Without a script or a roster, impromptu, Sean Miller can list the playing rotation of No. 1 Ohio State, position by position, with their Ohio hometowns.
Jared Sullinger is from Columbus. William Buford is from Toledo. Jon Diebler is from Upper Sandusky, David Lighty is from Cleveland, Dallas Lauderdale is from Solon, and Aaron Craft is from Findlay.
The only non-Ohioan in the Buckeyes' seven-man rotation is Deshaun Thomas, who is from Fort Wayne, Ind. What's that, 130 miles from Columbus?
"I don't think (OSU coach) Thad Matta even got out of his car to get any of those guys," Miller said with a laugh. "He walked to get two or three of them."
Matta traveled a cumulative 570 miles from the Buckeye campus to recruit his seven leading players.
UA coaches traveled roughly 7,400 miles to get Miller's seven leading players, none of whom is from the great state of Arizona.
I'm not suggesting it's harder to be successful at Arizona, but I do contend that it's easier to be successful if you are Josh Pastner and you coach the Memphis Tigers.
In the last 35 years, high schools in the Memphis area have produced 16 NBA players. People visit Memphis to hear B.B. King and go to the Elvis museum, but the No. 1 product in that city is basketball.
Pastner hit the mother lode. His first recruiting class included guard Joe Jackson, a McDonald's All-American from -where else? - Memphis.
I'm not exaggerating. Here is the list of 16 Memphis men to reach the NBA (and I might have missed a few): Bingo Smith, Johnny Neumann, Larry Finch, Penny Hardaway, Thaddeus Young, William Bedford, Lorenzen Wright, Michael Cage, Todd Day, Elliot Perry, Vincent Askew, Andre Turner, Rick Roberson, Chris Garner, Keith Lee, and Ronnie Robinson.
The population of the Memphis area is roughly 1.3 million. By comparison, the population of the Tucson valley is about 1 million. Do you know how many Tucson high school ballplayers have reached the NBA in the same 35 years?
Three. Sean Elliott, Fat Lever and Dave Feitl.
This is a coldbed of basketball like no other, and it doesn't figure.
Arizona has played in 25 of the last 26 NCAA basketball tournaments. Shouldn't there have been the-next-Steve Kerr by now? Or the next-Damon Stoudamire? After Elliott arrived from Cholla High School, the only local high school player to earn a scholarship at Arizona was Sunnyside's Deron Johnson.
"It's really untapped here," Miller said, tactfully. "Our quest is just to get more kids playing, have more quality venues and more organized leagues and tournaments. The more they play, the better they get."
A promising sign: Tucson sent an unprecedented group of five freshmen to Division I schools this season: Santa Rita's dynamic Terrell Stoglin to Maryland, Ironwood Ridge 7-footer Jan Maehlen to Pepperdine, Pueblo's Mike Perez to UTEP, Palo Verde's Bryce Cotton to Providence and Santa Rita's Andre Hatchett to Idaho State.
It was almost maddening that the UA missed Stoglin (and Stoglin missed Arizona) in a bit of bad timing related to the Lute Olson exit. What if it's another 20 years until the next Stoglin comes along?
"I ran Lute's summer camps for 20 years, and we had roughly 1,000 kids every summer," said former UA associate head coach Jim Rosborough. "About 80 percent of those kids were from Tucson, so that's maybe 16,000 local players. Ultimately, we didn't recruit any of them. It never added up."
Before Rosborough coached for Olson at Iowa and Arizona, he taught and coached at an inner-city school in Chicago. The difference in cultures fascinates him.
"In Chicago, I'd get to school at 7:30 in the morning and the playground would be full of kids playing basketball, the same kids who would be on the playground after school," he remembers. "Josh has the same thing going for him at Memphis: hard-nosed kids who grew up with a basketball in their hands. In Tucson, it just hasn't been that important."
When Pastner successfully recruited Memphis prep senior Adonis Thomas in November, a prospect chased by most of the nation's elite schools, Pastner almost became defensive.
"We are gonna put bodyguards, Secret Service, a SWAT team and Navy Seals around Memphis to make sure if you're coming here (to recruit), you've gotta defeat and go through all those things," he told Tennessee reporters. "If you can get past all that, then you've earned it."
For 26 years, Arizona has earned it the hard way. But, still, the Next Sean Elliott is long overdue.
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