The University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville have added more top-level commitments to their future men's basketball teams recently.

Unquestionably two of the best college programs in the nation, U of L and UK have their choice of the nation's best high school basketball players.

They're choosing kids from New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, California, Georgia and points in between.

But wait! The state of Kentucky is in between, and they're not choosing our kids.

Louisville's Rick Pitino made it clear in his days as Kentucky's miracle worker that he didn't believe he could produce an annual championship contender with Kentucky players.

Tubby Smith tries to add a player or two with ties to the Commonwealth annually, but guys like Brandon Stockton, Preston Lemaster and Josh Carrier usually land on the other end of the bench from those doing the playing.

Active participants Rajon Rondo, Patrick Sparks and Ravi Moss all are Kentucky natives, but Rondo spent his senior season in Virginia, Sparks was relegated to Western for two years and Moss had to walk on.

Just the other day, a story appeared that Western Kentucky University, which went to the Final Four in 1971 with four of the starters coming from within a 30-mile radius of Bowling Green, is actively recruiting international players.

Have you seen Athlon Sports' 2005-06 Basketball magazine?

It lists the top 300 high school players from last year. On the average, a state should get six. Kentucky had one.

The top 100 current seniors in the nation are listed. Not a Kentuckian can be found in the Class of 2005-06. Top 50 juniors? None. Best 15 sophomores? Nary a one.

O.J. Mayo's ranked number one among the juniors. He left Kentucky a couple of years ago to play in Ohio.

Have you checked how the Kentucky All-Stars are faring against their Indiana counterparts lately? Don't, if you're squeamish.

In short, as good as college basketball is in Kentucky, there's not much left for Kentuckians to brag about when the subject is high school basketball.

We still do have the Sweet Sixteen, which remains the ”greatest show in high school sports“ because of the excitement of every school in the state being eligible to compete against each other for the lone state championship on the legendary Rupp Arena playing floor.

The talent level may be down, but the last two days of the 2005 state tournament couldn't have been any more exciting.

And now, some school officials want to 1) ruin the state tournament by making the private schools have their own classification and 2) put our basketball players even further behind adjoining states by prohibiting them from playing on AAU or traveling teams during the spring.

The public/private clash has been brewing for years. Fourteen seasons ago, University Heights Academy and Lexington Catholic played the state championship game in an almost-empty Freedom Hall.

That proposition has drawn most of the discussion.

One which quietly is making the rounds, however, involves limiting basketball and football players' eligibility to play their sports on non-school teams out of season except for one day a year..

That means basketball players couldn't be part of AAU teams, the Derek Smith All-Stars or Eddie Ford's Kentucky Nike HoopStars in the spring.

The proposal was submitted to the Kentucky High School Athletic Association by former Russellville High School boys basketball coach Jeff Edwards, now the athletic director at Jeffersontown High School in the Louisville area.

In his rationale for the proposal and in an e-mail sent to many coaches by J-town coach Jeff Morrow, the main purpose seems to be stopping recruiting of athletes from one school to another through the influence of AAU coaches in Louisville.

If it passes, though, Kentucky will continue to fall behind neighboring states like Indiana, Ohio and even Tennessee.

Eddie Ford has been molding the state's best underclassmen into traveling teams for about a quarter of a century. They journey to several states during April and May, take June off to avoid interference with the three weeks that high school coaches get with their teams before the dead period, and then resume in July.

This proposal would virtually destroy that program, depriving kids of a chance to participate in exciting events, to travel and to improve their games.

”Players get better by playing strong competition and by competing with the best from their own state (for playing time),“ Ford says. ”When they are part of a travel team like ours, they get out of their comfort zone and reach down within themselves to get things they don't know they have.“

Ford uses current or retired top-level high school coaches to work with his players. They volunteer their time and so does he. Kentucky Nike HoopStars is a non-profit organization which Ford says costs him personally every year, but he believes in its importance.

Every teen good enough to play for the HoopStars or for the Derek Smith All-Stars dreams of playing college basketball. If the KHSAA holds them back too much, parents may look for alternatives, Ford fears.

”Most states are allowing kids to play in the fall, and we aren't. I'm afraid if this spring thing passes, some of our best players will decide not to play high school ball here and go to other states or to private schools that aren't bound by restrictions like this,“ he said this week.

AAU ball is important for development of players. For example, current Russellville standouts Jordan Hinton and Jerrell Mayo along with key Logan County players Corey Lawson, Trey Turner, Nathan Hinton, Jon-Matthew Thomason, Keenan Brown and Jeffrey Sydnor were on AAU teams when they were seventh and eighth graders. Those teams were organized and coached by Brent Hinton, Jeff Lawson and Kim Hinton. They're better players as a result.

Brent continues to field AAU teams of RHS players, even though they're older, to give them more experiences and more exposure.

A better solution is for Louisville coaches and school officials to police their own area more effectively without trying to bind the entire state with a rule that will further deteriorate high school basketball in Kentucky.

Personally, I spent this spring and summer around top-level basketball while our son Trey was playing for the Kentucky Nike HoopStars. I marveled at how far Kentucky is behind Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Colorado and... the list goes on.

Kentucky was fielding one senior, two junior and one sophomore team. Indiana and Ohio would have 15 or more entries in the big tournaments. And they all could play.

This rule won't affect the Turner family directly. By the time it goes before the KHSAA Delegate Assembly Oct. 20 and then, if it passes, the KHSAA Board of Controls, the Legislative Research Commission, the board of controls again, and the state legislature, it couldn't go into effect until the 2006-07 season.

If Eddie Ford invites Trey to be a HoopStar again this spring, he would be a senior before it becomes law the next year. After a basketball player completes his high school eligibility, he is governed by the NCAA, not the KHSAA.

Yet it would affect the Turners and every other basketball-loving Kentuckian adversely indirectly, however, because the quality of our high school roundball would drop down another level.

That's not acceptable!