Blue & Gold

All things considered he played well & showed huge potential. He probably only finished with 10 points but I actually found that encouraging because even though St. Ignatius is one of the more complete teams in the state, it was obvious from the opening tip that Coach Dru was solely focussed on not letting RJ beat them. STVM has a player named DeCarlo Prince who is 6-4 and supremely athletic & already has a grown man's body. This year & last I'd say DeCarlo has been one of the two best players in the city - along w/ Garfield's Rayshawn Hamilton, IMHO. Anyway, Coach Dru had DeCarlo sticking to RJ like glue all night long. All. Night. Long. Hounding him. Denying him the ball. Fouling him. Any & everything. Played RJ extremely physically all night... literally every second RJ was on the floor. Coach Dru was going to let anyone but RJ beat them. That's the first I'd seen St. Ignatius play and so even though it kept RJ's numbers down I left the game excited that Coach Dru centered his entire defensive game plan on denying RJ the ball. RJ's going to have to add muscle to contribute at the next level as he's still pretty skinny. So he'll almost certainly redshirt next season. But I think most of us expected that anyway. He's a legit 6-6 and can jump out of the gym. He almost had two head-at-the-rim highlight dunks but was fouled pretty hard on both attempts. He can handle the ball & has a left hand & often ran the point & brought the ball up the court to initiate the offense. He didn't shoot a 3 all night, which I wanted to see, but in warmups he's got a smooth stroke. His free throws are kind of knuckle-balls, but they went in. He's a good and willing passer. He's got super quick feet, can move side to side on defense & gets his hips low without effort. (He was also usually assigned to guarding DeCarlo on defense, so those two kind of negated each other). You can tell he's an Akron Zips-type of personality. During warmups & even during the game he was smiling a lot & encouraging his teammates; appears to be super friendly. So John Groce got another high-caliber young man.

Hiller had both wrestling and football scholarship offers from KSUcks. His other D1 football offers were FCS-level schools.

RJ Jones & St. Ignatius is playing at STVM tonight.

Groundhog Day. Waking up to JoeMo Year 1... again.

KSUcks' Gillespie had 18 & 20 vs. UMass today 👀

Ah, the ol' Gaussian Method. I should have guessed as much. 😊

The MAC champ absolutely had their way with the C-USA champ 👀

Catdaddy's keeping on top of this but I was also pleased to see the ABJ tracking the fluid situation

Neither Shammah, nor either of the Mahaffey brothers had strong games vs. Murray St. Yeah, we still put up 100 points but our defense is concerning. And Murray St. looked very good.

KSU to eliminate 19 undergrad majors. Due to lack of conferring degrees (<5) over a 3-year window. A couple of these programs should have never been majors to begin with, but the vast majority of these are serious areas of study.

By now I guess it's safe to say that neither Yeboa Cobbold nor Josiah Collins are going to sign? @catdaddyp

247 reported offers from BUGS, Buffalo, Charlotte, Indiana, KSUcks, Kentucky, Maryland, Miami (FL), Michigan State, Missouri, Pitt, Purdue, Sacramento State, Toledo, UAB, UCF, West Virginia, and YSU.

Hmm. Tulane is 6-2 with wins over Samford, Texas State, Louisiana, and Boston College. They did, however, get run off the court by New Orleans (85-63), so that has to rub the Tulane alumni the wrong way.

If you'd like to watch future Zips QB Semaj Beals in the PA 5-A (2nd largest division) state title game, here is a link to the NFHS Network for online streaming. Unfortunately it does require a monthly subscription for $11.99. So if you watch Semaj don't forget to cancel afterwards!

Semaj and Jaborree both stacked scholarship offers but many "weren't committable." But JoeMo's extremely happy with both, obviously. I mentioned JoeMo targeting a TP or JUCO QB for next season to bring us to 4 QB (Raggow the only QB on the current roster w/ any PT experience). Article also talks about Donovan Moorhead & that JoeMo did in fact offer him, but they were clear early on there'd be a lot less controversy/drama if he went & played somewhere else other than for his dad. The linebacker we signed out of Pickerington North, Dante Curtis, was D-1 Ohio Central Region defensive POY. the DB we signed out of VASJ, Savion Lewis, was the D-3 Ohio Lakes Region defensive POY.

Great article by Michael Beaven on our recruiting class. Insight into how we signed Semaj & mentions JoeMo aiming to bring in a TP or JUCO QB to compete for the starting job next season.

Smallish crowd tonight

That's 5 of our 10 verbal commitments.

I watched the BUGS vs. K-State and the EMU vs. Cincy games yesterday & both MAC teams controlled the action from tip to final buzzer. On the road. Cincy & K-State's fans were getting excited when each respective team would be trying to claw back into the game, but neither game was particularly close - especially BUGS. BUGS & EMU are tough down low & compliment that with 3-point shooting. Add KSUck's Gillespie to the mix & Amani's gotta bring his A-game on a regular basis in the MAC 👀👀

Daunte Curtis is a new name No, he's not. My bad.

Got our first!