Qasual Questions: Kenner League Is Coming

Summer is a slow time for hoops (well, college hoops at least). In between long stretches of random questions and answers and (pre-ingestion) photographs of our lunches, we get the occasional glimpse of basketball-like substance. The July live period allows us to obsess over the fickle interests of high school players who eventually will shave another school's logo into their heads. Once every few years, the hawkish Georgetown Hoyas will trek overseas for a unique display of diplomacy. And for one glorious month every summer, we get to see our Hoyas on campus playing in the Kenner League.

The Kenner League--or the Nike Pro City Jabbo Kenner College/Pro Summer League if you're nasty-- begins this Saturday and runs through August 10. During this time, Hoyas new and old play alongside local collegiate and once-collegiate ballers. With nearly eight months between March's crushing cynicism and the November departure of next season's delusion train, Kenner is the faithful's best chance to evaluate a Georgetown player's off-season progress, whether in the form of a refined jumper, a new post move, or 10 pounds of added muscle. Icing on the cake comes in the form of the occasional cameo by former Georgetown studs, who remind us how freaking good professional basketball players are.

In the past, returning Georgetown players have paired up, two to a team, while all of the the freshmen-to-be have suited up for a team sponsored by the Tombs. This arrangement has worked out well. Veteran Hoyas get at least one familiar teammate, a necessity in open-court, ball-hogging summer play.  Meanwhile, the newbies quickly establish camaraderie. The Tombs' team has produced some memorable results, most recently in 2011 when the heralded incoming recruiting class of Otto Porter, Jabril Trawick, Mikael Hopkins, Tyler Adams, and Greg Whittington advanced all the way to the league final.

Unfortunately, the NCAA, which doesn't allow its member institutions to have nice things unless $$$, may have put a kibosh on this happy tradition. The NCAA reportedly has ruled from some undisclosed location that freshmen-to-be are like returning players and so are limited to two per team. If true, this spells doom for the Tombs team as we know it. While no one needed further evidence of the NCAA's infinite suckitude, the timing of this reminder is particularly unwelcome, given the arrival of Georgetown's touted 2014 recruiting class.

Even so, every Kenner League offers intriguing questions, and this year is no different. We'll be diving into those questions in greater detail over the coming days, but, in the spirit of the blog's latest ill-advised running feature Internet sensation, today we'll just let the questions below simmer like a poisonous Kenner hot dog. So, let's get to it:

(1) Who are you most excited to see at Kenner League?

(2) Which Hoya freshman is the biggest threat to go AI and dominate the Kenner League?

(3) Do you think a game schedule will actually get released? When?

(4) Who's the best bet to be a pleasant surprise at Kenner?

(5) Is the NCAA bad or the worst?

(6) Anyone else completely forget about Josh Smith until just now? Yeah, me neither.