At Heidi’s department end-of-year party today, I found out about Jared Jordan, a senior PG from Marist. Jared attended Kingswood Oxford for high school and is currently listed at number 40 on the NBA Big Board.

There’s a lot of pride in that at K-O, a school not known for its basketball program. Nowhere is that pride more evident than in this article on SI.com written Rand Richards Cooper. Since Rand is married to one of Heidi’s department colleagues, I had a chance to talk to him today at the party where Jared and this article were a hot topic of conversation.

It was actually quite amazing, by the way, to see the non-sports fan English teachers excited about NBA basketball. OK, sure, they were excited for Jared and for Rand’s article, but still… for once the “I used to work at ESPN.com” actually was relevant to the conversation at a K-O event.

Check out the article. After speaking to Rand, I can tell you this article is how he really feels. I’ve never seen someone as excited about the potential in a player as Rand is about Jared. Even acknowledging the weaknesses in his game, Rand sees some great potential here. Just talking to him got me excited enough to hope that the Sixers pick him up. A real point guard, wouldn’t that be awesome?