guessing they'll have to drop one of the 5 teams in the GCS and make it a 4 team tournament, right?

with B10 and A10 talent, you'd think they'd do better than 14-18 last year. maybe there were injuries.

kneepadmckinney said:

I honestly think Roche's time dwindles significantly during the course of the year, if he hasn't made himself more multidimensional on offense.

Click to expand...

Agreed. Too much talent on this roster for Roche to significant minutes, unless he is just knocking down a bunch 3 balls every game.

Spiders should hire JOC for athletic PR...he's got the errors down pat with "breaks/brakes" confusion.

Login to view embedded media

Delaware State's schedule is out with no MTE, so we're officially dead in the water.

(Oregon also announced their schedule and their final slot was filled by Stephen F. Austin, so no one-off opening there for us. )

My observation was his form up top was pretty good, but his feet were often not set or not organized. He looked better from the corners b/c he couldn't drift on the shot and had to keep momentum facing/towards the rim. Get the puppies organized, as Rafferty would say. But there's hope.

Robinson is gonna be good right out the gate

urmite said:

Did they miss Delaware ST?

Click to expand...

Delaware State is the only school left that isn’t known to either be in an MTE or is skipping one. I suspect they’re skipping, but either way, they have another game already scheduled during our MTE.

Rocco did miss a few others that opted out of MTEs this year…Wagner, Central Connecticut, Coppin State.

Wood Hall said:

Canisius had players from its 2023-24 team transfer to Minnesota, Duquesne, Hofstra, Cleveland State, among others. Big Ten and A-10 talent. The kid transferring to Minnesota averaged almost 12 rebounds a game. We'd kill for a guy who averaged 2/3 of that.

Maybe he should spend some time watching games like that.

Click to expand...

agreed - but also remember - not every kid that transfers somewhere ends up playing, especially kids that transfer up in big jumps like that. Big schools have 13 and think soon to be 15 scholarships to give out. So it doesn't hurt them to have a strong core of 4-5 kids and then take a few flyers on kids from lower schools moving up. Something that I think gets lost in the shuffle of the portal. Not every kid that transfers ends up playing at their new school Wish someone would do some stats on that. How many kids transfer, and then have a significant drop in playing time or stats at their new school.

Gallipoli said:

No way, the CAA is a better fit for football. It is not even close. It has the reputation as one of the top 3 FCS conferences in the country. The CAA is the premier FCS league in the east. UR has been consistently in the top of the CAA. We have much more in common with Elon, W&M, Nova than we do with Lafayette, Georgetown or Bucknell. The quality of competition in the CAA is better and the quality of players is better. The CAA and UR places players in the NFL. The Patriot League does not. That will hurt recruiting. Once UR joins the Patriot League we will not have a single player make an NFL roster. In the PL we would never have gotten a Brian Jordan, Tim Hightower or a Kyle Lauletta.

Click to expand...

I agree the CAA is much better football conference than Patriot. And from a fan and athletic perspective - its a better fit. But looking at our administration who doesn't put sports first in these instances - that is why I say the Patriot league is a better fit because I believe it better aligns with what our administration would like UR to be. A good athletic program with like academic minded schools - preferably wealthy north-east base. And you get that in the Patriot league. You don't get that with the CAA schools of Delaware, Towson, Monmouth, Hampton, etc. You get some pretty good football schools. But I don't think our administration looks at that way. They are looking more from a educational and overall holistic perspective.

Put it this way - I bet if you told the administration at UR they had 2 options and had to pick one.

1) Be compared to Ivy League schools and be proclaimed the Ivy League or Princeton of the South.
2) Drop slightly in our current rankings as school (slightly like 5-10 spots). But in return - have a football team that makes the playoffs every year and in some years is competing for national titles. Have a basketball team making the NCAA tourney on average every other year. Have a baseball team at the top of the A10, and have a lacrosse team winning games in the NCAA tourney.

I think they pick 1. Hence - the reason they decided to move football to the Patriot league.

The rule should be to play in the best conference the school can, that it can afford and where it can compete and win conference championships, while working towards a national championship and prominence in a given sport.

SpiderTrap said:

Academically and geographically (since we pull a large amount of our student base from the Northeast), the Patriot league is an ideal fit for UR in every aspect, except Basketball. But given our handling of men's soccer and track to add Lacrosse, and fact that major college basketball is heading in an unknown direction - I would have concerns that one day, in the not too distant future - UR ends up in the Patriot League. I just don't think we are serious enough from a basketball perspective to make that extra push that might be necessary in the next few years, if NIL continues to spiral out of control, and the bigger conferences somehow break off - I think it will be a serious conversation for UR to join this league in all sports. Not hoping to be right here, just a thought in the back of the mind that is a little scary. I think the school is sending a message from a football perspective to clearly step down, that just leaves basketball all along carrying the reason to stay in the A10.

Click to expand...

Distraught. In MBB on the Board have gone from potential Big East to the Patriot League in a few short years.

"Losing to either of Wofford, Charleston Southern or Delaware State would be a shock..."
Wofford has been our biggest test of the season so far. The great Satchmo is right again, this is a must win for us.

What a tough schedule! Pretty cool that we are able to get top rank teams like Texas and Duke at the Robins Center in recent years. Hope we bring prospective recruits to this game. Great balance of Q1 and Q2 opportunities on our schedule as well. I am guessing no of or both the Daytona Beach Classic and West Palm Beach Classic aren't MTEs, otherwise we're allowed to play in 2 MTEs? Lots of big games and names on our schedule, but two underrated games this year are at Fairfield who finished 31-2 last year and managing to get a neutral game (in Henrico and essentially home game) against Columbia who was 23-7 last year and an at-large team in the NCAA tournament.

Roussell is continuing to do an amazing job building this program. I hope attendance continues to rise for our women's Spider's basketball games and I hope there is some NIL in place for our women's program as well. I am excited to see how this program continues to grow in the next several years.

8legs1dream said:

First one of you that I see sporting one of these bad boys at the RC, drinks are on me!

Click to expand...

Is that his jersey number or offensive rebounds per game?

spiderman said:

Login to view embedded media

Click to expand...

Did they miss Delaware ST?

Canisius had players from its 2023-24 team transfer to Minnesota, Duquesne, Hofstra, Cleveland State, among others. Big Ten and A-10 talent. The kid transferring to Minnesota averaged almost 12 rebounds a game. We'd kill for a guy who averaged 2/3 of that.

Maybe he should spend some time watching games like that.

spider23 said:

Login to view embedded media
Like this guy

Click to expand...

Really like this guy and hope he has a bang up year.

Tyne had a lot of positives as a freshman, but he didn't shoot well at all last year. He was 21-78 (26.9%) from 3 last year and only 27-72(37.5%) from 2. His 39% eFG% was lowest for the rotation guys by a good margin. And, he was usually pretty open when he shot.

His shot did look good to me and I kept waiting for a mini hot streak that never happened. Hopefully, he will knock more down this year because he does add a lot elsewhere out there.

We are talking about the first starting lineup for the Mount Olive game right? I don’t have any concern about rebounding in that game. It is an ”everybody plays” game and the starters are going to all be returning players in my version.

Hunt
Tyne
Tanner
Soulis
Walz

Soulis is the most questionable one since he was out all of last year, but I am going with the time in program as being the deciding factor.