Monday Eagles Update (Wednesday Edition)

Welcome back to this week's Monday Eagles Update! You might notice that it is now actually Wednesday, and I apologize for the delay; It is due to many factors including the freak rainstorm on Sunday knocking out power, as well as a sudden illness no doubt brought on by the lack of college hoops in July.

Two major things of note this week. First, our new AUHoops Message Board is now officially up and running! Check it out, create a profile (we've made sure that you can remain as anonymous as you like), and get talking about our beloved Birds of Bender like never before. The board can be easily accessed from the tab at the top of the page, or the "Discuss AUHoops" box in the right-hand column. We welcome, of course, any ideas, suggestions, or comments you may have about it, so send them our way.

Next, an update on everyone's favorite Eagle-cum-MLB-Draft-Pick, Stephen Lumpkins. For those who haven't been following, Lumpkins has a real knack for pitching a baseball -- a knack that clocks in at approximately 92 mph. Some scouts got wind that he was playing over the summer for the Bethesda Big Train, and he was selected in the 42nd round of the MLB draft. Good, now we're caught up. While this is a great opportunity for Lumpkins, many would argue that his departure as an Eagle (strike that, Once an Eagle, Always an Eagle!) would be a big blow to a team projected to do quite well this upcoming season. While he still has until August 16th to decide whether to take the MLB offer, in a recent interview with American Magazine Lumpkins had the following to say:

"Right now I'm really enjoying going to college at American and playing college basketball. Ideally I'd like to do both. I'd love to play pro baseball. But I'm looking forward to coming back next year and playing for American and winning another Patriot League Championship."

Fortunately, it looks like we'll be chanting "you can't stump the Lump" for another two seasons. I'm holding you to that Patriot League Championship comment, Stephen!

Pro Deo Et Patria,

Josh

Despicable Redskins Owner Dan Snyder Steals Blue Crew's Slogan

Much maligned Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has committed yet another offense to fans in the District of Columbia. For once, Redskins fans (well, some AU fans may be foolish enough to pull for the 'Skins, but I'm not one of them) are not the ones being offended, no indeed, it is we, the loyal Blue Crew of American University.

Witness exhibit A, the back of a Blue Crew shirt circa 2006:



Now witness exhibits B and C, snapshots of an ad I saw when I was on Metro earlier this week:



If I'm AU Athletics, I'm calling General Counsel tomorrow morning to have them have a little chat with the folks over at FedEx field. If the "conversation" goes well enough, I see a brand new arena in our future.

Pro Deo Et Patria and GO EAGLES!

Monday Eagles Update

Happy Monday Eagles Nation! While I know for many a "happy Monday" is more of an oxymoron than "Holy Cross Basketball", here at AUHoops we'll be giving you at least one reason to look forward to Mondays. For the rest of the summer, we'll be providing a weekly column: the Monday Eagles Update. Barring any breaking news, every Monday from now until the end of August we'll be dutifully bringing you something to help tide you over until basketball season.

While today we don't have anything about the Eagles per se, we do have some great news about AUHoops itself! As many astute readers may have noticed, we made a few rather significant upgrades to the site this weekend. We're still not done (more forthcoming as the summer rolls on), but here's some of the major changes we just implemented:

• Visual redesign - A spiffy new layout brightens up the page, and looks better in various screen resolutions. If you're having issues with any particular resolution, please let us know! We think it looks pretty darn good, though.
• Improved RSS capability - You'll notice in at the top of the right-hand column is a big, blue button that can be used to subscribe to an RSS (really simple syndication) feed of the blog in your favorite reader. Very handy if you want to take AUHoops on the go with a mobile device!
• Social networking - Since our primary goal here at AUHoops is to build community, it only made sense to get with the times and jump on the social media bandwagon. At the bottom of every post and page you'll now see a bar that will easily allow you to share our content on facebook, twitter, digg, reddit, or your preferred networking platform. You can also "facebook like" our posts directly on our page!
• Facebook - We didn't just put facebook functionality on AUHoops, AUHoops is now on facebook too! Just search for "Real Eagles Read the AUHoops Blog", and become a fan! We'll be putting up picture galleries of our favorite AUHoops photos, you'll be able to read the blog and participate in our liveblogs directly on facebook, and we'll be doing even more cool stuff as we figure out just what facebook can really do.
• Search - You'll find a much more powerful search function at the top of the left-hand column. After a full year of operation, our archives are getting pretty populated - and finding a key piece of info from a previous posting was becoming more and more difficult. The improved search bar can now be used to search our posts, our links section, or sites we've linked to from our posts. Snazzy!
• Additional pages - Weren't sure quite what our mission statement was? Didn't know how best to contact us with a suggestion, love letter to Bill, or anonymous tip? We now have pages, cleverly titled "About Us" and "Contact Us", linked directly below our main banner. 
• Message board - The long-awaited AUHoops message board is currently under development. Stay tuned for the big announcement about its launch on an upcoming Monday! 

UPDATE: The message board is now live! Check it out!

That's all for today, folks! Thanks for sticking with us as we continue to upgrade to bring you an even bigger, better, and Blue-er 2010-2011 AU basketball season.

Pro Deo Et Patria and GO EAGLES!
Josh

AUHoops Exclusive: Men's Basketball 2010-11 Schedule (PLEASE NOTE DISCLAIMER)

Gooooooood evening AUHoops fans! I'm pleased to bring you what is the EXPECTED schedule for this upcoming season. Some high profile games for sure this year, even more than last year. I'll post the schedule here, let everyone get their comments in for a day or two, and then post my initial thoughts on it in a few days. Please read the following disclaimer:

THESE ARE THE EXPECTED OPPONENTS FOR THE 2010-2011 SEASON. THESE OPPONENTS MAY BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. DATES AND TIMES ARE UNAVAILABLE FOR SOME OF THESE GAMES.

Home Schedule

Randolph-Macon (exhibition).

St. Francis (PA) ( 11/12)

UMES (11/17)

Columbia (11/28)

Florida* At Verizon (12/5)

Brown (1/3)

Lehigh (1/8)

Bucknell (1/12)

Army (1/19)

Lafayette (1/29)

Colgate 2/12

Holy Cross 2/19

Navy 2/23

Away

Albany

Florida Atlantic

Howard

WVU

UMBC

Northwestern

Mt. St Mary

Pitt

Cable Car Classic tourney ( Santa Clara Univ)

Colgate

HC

Navy

Lehigh

Bucknell

Army

Lafayette

Enjoy! What are everyone's thoughts on the schedule?

Pro deo et patria and GO EAGLES!

Slightly Off-topic: NCAA Expands NCAA Tournament

Via Yahoo! Sports: The NCAA tournament has expanded to 68 teams. Yeah we already knew that was going to happen. What this blogger didn't expect, however, is that they would do it in a way that didn't completely screw the smallest (read: weakest?) conferences. Now, of the four play-in games now, two will feature the four weakest teams in the NCAA field and the other two games will feature the last four at-large teams in.

Why is this surprising? Well, for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, does the NCAA ever do things that exclude teams from large conferences (read: larger revenue bases) and spare (read: not screw) teams from smaller conferences? Not from what I can see. Second, it seemed to me that it would be unlikely that the NCAA would make at-large teams play for number 16 bids. Take some of last year's "last out" teams: Mississippi State, Minnesota, Virginia Tech, Florida. Does it seem appropriate that any of those teams would potentially play for a 16 seed? No. Last year's number 1 seeds would have a conniption of they had to play any of these teams in the first round. And rightly so. Mississippi State, coming off an appearance in the SEC final, is not remotely equal to Lehigh, the Patriot League champion who just narrowly avoided the play-in game but would not have done so under this scheme.

Well, the NCAA got creative in a way that I didn't anticipate they would and made it so that the last four at-large teams would play for the seeds that they would actually deserve. What this means is that Virginia Tech and Mississippi State, under the new system, might have played for a 10 seed and Minnesota and Florida might've played for another 10 seed. That's fine with me because those seeds are where any of those four teams deserved to be. Brilliant. Makes them really earn the seed that they didn't quite earn during the regular or post-season.

Overall, I like this because it's a compromise. It doesn't put the full onus on the weakest teams in the field and it doesn't put it on the last 8 teams in at-large either. Compromise is always going to get applause from me.

How does this affect our Eagles? Well, instead of playing the season to not be one of the worst two teams in the NCAA tournament field we now need to play to be not one of the worst four. THAT'S MOTIVATION! HIT THE GYM BOYS!

Pro deo et patria and GO EAGLES!

Thursday...From the Vault

Back in March, I thought it would be cool to periodically share pieces of AU Basketball history. Now deep into the summer, my basketball-starved mind is looking back into the past. How far back? Let's say...45 years. Here's some gems from the 1965 Talon.

Foul shots vs. the Georgetown Hoyas in Fort Meyer

Tipoff in the old Clendenen Gymnasium

If this bit of Eagles nostalgia doesn't quench your basketball thirst, you can always watch LeBron James' big announcement tonight. Or better yet, check out this sweet historical archive of The Talon, AU's yearbook, from 1925-1998.

Pro Deo Et Patria,
Josh