DaneFan2k3

Out of curiosity, why did you post the story from some lacrosse site, which appears written by UMass (home team) ... instead of posting the UAlbany story ... which had quotes from Scott Marr and was much more lengthy?

Has to be one side only - the fence is almost right against the far side of the field, and it hasn't been removed. The framework that was put into place today (saw it today, assuming it started today as well) is very small - not even the width of the old bleachers. Maybe they are doing it in sections?

I'd wager that it's UAlbany that doesn't want to play Siena in lacrosse now - we would smoke them.

Again, get serious - it's the chicken or the egg, except with college sports the SPORT comes (exists) first and the student-athletes come second. It is decidedly so that the sport exists first, then coaches go out and get the football players to come to Siena. "It's not about winning, it's about offering your students a chance to play" - what a crock. That can't even apply here. Don't try to make this an issue of "there are X number of students that are coming to Siena anyway that way to play football, but they don't offer it and so they are being denied an opportunity" That's not how it works; that's an out-and-out lie. It's just not the process. Even at the I-AA level, the athletes are going SOMEwhere to play football, whether its Siena or elsewhere. You will not have someone come to Siena then say "oh geez I can't play football, boo hoo". There are not (many) students who are borderline about playing football and having it is going to sway them to come to Siena. If they are serious, talented I-AA calibur players, they are going to only consider schools that have football to begin with. Anyone who wants to play football will now consider another school. So they won't be YOUR students to NOT offer an opportunity to. They are going to offer to still honor any money that was issued to the student-athletes already there. They won't recruit any new student-athletes. It's a no-lose situation for the kids who were playing, as they can either choose to hang them up now and cruise home with the money they were getting but not have to work for it, or they can transfer immediately to another school to play ball. No one is being shut out here. You strike me, without really knowing you obviously, as the type of person who looks at President Bush's "No Child Left Behind Act" and gives it thunderous applause ... not considering that he didn't fund the mandate at all. So now the states are left in a quandry, becuase the IDEA behind it is great, but he's not backing it with any type of money and the state economies and local school districts are being drained because of it. So the IDEA of having football is great, but since Siena can't or won't fund it ... it's a lame duck. It's dead to me and (pretty much) everyone else. What good is a program that isn't going to win, isn't going to generate any sort of revenue, and in fact, is going to instead drain money from otherwise necessary and beneficial programs? Losing a school that was not dedicated to the sport or to funding it properly is not an issue of any "grave" importance to anyone. In fact, the "grave importance" probably comes in the form of the other student-athletes who were being shortchanged to the tune of $200,000 per year, i.e. your somewhat pathetic non-revenue sports. For being in Division I as long as you have, your record of sending teams to the NCAA Tournament is very shoddy. You just got full-time coaches in most of the non-revenue sports, what, within the last 10 years?, despite being Division I for a significantly longer period of time. $200,000 is (including benefits) probably equivalent to three full-time coaching positions, maybe four, for non-revenue sports. Perhaps they are the ones being shortchanged my friend. You're blinded by your misplaced loyalties...

Personally this story to me is not as positive as it may seem. To me it underscores the importance, the extreme, extreme importance, of recruiting your area and owning it. We have not done that. Now that we are in a conference, we HAVE to do that.

Wow ... it's like extending life support for another year on a person who is braindead and in extreme pain, but can't communicate their wishes adequately ... and you are the relative(s) that is hanging on to your own feelings and memories, instead of doing what is best for the patient and pulling the plug. Siena football needs a DNR... Do Not Resuscitate "At a 4-hour rally Friday that featured music, food, "Save Siena Football" T-shirts and Albany County Comptroller Mike Conners among a peak crowd of about 150, supporters talked about their desire to save Siena football." They should have sold season tickets at the rally ... you would have upped Siena's total season ticket holders to 175 ... Get serious for a second ... as a basketball school, you should know that 35-101 isn't even a good 3-point percentage, let alone football winning percentage...

Looks like UAlbany took on too many penalties- Johns Hopkins was 6 for 11 on the extra man opportunity ("power play"), while the Great Danes were 0-5 (I'm not going to count the penalty with 7 second remaining). There is a large portion of the final score. Five of their goals in the 15-1 run were man-up.

I'm sure the coaches are plenty busy during the season, but hopefully I will see many of you there asking questions of the hoops coaches and getting more into the spring sports.

Hopefully this won't get lost by posting it in a previous thread on the second page - But Antione Johnson is playing in the "new" ABA with Kansas City http://www.knightsfans.com/knights/antione...ne_johnson.html Averaging 3.5 points, 1.1 boards and 1.0 assist per game in only 7 minutes ... not bad. Plays with Joe Crispin (Penn State), Paul Shirley (got called up to the Chicago Bulls) ... team is 23-9 and playing for the title for the second straight year ... Also, someone mentioned this to me at one of the last men's home games ... Will Brand was in attendance and I overheard someone say that he was in a Nike commercial with LeBron James ... I didn't believe it, so I logged on to nike.com and finally found nikebasketball.com and there is the commerical (the same one with Bernie Mac that is on the TV) ... anyhow, there Will is, plain as day, standing right behind Mr. Mac strumming a guitar (?) as part of the church "choir" ... I just re-watched it to ensure I didn't write anything incorrectly, and he's directly to the right of Mac, but there are two guitar players - he is closer to the middle, closer to Bernie Mac, than the other guy. But you can see him multiple times.

wow an 0-for-New Hampshire awards are nice, but I'd trade that for a tournament win that stings

There are three new "media center" video links (as they call them) on the UAlbany homepage ... one from Brown previewing the Tournament, one from Patterson about senior day and the Saturday game, and one from Fox 23 profiling Iati. I like the videos, they are a good addition to the UAlbany site.

I think the main rub against Danielle for POY is that we had her last year and posted a crappy record ... it was the combination of having Danielle and Becky on the court finally at the same time that helped lead us upward (amongst other things). If she had just really poured it on with basically the same lineup as last year then she'd be the clear-cut winner. But players emerged (Maree, Sweetland and most of all Alicia) and came back (Becky) and that hurts her chances.

The way I look at it, Jamar had a more dominating conference season and overall season last year than Iati did this year, although the statistics might not bear that out. So Jamar was ROY, but I believe he was only a second team pick - they give respect to the older players first (the coaches that do the picking, that is). So I would say that Iati would be third team at best, however I don't think he'll be all-conference at all. I'd say he's a lock for the ROY though, simply because there aren't any rookies really do much aside from him.

Chris Wyatt is the master of the low-post hook move (contributing to the complaints of other players), unfortunately he misses about a quarter of the ensuing layups.

First off why would they want a team like UAlbany in that game? Clearly with North Carolina and Michigan State they are gunning for the "money" names for this publicity stunt game. Also, the people at Michigan State approached them about doing it. They are used to those types of things, i.e. setting the NCAA hockey attendance record with an outdoor game, playing hoops inside the domed Ford Field, etc. etc. And secondly, the ship would be docked, so it wouldn't be out to sea at all. So how would that not be safe? It would have to be docked so the deck wouldn't pitch and throw the game off. At sea those things can rock, but in port a few waves won't even be felt by the players. PS - The Admiral (ours, not David Robinson) is only the interim president and isn't even going to be a candidate for the UAlbany job full-time. And discussions on the Navy-Air Force ship games were going on for some time, long before he came on board with us last week (or whenever it was).

Oldtimer, god bless. She was really, really bad as a freshman and sophomore. She still can't dribble with her left hand, but at least she knows how to shield off the defender better than she used to and doesn't therefore get the ball stolen every other time down court. Her biggest improvement has come in handling the rock. She's always been a good shooter who unfortunately doesn't get herself open for shots (has to come off screens and get the open looks because of her technique). But as far as handling the ball goes, she went from 4 assists and 14 TO's (1:7 ast-to-TO ratio) as a freshman, to 51 ast and 64 to (5:6) as a sophomore, 63 ast and 66 to (almost 1:1) as a junior and finally 116 a and 67 to (more than 1.5:1) this season.

The MAAC had to fold. This tells you something about the level of play in the league and the financial and spirit contribution levels of the schools that were involved. Let me tell you, Siena and Canisius are better off without football overall. The age old question "If a Tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" could easily be applied to Siena football. Now mind you, UAlbany isn't exactly an attendance haven, but if Siena plays a football game at Albany Academy, and no one goes, listens on the radio, or cares who won (not Siena), then did the Saints actually play a game?

All the boo birds will be ready when I say it, but in the interest of fairness, this is a report from 1999-2000 ... the bubble has come down and gone back up in that time. The $8 million in the "Bold. Vision." campaign is designed to endow scholarships and programs or coaching positions, and then the interest generated from those endowments would fuel the athletics budget ... the same $8 million they are talking about here. New facilities will eventually be put into place at the school, but this report isn't a sign of immediate things to come. It just happens that you found an old report saying the same things we're saying now four and a half years after it was published. It also doesn't say it's outside the budget - it clearly says the opposite, that they want to increase spending from $3.7 million in 1999-2000 to $7.8 million overall. They are talking about the overall athletics budget and the hope that they can increase it to that level. I just want to keep things in perspective, without pointing those things out people might read your post and get all geeked up over nothing.

I mean the overall point to the whole thread ... he gets $160,000 for coaching on Long Island with the cost of living and having more experience.

Beeten got paid that much because he was an associate head coach at a Pac-10 school and was a Division I assistant for a number of years. You guys act like he didn't deserve the money when he came. Obviously we know he wasn't worth it in the end, but at the time he was leaving what was probably a cushy job with security to become the second head coach at the D-I level for a fledgling program without a conference. He had to get paid that much. Conversely, if you look at someone like Will Brown, he was a head coach at a Junior College, and then got an assistant's position at our school first. He was paid as such. I don't see the argument here. What SBU pays their coaches shouldn't be of concern to us. PS - Stony Brook is on Long Island. $160,000 there is probably about equivalent, if not lower than, the $120,000 we paid to Beeten here.

If by "same neck of the woods" you have some dilusion that UAlbany would ever cancel football, that is laughable. We have a strong league, a strong program, good financial backing. Siena football shouldn't have been saved the first time. I look at this as a positive for Siena- thankfully for them most people didn't know they had a team, and those that did knew it was one of the worst in the entire nation. It's a positive public relations move to remove an anchor from our your collective necks. Good riddance.

Talk amongst yourselves .... I'll give you a topic: The Great Danes are one up and one down vs. UNH this season, trading road victories between the clubs. Discuss.

I'd add a fourth thing: Injuries Without Jamar's knee injury, we'd be markedly better than we are right now. And who knows what will happen next year?

I think moving to the Pepsi at any point would be a mistake, but even if we began selling out the RACC on a regular basis then that's a minimum of 5-10 years down the road realistically. If you can't get 200-500 students to walk 200-1,000 FEET to the on-campus arena, you certainly won't get half that to drive down to the Pepsi and pay for parking (in most cases). Then, moving on to this quote: I will give you the River Rats part, as even the NHL doesn't draw. Fine. But the Firebirds? They were GIVING tickets away (literally giving them away, as in free) in the first few years, and the team was winning, hence you saw large crowds. Once they started actually CHARGING for the tickets so many had gotten for free for so long (because they were bleeding money), what happened? ... you could yell a nasty comment about someone's mother and the poor woman might actually hear it on the other side of the arena. There were no actual fans in attendance. Was it the product? Possibly. But the crowds were there for free, they just didn't want to pony up after a while. The Duke-Maryland comment is irrelevant, because it was standing room only. That's all that Cameron Indoor Stadium holds. Understandable mistake. People hate pessimism, or as I like to call it, realism, and that's fine. But I feel like even if you went to that Siena game with 7,000 people, and actually made them write down or answer the following, the numbers would be very suprising: 1.) Are they alumni/family/students or are they general public? I have a feeling the answer to #2 would be resoundingly alumni/family/students. And as we have discussed before, all the UAlbany alums move back downstate after graduation, hence that is most of the problem (along with the student problem which has been well documented). And the fact it would be skewed in that direction is fine, but that just happens to be a problem at UAlbany - many alums move away or aren't interested because we don't play any of the same schools we played when they were here. I don't call that pessimism, that's a fact in my mind.

I think shooting for 500 students is terrible. With a school this size, it should be all students all the time. There is nothing else to do in the concrete jungle, so what the hell is going on with the student population? You should be able to get 500 students to a poetry reading on a campus this size, let alone a Division I basketball game. It's pathetic. Hell, if 500-1,000 students came out to the games, the atmosphere would be tremendous and I think that alone would bring more people from the general community.