(08-18-2019 01:14 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote: They'll be on target to graduate and will do so. Some will just finish playing, and some will transfer elsewhere to play another year. We've lost about 4 or 5 that way the last couple of years, and that's the new norm in college athletics.
But do the math. We have 12 seniors on the team (and I'm not even sure if all are on scholarship). You have 85 scholarships total and we're pretty much at that number. We have 13 commits already for the 2020 class, and we're still actively offering scholarships. There will be some natural attrition but I'm pretty sure the staff already knows that some of the 4th year juniors are playing their final season in 2019 (and the kids probably know that too).
I think there are 16 that are on schedule or could graduate this scholastic year.
3 redshirt seniors (i.e. on the 5th academic year, scheduled to use their 4th play year), 1 senior, (4th academic year, scheduled to use the 4th play year), and 12 redshirt juniors (4th academic year, scheduled to use their 3rd play year).
In addition there are 9 classified as Graduate Students.
That brings to 25 the number of potential scholarships, assuming all are not walk-ons.
https://riceowls.com/roster.aspx?path=fo...sort=class
But you also forget the Rice Investment --- at the coaches stop in Austin, Bloom mentioned he had something like 15-20 people as walk-ons or preferred walk ons this year, and expected to be able to very aggressively utilize the Rice Investment to bolster the number of recruits he could bring into the program.
And yes, there is an allocation of 85 scholarships; but again, during an aside with him at the coaches caravan meeting, both Bloom and a number of his assistants noted that for the people being brought in at the lower end of the economic spectrum, they were readily prepared to use the Rice Investment as a very big tool in that regard, and open up the ability to use the true sports scholarships in targeting upper middle class+ students with those.
The Investment, if used wisely, can really be somewhat of a game changer.