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Post by Kapitan on Jul 3, 2020 17:46:43 GMT
When drafted, he would be the first player drafted out of an HBCU since Kyle O'Quinn out of Norfolk State in 2012. But he's got a LONG ways to go to be among the best ever from them! Before college basketball became such a massive brand-oriented moneymaker, plenty of really good players went to them.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 8, 2020 22:02:56 GMT
The Ivy League has ruled out playing sports in the fall. They may play winter sports, and fall sports could be played in the spring, but it is all uncertain.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Jul 9, 2020 0:20:47 GMT
The Ivy League has ruled out playing sports in the fall. They may play winter sports, and fall sports could be played in the spring, but it is all uncertain.
I was waiting to see who would be the first one to...take the lead...in this area. Now that the Ivy League has decided, I would expect more leagues to follow. It's already approaching mid-July. Fall is right around the corner.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 9, 2020 11:13:46 GMT
If I'm not mistaken, they were the first to shut down in the spring, too.
Honestly, it does seem counterintuitive to allow football if kids are not allowed to physically sit together in classrooms (for example). I want to watch football, make no mistake, but that would obviously be a massive trade-off on the principles of keeping people as safe as possible for the financial benefits.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 10, 2020 11:36:25 GMT
Seems the Ivy, just as it was in the spring, is a harbinger of things to come: the Big Ten has canceled all of its nonconference games for fall sports. Their statement also makes clear that this doesn't mean they WILL play conference games, either. But they tentatively plan to.
For Minnesota, this cancels games against Florida Atlantic, Tennessee Tech, and BYU.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 15, 2020 20:59:01 GMT
The University of St. Thomas, the St. Paul, Minn., DIII school that was ousted from its longtime conference last year, has been allowed to make the leap directly to D1 starting in the 2021-22 school year.
I'm THRILLED, especially from a basketball perspective. Minnesota has in recent years dramatically expanded the number of D1 players it produces, yet because we've only had one DI school--and that a Big Ten school, no less--there have been limited opportunities for our players. The best of them leave because they're recruited by true national powers (e.g., Tyus and Tre Jones, Gary Trent Jr., and Matthew Hurt going to Duke; Zeke Nnaji going to Arizona; Reid Travis and Tyrell Terry going to Stanford; Jalen Hurts going to Gonzaga), while those who may not be Big Ten caliber have to go to the four (!!!!) Dakota D1 schools, or the five Iowa or Wisconsin D1 schools, etc.
Theoretically, St. Thomas could fully populate its roster with in-state kids and be very competitive in the Summit League, which comprises North Dakota, North Dakota St., South Dakota, South Dakota St., Denver, UM-Kansas City, Nebraska-Omaha, Oral Roberts, and Western Illinois.
For football, they will play in the I-AA (FCS or whatever it's called now ... it'll always be I-AA to me!) Pioneer League, alongside Drake, Butler, Davidson, Dayton, Marist, Stetson, Valparaiso, Morehouse St., and San Diego. The geography of that is intimidating! Florida, California, New York, and the Midwest?
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 4, 2020 13:27:29 GMT
My mind is really focused on college basketball due to some recent Gophers and Big Ten news.
The Gophers have gotten some great news, that two of their three players who had declared for the draft have withdrawn and will return to college. Most important is starting point guard and likely all-league performer Marcus Carr, who averaged around 15 ppg, 5 rpg, and 7 apg last season as a redshirt sophomore. But Both Gach, a wing from Austin, Minn., who is transferring from Utah, has also withdrawn. Gach averaged roughly 11 ppg, 3 rpg and 3 apg as an injury-plagued sophomore last year.
(Center Daniel Oturu is remaining in the draft, but that was never really a question. The 6-10 sophomore averaged 20 ppg, 11 rpg, 2.5 bpg, and was all-in from the get-go.)
However, the Gophers still have at least two serious questions remaining: will Gach and will junior transfer Liam Robbins, a 7-footer coming from Drake who averaged 14 ppg, 7 rpg, and 2 bpg as a sophomore, be immediately eligible or have to sit out a season? With the modern NCAA, you can never tell who will be among the liberally doled-out waiver recipients and who will be forced to sit out under what remain the technical rules.
All that said, both Iowa and Illinois got good news for their programs. Iowa's Luka Garza, a near-7-footer who averaged something like 23 and 11, is returning and must be the odds-on favorite for B10 POY. And Illinois is getting back both its stud freshman center, 7-foot Kofi Cockburn, and junior wing Ayo Dosunmu. They were the team's two leading scorers (at 13.3 and 16.6 ppg, respectively) and combined for 13 rpg and 4 apg.
But of course all this is in the context of a season that may not begin on time, and may not happen at all.
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 4, 2020 17:45:40 GMT
ARGH. Why can't Minnesota have nice things!?
Star wide receiver Rashod Bateman, a junior-to-be who performed at a Randy Moss-like level last year with 1219 yards and 11 TD on 60 catches (20 ypc), will sit out whatever kind of season the NCAA has this year to prepare for the 2021 draft. The Gophers' receiving corps already lost star Tyler Johnson, who was picked by the Bucs in the 2020 draft, but had nice depth led by Bateman.
Our top two returning receivers now are Chris Autman Bell (371 yards, 5 TDs) and Demetrius Douglas (157 yards). We have some inexperienced but talented recruits on the roster as well. But it's going to be a much tougher season for QB Tanner Morgan now.
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 28, 2020 13:09:13 GMT
RIP to the great Lute Olson, former coach at Long Beach State, Iowa and, more famously, Arizona. (Also a multisport athlete at Augsburg (Minn.) College here in Minneapolis back in the Eisenhower era.) He had been in hospice recently after having suffered a stroke last year. He was 85.
Coach Olson put a LOT of players into the NBA: Steve Kerr, Sean Elliott, Richard Jefferson, Channing Frye, Loren Woods, Damon Stoudamire, Jeryd Bayless, Marcus Williams, Hassan Adams, Salim Stoudamire, Gilbert Arenas, Andre Iguodala, Luke Walton, Aj Bramlett, Jason Terry, Mike Bibby, Michael Dickerson, Miles Simon, Reggie Geary, Khalid Reeves, Chris Mills, Ben Davis, Ed Stokes, Sean Rooks, Jud Buechler, Anthony Cook, Tom Tolbert... and that's to say nothing of all the guys he helped have great college careers.
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 29, 2020 12:56:56 GMT
Tonight, the first two NCAA football games are scheduled to occur. While many programs (and conferences) are delaying or canceling seasons, South Alabama v Southern Miss and Austin Peay* v Central Arkansas are set to begin at 7 pm CT.
Can't say I'm familiar with anyone on any of those teams, but I might actually tune in to one or the other (or both), just for a little football fix.
*EDIT: My local paper said Austin Peay, but ESPN says UAB. Regardless, the point is the same.
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 31, 2020 12:22:29 GMT
Rough week for college basketball coaching legends: former Georgetown head coach John Thompson died at age 78. He coached the Georgetown Hoyas to national prominence and one NCAA title over a nearly 30-year tenure (1972-99). He went 596-239 (.714) and very, very rarely missed the postseason.
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Post by Kapitan on Sept 3, 2020 12:38:00 GMT
Today was supposed to be the Gophers football team home opener. After a great season last year, they are ranked coming into this season ... but may not play any games, or may play in the spring, or may...?
Unpopular take, but I'd rather have college football (and especially the Gophers) than NFL. But of course I understand that amateur student-athletes who are part of these communities of often tens of thousands of other students are in wildly different situations than professionals making tremendous salaries at for-profit franchises.
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Post by Kapitan on Sept 16, 2020 14:40:19 GMT
The Big Ten continues its flip flopping and waffling by apparently choosing to proceed with fall football after all, beginning the week of Oct. 24. What the fuck...
They've lost quite a few high profile players already, who decided to sit out the season and train for the draft rather than sit around to potentially play spring football. Now, with their eligibility presumably compromised, they could have played after all. (Not that they'd necessarily have wanted to. They may have gone this route regardless.)
And they'll be starting their season seven weeks after the (mostly southern and eastern) conferences start theirs? How will bowl game timing work? How long is this season going to be? If you played the typical nine conference games, you'd already be right at the bowl season with no breaks or byes.
What a joke. I mean, I love college football and really do hope to see the Gophers (who are promising!). But this whole thing has really been bungled the entire way.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 18, 2020 13:15:23 GMT
Yesterday I watched about a half hour of a documentary, "The Damon Stringer Story," on Amazon Prime. The title caught my eye because while I remember Damon Stringer well, I didn't see what would warrant a documentary. Stringer was a point guard who won Ohio Mr. Basketball in the mid-90s and was part of a much-hyped recruiting class for Randy Ayers at Ohio State for the '95-'96 season (along with Jermaine Tate, Shaun Stonerook, Neshaun Coleman, Jason Singleton, and a few lower regarded players). He was an immediate starter, a good player, but not a great one. (In two seasons there, he averaged about 12.5 ppg and 4.5 apg.) After some legal trouble and Ayers' dismissal, he transferred to Cleveland State, where he scored more but was less efficient.
That's it. No pro career that I know of, anyway. Never won big. He had some legal troubles, including being part of a robbery of baseball player CC Sabathia, but nothing notable.
So you can imagine how odd it was to see a documentary about him. As I watched, it seemed pretty embarrassing, actually. Badly filmed, bad sound, bad lighting, uninteresting people talking about uninteresting things. (Childhood friends explaining how popular they were in middle school because they were winning youth league basketball games behind Stringer? Hardly movie-worthy! This could be literally every decent college basketball player's childhood story.)
I had to give up on watching even before it got into the college years. Really, I don't understand why this is a movie. Had to be somebody's weird vanity project. Perhaps "Ray Jr" (the director) is another childhood friend who thinks he is a mogul-in-the-making, someone who imagines himself running a production house or something. But this movie was trash. And I LOVE basketball esoterica!
I wonder--Cincinnati Kid--as a younger Ohioan, have you even heard of Damon Stringer?
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 24, 2020 11:55:04 GMT
I'm very excited for the debut of U of MN Gophers football this evening, especially considering the massive disappointment of the Vikings. We host Michigan for a battle of ranked teams to open the season. Should be fun! But...
A few weeks ago, a backup receiver announced he wasn't going to play football anymore. It was nothing shocking: Demetrius Douglas was likely to be in the 3-4th receiver role and he's a senior; he has no pro prospects; and he is pursuing a photography career. That happens. (Also he's a local kid whose dad, Omar, was a great Gophers receiver who even made the NFL back in the 90s.)
But at that time, there were some odd rumor-references within the stories. A couple of reporters asked--seemingly out of nowhere--whether we'd also be getting similar announcements soon from STARTING STARS LB Braelen Oliver and OT Daniel Faalele. Uh, what? It was cryptic, hints that maybe they were banged up last spring, or maybe just not interested in playing. Our coach just said something vague but not reassuring, like "everyone is going to be making their own decisions on this season, we'll respect them, but we're not announcing anything at this time so that kids can control their own timing."
Well now several weeks later, opening day, and ... no depth charts. I have never in my life seen a Gophers (or any serious level) team NOT release its depth charts. The suspicion is that more kids have opted out already but they just don't want anyone to know ahead of time who it is.
I find that really sketchy and tremendously annoying.
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