Now that The CA has thankfully upgraded our blog capabilities, hopefully The Edge will be a daily stop for Tiger fans. I’ll try to provide some sort of post every day leading up to Memphis Madness, then start with daily blogs once practice begins.

A couple things:

– As first reported by Scout.com, the Morris twins have indeed de-committed from Memphis.

In surfing various message boards, supposed insiders have forwarded the idea that this development is linked to the Sept. 2 incident on Beale Street and other various off-court issues from past years. That assertion is laughable. The truth is, there had been issues in this recruitment for awhile, much of it linked to the influence of Danny Brinkely, the twins’ high school coach from Philadelphia Prep Charter.

After the twins signed with Memphis, their stock went up fairly considerably last year. Brinkley, I’m told from solid sources, had encouraged the twins to look around and see what kind of interest they could get this summer from other programs, which is why they re-opened their recruitment. Meanwhile, Memphis coaches fell in love with Angel Garcia, who looked like a potential All-American during John Calipari’s elite camp in July. The twins and their high school coach, according to my sources — and they haven’t called back to deny this claim — did not want Memphis to recruit Garcia since he essentially plays the same position. This put the Tiger coaching staff in a difficult spot. Should they have backed off Garcia, who they evaluate as a possible top-5 player in the country (and perhaps the best), to placate the twins, who had already waffled once on their commitment? Obviously, Calipari made the call to continue pursuing Garcia, even though he probably knew it could have consequences.

If Garcia meets NCAA qualifications — and we’ll monitor that situation closely in the coming months — the overall impact on Memphis won’t be too significant. The Tiger coaching staff will now look at some other players, and perhaps attempt to get back in on players they didn’t recruit in the summer because the Morris twins were committed. But the Tigers certainly aren’t going to take somebody just to take them, especially given the quality of players they are recruiting for the 2009 class.