the squared circle

Approaching the pinnacle of his high-school sports career, a basketball prodigy finds his tournament glory plunged into a nightmare when he becomes embroiled in a college recruitment scandal.

Grade 9 Up?The seamier side of big-time college athletics and the painful maturation of a young man is portrayed through the experiences of Sonny Youngblood, high school All-American. As he enters Southern Illinois University on full scholarship, his sole focus is on basketball. His cousin Sissy is an art professor at SIU and becomes reacquainted with Sonny when she helps him get an independent credit he needs to stay eligible for the team. Though she is totally cynical toward the University's basketball program, a strong bond begins to form between them. While getting national publicity as one of the nation's top scoring freshman, Sonny is starting to see the bigger picture due to an NCAA investigation into SIU's basketball program and Sissy's perspective on the situation. After he works through a number of unresolved issues in his past, including confronting his uncle about receiving a large payoff for steering him to SIU, his life is forever altered by an accident that costs Sonny a major portion of his right hand. Bennett pulls no punches. His story is fictional, but his sobering indictment of Division One college athletics is right out of the daily sports pages. The language is rough, and the sexual innuendoes are raw but reflective. This is a sobering read that should be thrust into the hands of any high school students who are contemplating playing revenue-producing sports at major universities. Just hope they have the ability and time to read it.?Tom S. Hurlburt, La Crosse Public Library, WI
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

It helps to really like basketball in order to enjoy this novel to its fullest. Interwoven around gritty, occasionally brutish, guys-only scenes of fraternity hazing, basketball team practice and tension-filled games is an acutely perceptive account of a young man's emotional and intellectual awakening. Sonny Youngblood is a mediocre student whose whole life is basketball. Guided by his good ole boy uncle, Sonny wins a basketball scholarship to Southern Illinois University, where his athletic talents quickly win him national celebrity. But as the SIU team rises in the national standings, Sonny becomes increasingly uncomfortable as he finds himself under the scrutiny of not only the sports media but also NCAA investigators. He begins to be troubled by memories of his past and then, more worrisome, starts feeling sick during basketball games. Just as he comes to the fumbling realization that basketball may not be the only thing, he irrevocably takes his fate in his own hands. Bennett's (I Can Hear the Mourning Dove) sketches out the pivotal episodes in Sonny's coming of age, inviting the reader to piece them together rather than assembling them, Chris Crutcher-style, into a single bombshell. His startling ending is sure to leave his audience with plenty to talk about. Ages 14-up.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 9^-12. Sonny Youngblood, high school all-American basketball player, finds the pressures building up in his first year of college. He still plays basketball with intensity and ferocious concentration, but his grades are mediocre, NCAA investigators are asking lots of questions about his recruitment, and he's joined the fraternity from hell. He soon gets rid of the fraternity with its barbaric (and graphically depicted) hazing and racism, but his older cousin Sissy, a professor at the university who is philosophically opposed to college athletics, adds to his confusion. Bennett can certainly not be accused of romanticizing Sonny's life, and high-school-age readers may be impressed by his tough writing style and openness about sexuality, even as they are intrigued by the moral complexities he presents. Susan Dove Lempke