After three weeks off, the weekly USF notes were back in Wednesday's paper, so here's a link, with notes about Chris Howard's friendship with Pitt's Sam Young, two USF players who could go high in Thursday's MLS draft and former USF standout Jessica Dickson starting a nonprofit foundation for at-risk kids in her hometown of Ocala. Of course, there's plenty more to link to ...

-- Doug Graber, a frequent analyst on USF football games, is back in the coaching ranks again, and could be going up against the Bulls in a few years. Graber has been hired as defensive coordinator at Ball State, which will play the Bulls in a home-and-home series in 2011 and 2012.

-- Former USF standout Altron Jackson's status as Conference USA's all-time leading scorer will soon be coming to an end. UTEP's Stefon Jackson now needs just 120 points to pass Altron on C-USA's all-time list. He actually just bumped B.B. Waldon out of the C-USA all-time top five. Those two have other C-USA career records -- Waldon has the most field goals made, Jackson the most attempted; guard Reggie Kohn still has the assists mark at 632. Gerrick Morris has the league season record for blocks per game -- 4.38 in 2003-04. USF still holds a few C-USA team records, all from a 2002 win against TCU -- points in a game (117), assists (34) and field goals (49).

-- And yes, thanks to a road win at DePaul, USF is up to No. 15 in the Big East "Power Rankings" at Marquettehoops.com.

-- Spencer Hall, blogging at Sportingnews.com, includes USF among his "Ten Things I Got Tragically and Completely Wrong" during college football season. He writes: "Three years running I have taken a running start and dove facefirst
into the tree shredder of "USF: The Next Big East Champion!" And for
the third year running, I end up ground to shreds when USF begins to
gag on its Big East schedule, as they did again this year."

-- Yes, Bulls fans, we have a "Southern Florida" reference, in a strange column from Recordpub.com, detailing how bowl games are often won by the team playing closer to home. He suggests the national championship game might have been different had it been played in Tulsa.

-- Interesting soccer news from Jamaica, where USF is in the mix for Shamar Shelton, a member of Jamaica's national under-20 team and the younger brother of the country's No. 2 all-time scorer.

-- USF's ice hockey team, the Icebulls, is hosting the Madison Goss and Friends Pediatric Cancer Awareness Tournament this weekend, Friday-Sunday at the Ellenton Ice and Sports Complex. For more information, visit icebulls.org.

I'll check back in midday with recruiting updates on several Bulls targets ...