Welcome Back, AUHOOPS FANS!

LET'S GO EAGLES! (CLAP, CLAP, CLAPCLAPCLAP)

Now that that's out of the way, WELCOME BACK! Now is the winter of our deprived-of-basketball discontent, friends and fans. AUHoops.com is ready to kick it back into high gear to bring you the best of independent AU Eagles basketball coverage.

It's time to brush off your hibernating commenter accounts (I'm looking at you, Steve, Not Juan Jones, Lord Baltimore, Matt B, turtleguts, Vidulicious, and PWB, among so many others) and get back into the mix of healthy discussion and debate about your favorite denizens of Bender Arena. New readers, be sure to jump right into the commenting game and become part of the growing AUHoops community!

We want to let you know what the schedule is going to be from here until pre-season tips off against Randolph-Macon (THE REVENGE GAME, as Josh dubs it). Tomorrow we'll have a post recapping everything that's happened in the off-season. Starting Wednesday we'll post a preview each day of a different Patriot League team so you can see what our competition looks like for the upcoming year. Then we'll have a preview of the non-conference schedule and a projection of what our starting lineup will look like. Finally we'll have coverage of the Chalk Talk event on November 8 and the Faculty/Staff Basketball Game followed by AMERICAN MADNESS on November 10.

Plenty of coverage coming your way. Get ready!

Now in case you missed it in the off-season, we added an AUHoops message board. We did this because last year when comments would run 50-60 deep it was difficult to follow. I'd encourage in-depth discussion of posts and games to take place there, although we will be leaving comments open on posts here if you can't bring yourself to migrate. We'll start a thread for each game so you can comment on it, and you'll also be able to start your own threads to discuss whatever interests you most about the AU Eagles.

As always, we still have our Twitter account which you can use to get more information about the team. We'll also Livetweet the home games, just like last year. We may also Liveblog the home games, in addition to the away games, this year. Stay tuned about that!

In terms of coverage, you can expect all the usual suspects: Speculation Tuesday; the GOOD, the BAD, and the UGLY; game previews; Patriot League Check-Ins; Polls of the Week; the occasional Open Letter; and so much more!

We're excited to be back folks, and I hope and suspect that you are, too. Stay with us here at AUHoops.com as we report on every step the Eagles take from now until their third NCAA Tournament appearance in four years!

Pro deo et patria and GO EAGLES!