Thanks to contributor Vidulicious comes this piece of news from The Gainesville Sun :
"Former P.K. Yonge basketball star Josh Snodgrass has departed American University. Twice the Sun's small-school player-of-the-year, Snodgrass dealt with a sprained ankle and the flu after joining the Eagles and and did not see action this season. Snodgrass committed to North Florida on Monday, according to P.K. Yonge coach Carlos Villalobos. Due to NCAA transfer rules, Snodgrass will have to sit out the rest of this season before becoming eligible to play for the Ospreys in the second semester of the 2010-11 season."
We had heard reports that he would be going to North Florida. This report obviously confirms them.
What I am particularly salty about, however, is the fact that we had to find out about Josh's ankle sprain and bout with the flu from a non-AU source. When I asked, "Is there anything that contributed to Josh's lack of playing time?" I essentially got a no comment about it. I guess they thought "Well, he had the flu and he was battling an ankle sprain" would've been too juicy a scoop for a fledgling blog like this one to handle or something. The mind-blowing complexity of it is something best left to WaPo, or at the very LEAST, DCist, I guess.
In any event, I'm willing to finally put this story to bed (although it was probably already there). I'll probably never get a straight comment about if there was anything chemistry/practice-wise that was keeping Josh from seeing minutes the way Munoz, Jolivette, and Bersch are. Maybe he really just wanted to transfer home and wasn't upset about not seeing the kind of minutes he will certainly see as soon as he's eligible at North Florida. And maybe not.
Either way I'll start reading hometown papers to get the dish on our AU Eagles players.
Unbelievable.
Pro deo et patria and GO EAGLES!
Bonus points to anyone who comes up with what that tag is a reference to.
ReplyDeleteAt least we can count on you, Bill, for giving us real news about AU Hoops. Especially since AU Athletics doesn't appear to understand that people actually want to know what is going on with their team.
ReplyDeleteI'd fully support AUHoops.com sending out press releases, since apparently AU Athletics is unwilling to comment on the most basic of facts.
You can't just give out reasons to why people are transferring or not playing, especially if they are in the middle of it. It's not the athletic departments job to keep you informed about something that is in house, at most higher profile schools,you never find out the reason why people are transferring either
ReplyDeleteAgree to disagree on your comment, anonymous. It is the athletics department's job to disseminate information about its teams and players when that information is pertinent. The transfer of a highly touted recruit like Snodgrass is pertinent to the future success of the team. At higher profile schools things like this would absolutely be scrutinized, talked about, the reasons found out, etc. If the interest from the fans about something is there, then as far as I am concerned athletics has an obligation to provide that information or issue a no comment and then face the speculation that will occur as a result of said no comment.
ReplyDeleteExhibit A: http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/news?slug=ap-marquette-maymonleaves&prov=ap&type=lgns
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