The opening three paragraphs of this latest article from John Gasaway (known alias: Big Ten Wonk) should serve as notice that Basketball Prospectus is simply essential daily reading for college basketball fans.
One day in the 1950s, a young boy in southern California was riding with his parents in their car when a song came on the radio. The boy liked what he heard and his parents told him it was by a group called The Four Freshmen.
The boy was Brian Wilson, and a few years later he started his own group, The Beach Boys, that featured tight vocal harmonies just like the ones that had drawn him to the sound coming from the car radio. For his new group Wilson enlisted the voices of not only his two younger brothers but also that of his cousin.
Proving once and for all that Disney is always right and there really is a "circle of life," that cousin turned out to be Mike Love. You may know Love only vaguely as a bearded and somewhat litigious fellow who seems to be forever suing a dwindling group of surviving band mates. Nevertheless, Love also happens to have a nephew, Kevin, who today features very prominently in a latter-day version of The Four Freshmen.
The rest is typically fascinating fare; Gasaway profiles Michael Beasley of KSU, Eric Gordon of Indiana, Love, and USC's OJ Mayo. Go, read this article now, and please do accept my strongest recommendation that you add their feed to whatever RSS service you use.