Think Jacob Gilyard's NBA career merits its own thread at this point. Thrilled as SF also noted his 2 way contract is for the 23-24 season as well.

Adrian Wojnarowski retiring from ESPN to become the GM of Bona basketball, his alma mater.

Hoping for a Top 40 initial NET. Go Lady Spiders.

Looks like we have a 2025 baseball schedule on the website - hasn't officially been announced by the athletic department yet, but should be coming soon. Some highlights:

• Season-opening home series vs. Navy (Feb 14 - Feb 16).
• Second-weekend home series vs. Fairfield (Feb 21-23), followed by a mid-week @ NC State (2/25).
• We're hosting the "Central Virginia Challenge" again this year, and the field is MUCH better. We play Penn State (2/28), Boston College (3/1), and Toledo (3/2).
• Strangely, we host BC again on 3/5. Looks like they're doing a long trip to VA, playing W&M/UR/VCU/UR/UVA all in a row.
• Mid-week @ UVA on 3/19.
• End of conference play should be rather tough. Our last 4 weekends are vs. SLU, @ Dayton, @ VCU, vs. Davidson.

Time to talk about something fun and get your mind off the shit show that is men's basketball. Let's Go Spiders! Beat the Lady Vols!

Fani Willis hired Nathan Wade, her lover, to prosecute Donald Trump under Georgia RICO statutes. They began a sexual relationship in 2019, years before Wade was appointed in November of 2021. It destroyed his marriage of 26 years. She appointed her lover and paid him $650,000 to prosecute Trump. He spent lavishly to provide her benefits. Fani Willis and Nathan Wade will be removed from the case.

Robin Yeartie a former friend and employee testified that Willis and Wade began their tryst very early on, and that the affair preceeded his appointment. They claim the relationship did not begin until after Wade was appointed special prosecutor. Willis and Wade have been caught lying to the court. Yeartie said there was no doubt they were in an affair before he was appointed.

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In 20 seasons at UR our coach has proven time and time again that he does not adapt to playing the other team to give his team a chance to win. We are going to run what we run no matter what. Do we even scout the other team? The W&M coach, just as one example, had a plan to beat us based on our personnel and how we play and they executed that. I once had a long talk with an ex-Spider player you would all know; he played for both Wainwright and Beilein. Asked the difference between the two he said that Coach W worked them real hard at every practice to do two or three things. With Coach B on the other hand, every practice was different as he had a unique plan for almost every team they played.
He scouted them and would adapt and coach the Spiders to play them in a way his players felt they always had a chance to win. Our coach is a fine man with a wonderful family, he is a good representative for the university, he creates a loyal culture and a family environment amongst his players. He is not a good X and O coach, period. Doesn't adapt from 1st to second half, doesn't adapt from team to team, doesn't appear to have a plan of attack other than do what we do. Other coaches don't have to look at the film of our last game, they all know what to expect. And for those who might say, "It's not about the x's and o's, it's about the Jimmy's and Joes", well James and Joseph are not playing for us this year. I have been watching Spider basketball since the days of Les Hooker at the Richmond Arena and have never been more discouraged, not even in our coach's first year here. My family would rather stay home and make soup than come to the RC with me. Thank goodness for the Lady Spiders! The true tragedy right now at UR is this is acceptable. We are obviously not going to find a Jordan King every year and we are not going to ADAPT in any way.

Figgered this thread needed to be fired up.
From what I’m reading he was able to remove the Chicom trade restrictions. Remember Apartheid Clyde, the orange guy is America first. Oh he works for you? Now I get it.

The NY Times is reporting that Trump wants to make Marco Rubio his Secretary of State. This may be premature, but here it is

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I am starting a new thread so we can share information regarding the portal in one spot. We have enough news going on regarding the portal to have its own thread. Hopefully some of that news will start to be about incoming players moving forward. We certainly do not want to mix in portal exits on the thread regarding the December Early Signing Period. That thread should be a celebration of the new high school kids that are formally committing to the University of Richmond to join our program and continue our proud tradition of championing level football. It should not be hijacked by news of those who choose to leave.

Figured we could use a thread separate from the betting one to follow how our conference mates are doing.

14 squads in action on opening day, with 13 of them playing D-I competition. Davidson was the exception, hosting D-III William Peace, and of course the Spiders were not in action. The A-10 went a respectable 11–3 on the day, with several squads recovering from early deficits to score wins.

Not a lot of surprises I guess. Mostly beating up on inferior competition, though Loyola only winning by 5 over Chicago State is a bit surprising to me even though Chicago State isn't quite the basement dweller they were a few years ago. SLU falling to Santa Clara was a missed opportunity for a decent win...gotta have those if you've hoping to be a contender. Hope Avila is okay.

I don't know whether to be surprised about Duquesne losing to Lipscomb...it's Duquesne. VCU rolled over Bellarmine with their guards doing a ton of damage. Not a lot of bench production and they really only went 8 deep. Billups only got 4 minutes but had 5 points, while Jennings was scoreless in 15 minutes.

Wins
Bona 70, CSUN 56
UMass 103, UNH 74
Dayton 87, St. Francis 57
Mason 75, NC Central 58
VCU 84, Bellarmine 65
St. Joe's 70, Navy 63
La Salle 65, American 52
URI 96, Fairfield 58
GW 76, Mercyhurst 59
Loyola 77, Chicago State 72
Davidson 88, William Peace 47 (D-III)

Losses
Santa Clara 85, SLU 78
St. John's 92, Fordham 60
Lipscomb 77, Duquesne 72

Congratulations on becoming and AP AA!

Should be a close and exciting battle at Robins on Saturday night ... Spiders going to win this and break the streak : Spiders 67-63

The Biden Doctrine is centered on Uncle Joe's desire to surrender and to cut and run. It infects every aspect of his policy choices.

Playing well for the LA Rams. Just sacked Joe Burrow.

The game two years ago was one of my least favorite Spiders games ever—losing to a bad W&M team at that point felt worse than getting blown out by 45 against Auburn a week ago today.

I’m in Colorado for the week, so I won’t be at this game, but I suspect we'll be the underdog—craziness.

Not going to be pretty clearly .. Section 9's initial guess is 195.

• Freshmen Commits

1. Jack Callaghan - 4/15/24 - QB - Collegiate School, Richmond, VA - 6'2"/210 ✅
2. Christian Soltis - 6/27/24 - LB - The Hun School, Princeton, NJ - 6'3"/225 ✅
3. Jackson Thorne - 6/29/24 - LB -Independence HS, Ashburn, VA - 6'1"/220 ✅
4. Matthew Martin - 7/1/24 - OLB/TE/WR - Atlee HS, Mechanicsville, VA - 6'4"/207 ✅
5. Jack Reece - 7/2/24 - DE/DT/G/C/T - Chatham HS, Chatham, VA - 6'3"/285 ✅
6. Moses Bailey - 7/11/24 - DE/MLB - St Francis Academy, North Laurel, MD - 6'3"/240 ✅
7. Elijah Lee - 7/16/24 - DB/RB - Randallstown HS, Baltimore, MD - 5'11"/172 ✅
8. Michael Creamer - 7/22/24 - RB/SS - Stafford HS, Stafford, VA - 6'0"/210 ✅
9. Jeremiah Washington - 7/25/24 - WR/CB - Choate Rosemary Hall HS, Wallingford, CT (Ancaster, Ontario, Canada) - 5'10"/170 ✅
10. Brady McIntyre - 7/28/24 - OG - Mechanicsville HS, Mechanicsville, VA - 6'5"/305 ✅
11. Tramayne Bullock, Jr. - 8/1/24 - CB/S/WR - Episcopal School, Alexandria, VA - 6'2"/175 ✅
12. Devin Geronomi - 8/6/24 - WR/DB - White Knoll HS, Lexington, SC - 6'1"/170 ✅
13. Bryce Lee - 8/27/24 - DL - Independence HS, Charlotte, NC - 6'3"/255 ✅
14. Donovan Higgins - 9/5/24 - WR - Pearl-Cohn HS, Nashville, TN - 6’0”/183 ✅
15. Tanner Wheeler - 9/29/24 - DE/TE - Freedom HS, Bethlehem, PA - 6'5"/265 ✅
16. Ned Gray - 12/4/24 - P - St. Leonards, Melbourne, AUS - 6'2"/180 ✅

• Transfers

• Preferred Walk-Ons

I enjoyed this thread last year so let's roll it back for the new year.

11/4:

LaSalle -4.5 over American

It looks like they caught a person of interest in the shooting of United Health's CEO, Brian Thompson, last week. His name is Luigi Mangione. He is from Baltimore, where he attended a high end prep school. He went to UPenn for undergrad and graduate school. They arrested him at Mc Donalds in Altoona, PA. He had a 9mm handgun that was created with a 3D printer and a silencer.

Tonight's loss marks our 11th straight non-conference road loss - we haven't won a true non-conference road game since December 5th, 2021 @ Northern Iowa. That's 1,109 days ago! With no more opportunties to break the streak this year, we're going to be pushing FOUR years since we've last won one of these games. Unacceptable.

Mooney talks so much about how hard it is to build a quality at-large resume as a mid-major in this environment. Winning a single non-conference road game across three seasons of basketball would probably help a bit.

I saw another poster allude to the culture. I mentioned on one of my other posts.

To me this is near the top of the list, or maybe the top for the failure and lack of results the last several years with Mooney. He instills a culture of "comfort"

1. Rarely ever is there any competition for starting spots - the line between each starter and his back up is usually large. Starters are comfortable. I know the players work hard and improve, Burton has improved I believe from last year. However the great majority of years, guys show up and are penciled in. Too comfortable.

2. "Competing" - I hear a lot of coaches, including some I really like (Dutcher - SDSU) use this term. I don't think it is a bad word necessarily, however in Mooney's world competing is OK, results are optional. The presser last night is typical.

3. Rebounding. I mentioned this the other day too, the camera crews got a little close in the huddle after an SDSU timeout and bad rebounding sequence. Three times Dutcher emphatically looked at the players and said: Get an "effing" rebound. Next two possessions, senior guard battled in and got rebound in traffic. Mooney will not emphasize rebounding. It is hard work and it takes effort and you get the crap beat out of you in there. It is not comfortable. It is not fluid. Comfort. Beat by 20 on the boards last night.

3. Defense - The freaking amoeba match up zone that Mooney acted like was some big secret for years. He was comfortable teaching it. It was a super soft defense, it was comfortable playing it for players. FInally switched to man, and improved on D - after YEARS. But our man defense does not make the other team uncomfortable. We do not play with great intensity and sub players out and be relentless. Sometimes just staying in front of your man is good, but this is our focus 85% of the time, not taking a hard foul inside, not phyiscally imposing your will. Yes, we have some players like that, notably Francis IMO - but it has to be all 8-9 guys that play, no exceptions. Too comfortable.

10 year contract, no pressure, PQ protected, comfort, comfort, comfort. excuses, excuses, excuses.

Might as well get this thread fired up now.

Just keep banging on that square peg, it might eventually fit in.