James Naismith’s boyhood home for sale; 4-year-old KU fan sad to see Jeff Withey, Elijah Johnson go

Naismith house

A few links for your Thursday …

Here’s a part of James Naismith’s history that has no chance of being featured in front of Allen Fieldhouse.

The boyhood home of Naismith — Kansas’ first men’s basketball coach and inventor of the game of basketball — is being sold in Almonte, Ontario, Canada.

There are plenty of photos of the property in case you’re interested in checking it out, including a plaque from the Archaeological and Historic Sites Board of Ontario that states, in part, “This is the boyhood home of James Naismith, the inventor of basketball. Born in a house that formerly stood on this lot, he entered McGill University in 1883 where he was active in athletics.”

The three-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath house is listed at 979,900 Canadian dollars, which is roughly $950,000 in the United States.

On our KUsports.com message boards, user Pay_Heed posted a video of his 4-year-old daughter who adorably says she doesn’t want to see any KU basketball games next year because “there are other players now.”


With tears in her eyes, she repeatedly tells her parents she wants the Jayhawks’ old players back.

“I can’t even watch KU any more,” she says after listing Jeff Withey, Ben McLemore and Elijah Johnson as her favorites.

• ESPN’s Jay Bilas ranks KU’s Ben McLemore as the No. 1 prospect on his “Best Players Available” list for the 2013 NBA Draft (subscription required).

Bilas cites McLemore as the player in the draft “most likely to mature into an All-Star.”

• Former KU assistant Joe Dooley talks more about his new life as Florida Gulf Coast’s head coach in this story from ESPN’s Jason King.

And finally, KU is expected to officially announce Jerrance Howard as its new assistant to replace Dooley soon, and here’s an interesting 2007 article from the Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette showing Howard’s recruiting chops even when he was still a player at UI.

Turns out he was one of the main reasons Dee Brown and Deron Williams decided to stay at Illinois after — you guessed it — Bill Self left to become the coach at KU.