Kentucky Recruit Patrick Patterson Tells ESPN to Shove It

I don't know much about Patrick Patterson, the high school power forward who committed to Kentucky last week. But I know I like him, now that I've read that ESPN gave him the opportunity to make a big deal of last week's announcement and he turned the Worldwide Leader down.

The cable network offered to televise the player's announcement if he would reveal the choice a half hour before the 3:45 p.m. news conference.

That way, ESPN gets a scoop to put on a crawl at the bottom of the screen, while Patterson gets national exposure.

"Thank you, but no thank you," the player's mother, Tywanna Patterson, said she told ESPN....

Patterson described his mother's reaction as telling ESPN, "You can come to the news conference like everybody else."

Although I'm not naive enough to think big-time high school basketball has any relationship to the ideals of amateurism in athletics, I'd like to think there are still a few teenage hoops players who haven't bought into their own hype. Patterson sounds like a good young man in addition to being a good player.

More at The Big Lead and Deadspin.