Hey everyone I am new ... I was just wondering how you guys thought our(KSU) basketball talent would match up in D-1. You probably know we won the D-II championship the other year... i think we are pretty good. We played a few teams last year and did well... we lost by 4 to xavier... so who knows!
Good to have you on board, kr. I'm really curious how Kennesaw will do, too. I assume KSU will finish above UNF, but who knows where they'll finish among the others. I'll guess around 6th-7th. I didn't realize they played Xavier that close. KSU will cause us headaches in this year's "A-Sun Pick'Em". (Hope you'll partcipate in that, by the way!).
Jacksonville State went something like 28-0 or 27-1 (all vs non D-1 competitiion, including some NAIA, D-3) the year before they went D-1 and joined the A-Sun (then TAAC). They went 10-17 in their first D-1 year.
Welcome to the board! I think that KSU-Mercer might turn into a rivalry eventually, given we're the two Georgia schools now...
I hope I can still be in the asun pick'em game. It was a blast on the rivals board last year.
I'll be at the Mercer @ Kennesaw road game, that won't be very far to travel. The pickem should be fun too!
I'm gonna take in a few KSU games too. Amazing how far the Owls have come...they were still a junior college when I first moved to town. :eek:
Based on a couple of preview, it appears that Belmont will be the conference favorite. They have three talented guards coming back, a good sized front line and Boomer will be available as well. Boomer Hernedon is a 6'11" transfer from UT. Hope you can make it to Nashville and see agame at the beautiful Curb Center
RedRam4 Wrote:Based on a couple of preview, it appears that Belmont will be the conference favorite. They have three talented guards coming back, a good sized front line and Boomer will be available as well. Boomer Hernedon is a 6'11" transfer from UT. Hope you can make it to Nashville and see agame at the beautiful Curb Center
Ok we got it!!! I've seen three posts now with the same info on belmont being pre-season #1. It's just one sites opinion.
Personally I think Jacksonville will be a top team in the A sun.
They had some really good young talent, and beat UCF in overtime last year.
Their "gym" is really awful, but they have a pretty good team. Does Gardner Webb have anything coming back?
JU would be a contender next year if Hugh Durham was coming back.
I dunno if Hugh did all that much outside of recruiting. His assistants did all the coaching during the game. They also got the asun's best player in Q. I wouldnt count them out. I'd put belmont, ju, and fau as my top 3.
Here comes my highly biased opinion...but I think the Bucs will be the team to beat this year in the Asun. Plagued with injuries last year, the Buc's core is returning. Throw away last season and we've dominated the Socon for 4 seasons, two of which resulted in NCAA births and narrow losses to Cincinnati and Wake Forest. I think this league will be highly competitive for all teams.
Bucfaithful Wrote:I think this league will be highly competitive for all teams.
No, you'll find Stetson to actually be quite easy.
:D
I think the league is going to shape up alot like last year...where 1-8 are going to be seperated by 4 games at most. we are looking at another year where 13, 14, or 15 wins might win the league. it will be interesting to see if etsu comes in and dominates like they think or if belmont is as loaded as they think. it will no doubt be a fun year in the A-Sun and i see the pickem contest being absolutely crazy. if i'm not mistaking i think gwu has most of its core returning. i believe most teams have their core remaining like gwu, ju, mercer, lipscomb. fau lost bell but are supposed to have some big time recruits and good guards. stetson yet again might be considered the best backcourt in the league with register and gordon. everyone has to be feeling good about their chances to start the year. there are going to be some barn burners this year, its all about who defends their home court. my sleeper pick is lipscomb based on the fact that they have a tough gym to play in and everyone kind of sleeps on them since their travel partner in belmont and they have some confidence from the end of last year. there will be two tough tough games in nashville this year. i feel good about my bears too with coleman and emerson.
From today's <a href='http://www.mdjonline.com/92/10190146.txt' target='_blank'>Marietta Daily Journal</a> (7/27/05):
Quote:KSU basketball tips off in Alaska
Wednesday, July 27, 2005 3:08 AM EDT
By David Friedlander
Marietta Daily Journal Sports Writer
Kennesaw State's indoctrination into a whole new world of men's college basketball will begin almost half a world away.
And with the Owls' first three games coming Nov. 17-19 at the Top of the World Classic in Fairbanks, Alaska, it also means they will get a rather chilly welcome to Division I hoops.
"It might have been better to tell (recruits) we're going to Hawaii," KSU coach Tony Ingle joked. "I felt like this was a good opportunity for our team to play some real good basketball teams on a neutral court, as opposed to playing them on (the road) court."
The Top of the World Classic fits that description with a field that also includes host Alaska-Fairbanks, Denver, Illinois-Chicago, Lamar, Montana State, San Diego State and Southern Mississippi.
The tournament leads off what is now a 29-game slate for the Owls inaugural season in Division I. A 30th game may also be added later.
Also included on KSU's tentative schedule are an appearance in the Furman Invitational with the host Paladins, South Carolina State and Marshall, road games at NCAA Tournament participant George Washington and a strong Saint Louis program, plus home games against Clark-Atlanta and St. Pauls.
The Clark-Atlanta game will be the Owls' first in their new home, the 4,500-seat KSU Convocation Center at 7 p.m. on Nov. 26.
The most dominant feature on the schedule is the 20 games the Owls automatically face as new members of the Atlantic Sun Conference, which made Ingle's tough job of filling the slate much easier. KSU opens up A-Sun play with home games Dec. 1 against Lipscomb and two nights later against Belmont.
"It's extra tough," Ingle said of making out his first Division I schedule. "We did the very best we could. It could be overwhelming, especially when you've got a team like ours with (several) freshman and only one returning player on full scholarship. Still, you've got to build a foundation, and it takes awhile to build."
Ingle may have a point about the Owls having to be quite patient in building a foundation with what will be an extremely young team.
Sophomore guard Ronnell Wooten is the only returning player on full scholarship, while senior guard Israel Ingle and former North Cobb Christian star Kenan Knight are the only two other experienced players returning.
The Owls will benefit from the return of Golden Ingle - one Tony's sons and brother to Israel - returning from a Mormon mission, but the roster will be dominated by five freshmen, including highly-touted Alabama All-State power forward Dusty Moore.
And against a primarily Division I schedule, Ingle knows his young fledglings will have to grow up in a hurry.
"We've still got two scholarships to fill before school starts in about three and half weeks," Ingle said. "It would be nice to have full guns, especially against this schedule. But we want to play exciting basketball and give our fans something to be proud of."
dfriedlander@mdjonline.com
The TOWC is an awesome tournament. I wish I had been able to go when UCF played last year.
The fans that went, as well as the team/coaches/family, had only praises for the way the tournament was run and the hospitality of the town of Fairbanks.
They also make these really neat ice sculptures of each team's logo and put them around outside the arena. The team should have time to do fun things - ours went on dog sleds and some other stuff.
http://www.towc.org
st932253 Wrote:The TOWC is an awesome tournament. I wish I had been able to go when UCF played last year.
Is this the same thing as the Alaska Shootout, or what used be called that???
No, the Great Alaska Shootout still exists & is held in Anchorage:
<a href='http://www.goseawolves.com/index.cfm?fuseAction=readStory&story_id=2039' target='_blank'>Article on pairings for 2005</a>
I checked out Kennesaw's campus and new gym while driving back to NC from Ga last week. The gym seems kinda smallish, but it's nice. Why are some of the seats red??!!! I was a little disappointed that the basketball floor wasn't down. Looks like they were preparing for some kind of program. The campus is modern and spacious. I saw the Leaning Man in the student center and I noticed the red "No Smoking" signs painted on the sidewalks. (I don't smoke, but they did catch my eye.) I was a little surprised at all the traffic around there, but it was Friday at 1:00 p.m. Seemed to be a lot of friendly folks around there.
The KSU gym is not as big as i thought it would be. It only seats 4,500 people but it is really nice. They said we are getting a screen for instant replays which we didnt have in the past but I have yet to see it. I really want people to travel to the KSU home games... In D-II nobody would travel to support their team. I love the Kennesaw State campus because everything is so knew and the state is pouring all kinds of money into it. Every year the campus gets two or three new buildings. I was wondering how many students attend the average ASUN school? KSU has 19,000 this year.
I didn't realize KU has that many students. ETSU has approx. 12,000. I think the avg. attendance for ASun teams last year was around 2500 (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).
ETSU has great fan support. We average around 4600 a game last year and always have a sizeable presence at away games too. I am definitely planning on traveling ot Kennesaw this upcoming season.
Not sure what the average is, but with the big public schools gone (gsu, troy, ucf) I imagine the average of the remaining private schools is around 2500-5000. 19000 is definitely one of the biggest of the remaining schools. FAU has 25000 but is only in asun for one more year.
It was bad that we had 44000 students but could only manage to get 2000 (or less!) to a bball game.
Mercer has somewhere between 3000-4000 undergrad. Our arena is 3100 seat maximum, we usually fill about half of it. Our top draw last year we had over 2800. I will also be traveling to the KSU game like I've mentioned in other threads, should be a lot of fun.
I think for a long time KSU had a higher percentage of the student population commuting, rather than living on campus. And KSU was a non-traditional school (meaning higher average age of student) until recently. That makes it harder to get students to come to games. Hopefully being Division I with a larger 18-24 student population living at or around campus will encourage higher attendance at athletic events.
Lucy,
You describe ETSU's student body exactly with one exception, of the 12,000 ETSU students there is a very large percentage of graduate students.
Interesting, BucDoc. I was not aware of that about ETSU. KSU doesn't offer a lot of graduate level programs yet, but they are growing that part of the curriculum.
ETSU has about 2000-2500 graduate students. Graduate degrees or certificates in 46 different disciplines/areas. 6 doctoral programs, not including the Med School. Moving from a Carnegie research intensive university classification to a research extensive classification.
If the numbers are still up to date, it is the number two public university in Tennessee with regards to research.
FYI, while the Tennessee Board of Regents System (the governing body of ETSU) is the fifth largest higher education system in the nation, the schools in Tennessee are really pretty small.
Many community colleges across the nation are larger than the University of Tennessee. BTW, you won't find many die hard ETSU fans that care at all for the big awringe.