No Mayo, no Walker, no problem for Huntington

	O.J. Mayo left Huntington, W. Va., to play high school hoops in Ohio, but Huntington head coach George McGuffin still cheers for the top junior in the class of 2007. Brian Spurlock/SI
	One Juicy Rumor I heard a lot of speculation about where O.J. Mayo and Bill Walker will attend college, none of it from informed sources, but there was one rumor so juicy it stood out. Bob Huggins was said to have the inside track on O.J. and Bill (they have said they will go to college together) before he was fired at Cincinnati. As has been reported, he continues to speak with the boys even though he is not recruiting them to a specific school. If he has any sway over them (and some speculate that he was the one who convinced O.J. and Bill's AAU coach to move them closer to Cincinnati) then he could use that as leverage in getting a new job. Which school would appeal to Huggins as well as the boys? "How about Marshall?" speculated one person who said he has spoken to Huggins. "Huggins is from West Virginia and so are O.J. and Bill." Current Marshall coach Ron Jirsa is entering only his second season and certainly deserves more time to turn around the program. But would Marshall dump him at the chance to grab Huggins with the understanding that, after one season, he would bring O.J. and Bill back home to Huntington? I hope not, as it would be a disservice to Jirsa, but if Huggins can indeed deliver O.J. and Bill, it will be interesting to see what schools line up to hire him.
	More High School Hoops DOHRMANN: Huntington High focused on future HUFF: Ranking the top 10 high schools by region From The Magazine DOHRMANN: Mayo, Walker are talk of the town HUFF: Top team in all 50 states HUFF: Preseason Power Rankings

By George Dohrmann, SI.com

It is hard to believe Lloyd McGuffin when he says he doesn't think about it. The boys basketball coach at Huntington (W. Va.) High sees O.J. Mayo regularly, including at a recent scrimmage. He knows several of his players remain close with Mayo. And, he sees television and newspaper reports declare Mayo and another Huntington native, Bill Walker, the No. 1 and No. 2 ranked juniors in the country, respectively.

Yet McGuffin says he doesn't think about what his team would be like had O.J. and Bill gone to Huntington High rather than move to North College Hill, Ohio, two years ago to attend the high school in the town just outside Cincinnati.

"It doesn't do any good to think about what you don't have," says McGuffin, who taught at the middle school Mayo attended in Huntington. "Plus, I can't be mad at O.J. about it because, well, I really like him. He is just such a good kid."

How Mayo ended up in North College Hill and the impact he and Walker have had on that school and town is the subject of a story I wrote in this week's issue of Sports Illustrated. But it is also worth mentioning that another public school just missed out on all the benefits. It was as if McGuffin and others at Huntington High were holding not one, but two, winning lottery tickets, only to have the wind blow them away 160 miles northwest to North College Hill. The one conciliation is that Huntington High's basketball program, despite losing out on two transcendent, one-in-a-lifetime players, won the AAA state title last season and is among the favorites this year.

"We have been fortunate in that we have a lot of good players," McGuffin says. "I don't know if I would go so far as to call this area a hotbed, but there is talent."

The most talented player now residing in Huntington is 6-foot-8 forward Patrick Patterson, a junior at Huntington High. Were it not for O.J. and Bill, he would likely be considered the best player to come out of the area in a decade. He is being courted by some of the same schools, including Kentucky, and is ranked among the top 75 players in his class.

"When he came in, he was tall and slender but he started lifting weights right away because he knew that one way for him to get better was to get stronger," McGuffin says. "He's the hardest working kid we have and the kind of kid you want to coach because he makes everyone else better."

McGuffin's team last season was so good that guard Tanner Wild -- who walked on at Tennessee this fall -- didn't start. This year's bunch is still a work in progress, but with Patterson and all-state tourney guard Michael Taylor and Jamaal Williams, another guard who played AAU basketball with Mayo, a repeat is possible. Still, had O.J. and Bill stayed, and been joined by 6-11 junior Keenen Ellis of Indianapolis, an AAU teammate who followed them to North College Hill, this could have been McGuffin's starting five:

PG  6-5   O.J. Mayo
SG  5-10  Michael Taylor
SF  6-6   Bill Walker
PF  6-8   Patrick Patterson
C   6-11  Keenen Ellis