YES! Really really good pickup for us.

Another 4 Star transfer.  Ranked #157 on Evan Miya's site.  
 

I don't think we admit defeat, but I think outside of Dayton, SLU, and VCU (because they are the de facto pro sports teams for those cities), there is going to be incredible randomness year-to-year.  We just saw it with Duquesne and the year before with Fordham.  I don't think we get to where it was in the 90s because teams just don't stay together that long.  So what happens is we all go to sleep when the season ends, wake up in October, and see who is on our team and how they stack up to the rest of the conference.

Go on any A10 team's message board and fans are rightly pissed that they do all the right things (buy season tickets, attend games, donate to NIL, etc.) and yet there's no stopping the best players from being poached by the P5 schools.  

A reality check is that these professional basketball players don’t care about academics. Most of these transfers are majoring in “general studies” like they’re going to community college. Kids are even transferring out of the Ivy League, who you’d think care about academics, to make more money. 

Here’s how one visit was described:

I am surprised at times that people close to the game haven’t realized what we sold in recruiting 5yrs ago isn’t what we are selling now. Just finished a visit the kid had:
- No academic meetings
- No campus tour
- Met with collective
- Met with head coach
Visit was 18 hours.

It has been a long 8 years but it’s also been the most disruptive 8 (really 4) years in college sports. It’s almost not worth comparing our current state to the Lonergan teams, let alone Hobbs or Jarvis, because it would simply not be possible to keep those teams together without Big East level NIL money. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but even in our glory days we wouldn’t be fundraising $3-4 million annually for player salaries.

Buff&BlueBandit wrote:

6’11” Forward Providence transfer Rafael Castro to visit GW this weekend.

https://x.com/dushawnlondon1/status/1778937904779178353?s=46&t=at8kc9mPPiJ11sWji-4ekA

Picture from his Instagram story. No commitment but seemingly enjoying the great weather today.

GWRising wrote:

trops_fc wrote:

The Ross-Man! wrote:

Are they providing you with anything for the monthly donation?  The website seems pretty bare bones

This is the only reason that's keeping me from donating too - I'm sure they're all figuring it out, but some sort of guidance would be helpful. I know they operate in a different stratosphere, but look at all the resources and information UConn's put together here, for example.

 LOL. UConn has $5 million dollars in NIL money and has won 2 straight national championships - it's not in just a different stratosphere - it's in a different universe. How about we compare apples to apples? Show me what other A-10 teams are doing.

I’d say UMass has a pretty sophisticated Collective. One thing they do is have all the athletes they sponsor on their website and the date they signed: https://www.themasscollective.com/athletes

One thing that FOG could do that all other fundraising organizations do is in person events. Why not rent out Tonic sometime this summer with the FOG-sponsored players in attendance? Or have a FOG-donor only open practice?

In my personal experience, putting faces to names and building relationships goes a long way.

Mount St Mary’s coach resigned to become an assistant coach at Syracuse.

https://twitter.com/MountHoops/status/1778185485313319272

Wonder is we see Jamion Christian come back to his alma mater?

Kind of a broken record when it comes to replacing ACs, but it would be good to get an AC with DMV ties again.

Also, Mike Hall just finished up another year as an AC in the G League and still lives in the area (just sayin'!)

danjsport wrote:

If only there were a legal mechanism to use that would ensure that players stayed for more than one year and were compensated.

Why would students even agree to collective bargaining? They’ve got a pretty sweet deal right now of basically unlimited earning potential and totally free of any transfer restrictions by the NCAA. For example, I believe the NFL decertified their union during the last lockout to have a better negotiating position versus the NFL by way of antitrust. 

Would SEC schools want to recognize a new public sector union of student employees or be told by the NCAA they had to abide by whatever terms it negotiated on the schools’ behalf? I thought those states valued the right to work!

Our walk-on Luke Cronin has entered the transfer portal.  Like all walk-ons, glad he got a chance to score a bucket this season.  Good luck, Luke!

https://twitter.com/VerbalCommits/status/1775934557818360070

Joel Joseph wrote:

Incredible that almost 8 years to the day we had a core group of players at GW that spent 4 years together before not only graduating with a degree but winning the school's only post season championship in men's basketball history.
This group was complemented by another group of young talented men and the entire team went on to accomplish other great things and become people of great character.
Hopefully we can come close to accomplishing great things in the future in our lifetimes.
Buckle up for a long off season to stew in our misery. Year 3 of the CC era will be interesting. Will his fate be the same after year 3 as the previous 2 coaches?
 

Great memories, however, if that group was at GW today, they would’ve been offered $200-300k each after the tournament run in 13-14 and transferred to various BCS schools. Maybe Joe Mac sticks around like DBJ because he’s local.

I’d almost guarantee that we will never see a freshman class of 3-4 players stay together for four years in the A10 ever again.