Billy Gillespie: Cradle Robber

In the transient world of college basketball, where coaches take new jobs mere days after signing contract extensions, it's nice to see a coach display long-term thinking.

But this is ridiculous.

Kentucky head coach Billy Gillespie got a jump-start on his 2012 recruiting class by offering a scholarship to an eighth-grader.

Gillespie reportedly noticed Michael Avery at a youth basketball event in Akron, Ohio last weekend. Just a week later, the 15-year-old guard from Lake Sherwood, California, officially committed to play for the Wildcats.

Even though he's yet to select a high school.

Avery's AAU coach, Dinos Trigonis, wins the understatement award for calling the commitment "very premature."

Ya think?

That a college coach would offer a scholarship to an eighth-grader is, unfortunately, not all that surprising. That it's Gillespie gives the story some additional flavor -- a little ironic "special sauce." See, Gillespie doesn't even have a formal contract with Kentucky -- he's working under a "memorandum of understanding." That uncertain status all but guarantees that Gillespie's name will come up in every high-profile coaching search over the next few years -- as happened recently with Oklahoma State.

So while you might be thinking that Avery's chances of actually landing in Lexington in four years are pretty slim... the odds that Gillespie will be there to greet him on move-in day might be even slimmer.