Aquille Carr has long been a major subject of fascination here at Prep Rally, both for his phenomenal talent, unique marketability -- Prep Rally was the first to report of his Italian contract offer in Spring 2011 -- and struggles off the court. Now the high school senior at Lanham (Md.) Princeton Day Academy has confirmed was the recruiting world has been buzzing about for weeks: He will bypass a scholarship offer that he had accepted to play for Seton Hall and instead play professionally overseas, likely in Europe.

Carr announced the decision on Twitter, for the first time publicly confirming what Prep Rally reported two years ago in the process.

After being offered an Italian contract that would have paid him some $750,000 as a 16-year-old, Carr has decided now is the time to officially take his talent overseas.

Baltimore Patterson point guard Aquille Carr — Rivals.com

“The money won’t always be there gotta get it when u can I turned it down last time not this time”

Carr’s announcement was quickly followed upon by Yahoo! affiliate TheRecruitScoop’s Alex Kline and other sources, all of whom were quick to offer well wishes to the Baltimore native.

So far there is no indication of precisely where Carr will end up. As Prep Rally reported in 2011, Pallacanestro Virtus Roma was the first foreign club to pursue him professionally, though there was no note in the Italian media indicating any resumption of interest on the Italian club’s part.

While Aquille was tweeting news of his decision on Tuesday, the rest of his family stayed quiet, with no word whether his daughter or any other members of his family might go with him overseas.

'Tis the season for wild, season-altering buzzer beaters. Today is no exception, with the latest rendition earning a team a crown and answering one of basketball life’s great questions: If a team wins on a backboard clanging buzzer beater without calling “bank”, does it still win?

The answer, evidently, is a resounding yes.

As first brought to Prep Rally’s attention by the blog The Basketball Diary, Ashburnham (Ma.) Cushing Academy edged past Barrington (R.I.) St. Andrews School, 61-60, to earn the New England Private Schools Athletic Conference title.

The final three of those points came on a wild three-pointer from just inside midcourt at the buzzer.

The shot, which was hoisted by Cushing sophomore Jalen Adams, rebounded in off the backboard and straight through the net, sending the Penguins (sidenote: how great a mascot are the Penguins?) and their fans celebrating in delirium.

The most bizarre episode of the 2013 boys basketball postseason across the nation may have unfolded on Monday night in Michigan, where a team that held a lead stalled for more than seven minutes in the second quarter, only to come out and rush to an even larger victory in the second half.

Muskegon Heights' Aaron Sydnor had plenty of time while stalling for dental hygiene — Matt Gajtka:MLive.com

As first reported by MLive.com, the Muskegon Heights (Mi.) Academy boys basketball team cruised to a 58-44 victory against Galesburg-Augusta (Mi.) High in a Michigan High School Activities Association Class C Regional semifinal. That the Tigers won was not particularly surprising; they entered the game as favorites to advance. What was surprising was how a team that has thrived with a frenetic, full court press throughout 2013 turned to an extreme slow down to get the job done.

According to MLive’s Matt Gajtka, Muskegon Heights led 21-16 after the first quarter. As soon as the second quarter kicked off, Galesburg-Augusta (G-A) kept the tempo where it was, rushing down the floor and hitting a driving layup to cut the lead to 21-18.

As it turned out, that would be the entirety of the action in the second quarter, with Muskegon Heights literally holding the ball between two players until there were only 20 seconds remaining in the period.

The strategy might have made conceptual sense -- even if it was a bit unsportsmanlike -- if it weren’t for the fact that Muskegon Heights immediately abandoned the tactic at the start of the second half. The Tigers came out for the third quarter with the same fast breaking, pressure trapping intensity they used at the start of the game … and promptly built up a significant edge that ballooned to 37-26 with just 1:36 remaining in the period.

Naturally, that begs the question: If Muskegon Heights could push out a big lead whenever it wanted to, why did the Tigers stall for an entire quarter?

"They showed they were willing to pull the ball out [and stall] if they got any kind of lead," Muskegon Heights coach Dell Stewart told MLive, referring to a brief period in the first quarter when G-A stalled for 45 seconds.

"We saw their talent offensively, and we decided to hold the ball if they stayed in their zone defense, which was hurting us. We might have attacked if they came out at us (in a man-to-man)."

If that was the true motivation, then clearly the Muskegon Heights-G-A contest should go down in the annals as one of Michigan’s most bizarre contests, a flat track scoring race that devolved into a tet-a-tet blinking contest between stalling coaches.

Despite conflicting video evidence to the contrary, a California prep boys basketball playoff official did not back down from his controversial call a day after denying a potential game-tying, buzzer-beating tip-in due to basket interference.

"I stand behind the call," Tim Johnson, the controversial play's trailing official on the three-man crew working Friday night's Southern California Regional Open Division first-round matchup between Westchester (Los Angeles, Calif.) High and Bullard (Fresno, Calif.) High, told The Fresno Bee the following morning. "I think it confirms it totally."

Based on still shots of both the play and the scoreboard taken from a television broadcast and a student's cell phone video footage, respectively, Bullard's Calvin Young appeared to have legally tipped in the game-tying basket with 0.2 seconds remaining on the clock.

"I thought he went over the rim to get it; I thought it was basket interference," Westchester coach Ed Azzam told the paper after his team's resulting 60-58 victory. "But I have a very biased view. You usually don't get a call like that on the road. You usually don't get that call anywhere because they just don't make it. But I'll take it."

While the ball was above the rim, it appeared to be outside the cylinder, thus negating any potential for offensive goaltending. That's why Bullard coach Tony Amundsen and the Knights faithful were under the impression that the basket was waved off due to time running out, which also seemed like the incorrect call, causing massive confusion.

"The only thing I wish I had done better was tell Tony my call was basket interference," added Johnson, who briefly conferred with Amundsen amid the post-game hysteria. "He was asking about time, and at that point it was getting crazy."

Johnson told The Bee he "made a circle motion with his right hand" to indicate the offensive goaltending call, but video footage also somewhat conflicts that statement.

Paris Jackson earned national headlines in early March when photos and videos emerged showing her cheering for the Sherman Oaks (Ca.) Buckley School boys basketball team. She appeared to be excited and effervescent and, at least in attitude, everything a cheerleader should be.

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At the time, plenty of people chimed in saying they were thrilled to see Paris just being a regular teen, enjoying life while doing precisely what plenty of other 14-year-old girls want to. Now an NFL team has caught on, and they want her to considering cheering for them in the future.

As reported by Yahoo! via TV Guide and a host of other sources, Barbara Zaun, the cheerleading director for the Philadelphia Eagles, told TMZ that her squad was interested in adding Jackson to their group.

Michael Jackson's daughter, Paris Jackson, cheers for Buckley's boys basketball team — Twitter

"We thought that she had a lot of poise, confidence and enthusiasm in her cheer performance," Zaun told the online gossip website. "Paris has that 'wow factor' that makes a great cheerleader.

"She is already very comfortable in the limelight, so we think she would definitely stand out and impress the judges. ... We hope that she will try out for the team and be an Eagles cheerleader!"

It's worth mentioning that the team isn't asking Jackson to move across country and start cheering for the Eagles this minute. After all, that would break child labor laws. Not to mention that putting a 14-year-old in the annual Eagles Cheerleader Lingerie Calendar might qualify as child pornography. Rather, the Eagles are encouraging the celebrity teen to try out and join the squad once she turns 18, after her senior year of high school.

North Marion football coach Doug Bilodeau and his dog Sally will work for new helmets — Facebook

The Aurora (Ore.) North Marion High school district is in the midst of a budget crunch, so they certainly didn’t have the funds needed to ramp up its stock of football helmets. That was a big problem for the North Marion football team, which didn’t have enough safe helmets to complete a full set.

While bemoaning this shortage of safe equipment, North Marion coach Doug Bilodeau joked that he was so desperate for new gear for his team that he would stand alongside a highway with a sign that reads “Will work for new helmets.” His daughter thought the idea was so funny that she actually made the sign, and Bilodeau was so touched by that gesture that he, in turn, took the sign out to the street and took a photo with it.

The now famed “Will Work for Helmets” photo landed on Facebook, and that in turn started what may be the most unusual fundraising drive for sports equipment in history. As reported by the Oregonian and Portland TV network KATU, no sooner than the coach had posted the photo than he was inundated by both donations and, fittingly, work orders from those who wanted to contribute to the program.

Hey, he did say “Will work for helmets,” right?

So far, the manual labor chores have only amounted to raking leaves at a number of apartments in exchange for one landlord’s donation of the money for one helmet, but Bilodeau and his players will take on all tasks if it helps them get the money they need to field a new squad’s worth of helmets in 2013.

“If someone has a project, we’ll get a group of kids to go do it,” Bilodeau told the Oregonian. “‘Work for helmets’ isn’t just a slogan. We put it into practice."

Of all the strange pseudo-celebrities to come and go in the world of high school athletics, few can boast a more unique “talent” than Svetlana Pankratova. The former Russian women’s basketball player is now an assistant coach at Falls Church (Va.) George Mason High, but she’ll never be known for his skill as a hoops coach.

Svetlana Pankratova, the woman with the longest legs in history — Getty

That’s because Pankratova has a much more distinct physical trait that dominates practically any and all conversations about her: She has the longest legs of any woman in history.

As reported by the Washington Post’s The State of NoVa blog, as well as BuzzFeed and other outlets, Pankratova married a Falls Church resident, Jack Gosnell, and took a position as an assistant coach at George Mason High, one of the state’s top girls basketball programs. The George Mason Mustangs were recently eliminated from the state playoffs in the semifinals.

If anything, being a girls basketball coach seems like a perfectly reasonable occupation for a woman who happens to be blessed with the world's longest legs, and Pankratova will be hoping to add to the Mustangs' history of success in Virginia with a strong basketball background that includes stints with the Russian national team and Virginia Commonwealth.

But enough about the team, right? Let’s talk about the legs. Officially, Pankratova’s legs stretch 4-feet-4, more than two-thirds of her 6-foot-5 frame. According to the Post, Pankratova first investigated the novelty of her leg length after a friend brought up the possibility that she might have the longest legs of all time.

Two cheerleaders at two different Arizona schools find themselves in criminal trouble for an action that seems like an outtake from the movie "Mean Girls"; they created a “hit list”, annotated with a gun, and posted it on the social media site Instagram.

As reported by AZCentral.com, a sophomore at Butte (Az.) Poston High and an eighth grader at Butte (Az.) Walker Elementary and Middle School posted a picture of a list that was titled **HIT LIST** with a pistol pictured just after the final asterisk.

Naturally, the photo set off alarm bells in the aftermath of the Newtown Sandy Hook tragedy, and the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office wasted no time in launching an investigation into the two teens.

Shortly after it learned of the list, the Florence Unified School District sent out an official statement addressing the incident and the disturbing contents of the list.

“Nine students who attend Poston Butte or Walker Butte and one teacher from Poston Butte were on the list,” the statement said. “Parents of all students concerned, those who created the list and those who were on it, have been or are currently being contacted.”

The girls maintained they did not intend to harm anyone on the list, [Pinal County Sheriff’s spokeman Tamra] Ingersoll said.

“Neither student has a history of disciplinary incidents,” the school district’s statement said. “However, all threats are taken very seriously, and both students will be suspended pending a hearing.”