After Trevor Cooney put up a modest performance in international play, he returned to the US for the Lebron Skills Academy, where he again joined the company of the nation’s top high school talent. After the Lebron Academy, Cooney met up with fellow 2011 commit Michael Carter-Williams in Cleveland for the King City Classic, where the two future Orange guards joined forces for the first time. The two have started to form a strong bond, which can only be of great advantage to the long-term development of SU.

While Cooney recharges his batteries at his Delaware home, Carter-Williams is hard at work at the Nike Peach Jam in North Augusta, South Carolina, where he’s playing for the Boston Area Basketball Club. So far, his performance has been astounding. In his first game, he dropped 44 on the Georgia stars, with nearly half of those points coming from the charity stripe. His seven turnovers are likely a byproduct of having the ball in his hands all the time, where these kinds of events are meant to showcase individual players rather than teams, so I wouldn’t get too worked up over them.

In the first two days of play, each team played a morning game and another one in the evening. The only real knock is that MCW’s shooting was way off in each of the nightcaps (7-39 from the floor in the second games versus 17-32 in the openers), so let’s just be thankful that the NCAA doesn’t operate that way. In the latest round, he put up 32 points on 12-26 shooting, and will play in the quarterfinals Thursday.

Carter-Williams has been committed to the Orange since last winter, and while in South Carolina, is looking to woo Anthony Davis and Rakeem Christmas, both big bodies who would complement the guards perfectly. Coaches Fine, Hopkins and Boeheim have all been in attendance at some point, and Davis has listed SU among his top three choices and plans to take a visit to campus.

You can track MCW, Davis and Christmas at the Peach Jam’s website here.

I’ve talked a little bit about how well Austin Rivers has played, and mentioned that Kyrie Irving is one of the can’t-miss guys of the class of 2010. There are two other players from this team who you should know about,  Marquette commit Vander Blue and power forward Quincy Miller.

Blue will be a freshman this fall for the Golden Eagles and is a combo guard, with great explosiveness and a strong body for someone his size. He didn’t light up the scoreboard, but you will be hearinging a lot out about him, as he’s considered one of the top newcomers in the Big East.

Miller is thought of as the country’s top power forward in the class of 2011, and averaged 14 points and over 10 rebounds in five games of action. He has offers from many of the usual suspects, but at this time, SU isn’t one of them.

Cooney’s line from the final wasn’t very encouraging at first glance, but you have to keep in mind that some of his teammates have a year of development on him, or in the case of Washington’s Abdul Gaddy, two. Still, Cooney put up two very good performances in four games, and the mere fact that Cooney was on the team is a reflection of how highly he’s thought of as a player.

It was a modest performance, he was just the undercard to the main event. The big story Tuesday night was the play of shooting guard Austin Rivers. Rivers played just 22 minutes against the Canadians, but scorched the nets by draining NINE straight threes before missing (he finished 9-12 from deep with 35 points total). It’s not yet known how many moneyballs he converted.

Rivers is currently the #2 prospect in ESPNU’s Top 100, with Duke, UNC, Florida, Kansas and UCLA all vying for his services. The USA will play Brazil for the gold on Wednesday night, and I sorely wish it was on ESPN instead of something called an “NBA Free Agency Summit.”

Next up is a semifinal matchup with the neighbors to the north Tuesday night. No word yet on where Andy Rautins’ loyalties are, but I’ll try to keep you posted.

Sure, it’s not the Dream Team (or Dream Team II, or III or The Redeem Team, for that matter), but Trevor Cooney is making some noise in FIBA Americas U19 Championship currently taking place in San Antonio. He and other top young players whose names you may recognize – Kyrie Irving, Austin Rivers, LeBryan Nash, Vander Blue, to name a few – are suiting up for their home country, and the US hasn’t left anything in doubt to this point.

In its first game against the US Virgin Islands on Saturday, Team USA prevailed in a 131-63 domination. Cooney didn’t start, but had the second-highest scoring total for the US. He had a solid game in 17 minutes off the bench, scoring 15 points on 9-19 shooting, including a 4-9 effort from downtown. Only Nash put up more shots, so it looks like Cooney’s teammates trust him with the ball.

In Sunday’s action, the US rolled again, annihilating Mexico, 114-38. Cooney, along with Austin Rivers, paced the game with 16 points apiece. Cooney shot 6-12 from the floor, including another 4-9 performance from beyond the arc. He still has another full year in high school to go before arriving on campus, but it’s great to see him holding his own and then some on a team full of studs.

Team USA plays Argentina tonight before the semifinals and finals wrap up competition on Tuesday and Wednesday. In another Upstate New York connection, Buffalo head coach Reggie Witherspoon is an assistant for the US team, which is led by Oklahoma head coach Jeff Capel.

Time will tell whether Wes and Johnny Flynn will still be teammates when the season starts, but for now, the Minnesota Timberwolves have picked up some fans in the Northeast. I’m sure there’s no one Johnny would rather have carrying his bags than Wes. In addition, SU fans are positioned for a real treat when the T’Wolves come to the Dome October 15 for an exhibition game against the Pistons.

Wes becomes the 11th Orange to be selected in the first round, and the fifth SU player to be selected in the top five of the NBA draft, following Dave Bing, Derrick Coleman, Billy Owens and you-know-who.

Later in the night, a VelociRautins alert was issued for New York City when the Knicks took Andy with the eighth pick of the second round. Rautins was projected to go somewhere in the draft’s last five picks, if at all, so it’s another feather in the cap for one of the most popular SU players in recent memory. If Andy can crack the Knicks’ roster, he’ll have the chance to make some more memories in Madison Square Garden.

Major props are in order for these two, who went from unknown products to big-time players to hearing their name called on draft night in just a few years.

But wouldn’t you want to keep the attention on the draft when you have a top-five player (perhaps top-three) in Wesley Johnson, another projected to go in the top 10 in Greg Monroe and two other first-rounder candidates in Dominique Jones and Stanley Robinson? Maybe only die-hards like me care about this sort of thing, and while it’s not worth making a huge deal out of, the timing is a little strange.

On to the schedule, the conference foes, split into home and away, are as follows (home-and-aways are bolded):

Home: Cincinnati, DePaul, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Providence, Rutgers, Seton Hall, Villanova, West Virginia
Away:  Connecticut, Georgetown, Louisville, Marquette, Pittsburgh, St. John’s, Seton Hall, USF, Villanova

The thing that sticks out most is that without knowing the schedule, which usually comes out in August, that’s one hell of a road slate, but a very manageable set of teams coming to the Loud House – Cincy, DePaul, Providence, Rutgers and Seton Hall all finished in the bottom half of the standings last season. There will be several opportunities to sing “The Hey Song” and load up on tacos, windshield wiper fluid or whatever it is they dole out when the Orange tops 100 points.

The home-and-away with Seton Hall is not like the others with Georgetown and Villanova, but however the rotation system is set, SU seems to always get a clunker (Providence last season, Rutgers the year prior, South Florida the year before that…).

Also, I find it noteworthy that the Orange has not played UConn twice in conference play since 2006-2007 (not including Big East Tournament games), considering the rivalry. For some persepective, SU and ‘Nova have shared home-and-aways in four of five seasons, if you count the upcoming campaign.

As I said before, I’ll analyze things further once the conference irons out the logistics and finalizes dates closer to summer’s end, but in the meantime, there’s a few things to chew on.

As draft projections become more refined, and with mock drafts changing by the second leading up to the big night on Thursday, Wes has pulled a top-five ranking of his own, currently projecting to be picked third by the New Jersey Nets, just after John Wall and Evan Turner.

But what about Andy Rautins, the engine to the Orange hot-rod last season? (or was he the keys? I’m bad with car metaphors.)

As we saw last season, Andy had the versatility of a spork, canning three-pointers, disrupting passing lanes, getting the ball moving in transition and, as he did most of his career, diving all over the floor for loose balls.

His work ethic and varied skill set garnered attention from NBA scouts, resulting in invites to predraft workouts with a large chunk of pro teams. In making the rounds, Andy has begun planning for the transition to play the point. At 6’4”, Andy is too undersized to stick at shooting guard but also not experienced enough for GM types to trust him bringing the ball up the court.

This puts him in somewhat of a precarious situation in regards to his future. At present, he’s a fringe second rounder, if he is to get drafted at all. Essentially, he’ll have to prove himself in summer leagues and hope to catch a break or two.

The college basketball media didn’t think much of Andy Rautins when he started up at the ‘Cuse back in 2005, which seems like eons ago, but he went on to prove them wrong in front of our very eyes, even conquering an ACL tear. It looks like he’ll have a similar mountain to climb at the professional level, but if anyone’s up to the challenge, it’s Andy.

It’s been widely accepted that John Wall and Evan Turner will go 1-2, and nothing has happened to change that, but while the players connected with the three next best players (Johnson, Derrick Favors and DeMarcus Cousins) also appear firmly set, the destinations aren’t quite as clear-cut.

This is the first time that the Nets have been connected to Johnson, as scouts have held that Favors and Cousins, a pair of high-ceiling big men with exceptional-but-unpolished talent, were the next best players available. What Johnson provides over Cousins and Favors is a more mature and developed background (three years of college experience versus one) at a different position. The Nets had been pursuing the two bigs for their youth as well as to fill a positional need, but now they’re indicating that they’re willing to go with Wes and roll the dice on a big man in free agency.

It’s very possible that new owner Mikhail Prokhorov wants the Nets to be competitive as soon as possible after posting a historically awful 12-70 performance in 2009-10. Such a direction would not involve waiting to see how and if Favors and Cousins will come around. In addition to being unpolished, there are said to be major red flags surrounding Cousins’ makeup and his ability to stay in shape. Anyone who watched a Kentucky game last season saw the tantrums that he threw whenever he was whistled for a call or sent to the bench with foul trouble.

Perhaps the Nets aren’t willing to risk another PR nightmare after the season they just went through, and don’t want the hassle of worrying about what kind of messes the short-fused Cousins might get himself into, in addition to not knowing whether and how long it will take for him to develop on the court. And I can’t say I blame them.

Derrick Favors, highly-regarded after spending a year in the ACC is another tremendous talent. For a team with more patience than the Nets seem to have right now, he could be a terrific contributor in the future.

We learned how mature and NBA-ready Wes Johnson looks to be; I don’t need to go into the specifics, but his draft stock has been rising since the day he declared. At the end of the day, the NBA draft is a crapshoot after the first two picks. High picks take time to develop, sometimes they don’t at all, sometimes you get key contributers at lower picks (Paul Millsap) or even out of rookie free agency (Wesley Matthews).  Here’s hoping that the GM who calls Wesley’s name, whoever it may be, knows not only where he wants his team to be, but also how he plans to get it there.

So what makes Johnson so appealing to the Timberwolves, who finished at an abysmal 15-67 last season? We’ll go straight to the source.

“He’s got a beautiful stroke,” Kahn told the Associated Press. “He has almost a classic basketball body. Good height. I thought he picked things up very quickly during the workout and clearly can run, which is so important to all of us in terms of how we want to play.”

In terms of roster management, should Johnson head to Minnesota, he’ll be in a position to compete for a starting spot with Corey Brewer, who averaged 12 points and six rebounds last season. With Brewer becoming more expensive (his contract was extended through next season for $3.7 million) and Minnesota circling the drain on the court, calling Johnson’s number would be a forward-thinking move for Kahn.

For SU fans, there’s also the appeal of Johnson teaming up with fellow Orange Johnny Flynn. While they couldn’t suit up together last year, Flynn was one of many hyping Wes’s talents when he couldn’t take the court due to NCAA’s transfer rules.

Johnson also recently worked out for the 76ers, who are expected to go with Ohio State’s Evan Turner, a close friend of Johnson’s. New head coach Doug Collins, who spent a few years coaching the Bulls before Phil Jackson came along, made a very intriguing comparison after seeing what Johnson had:

“Watching Wesley work out was like, ‘Wow, that was impressive.’ This young kid has got it. He’s charismatic. He can play. He’s respectful. He’s older. Impressive,” Collins told the Philadelphia Daily News.

Collins compared Johnson to Scottie Pippen, who he coached with the Chicago Bulls. “Not as good of a ballhandler right now as Scottie, but he’s a better shooter. He has that lanky, rangy body. He has a real good feel,” Collins said.

In addition to the ball-handling, Pippen was spectacular defensively. Wes has never struck me as the type who gets wrapped up in that kind of thing, but to be mentioned in that light that has to be pretty flattering.

As stated earlier, it’s very hard to see Philly passing on Turner with the second pick (also, how crazy would it be to see Johnson go higher in a draft than Carmelo Anthony?), but SU fans should be very excited at the possibility of a Flynn-Johnson reunion. Now, if only the T’Wolves could pull in a few nationally-televised matchups…