For a program that is on its way down (according to kennesaw fans) I have to say, I look at the new recruits and the returning players and I don't know who is going to be our starting five next year.

Tiggs could potentially start. I don't see Reed not starting. I don't see anyone keeping Smith on the bench. But at the same time we've got Strong coming back (assuming he is back to the level he was at) We have Swayder. Nobody is going to knock Pigram out. Twiley should take over at point. And we've got three new guys who I hear have a chance at stepping right in and getting playing time.


Of course you never know until they get here, but we could be loaded.

Years two and three of the Bartow era should have been great years as well and turned into disasters. Recruiting disasters such as Greg Surmacz and Chris Mitchell caused those teams to be HORRIBLE. This class looks good on paper, but throw in an injury, someone gets mad and another player starts acting selfish.... Hopefully it won't happen.

Well you never know until they get here

Yeah, but if you still have an open scholarship after all this time, something is wrong.

What is wrong is an athletic administration that won't allow him to recruit at full capacity.

With no extension, it certainly appears the athletic administration are making Bartow out to be the fall guy for their own cheapskate ways.

That could be....and although I do not know the intricacies of this, I hear that the entire athletic department was set up this year under terms that if football was not to pass (which it didn't) the athletic dept couldn't get any new money for a period of four years. Meaning no program could grow in a four year period. Which sounds ridiculous to me, but perhaps it was a master strategy to yank even more money from the dept. As I say I don't know the full intricacies of this and if anyone does I'd be interested in hearing about it

I'd heard much the same thing, and I also think the vote is going to hurt luring in new donors.

Now, what it shows me is that the athletic department wasn't going to use the football money for football. They were probably going to do things like use the funds to give Bartow his extension, a larger recruiting budget, completing the soccer stadium, etc.

And so after they dipped into that pot, if the stadium funding was a little slow I assure you they wouldn't have brought back football. Instead, the students would have been paying for sports they cared nothing about.

These are shady people folks. Very shady.

Well that is what I was thinking, b/c everyone else's budget being hurt b/c football isn't coming back makes absolutely no sense from a dollars and cents perspective.

Remember when Wylsie Bishop said that the student fees were going up in the future regardless of the vote- this was just a vote about if we want football.

Well something is going to grow since Wylsie Bishop has already made it clear that student fees were going up without a vote supposedly to help fund Title IX issues

It will probably go to soccer

They need it. one winning season in the program's history, but I guess that's what happens when we have Pirate Club people coaching the damn team.

I think he was referring to men's soccer

Oh great, even better. I think I'd rather watch paint dry, or the Atlanta Braves try to score runs.

Could be worse.

You could be watching the Buccos try to score some runs.

Speaking of recruiting nonsense....does anyone know what Belmont recruited?

Totally reprinted from a month old post I made-

Now- Belmont's recruiting class.

Belmont and Lipscomb got firm commits early- so they had that on ETSU.

They got a two-star point guard named Jon Rice and a 6-6 post player from Ontario named Jon House.

Obviously in the case of House if he had any athletic ability whatsoever he'd be playing hockey. But I digress.

Lipscomb- got two players from Brentwood Academy- two-star 6-6 forwards Brian Wright and Brandon Brown.

SO OBVIOUSLY THEY MUST BE SPECTACULAR BECAUSE THEY PLAYED FOR GEORGE PITTS IN THEIR JUNIOR YEARS!

Also got a 6-8, 240 forward in Adnan Hadzic from Indianapolis and a couple of guards- a two-star guy from Nashville named Josh Slater and a guy from someplace called North Georgia Prep called Jimmy Oden.

You can do the research on those guys.