It’s too early to accurately rank basketball players in the Class of 2016, but if they could be ranked, High Point (N.C.) Wesleyan Christian Academy forward Harry Giles would be right near the top. Have doubts? Just click play on the highlight reel above.

Giles, a 6-foot-8, 205-pound freshman who led Wesleyan to a North Carolina Interscholastic Athletic Association Class 3A title, first began getting attention before he had even played a high school basketball game. Now that a season is under his belt, that interest has hardly abated.

Instead, the forward has closed out his first regular season and continued to dominant in the early stages of the spring invitational tournament season, earning major plaudits for his performance at the Dave Telep Carolina Challenge, among other tournaments.

Harry Giles may be the top prospect in the Class of 2016 — Rivals.com

Giles has more than enough athleticism to make him a bona fide, breakthrough collegiate prospect right now. Yet the freshman appears perfectly happy to bide his time in the recruiting game. He has already received scholarship offers from the likes of North Carolina, Wake Forest and Ohio State, not to mention significant interest from the likes of Duke and Georgetown.

That North Carolina scholarship is particularly notable, because it makes him the first freshman Williams has ever extended a scholarship to.

"I just [want to] go out there and do my best, and show people [who claim] that he may not be that good,” Giles told Rivals.com affiliate Tarheel Illustrated. “Some people say I'm good, and some people say I'm not good. I'm going to show them.

"No [I don't worry about the expectations]. I just play my game. I just play basketball. I don't believe the hype and stuff and let it worry me or get to me, and just play like I have something to prove."

Long Beach Poly coach Sharrief Metoyer — Inner City Players

In March, one of Southern California’s most respected high school basketball coaches made a statement, intentionally inserting a player he knew to be ineligible in the closing moments of the team’s season-ending playoff loss. The move was made for purely symbolic reasons, with a coach attempting to stand up for a player he felt had been unjustly persecuted.

Long Beach (Cal.) Poly High basketball coach Sharrief Metoyer made his statement. Now the California Interscholastic Federation and Metoyer’s employer are making statements of their own, suspending Metoyer for an entire calendar year because of his decision to insert junior Kameron Chatman in Poly’s loss in the Open Division playoffs semifinal.

As first noted by Gazettes Sports, Metoyer was officially suspended from any activity involving the Poly basketball program for an entire calendar year by the Poly administration, a penalty that was backdated to April 1, 2013. The penalty was levied with an eye on the CIF, with Poly officials realizing that CIF would intervene if it deemed the school’s internal discipline of Metoyer to be lackluster.

In the end, the CIF was all too happy to sanction Poly’s internal discipline, cementing Metoyer’s year of absence from prep basketball but ensuring that the penalty would not last longer than 12 months, either.

“We admire Sharrief, he’s a great person, a great coach, and a great role model,” Poly co-principal Victor Jarels told the Gazettes. “He had a moment, and coaches have to set a higher standard. He’s taken complete responsibility for his actions.”

The year-long penalty feels like a particularly caustic ruling given the length of time that Chatman played. The junior -- who moved to Long Beach and joined the Poly squad so he could live with Metoyer, who is his Godfather -- sat out the entire season until there was 1:12 remaining during Poly’s playoff matchup against fellow SoCal powerhouse program Santa Ana (Cal.) Mater Dei High.

Chatman moved to Southern California to live with Metoyer, but that move was deemed to be made for competition’s sake, which meant that the budding forward couldn’t participate in a competitive game until one year after he arrived at the school.

Metoyer never shirked responsibility for his actions, nor did he ever question his own gut instinct that he had acted the right way.

“Somebody had to make a statement," Metoyer told the Los Angeles Times after the season-ending loss. "The game of basketball means nothing -- we’re supposed to be in the business of helping kids.”

Volleyball doesn’t typically earn consideration as a particularly hazardous sport. In fact, short of slipping on water on the court or getting one’s hand stuck in the net in a what would be a true fluke injury there may not be a way to get hurt in volleyball. In other words, it’s about as safe a sport as you’ll find outside the bounds of sheer dumb luck.

That doesn’t mean that volleyball can’t look like it hurts though, as one Illinois teen discovered during a recent game.

As first discovered and posted without full background by Bob’s Blitz -- and they have yet to miss a single buzzer beater, blooper or highlight reel by our calculations -- the video you see above comes from a recent boys volleyball game between Orland Park (Ill.) Carl Sandburg High and league foe Palos Hills (Ill.) Amos Alonzo Stagg High.

While the game featured plenty of highlights, the play that stole everyone’s attention was one of the great blooper shots of the year. While attempting to position himself to return an attempted Stagg spike, Sandberg junior Jimmy Drynan found himself on the wrong end of a very aggressively struck Voit (or Mizuno ... or Mikasa? We couldn’t read the brandmark from the video) orb.

In fact, the spike was so hard that it literally knocked Drynan over. Luckily for all, Drynan was able to pull himself up and get back in the game. His teammates flocked to him after the ball made contact with his head, though he was quick to shake off the incident.

In May 2012, Torii Hunter took time off from his then employers, the Anaheim Angels, to deal with a family crisis back home in Texas. One of the longtime All-Star outfielder’s sons, Darius McClintock-Hunter, had been accused of sexual assault related to a sexual incident involving two teenage girls.

Darius McClintock-Hunter and Torii Hunter deny his involvement in sexual assault at a 2012 press conference — AP

Now, a year later, McClintock-Hunter has been cleared of any wrongdoing and its clear that he was falsely accused. Yet the teen isn’t getting his old life back, so he and his family are now filing suit against the families of the two teenage girls who falsely accused McClintock-Hunter of sexually assaulting them.

More specifically, the son of Torii Hunter and his represented filed a lawsuit seeking up to $40 million from the families of the two girls because of the irreparable harm that has been done to McClintock-Hunter’s image and life. The suit alleges that the girls’ actions, “falsely branded as a 'criminal,' ruined his reputation, sent him to an alternative school for a year, got him kicked off the Prosper High School football team and banned from high school sports."

At the time of the incident, McClintock-Hunter and four other male Prosper students were accused of forcing two female classmates to have sex with them. Yet some 48 hours after calling out McClintock-Hunter, the teenager’s accuser recanted her story and said he was not involved.

When McClintock-Hunter was accused of the alleged crime he was one of the nation’s rapidly rising football recruits. The then-junior had received scholarship offers from LSU, Arkansas and Oregon, among other programs, and there were whispers that he could try to attend the same school as his brother, fellow junior Torii Hunter Jr.

Yet the charges against McClintock-Hunter forced him to withdraw from Prosper (Tex.) High and enroll at an alternative school. That, in turn, kept him away from football, and his lack of action combined with the besmirching of his name to eliminate the major Division I scholarship offers that had come his way before the charges were levied against him.

Clearly, McClintock-Hunter has a case. His brother will attend Notre Dame in the fall and will compete for the Fighting Irish once an injury he suffered in the postseason heals. Meanwhile, McClintock-Hunter will aim to simply continue repairing his image, all while trying to recoup some of the dignity he and his image lost in the aftermath of a disturbing case of misappropriated wrongdoing.

Years after starring for the Nets, Kenny Anderson coached a Jewish hoops team — Getty

Well, that didn’t last long. Less than two years after being appointed as head boys basketball coach of a local Jewish high school, former NBA star Kenny Anderson has been fired in the aftermath of an arrest for a suspected DUI.

Anderson spent the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons serving as the head basketball coach at Davie (Fla.) David Posnack Jewish Day School, after being hired in September 2011. Anderson struggled to turn around the school’s fortunes, with Posnack finishing the most recent season with a woeful, 1-14 record.

However, those on-the-court struggles weren’t the reason that Anderson was fired. Rather, he was dismissed because he was arrested not once but twice for driving incidents in which it is alleged that he was inebriated. On Saturday, Anderson was arrested and held on suspicion of DUI after being witnessed swerving erratically. In December 2011, the coach crashed his car into two trees, but was eventually not charged with DUI because he fled the scene (fittingly, he was charged with fleeing the scene). No one was injured in either incident.

Yet the reputation of Posnack was apparently damaged enough to elicit an immediate response from the school, which issued a statement saying in no uncertain terms that Anderson would not be back leading the Posnack basketball program in 2013-14.

“Kenny Anderson will not be returning as head basketball coach next season for the David Posnack Jewish Day School,” Posnack Athletic Director Danny Herz wrote in a statement that was obtained by Miami-based website Gossip Extra.

There’s no word on what Anderson expects to do next, but the area will almost surely reflect on his time at Posnack as a true curiosity. The former 14-year NBA veteran has no direct ties to Judiasm, and his appointment appeared to come out of the blue.

Forget Guan Tianlang. Sure, he’s only made the cut at two straight PGA Tour events, but he’s old news. In fact, compared to what will happen tomorrow, Guan, a 14-year-old phenom is just old.

12-year-old Ye Wo-cheng will set a record for youngest person to tee off at a European PGA event — Reuters

That’s because on Thursday, at the PGA European Tour’s China Open, Guan’s existing record for youngest player to compete in a Tour event will be eclipsed. Guan himself set that mark in 2012 when he competed in the China Open at age 13. Now, 12-year-old Ye Wo-cheng is ready to take that mantle, after Ye earned the final qualifying spot for the event.

According to the Associated Press, Ye is coached by English golf professional David Watson, who raved about the pre-teen’s ability to respond to course conditions on the fly and remain calm in pressure-packed scenarios.

"Ye's ability to listen and respond is way above the norm," Watson told the AP. "At the moment, I don't believe that Ye has too many rivals of the same age. He often wins in higher age groups, but at the same time, I know it is dangerous to speculate and we must realize he is just a 12-year-old boy."

To put Ye’s young success in perspective, one need only look at the marks he has already broken. The native of Dongguan province competed at both the 2010 and 2011 U.S. Kids World Championship event, breaking the previous tournament record by winning with a total score of 12-under-par. The previous holder of that mark was none other than Tiger Woods. No longer eligible for the U.S. Kids World Championship, Ye turned homeward to the Guandong Junior Championship … and won by a remarkable 18 strokes.

Given the accomplishments of Guan, it’s no surprise that the golf establishment finds itself looking East as another remarkable athlete prepares to take a first cut at a professional event.

Like plenty of prep football programs, the Longwood (Fl.) Lyman High football team was looking for a way to kick off spring practices with a bang. That’s when the school’s football coach got an idea by looking at his own team’s mascot.

Lyman lineman Brock Merritt attempts to hold off a canine competitor — Orlando Sentinel

As covered in detail by the Orlando Sentinel, the Lyman football program officially started its 2013 spring training program with a unique set of sprints, pitting the fastest Lyman High Greyhounds against actual greyhounds.

In the end, the Lyman coaches set up seven races between the team’s fastest players at different positions and greyhounds at the Sanford-Orlando Kennel Club. The event was a chance for the Lyman football program to help raise funds for the Kennel Club to help retired Greyhounds, all while getting the offseason practice sessions started in a way that could help inspire an energetic push forward.

Lyman coach Jeff Gierke told the Sentinel that the one-of-a-kind race series was initially the idea of the Sanford-Orlando track manager in 2012. While that manager has moved on, the idea he planted stuck and Gierke followed up, setting the stage for a $1 entry fee man v. dog invitational in 2013.

To even up the odds, the track had the dogs run 200 yards while the human greyhounds raced 100 yards. That distance edge was mitigated by the dogs running on their home surface, with the football players racing across a grass and pavement path adjacent to the dirt track.

The Lyman Greyhounds with real greyhounds — Orlando Sentinel

In the end, the humans did better than one might have expected. Three of the Lyman players emerged victorious, making the dogs 4-3 series winners but the humans the stars in the eyes of public perception, none moreso than 300+-pound offensive lineman Brock Merritt, who stunned his greyhound counterpart to emerge with a narrow match race victory.

“I’m 6-6 and weight 305 pounds and I usually run about a 5.2 or 5.1,” Merritt told the Sentinel. “When I started out I thought I had it, then I heard the thing coming up behind me and I kicked it into overdrive because I got scared and thought I was going to lose. I was like, ‘Man, I don’t think I got this.’ But I just pushed through and I got it.

According to his teammate and quarterback Jared Reimel, the race was a wholesome yet surreal experience for all involved.

Brooks College Prep assistant baseball coach Anthony Beale — Chicago Sun TimesA major race row has emerged in Chicago, where a high school baseball game between two public schools scheduled for an evening start time was postponed because one school’s parents were allegedly afraid for their children’s safety at the rival South Side academy.

As reported by both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times, as well as Chicago ABC affiliate WLS and a handful of other outlets, a scheduled prep baseball game for Chicago (Ill.) Walter Payton College Prep at Chicago (Ill.) Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep was cancelled when parents from the Payton Prep program allegedly raised concerns about the safety of their children in the Roseland neighborhood where Brooks is located.

Roseland is a section of Chicago’s South Side that has experienced a large amount of gun and gang violence over the previous 12-18 months.

"The parents didn't want to come down here due to the neighborhood we were in," Brooks assistant coach Bert Redmond told WLS. "They were in fear of their child's lives. They were afraid of being in a drive by shooting. I was kind of appalled."

So were many other Chicago parents and residents, who accused the Brooks parents of acting out racist biases for cancelling the matchup. To his credit, the coach of the Payton squad, William Wittleder, traveled to the game to apologize to his counterpart at Brooks and the Brooks squad, later specifically citing parental concerns as the primary reason why the game was cancelled in interviews with the media.

As one might expect, that didn’t go over well with the Brooks players, who live in the neighborhood that their counterparts from Payton Prep allegedly didn’t feel safe traveling to.

"It's heartbreaking to know a team wouldn't play us because of the location of our stadium,” Brooks player David McKnight told WLS. “We come out here every day and we dedicate our lives to playing the sport of baseball.”

The schools moved quickly to smooth over hurt feelings between the academies, with the principals from both schools issuing a joint statement on the incident, saying that they were looking forward to future interactions between the schools. Separately, Payton principal Tim Devine issued a statement to his own students claiming that the game was cancelled because of poor communication on the part of the Payton coach and not any racial tendencies on the part of the team’s parents.