Bits and Pieces to Brighten Your Hump Day

There's nothing better than Wednesday, except possibly Thursday, or even Friday. It's our mission here at AUHoops to help get you through "hump day", and toward that end I have a few bits and pieces to share.

First, big news on The Mid-Majority Legacy Countdown today. The first Patriot League team has reared its ugly purple head, and (if you couldn't guess) it's Holy Cross at number 63 (43 points). Since neither AU nor Bucknell has shown up yet, I'll assume that both schools have scored more than 43 points and can be ranked no lower than the low-60's, and I'm just fine with that.

Second, our own version of Rudy, Warren Flood, has officially been assigned the number 10. In binary, this is actually the number 2, which is how many seconds it will take for him to warm the hearts of Eagles fans nationwide with his relentless determination and drive to succeed. Too corny? Well how about a real fact: his uncle, Fred Stokes, played in the NFL for Washington, LA (Rams), and New Orleans for nine years (factoid courtesy AUEagles.com).

Next on the docket is confirmation that we will be playing an exhibition game against the Yellow Jackets of Randolph-Macon College on November 4th. I have this marked on my calendar as "Sweet, Sweet Revenge Day." If you haven't had a chance to see the full schedule yet, check out our new schedule page. While the schedule has not officially been announced yet, those dates are from an official athletics publication (the 2010-2011 wall calendar) and are accurate as of late August.

Speaking of premature announcements, we have the results from this week's Poll of the Week! About seven days ago we asked "Who is your preseason pick for Patriot League Player of the Year?" The final tally is:

Stephen Lumpkins (American): 6 (11%)

Vlad Moldoveanu (American): 22 (42%)

Troy Brewer (American): 10 (19%)

CJ McCollum (Lehigh): 10 (19%)

RJ Evans (Holy Cross): 2 (3%)

Jordan Sugars (Navy): 1 (1%)

Yaw Gyawu (Colgate): 0 (0%)

GW Boon (Bucknell): 1 (1%)

Jared Mintz (Lafayette): 0 (0%)

Julian Simmons (Army): 0 (0%)

Total Votes: 52

There was a great turnout this week for the Poll, so first, a big thanks to our readers for voting. It's no surprise that AU players hold just shy of 75% of the votes: this is an AU blog and accordingly there were more AU players listed. Vlad the Impaler comes out the clear favorite, with Stephen Lumpkins having a solid following as well. Even with an inevitable bias toward the Red, White, and Blue, our readers still have a healthy respect for the talents of Lehigh's CJ McCollum. There's really no contest there, he's just really, really good. However CJ shares 19% of the vote with AU transfer Troy Brewer, who will finally be eligible in November. I'm excited to see that our readers have big things in mind for Troy, and I'll be sure to link to this very post after he first dunks straight over CJ.

On this note, however, I also want to address a shortcoming of this week's poll: for certain members of the Patriot League, I just didn't know which player to list. I wanted to keep it fair for the other seven schools, and list only one player apiece, but frankly I just wasn't up to snuff when it came to researching just who I should put. One astute Bucknell fan pointed out this transgression to me, and it's clear that there's about 4-5 players on their roster who could easily be listed ahead of GW Boon (in retrospect, I should have chosen Darryl Shazier or Bryan Cohen). So, to any Bucknell fans out there, thanks for reading, and I'll do my best not to let this happen in the future. For now, GW will just have to enjoy his lone vote in our poll. That being said, I am (for now) only human, and am likely to screw up again in the future. If I do, make sure to tell me - I appreciate the feedback as it can only make AUHoops a better place for fans of any stripe.

Finally, there was a minor change made over the weekend to our facebook page. Alright, maybe minor is an understatement. After realizing that "Real Eagles Read the AUHoops Blog" is a mouthful that is difficult to remember and even harder to search for, and then realizing that facebook doesn't allow name changes for pages, we migrated to an entirely new page, simply called "AUHoops." It went quite smoothly, and within 24 hours we had actually exceeded the number of fans of the older page, which tells me that it was a good decision. If you're on facebook, take a gander, and "like" us if you please. Alternatively, you can also now "like" our facebook page straight from the sidebar on the left. Nifty!

That's all for this hump day, folks. As always, keep checking back for the best Eagles coverage that the internet can possibly offer (a fact empirically proven by multiple teams of top scientists). Until then, stay classy Eagles Nation!

Pro Deo Et Patria,
Josh