It was nice to see a little Oakland County and Metro Detroit flavor in the NCAA Sweet Sixteen on Thursday night. Four players with local ties – two of them who played in THA OC in recent times – did the region proud with their performances under the spotlight on national television. Not that it needs to be said, but the presence of this quad of top-notch local athletes getting serious court time on the biggest of stage in college bball, tells you all you need to know about the consistent level of quality of hoops being played in Southeast Michigan. We sometimes take it for granted because we see this type of talent before our eyes every game, season-in and season-out, yet make no mistake this area is the definition of a "HOTBED of HOOP ACTIVITY."

Mark Coury and Da'Shonte Riley, both of Birmingham Detroit Country Day, saw some critical clockage in their teams respective Sweet Sixteen Games. Coury, a senior forward at Cornell, who played his first two seasons of college ball at Kentucky and Colgate, respectively, grabbed two rebounds in the Big Red's loss to his former team, the Kentucky Wildcats. Riley, a freshman center at number one seeded-Syracuse, collected two rebounds and two assists in the Orangemen's loss to Butler. Riley, a member of the Yellowjackets state championship team in 2007, has seen spot minutes for head coach Jim Boheim. His best game of the year just happened to be against our hometown Oakland University Golden Grizzlies back in December when he scored four points and hauled down 3 rebounds in a Big Orange beatdown of the Summit Conference champ.

Standout Oak Park senior guard Jalen Crawford's big brother Jordan Crawford was repping  'The D' to the fullest this whole year with the X-Men of Xavier. After scoring 10 ppg at Indiana as a freshman back in 2008, Crawford came to the 'Natti and onto the Musketeers' roster with unbridled passion and precision in his game this year, scoring 20 points, grabbing five boards, and dishing 3 dimes a game. In the NCAA Tourney, Crawford, who played at Detroit CMA and whose other older brother, Joe (state title at Detroit Ren), played at Kentucky, averaged 29 point per outing. He dropped 32 on Thursday night, hitting a number of huge shots on an array of highlight-worthy moves, in his team's double OT loss to Kansas State. Crawford's teammate, Brad Reford, a sophomore sniper from Frankenmuth, banged home a pair of trifectas in the Musketeers defeat.  Guess who was Crawford's asst coach back in his days as a Hoosier at IU? answer - none other than UofD-Mercy head coach Ray McCallum, Sr. Jalen can play some ball too now, don't forget. The youngest of the Crawford boys, averaged 22 ppg this season for Oak Park and is currently getting looks from a number of college programs.