Since I blogged the info about Erin Phillips of the Connecticut Sun suffering a knee injury in the championship game of the Israeli Cup, thought it was only proper to provide an update.

According to the same site where I found out about Phillips' injury, Phillips does not need surgery

Now, in regards to the big news of the day, i.e. confirmation that highly sought after post player Stefanie Dolson has committed to UConn, here are some thoughts.

I am not, never have been and never will be a coach so unlike these people who prop them up as experts on various recruiting web sites (including one who expects us to value his expertise even though he had Diana Taurasi as the No. 2 rated player coming out of high school behind Ashley Robinson), I am just not qualified to predict how good a player will be. I have always used the "who else is recruiting them" as a way to judge recruits. Dolson's other schools at the end were Maryland, Duke, Penn State and Rutgers. That's some pretty good company. I know that the Washingtonville team playing Dolson's Minisink Valley squad the night I went to see her was so clearly overmatched physically, it was hard to draw any concrete conclusions based off the one time I saw her play.

On a personal level, Stefanie Dolson is an easy kid to like. Coming out of the lockerroom after Monday's win over Washingtonville, the first thing she did was pick up an adorable child who I assumed was either the offspring of a family member or close friend. She has an easygoing nature about her that is very endearing. She reminded me a little bit of Heather Buck in the way she interacted with her teammates and carried herself on and off the court.

It seemed to me that Stefanie found the entire recruiting process to be a bit peculiar especially the part where a guy who drive two hours to watch her play and then want to talk to her after the game about the process before driving two hours back home. For the record, I believe she knew she was going to UConn when I spoke to her and I think she knew that I knew she was going to UConn. But obviously the Dolson family has been raised with a sense of courtesy because they believed they shouldn't announce their decision to the media until they first let all the coaches in the process know. I can appreciate and respect that even though the best thing for me would have been her blurting out to me on Monday that she was committing to UConn. I will say I greatly appreciate the way the process was handled from the end of her and her family and her very helpful AAU coach Marc Riley. Other recruits who accuse the media of being overbearing might want to take a page from the Stefanie Dolson/Heather Buck/Kelly Faris/Samarie Walker handbook.

Among the items I brought up with her when she returned my call was how hard it was telling the other coaches that she was going to UConn. For space purposes, I had to cut that part out of my story which will be running in Sunday's edition of the Register so here it is:

"I feel really bad, I say sorry a lot when I talk to them. It is hard but so far a lot of people I have called, I keep getting answering machines but I will get them sooner or later."

In my quest to place the extent of Dolson's recruitment in the proper perspective, I asked her high school coach Judy Mottola that other than former Virginia guard Tammi Reiss, is there another player in their region who has attracted the same amount of attention from the big-time schools. The only other name she came up with was Katina Mack, who graduated from Penn State as the Lady Lions' fifth all-time leading scorer with 1,463. Mack still ranks 12th on Penn State's career scoring list. That is some pretty good company.