RE: what happened? is Babylon falling?
What are you trying to say that I haven't already addressed? You thought Enrique was the best to ever play at ETSU. Maybe you weren't around when Yaser was on the team himself?
(Oh, and you were wrong about his salary, too....)
Those individual rankings are very squirrely when you get past, say 30 or 40. Have you not been reading Yaser's quotes over and over again about how we're a bit down this year and the rest of the league has caught up? The overall league strength (maybe like basketball this season) is stronger than any year since we've been in the ASun.
I agree you have a point, "on paper" about having a number of nationally ranked players - but remember those rankings are extremely suspect the further down the list one goes. Did Bandres 'deserve' his #112 ranking earlier this year? Probably not, in hindsight. Rankings that early in the season are almost like predicting who will win the basketball conference, or early-season RPI numbers. Have they underachieved this year? Well, they won the conference tournament again this year (5 in a row, no less) in a clearly more competitive league, with everyone once again gunning for them. One could argue Zaatini should once again be coach of the year, although more likely North Florida's, USC-Upstate's, or Campbell's deserves it more because of the strides they've made. Any of the top 5 teams could have won the conference tournament. Heck, even Mercer was significantly improved.
So I don't think much criticism is warranted - certainly not for the team. Have individual players had minor lapses? Possibly; but the bottom line is they got the job done, against tougher comp than ever before in this league. We came within a breath of beating #20 San Diego (at their place).
I think I've done enough 'splainin'.....
And oh, by the way, ETSU was ranked 71st in the April 5th rankings; we weren't in the top 75 April 12th, however. (And I think new rankings come out sometime today, but I'm not sure.)
I think if we get a #3 regional seed, we'll have some chance of winning another NCAA match, depending on who it is. If they give us a #4, then that's much tougher, and we might get stuck playing UT again.......
EDIT: I see that they've already named coach of the year, and it's UNF's Igal Buberman, which is very deserved....
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