BG

Powell's relative seeking hire

2011-07-24T19:38:00.000-04:00

This article originally appeared on the now-defunct www.themountainecho.com. It has been republished here for reference purposes.

January 23, 2008

A new job opening in the admissions office called "Metro New York Regional Coordinator" may be filled by President Thomas Powell’s sister-in-law, Theresa Mahoney. The job, however, is news to human resources.

Director of Human Resources Barbara Miller and her secretary say they are unaware of any such job opening, and do not have it posted on the Mount's Web site, nor is it posted in the Department of Human Resources, the two places where they said all of their jobs are listed. The admissions department did not have any jobs listed as of 3 a.m. this morning.

Powell, however, said that this is a mistake and that the job should be posted. "I'm surprised," Powell said, "because the position is a new position that we're developing to better recruit students in the 22 Catholic high schools that are on Long Island and both Brooklyn and Queens and Nassau and Suffolk counties."

Personnel from the admissions office interviewed Mahoney at 1:30 p.m. and she was seen taking a tour of the campus around 4 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon.

"I don't know if I'm getting it [the job], but I think so," Mahoney said. "I'm going to be like a permanent presence on Long Island so that I'll be the go-to person between the alumni and the Mount. I can't wait to spread the word to Long Island."

According to Powell, though, the process is far from over.

"She has not been offered a job. Nobody gets offered a job at Mount St. Mary's until they get a letter from the president offering a job. There's only one person who's allowed to offer people jobs and that's me," Powell said in a phone interview.

According to the Mount St. Mary's Governing Documents that can be found at www.msmary.edu, "all positions will be posted for a minimum of three days." The documents later state that positions are not required to be posted for "temporary assignments, sub-contracted assignments, jobs being filled from within the same department, and positions reporting directly to the President of the University."

This position, however, is to be a full-time position and "the Regional Coordinator reports jointly to the Dean of Admissions and Enrollment Management and the Director of Alumni Relations," not Powell, according to a preliminary job description obtained from the admissions office.

Despite the claims that Mahoney has not been offered a position, she already has an e-mail account, which Powell said is also news to him.

According to Sue Lindsay of Informational Services who is in charge of creating e-mail accounts for individuals on campus, no applicant for a full-time position is granted an account until they are officially hired. Not even during the interview process, the state that Powell said Mahoney is undergoing, would that person be given an e-mail. She said the date which accounts were created is confidential.

"I'm going to get right on it and check that out," Powell said of her e-mail account. "I'll find out how somebody is jumping the gun."

Powell added that the position had been cut in the early 1990s due to budget constraints.

Whoever does fill the position will work primarily out of the Long Island area and receive a salary in the low $30,000 range, according to Powell.

He said that he did recommend Mahoney for the position because of her professionalism and experience with parents among other things that he felt made her a strong candidate.

When asked when she heard about the position, Mahoney said, "a couple of months ago. I just had my interview today and I got to meet Dean [of Admissions and Financial Aid Stephen] Neitz and [Director of Alumni Relations] Ms. [Maureen] Plant."

When asked about how she heard about the job Mahoney cited relatives that work at the Mount.

"They suggested that since I do live on Long Island that they recommended me for the job so I came for an interview," Mahoney said.

Mahoney confirmed that Powell was the relative who spoke with her and that he had told her about it "recently," not a couple months ago. At that point Mahoney declined to answer any further questions and continued her tour of the campus.

According to sources within the admissions office, the number of applicants from Long Island is expected to increase for the third consecutive year under the current recruiter that covers that region.

Powell confirmed that other than Mahoney being his relative, she has no other ties to Mount St. Mary's. She graduated from the New York Institute of Technology in 1983 with a major in fine arts and a minor in education.

NCAA Tournament: Last Four in? Keep them Out

2011-03-13T13:25:00.004-04:00

In what has become an annual event in Blacksburg, Va., Virginia Tech is sweating the final hours of Selection Sunday.

For the last three seasons, the Hokies were sent to the National Invitational Tournament, presumably as one of the final teams to miss the NCAA Tournament at large cutline.

This season, though, with a stronger non-conference schedule – Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Purdue, Penn State – and a late-season win against then-No. 1 Duke, head coach Seth Greenberg’s team may return to the sport’s biggest stage for the first time since 2007, when it beat Illinois before losing to Southern Illinois.

But none of this season’s accomplishments would have been cause for optimism if not for an offseason gift from the NCAA. There will be 68 teams in this year’s NCAA Tournament field, three more than the previous 10 seasons, and four more than the from 1985-2000. And to think, the NCAA and a number of “Big Six” conference coaches prefer the field be expanded to 96.

Does America really want to see 28 more teams, whose chances for a national title fall between slim and none, try to win seven games in three weeks? I would think college basketball fans want that as much as NFL fans want an 18-game regular season schedule. (Although any schedule would be nice at this point.)

The mainstream pioneer bracketologist, ESPN’S Joe Lunardi, has Virginia Tech as the second-to-last team in the field as of late Sunday morning, one slot ahead of USC. St. Mary’s and Clemson are the top two of the “Last Four In.” Jerry Palm’s of CBS’s “Last four in” are, in order, Virginia Tech, VCU, Clemson and St. Mary’s. Even more telling, though, may be the two prognosticators’ “First Four Out.”

For Lunardi: Alabama, Georgia, Boston College, UAB.

For Palm: Boston College, UAB, Colorado, Harvard.

By RPI, Alabama’s top non-conference win came against Lipscomb. (That’s in Tennessee, in case you’re wondering.) The Crimson Tide lost to Big Ten and Big East bottom-feeders, respectively, Iowa (11–20) and Providence (15–17).

How can we expect Alabama to repeatedly beat the top teams in those conferences, all of which will be somewhere in the NCAA Tournament field?

Boston College, meanwhile, lost to Yale and Rhode Island, and failed to beat either of the top two teams in its own conference, Duke and North Carolina. Not to mention a 70–47 ACC Tournament loss to Clemson, another borderline entry.

The other “Last Four Out” nominations have similar résumés.

Forget that these teams would be even further excluded if it were not for the additional three slots in this year’s field, and consider who some of the next 28 teams could be.

In the interest of simplicity, I’ll use the No. 93–96 teams in the latest RPI rankings. (Understanding that some of the automatic bid teams, who all deserve a spot in the field, are ranked lower than 96, and would therefore "bump" these teams.)

St. Peter’s (93) is already in with for winning the MAAC Tournament, so we’ll use No. 92 Wisconsin-Milwaukee instead. Followed by Baylor (94), Vermont (95) and Maryland (96).

As a one-time diehard Maryland fan and someone who still follows the team as closely as my free time allows, let me be the first to dismiss the validity of considering them in any tournament to decide the sport’s national champion.

If the Terrapins were going to stake any sniff of a claim for inclusion into this year’s field, they would have needed to make more than 15 of their 28 free throws (0–for–6 in the first half) before Duke pulled away late in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals.

Vermont lost by a combined 44 points to BYU and Connecticut – three and two seeds, respectively, via Lunardi – with no victories against any projected NCAA Tournament teams, including 0–2 against conference counterpart Boston University, the America East champion.

Baylor’s best non-conference win by RPI came against – Guess who? – Lipscomb. (They’re the Bisons, in case you're wondering.)

If you need reasons to exclude Wisconsin-Milwaukee, look no further than some of the Panthers’ losses: Western Michigan, DePaul, Wright State, Wisconsin-Green Bay, Loyola (Ill.), Buffalo and Florida Atlantic.

Would the NCAA Tournament be improved with 28 more teams? Is it better off with the three spots that were added? Probably not.

Who cares, then, whether St. Mary’s is selected instead of Clemson, or Virginia Tech instead of Virginia Commonwealth? Certainly not me. But I can think of someone who does.

“You guys are the experts,” Greenberg said to the ESPN College Gameday crew via telephone Sunday morning. “Are we in?”

BREAKING: Lindsey Munday screws the Mount, (Can't blame her); Hire Catanese

2011-01-03T17:28:00.001-05:00

It appears that the Mount women's lacrosse team will have its third coach in less than a year. Lindsey Munday, the former Northwestern first assistant who was certainly the biggest resume hire in school history (I don't care how young or inexperienced she is, she was a part of FIVE national championships), is going to USC, according to the LA Times.

I'll say this, Los Angeles sounds a lot sweeter than Emmitsburg, but how can you leave a program before you ever coach a season there? What will she tell the players she's spent the last four months with? Now there is the potential of a lost recruiting class and a scramble to find what will likely lead to a lame duck coach.

Even worse, every coach in the athletic department who was pissed that Munday was receiving a ton of money (compared to them when they started) will now be wondering if it was worth it. I met one of the recruits signed by Sonia LaMonica before she ditched the Mount for Towson (where she was an assistant before, plus she didn't leave until the offseason) and they were ecstatic to have the chance to play for Munday.

I'm not sure what Trojan Land could offer a woman's lacrosse coach, but I'm sure it's much more attractive than what the Mount signed on to pay.

"It is an incredibly special opportunity to begin a new program and I cannot wait to recruit student-athletes who are passionate about lacrosse and about joining this amazing time in USC women's lacrosse history," Munday said in a statement that was quoted on the LA Times' blog, The Fabulous Forum.

There is no indication on the Mount's site that Munday has left, and she is still listed as the head coach. Expect any record of her to be gone within days, if not hours, as the Mount did with Milan Brown and company.

If I were in Munday's shoes, would I do the same thing? Without hearing the financials, it's not – OK I'll stop posturing. You're damn right I would leave the Mount for USC. This is a business, not daycare.

The only peculiar part of the move is that it comes during winter break, meaning by the time she packs her belongings and moves out of town, she'll never have to face the players she barely got to know. Can we please schedule USC in 2013 – the first year it will have a varsity team? (That's right; she won't even coach a meaningful game for more than two years.)

My biased but logical recommendation is to hire my good friend Katelyn Catanese, who was one of the best players in Northeast Conference history, and coached St. John's at Prospect Hall last spring. She led the girls to an undefeated season and an IAAM "C" Conference championship. Better yet, she's finishing graduate school at the Mount and could probably use a full-time job.

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UPDATE: How could I forget this? (H/T to you know who.) Kind of puts a damper on the national championship hopes of our university president. This is what Powell said in August when Munday was hired:

"We're excited to welcome Coach Lindsey Munday to the Mount," said President Dr. Thomas Powell. "She brings a national presence along with great talent and experience and exemplifies the formation of character we try and instill in our athletes. I am confident this dynamic coach will take us to the next level and bring home a national championship."

As the next coaching search begins, hope springs eternal yet again!

Weekend from Hell II: Why am I tortured?

2011-01-02T20:00:00.000-05:00

Click here to read about Weekend from Hell I in 2007.

It began and ended with coaches fighting for their jobs, these two days from hell. Never has a weekend held so much promise that four of my teams would all be playing significant matchups in a 30-hour period.

Rich Rodriguez led an underprepared Michigan football team to the Gator Bowl, potentially with his job on the line. Although athletic director Dave Brandon may have decided Rodriguez' fate after a resounding loss to Ohio State, if not sooner, it would not have hurt for the Wolverines to beat nationally-ranked Mississippi State to end the season.

Alas, an incompetent, if not apathetic defense allowed more points (52) than the school's basketball team has done on three occasions this year. Here's to hoping the Jim Harbaugh wants to coach at his alma mater.

With the Michigan game scheduled for 1:30 p.m., I was elated that the Winter Classic was delayed until 8 p.m. due to rain. This meant no choosing between my favorite college football team and my favorite hockey team – the Pittsburgh Penguins.

As it turns out, I would have much rather they played simultaneously. Watching Michigan get trounced before the Penguins failed to score more than once on what seemed like 60 shots on goal (actually 33) was like have my wisdom teeth removed then going back a couple hours later for a root canal. Couldn't they just get it over with?

No reason to worry, though, as the Mount's men's basketball team played a marquee matchup at Virginia Tech and the Philadelphia Eagles hosted their bitter rival, the Dallas Cowboys, in a season finale – both on Sunday.

It was only two years ago that I watched as the Mount squandered a six-point lead with two minutes remaining in Blacksburg. Surely this season we could come just as close. But the more I checked the score, the more I believed that there must be a malfunction with my iPhone application.

Halftime score: Virginia Tech 50, Mount St. Mary's 11.

The Mount had four players not make a single shot from the floor on four or more attempts. As a team, the Mountaineers shot 17 percent while the Hokies made a smooth 69.2 percent of theirs. It's not the way I envisioned Jean Cajou making his season debut. And it's certainly not a team I would have recognized had I been watching.

Final score: Virginia Tech 99, Mount St. Mary's 34.

I'll leave it at that, though I will point out that there are still 16 Northeast Conference games remaining, and the Mount is 1–1, a game out of first. There's no time to waste, though, as St. Francis (Pa.), who beat the Mount once last year, visits Thursday, before Robert Morris goes to Emmitsburg on Saturday. Can you say defining games?

My final hope, then, laid in the hands of the Philadelphia Eagles. Although Jason Garrett had been unofficially named Cowboys head coach before the game by everyone but the organization, he certainly wanted to beat the Eagles. And Kevin Kolb certainly wanted to prove that he could win, too, even with a slew of second string skill players around him.

But just like Mike Vick the week before, a sack-fumble for a touchdown by the defense tied the game at 7, and sparked an upset. Not as key, though, as the Eagles failure to execute in the red zone, or stop Dallas from staging a late-game touchdown drive to go ahead 14–13, even with the refs botching the spot on a Jason Witten reception that should have been ruled a first down.

So Michigan could very possibly begin a search for a new coach within 24 hours, the Penguins are suddenly not so hot after winning 12 in a row, the Mount has zero momentum going into conference play, and likewise for the Eagles heading into the playoffs.

This Saturday, the Mount, again, hosts Robert Morris. The same day, if not Sunday, the Eagles host the Packers. And wouldn't you know, Michigan's season is over and the Penguins don't play either day. So already it can only hurt half as much as it does right now.

Enter to win an iPad

2010-12-30T10:09:00.001-05:00

Click this link: http://patch.com/E-c2ch then click RSVP and enter your e-mail address, and you're entered to win an iPad from BelAirPatch.com. It's that easy. The more entries from you, the better for me. I promise it's not spam and you won't be put on any kind of mailing list – unless you win. Good luck. (By the way, deadline is New Year's Eve at 7 p.m.

espn.com
Facebook.com

BREAKING: Cajou Rejoins Mount

2010-12-17T18:23:00.001-05:00

Jean Cajou has rejoined the Mount St. Mary's men's basketball team, according to an individual who was at the ARCC today.

Cajou left the Mount before the fall semester began for a leave of absence due to personal reasons.

I've seen one game on TV this year, parts of two on the computer, and the Loyola game in person. Although coach Robert Burke is doing well transitioning the program to a new coaching staff, I can only think that Cajou's leadership in the backcourt will help the young team.

I'm not sure how soon Cajou will see playing time, but the Mount travels to Albany for a 7 p.m. game tomorrow. (I would guess they were practicing at the ARCC today, as the individual tells me, instead of in Albany, because it is the last day of finals.) I doubt he plays today or Monday against American at home, but you never know.

As well as Lamar Trice is playing, I wouldn't mind seeing him and Cajou starting at 1 and 2 by the time the Mount plays its third conference game Jan. 6. It is possible, though, that Trice is more comfortable coming off the bench. Regardless, I'd like to see how we do with freshmen Josh Castellanos and Julian Norfleet coming off the bench instead and leaving redshirt freshman David Golladay at the 3.

Shawn Atupem should also remain in the starting lineup, but I'd like to see Raven Barber starting fulltime soon if he's completely healthy. Norfleet has a good stroke, but with only a 30 percent clip from 3, and Castellanos 2–for–17 from deep, maybe they will be more settled after watching the game unfold for a few minutes.

As someone who has been to a team's every practice while other's who simply saw home games thought they new better than coach Milan Brown, I'm certainly not criticizing Burke. It's just that the starting lineup I'd like to see is 1 Trice 2 Cajou 3 Golladay 4 Atupem 5 Barber. If Danny Thompson, however, keeps playing as well as he is, you could start him at the 5 and have a very good defensive post playing with three very good defensive guards, and you wouldn't lose much as far as athleticism.

Whatever Burke decides, though, I support. You can't question the man who eats, sleeps and breathes the program, especially in his first year.

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That Loyola game, the first one I got to see since leaving the Mount, was an interesting experience for the fact that I was covering the game. I didn't envision my first time watching my alma mater since leaving the school would be as a reporter.

I essentially volunteered because my company, Patch.com, launched a site in North Baltimore – an area that covers Loyola – on Monday. So I got to interview Burke, which was strange, especially after such a bad loss. But I also got to speak with my old nemesis, Jimmy Patsos. Turns out he's not half as evil as Mount students always made him out to be. He's just a passionate coach who turns into a regular guy once the horn sounds.

Here's the men's story I did.
And the women's.

And of course, check out BelAirPatch.com.

Qatar gets cup instead of USA, other less important choices

2010-12-02T11:59:00.000-05:00

I'm not going to get too deep into something I don't completely understand in regard to the behind-the-scenes details, but I will give a small rant on Qatar being selected to host the 2022 World Cup instead of the USA (and any other less important countries).

One of America's biggest selling points was an environmentally-conscious venue. As someone who is admittedly liberal on the subject of "greenness," I thought this would be a great feature of our role as hosts. Not to mention how cool it would be to have a World Cup on US soil in my lifetime. (I don't remember Chicago.)

Instead of the resource-friendly USA venue, we're going to a country where the temperature will very likely soar into triple digits most, if not all, of the days of the World Cup. What's worse, Qatar said they will air condition all 12 (I think it's 12, correct me if I'm wrong) of the stadiums. So in that regard, I don't think there could be a starker contrast. Save energy vs. pour a bunch of money into wasting a bunch of energy.

Should we blame Morgan Freeman? (Half-kidding.) Please click here (sorry about the ad, don't see it on YouTube yet) and look around the :30 mark.

Either way, I'll leave you with this Qatar highlight via @AroundTheHorn:

RMU's Abraham suspected of drinking and driving

2010-11-27T14:09:00.002-05:00

Robert Morris star and last season's Northeast Conference Rookie of the year is suspected of drinking and driving. He was recently suspended from a matchup with Pittsburgh because of a "violation of team rules," and now the Beaver County Times is reporting that, "Abraham, who struck both a moving car and a parked car, has been charged with driving under the influence, driving under the influence with a blood alcohol content above 0.159 percent, underage drinking and careless driving, according to the Moon police report. The report did not list his blood-alcohol level."

(Thanks to Richard for sharing the link.)

A couple thoughts:

1. Definitely nice to see Robert Morris lose its best player in a manner where no one was physically injured.

2. As Mount fans, let's not be too critical. We saw one of our starters, Joey Butler, get caught making a huge mistake that altered his life. Joey's a great guy and still a close friend, and has moved well beyond his mistake to become successful.

So yeah, Karon screwed up, what's bad for Robert Morris is good for us, but let's not go overboard kicking the kid while he's down. I'll be very interested to see how the administration handles this compared to the Mount.

I can tell you for a fact that you can get a DUI at the Mount and not only keep some or all of your scholarship, but not even be forced to sit out an entire season. I have seen multiple occasions where Mount student-athletes got DUIs and served suspensions that did not even amount to half of the season. (No one from within the school will call me out on this because it's true.)

Here's hoping Abraham is given a second chance at Robert Morris or some other school. A kid with his talent should be put on a strict probation and be allowed to play again after serving a just punishment.

Mar-teeny: Kansas State coach calls out Mount

2010-11-23T16:37:00.002-05:00

Whether the comment was a shot at Mount St. Mary's, its coach, or just a shot in the dark, it's hard to say. But Kansas State head coach Frank Martin's remark featured on "The Pitch" that, "It's not like we're Mount St. Mary's. We've played these kinds of games before," should ruffle a few feathers.

The quote was used to essentially say that the Wildcats will not be scared of Duke like he suggests our Mountaineers would be. I hate to break it to the polarizing general from Manhattan, Kansas, but the Mount would be plenty comfortable – though still overmatched – in a game with Duke. Under Milan Brown, the Mount played the toughest non-conference schedule in the NEC every single year, and Robert Burke has accepted a beefy slate this year as well.

I don't think this Duke team is so high and mighty that it could not be compared to a matchup with: Cincinnati, Penn St., Virginia Tech, Oklahoma, Oregon, Siena, Old Dominion, George Mason, Winthrop (when there were awesome), Georgetown or, best of all, the Tyler Hansbrough/Ty Lawson (as juniors) North Carolina team. Hell, there's more pressure when we play Robert Morris than there would be against Duke.

So no, this isn't a diss on Martin. And it's certainly not to say that the Mount is as good on paper as Kansas State, but I sure as hell would like to go play them next year. Or better yet, around the third weekend in March.

If I get an update, and you better believe I'm digging, I'll post it. Go 'Cats.

Mount baseball lands monster catcher

2010-11-14T09:37:00.000-05:00

I attended a mock signing for three baseball players at a high school in my Patch, and one of them, Andrew Clow, is headed to the Mount. See his video interview and gaudy stats here.

His team (C. Milton Wright) went undefeated and won the state title last year with Clow behind the plate for every game.

Another coach in the county told me he thought Clow had a chance to play for an ACC school. Great signing by the Mount.

Burke's First 'Dayt'

2010-11-13T23:04:00.000-05:00

I have some observations from today's 67-52 loss to Dayton based purely on the box score. In other words, I'm not giving any game analysis – that would be impossible – just pointing out a few statistics of note.

Brown, Krajina didn't play

Pierre Brown and Kristijan Krajina both have a fractured foot. They should be out for a few weeks. The interesting part will be whether Brown plays when he comes back. If the team is struggling, or if coach Robert Burke just believes Pierre would be more useful with a full and more healthy final season, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a red shirt. That's pure speculation.

Barber only took three shots

If Raven Barber didn't have more than two fouls, and if he had played less than 23 minutes, this wouldn't stand out so much. There could be a dozen reasons for this, but it's still pretty curious.

Norfleet led the team in scoring in his college debut/Norfleet took 13 3s

I would be me encouraged by Julian Norfleet leading the team in scoring if he didn't take 16 shots to do it. The kid was either A. a gunner B. highly-trusted by Burke or C. wide open and missed a lot of shots. On the other hand, it's definitely encouraging that he wasn't afraid to put the rock up in his first college game against a very good team. With Pierre out, we will need a guard to step up as our primary perimeter scorer (in my opinion) so maybe Norfleet is the guy.

12 team fouls, only one player with three

I mean, it's about time. In my five years, every time we played a major program (I consider Dayton major) we would be lucky if we only had 12 fouls called on us in a half, let alone an entire game. For the record, Lamar Trice had the three fouls.

Atupem's line

Fourteen points on 5-for-11 from the floor and nine rebounds (Shawn Atupem only has one career double-double to my knowledge.) He was also 4-for-5 from the line; if he can make 80 percent of his free throws this year, he'll score at least 14 points a night. The best stat of all, though, is that Atupem only had one foul in 33 minutes. Early, I know, but it's encouraging.

Point guard play

Trice: Five assists, three turnovers to go with eight points and two steals
Josh Castellanos (freshman): Four assists, no turnovers to go with four points, all from a perfect night at the line.
I heard Trice improved a lot in the offseason (as he did the year before) and this line reflects that.

I could say a lot more about the stats, especially by comparing and contrasting to Dayton (we were out-rebounded 54–31,) but overall the numbers are encouraging. Great point guard play, great game from Shawn and a respectable showing at a tough venue in the first game under a new coach. It doesn't look like Dayton cleared the end of its bench until the very end, either, so it's not like we would racked up a bunch of stats against their walk-ons (as it appears.)

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-Someone found this site by searching for "mount st marys, md coach brown fired." So just to clarify, he wasn't fired.

-Holy Cross also had its season opener today. The Crusaders lost to College of Charleston, (who just lost to Maryland practically at the buzzer) 93–84. They trailed 48–30 in the first half, so a nice comeback, and definitely not the low-scoring game we're used to seeing from coach Milan Brown's teams.

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NEC Scores

Fairfield 62 Sacred Heart 45
Kent State 90 Bryant 49
Robert Morris 55 St. Peter's 30 (Think they were going to forget how to play defense without Mike Rice there? Nah. Also, why the hell wouldn't the coaches vote them No. 1? They won the last two NEC titles. Thanks for adding fuel to the fire, everyone.)
Central Conn. St. 64 Hartford 62
Quinnipiac 75 Yale 64 (3:25 remaining in game as I type this)

Mount Signs Fredericksburg Forward Danaher

2010-11-11T23:19:00.001-05:00

According to this story from fredericksburg.com, the Mount has signed 6-foot-10 (not 6-foot-6 as an earlier typo indicated) Taylor Danaher from Fredericksburg, Va. He will play his senior season at Fredericksburg Christian School after averaging 24 points, 14 rebounds and six blocks in his junior season in the Central Virginia Homeschool Athletic Association.

He chose the Mount over Longwood.

Thanks to Richard for sharing this link.

Kevin Robinson Jr. is a father (It's not as scary as it sounds)

2010-10-21T09:48:00.000-04:00

Congrats to former Mount assistant Kevin Robinson Jr. and his wife, Trish, on the birth of their daughter last night. Here is KRob's status announcing her arrival.

"Welcome to this world Kathleen Nicole Robinson- 8.45 lbs. Mommy and baby are doing great. 21.75 inches, 13.6 in head."

I vividly remember the night I found out KRob was going to be a father. I was in Ott's with some of the players after a game when I texted KRob to come out for some food. He responded saying he couldn't make it but he also couldn't tell me why.

Slightly alarmed by his sketchy justification for not coming, I began to respond asking if everything was OK. Before I could sent the text, he wrote back telling me he had to "spend some time with his pregnant wife." The grizzly-bearded son of a gun couldn't hold it in for more than two minutes after originally saying he couldn't tell me why he wasn't coming out.

Although I haven't seen him in months since the old staff made its move to Worcester, I have talked to KRob on the phone and I know he was extremely excited to become a father. Hopefully he is as cool of a dad as Kevin Robinson Sr.

Congrats again to KRob, who is like a big brother to me. Looks like coach Dan Engelstad is the last one on staff to become a father! (Just kidding, coach. For now.)

John Daly's fake Twitter?

2010-10-20T23:44:00.000-04:00

Someone explain this to me. Someone named "Chris Bath," who I do not know, just showed up on my Twitter feed.

Previous posts under this account appeared as "PGA_JohnDaly." So what the hell happened to John Daly's account? I have a hard time believing it was always fake, but what's up with this Christ Bath BS? Someone solve this madness!

(I just looked back at older Tweets and it's not the first time this has happened. WTH?)

This is why I can't bring the radio team back, buddy

2010-10-05T22:50:00.002-04:00

The comment box isn't long enough to respond to the last poster, and he/she asks a valid question, though ignorantly.

Here is what the latest anonymous coward said:

"There are those who only know how to complain and bitch about things. Then someone comes along and actually sees a problem and attempts to get a movement going to solve it.

You say the Mount "radio debacle". Why instead did you not:

a. Try to determine how much it would cost to broadcast the away games.

b. Find a way to use your efforts to raise the money to help the Mount?

Over and over in your rants, there rarely is anything remotely positive or forward looking. You need to make yourself a person who lives by the lessons of his Catholic education. Stop ---, Start +++."

You know what Catholics aren't supposed to do? Judge. You either don't know me, or are too cowardly to say these things with a name on your post, or come to me directly.

Let's look at the subjects of my recent posts before this light-hearted one you complain about:

-An update on a recruit we pursued but lost with nothing negative said about the Mount.

-Praise for a new feature on the athletics site

-Praise for the same site's YouTube page

-A neutral schedule update

-A neutral poll about new coaches

-A neutral schedule update

-A positive announcement of a new recruit

-A positive analysis of President Powell's quotes

-A VERY positive analysis of the new lacrosse coach

Do you see a pattern?

So, how much would it cost to have a radio team?

-Let's say 16 regular season road games (on average) X $100 meal money for both announcers (a high estimate) = $1,600

-An extra pizza per trip on the bus X $10 = $160

-An extra hotel room for about 24 nights X let's say $100 = $2,400

-Stipends (Roy fundraised his own position so we're only counting Stof here) about $2,000. I don't know that for sure but I think I'm close if not a little bit high.

Those things alone are $6,600. Add in extra meals and incidentals and we can probably round it to $7,000.

So you want me to use my "efforts" to raise $7,000 so that we can hear the Mount on the radio? First of all, if I was able to raise seven Gs for any cause it would be the mound of debt that my wonderful Catholic education has provided me. I'm grateful for everything I learned and experience at the Mount, but the last thing on my mind is raising $7,000 so that our road games are on the radio.

If I was hellbent on hearing games on the radio and could raise $7,000, I might as well make a deal with Greyhound, Southwest and HotWire.com to transport myself to every road game for an overnight stay.

Now I realize you probably don't expect me to raise this money by myself, rather you suggest I start some sort of campaign where we all contribute to a cause (if you did want me to do it all by myself you can go play in traffic.)

Well I hate to break it to you but Mount fans don't care that much. I watched dozens of games in Knott Arena over the years, many of them against good teams or with postseason implications (or they were postseason games themselves) in front of a half-empty gym. Did you know that Knott Arena's capacity is in the mid-3,000 range? So how many times in my five-year career where I never missed a single home game do you think that attendance even cracked 3,000?

If you guessed zero then I owe you a pat on the back and a stick of gum. In fact, I think there may have been—MAY have been—two games with more than 2,500 people. I think one was against Robert Morris and the other was probably one of the dreams I had last year where we won NECs at home. (Obviously it didn't work out that way.) There may not have been more than two games with an attendance above 2,000. My point is that I could raise the $7,000, and an additional $100 for every person I wanted to pay to listen to every game, and they wouldn't listen to half of them.

If you think enough of me that I can raise $7,000 to get Mount basketball back on the radio than I am completely flattered. The fact that I can't has nothing to do with pessimism. I'm an eternal optimist on all things out of my control, believe it or not. Even when I'm watching the Eagles and Michael Vick gets sandwiched and Kevin Kolb spells him, and I complain about how Kolb won't throw the ball more than 15 yards down the field in 30+ attempts, I still think the Eagles will win. Just like I always believed the Mount would win, even against North Carolina.

But if the golden statue of Mary climbed off her perch in Emmitsburg and leapt over U.S. Route 15 with a bucket to collect change for the "Mount basketball radio fund," she would be lucky to gather enough cash to buy a $5 footlong at the Subway in town.

So anonymous sir or madam, I appreciate your motivation, but my post was not meant to bash anyone or anything (and it didn't.) It was merely meant to express my dismay that I will have more trouble than I ever imagined keeping up with the team for which I so deeply care. And that, in turn, means that passionate fans like you and me will have a more difficult time than ever before of staying connected. To be disconnected from the Mount would be as if Mary did in fact climb off that very aforementioned perch.

I leave, everything falls apart

2010-10-05T18:13:00.001-04:00

I probably listened to a maximum of two Mount basketball radio broadcasts in my lifetime. I attended almost every game – home or away – in the last five seasons. And before that, the only thing I knew about Mount St. Mary's was that I picked against them in my 1995 and 1999 NCAA Tournament bracket. I never needed to listen to the Mountaineers on the radio.

Now I'm graduated, have a real job, and am still passionate about the program for which I gladly gave thousands of hours of time. I want to follow the team, and not just by looking at a box score. I need live results. To say last month's news that the Mount would be dropping its radio broadcasts is a huge dagger is an understatement.

I understand the reason – all the money we used for radio broadcasts now goes to Lindsey Munday (which is a good thing) – but the timing could not be more unfortunate.

I apologize for the domino effect I have caused by leaving the Mount. Upon my announcement, the coaches decided to take a job at Holy Cross. A significant pay increase may or may not have influenced their decision. As a result of that, our original three incoming freshman recruits decided not to come to the Mount. And now the radio debacle.

I would have much rather the school cut the radio program before I even got there. Not only would I have been oblivious that it ever existed, but there would have been a lot more room on the bus, and one less pizza for me to order. (Though Stof was a good guy to have on trips, and Roy always entertained.)

My hope is to attend some home games when I can, and when I can't, I'll watch them on my computer. But now the road matchups will be waiting games that I can only hope are broadcasted in some form by the Mount's opponents. I just hope that most of the games I do miss turn out to be wins.

JC's Malcolm McMillan chooses CCSU

2010-10-04T17:58:00.002-04:00

The Mount lost out on combo guard Malcolm McMillan to Northeast Conference foe Central Connecticut State this weekend, according to Matt Bracken of the Baltimore Sun. McMillan was heavily recruited by the Milan regime as well as Robert Burke and company, who offered McMillan relatively early. I'll get to see plenty of his senior season at John Carroll with Bel Air Patch.

There is one positive about the signing:

'“[The team is] always together and they’re like a family. They made me feel right at home,” McMillan said. “I had a great time with the guys. My host was Shemik Thompson. He did a great job showing me around. They work hard, and their main focus is defense and rebounding.”'

Now Thompson can teach McMillan to turn the ball over eight times a game and we won't have to worry about him when they play the Mount.

Updated note: Thompson only turned the ball over eight times once last year, which makes me an a***ole.

As posted by me in comments:

4 TOs:
1/7/10 vs. Monmouth
2/4/10 @ Bryant
2/11/10 vs. RMU
2/13/10 vs. St. Francis (Pa.)
5 TOs:
1/24/10 @ QU
6 TOs:
12/12/09 vs. Albany
1/30/10 vs. FDU
2/18/10 @ MSM
8 TOs:
3/4/10 @ RMU

That's nine games with four or more TOs, but only five with five or more.

New MountAthletics.com Feature/Bel Air Patch

2010-09-23T21:50:00.000-04:00

As you may have noticed, my time is limited since my site has launched. If you live in or have interest in Harford County, namely Bel Air, hit up BelAirPatch.com. A14-year-old music and athletic star who was fatally hit by a car last Friday has dominated coverage lately. It's a sad, but inspiring story.
---
One thing thing I have to bring attention to while I'm here, though, are the new segments on MountAthletics.com. I've watched most of both "Up Against Atupem" episodes and plan on catching up with Leah Westbrooks, too. A genius segment that is entertaining and informative from the Mount's athletic department. Check them out and sorry for the short and intermittent posts.

MountAthletics.com to launch YouTube page today

2010-09-01T11:23:00.002-04:00

The MountAthletics.com staff is expected to announce the launch of its official YouTube channel today. Videos have been available for days featuring an interview with new women's lacrosse head coach Lindsey Munday, as well as player profiles with all the men's and women's soccer teams. One of the most recent interviews is with women's soccer head coach Tom Gosselin after last night's draw with George Mason. With updates like this being put up immediately after games, this site will be the place to go for up-to-the-minute videos. Eventually each student-athlete will have their own intro page. I would have loved to have had my own intro video last year! Why couldn't they unveil this one year sooner??

Regardless of my selfish desires, this is another great idea and addition to the MountAthletics.com resources. Also be sure to check out and "Like" its Facebook page.

Update 12:09 p.m.:

Here is the link to the full release, which is pasted below.

Emmitsburg, Md.--- Mount fans now have the opportunity to keep an even closer eye on their favorite Mount St. Mary's teams as the university announced today the launch of the official Mount Athletics Facebook page, You Tube page and soon to come Twitter account. These social networking sites, according to the Mount Athletic Department, will be a means for the public to obtain unprecedented access to up to the minute new releases and information.
The Facebook page will feature content from the official online home of Mount athletics - w ww.mountathletics.com - as well as exclusive content regarding teams and players that cannot be found anywhere else! Some of the special features on the Facebook page include photos, breaking news and player updates, to name a few. Becoming a Mount fan through Facebook is a simple as typing in "Mount Athletics" to a Facebook search.
Facebook is a social networking site that connects people with friends and family all over the world. Millions of people use Facebook everyday to keep in contact with friends, upload photos, share links and learn more about people they meet. The Mount Athletic Department believe this social networking site will be a huge resource in offering Mount fans an even closer and more personal opportunity to follow their favorite teams.
The Mount You Tube page will present fans with the chance to view never before seen footage of their favorite players and coaches in addition to press conferences and behind the scenes videos of what goes into making Mount teams so successful.
Within the coming weeks, Mount Athletics also plans to release breaking news and announcements through short messages called "tweets" from a Twitter account.
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
All the new official social networking information can be found on the Mount Athletics homepage,www.mountathletics.com , on the left hand side of the main page.

Schedule update - Northwestern road trip right before Christmas

2010-09-01T11:05:00.003-04:00

Because I am not perfect, I have yet another schedule update. Word from the academic side of the Mount is that Mount 2000 (you don't want to know) is the weekend of the (incredibly stupid) rivalry weekend with Wagner. Therefore those games have been flipped. (I probably had it wrong with which to begin, but that is the reason we can't be at home that Saturday.)

Additionally, a source close to the team tells me that the Mount will travel to Northwestern two days before Christmas. Traditionally the Wildcats are one of the weaker teams in the Big Ten, but with a holiday fast approaching, an expected lack of students at the game, and the Mount's recent ability to play BCS conference teams tough on the road, I like this addition. Of all the games on our schedule against power teams (Cincinnati, Penn St., Virginia Tech, Dayton) I think this is our best chance to pull an upset.

Note: 2:30 p.m. The addition of the Northwestern game is not tied to the hiring of Lindsey Munday, as the game was on the schedule before she was hired.

Update: 3:40 p.m. As the poster noted, I had the first LIU/SFNY series backward. Guessing the order of some of these conference games was a little tricky after basing it off of Sacred Heart's schedule, so my apologies.

Hopefully this is the final schedule. Updated games in bold.

Nov. 13 @ Dayton*
Nov. 15 @ Cincinnati*
Nov. 20 Savanannah State*
Nov. 22 @ Niagara
Nov. 27 Florida A&M*
Nov. 29 Navy
Dec. 2 @ Sacred Heart
Dec. 4 @ Quinnipiac
Dec. 7 @ Penn St.
Dec. 11 @ Loyola (Md.)
Dec. 18 @ Albany
Dec. 20 American
Dec. 23 @ Northwestern
Dec. 29 @ Vermont
Jan. 2 @ Virginia Tech
Jan. 6 St. Francis (Pa.)
Jan. 8 Robert Morris
Jan. 13 @ Long Island
Jan. 15 @ St. Francis (N.Y.)
Jan. 20 Sacred Heart
Jan. 22 Quinnipiac
Jan. 27 @ Central Connecticut State
Jan. 29 @ Bryant
Feb. 3 Monmouth
Feb. 5 Fairleigh Dickinson
Feb. 9 Wagner
Feb. 12 @ Wagner
Feb. 17 Long Island
Feb. 19 St. Francis (N.Y.)
Feb. 24 @ St. Francis (Pa.)
Feb. 26 @ Robert Morris
*Global Sports Main Event Tournament

Poll Open Thread: Coach under most pressure?

2010-08-31T16:12:00.002-04:00

This post is to be used as an open thread for the most recent poll in the upper-right portion of the page. There are three choices, and they should be assessed in a vacuum. In other words, don't hold the fact that basketball is the top sport at the school against Burke, but analyze the other elements that directly affect the pressure on his tenure in specific. Same for Munday and Nagro.

Again, which of the Mount's three new coaches is under the most pressure to perform in their first seasons?

Robert Burke - Men's Basketball. Highest-paid coach in school history, strong resume as an assistant as a member of the staff at offensive juggernaut Siena, Big East power Georgetown, and most recently, respected Patriot League contender American. Burke is replacing the man, Milan Brown, who, by all accounts, was the most liked as well as the most successful at the Mount in the last five years. No sport won multiple NEC (or MAAC) titles in the last half-decade, but Brown was fortunate enough to win one. He is the only sport to notch an NCAA victory in that same window, albeit in a play-in game. As big-shoes-to-fill goes, Burke takes the cake.

Anna Nagro - Softball. She's only 24 years old (turning 25 in September). There's not much more to say there. Coming from D'Youville College in New York, Nagro has not been involved with an NCAA Division I program since her playing days at St. Bonaventure. While she may be a great coach, and we should all hope that she is, she replaces men's golf coach Kevin Farrell as the youngest at the school, is probably the youngest coach of any sport in the conference, and I bet she's one of the 25 youngest head coaches in any Division I sport in the country. Oh, and some of the softball players from last years team (returning and graduated players alike) ran the last coach, Larry Alvis, out in a revolt of sorts. This after they didn't sniff the playoffs (they've only made it once in the last five years.) Meet your team, Anna!

Lindsey Munday - Women's Lacrosse. See yesterday's post for my overblown rant on the main idea here - she comes to us from Northwestern. Not only was she the top assistant at arguably the greatest NCAA program in any sport of the last decade (she wasn't a coach for the entire decade) but she also played there. Twice she was a Tewaarton (think Heisman for lacrosse) semifinalist as a player. After Sonia LaMonica snagged the Towson job, which Munday also vied for, the Mount snagged Munday. Even with the third coach in as many seasons taking over the program, we may be better off with Munday than we ever could have been with LaMonica. I'm also hearing that she is well-compensated with an intricate, multi-year contract to boot. None of that, though, equals the pressure placed on her by President Thomas H. Powell, who laid this quotation down in the press release: "I am confident this dynamic coach will take us to the next level and bring home a national championship." If Munday does that, I'll be the first to buy her dinner and a drink at Ott's. Look at the bright side: At least Powell didn't say how soon he expects that national title. (Again, I like the ambition in the quotation, it's just a real pressure-cooker.)

Without further ado, please, comment to your heart's content.

BelAir.Patch.com launching

2010-08-30T22:03:00.000-04:00

For anyone who is from or cares about Bel Air, Md., I have good news. The BelAir.Patch.com site for which I'm the editor will be launching next week between Sept. 7 - 10. When the final date is set I'll let you know. If you have no association with Bel Air, or don't care what I do for a living, then I'm sorry you wasted your time reading this post.

For a semi-preview, check out one of our other 115+ sites at Patch.com.

Also check out my extreme fried food experience at the state fair on the Timonium.Patch.com site.

You can follow Bel Air Patch on Twitter @BelAirPatch and Like on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BelAirPatch.

Schedule update - Savannah State game moved to Emmitsburg

2010-08-30T19:26:00.001-04:00

Savannah State has confirmed what a poster asked recently - the Nov. 20 game will now be played in Emmitsburg. This is a nice break so that we don't play our first four, and eight of the first 10, on the road. Here is the updated schedule:

Nov. 13 @ Dayton*
Nov. 15 @ Cincinnati*
Nov. 20 Savanannah State*
Nov. 22 @ Niagara
Nov. 27 Florida A&M*
Nov. 29 Navy
Dec. 2 @ Sacred Heart
Dec. 4 @ Quinnipiac
Dec. 7 @ Penn St.
Dec. 11 @ Loyola (Md.)
Dec. 18 @ Albany
Dec. 20 American
Dec. 29 @ Vermont
Jan. 2 @ Virginia Tech
Jan. 6 St. Francis (Pa.)
Jan. 8 Robert Morris
Jan. 13 @ St. Francis (N.Y.)
Jan. 15 @ Long Island
Jan. 20 Sacred Heart
Jan. 22 Quinnipiac
Jan. 27 @ Central Connecticut State
Jan. 29 @ Bryant
Feb. 3 Monmouth
Feb. 5 Fairleigh Dickinson
Feb. 9 @ Wagner
Feb. 12 Wagner
Feb. 17 Long Island
Feb. 19 St. Francis (N.Y.)
Feb. 24 @ St. Francis (Pa.)
Feb. 26 @ Robert Morris
*Unnamed tournament

Unrelated sidenote: If you go to Jameer Nelson's Twitter page, you'll see that there is a Mount logo under the people he follows, thanks to Mount assistant coach Mike Farelly, who played with Nelson at St. Jospeh's.

Cleveland's official arrival confirms James not playing for Mount

2010-08-30T17:53:00.000-04:00

I do not have any confirmed specifics for the reasoning, but Jeff James will not be coming to the Mount to join the men's basketball team this year. I suspected as much with the arrival of Evan Cleveland, (which was reported her first on Aug. 22) but could not say so for sure.

With the men's basketball roster updated at MountAthletics.com, sans James, it is official. This means that none of the recruits signed by Milan Brown remained with the program after Brown left for Holy Cross. Donte Morales is headed to UNC-Wilmington, Justin Burrell is headed to prep school, then Holy Cross, and James is headed God knows where.

This is actually kind of cool because now Burke will have to wait one less year to say that he has all of his own players. Excluding redshirt freshman David Golladay, everyone in the class of 2014 on will have been recruited by Burke for as long as he remains with the team.

Cleveland joins Julian Norfleet and Josh Castellanos as the other two members of Burke's inaugural recruiting class.

Powell predicts national championship for women's lacrosse? Fine with me

2010-08-30T14:18:00.003-04:00

I should have read the the entire press release (below in full) before I wrote the last post, because I would have seen what President Thomas H. Powell said about the women's lacrosse program's future under Lindsey Munday:

"We're excited to welcome Coach Lindsey Munday to the Mount," said President Dr. Thomas Powell. "She brings a national presence along with great talent and experience and exemplifies the formation of character we try and instill in our athletes. I am confident this dynamic coach will take us to the next level and bring home a national championship."

My first reaction to this was, "A national championship at the Mount? Powell is one crazy son of a gun, and has no idea what he's talking about."

Then I thought, you know what? I have been complaining all this time about us setting our standards too low and hiring people for cheap. I don't know what we hired Lindsey Munday for, but damn, it has to be worth it.

So I have zero criticism for Powell's quote. Props to the president for dreaming big. Who cares if our only team national championship came in the 60's in basketball's "College Division"?

I can't complain about us thinking inside the box, then complain when we talk about a national championship. If Thomas H. Powell himself thinks we can win a national title at the Mount, I'm all for it. In fact, not only was I highly critical (Part I, Part II) of the Mount's recent hiring practices (which is temporarily, completely reversed by this hire), but I also said that lacrosse needs to become our staple program.

I'm not saying I'm the reason this all is happening, I'm just saying that I'm getting what I asked for, so I'm willing to sincerely give credit and a hell of a lot of praise to Powell, and especially Lynne Robinson. Gotta spend money to make money, baby.

(I never thought I would be this excited about women's lacrosse.)

Press release for Lindsey Munday's hire:

Mount St. Mary's University Names Lindsey Munday Women's Lacrosse Head Coach

EMMITSBURG, Md. - Mount St. Mary's University Director of Athletics Lynne P. Robinson has announced the hiring of five-time National Champion Lindsey Munday as the seventh women's lacrosse head coach in program history.

"We're excited to welcome Coach Lindsey Munday to the Mount," said President Dr. Thomas Powell. "She brings a national presence along with great talent and experience and exemplifies the formation of character we try and instill in our athletes. I am confident this dynamic coach will take us to the next level and bring home a national championship."

Munday comes to the Mount after spending the last eight years at Northwestern. She won two National Championships as a player and three as an assistant coach. For the last four years, Munday has been the top assistant on Kelly Amonte Hiller's staff, serving as recruiting coordinator, offensive coach and helping with scouting opponents. She helped Northwestern to an 85-4 record in her four seasons as an assistant coach, including a perfect 23-0 mark in 2009. The Wildcats won the National Championship in 2007, 2008 and 2009 while advancing to the NCAA championship game in 2010.

"We are thrilled to welcome Lindsey Munday to Mount St. Mary's University as our new head women's lacrosse coach," said Robinson. "Lindsey's experience as an elite player and successful Division I coach perfectly position her to guide our program. Lindsey is a proven winner and we are extremely fortunate to have her join the Mount community. Under Lindsey's leadership, the future of our women's lacrosse program is indeed very bright."

As a player, Munday left Evanston as one of the greatest players to wear the Wildcats uniform. A Tewaaraton Trophy semifinalist in 2005 and 2006, she finished her career as the program's all-time leader in assists (128), third in points (268) and fifth in goals (140) and also holds the single-season record for points (107) and assists (54) for the 2005 campaign. Northwestern posted a 64-12 record in her four-year playing career, including a 56-4 mark in her final three campaigns while winning the Wildcats first two National Championships in 2005 and 2006. A co-captain for 2006, Munday was named an IWLCA/US Lacrosse All-American in her final two seasons while also nabbing a spot on the All-American Lacrosse Conference first team in 2005 and 2006 after garnering second-team recognition in 2003 and 2004. She was also awarded the 2006 Big Ten Medal of Honor, which is given annually to one graduating male and female student-athlete of outstanding academic and athletic talent.

"I am extremely honored to be the next women's lacrosse coach at Mount St. Mary's University," said Munday. "I want to thank President Dr. Thomas Powell and Director of Athletics Lynne Robinson for giving me this opportunity. I would also like to thank Northwestern head coach Kelly Amonte Hiller for first teaching and mentoring me as a player and then as a coach to prepare me to become a head coach. The Mount has a rich tradition and I am really excited to be a part of the future of Mount women's lacrosse."

Munday remains active as a player in lacrosse after playing with the United States in the 2009 FIL Women's World Cup Championship team. She was named to All-World Cup team as an attacker after leading the United States with 17 goals and 20 assists for 37 points in seven games. Munday met Mount St. Mary's once on the playing field. She posted two goals and four assists in Northwestern's 16-3 win against the Mount in the NCAA Division I First Round matchup on May 12, 2005. She assisted four of the Wildcats' first six goals to stake Northwestern out to a 6-1 lead and then scored the final goal of the first half and first tally of the second half in the Mountaineers' last NCAA Tournament appearance.

"Lindsey is a tremendous coaching talent," said Amonte Hiller. "It is exciting to see her get an opportunity like this. Mount St. Mary's is a great school that is building an exciting lacrosse tradition. With Lindsey's experience, she will build on their current traditions while taking the program to a whole new level."

Munday inherits a team that went 8-9 overall and 6-3 in Northeast Conference play. Mount St. Mary's advanced to its eighth-straight NEC Tournament appearance and 12th in the last 13 years before falling to Sacred Heart in the semifinals.

AP Transactions
Mount St. Mary's - Named Lindsey Munday women's lacrosse head coach.

It's a Munday Monday! Mount's best hire - ever??

2010-08-30T14:03:00.004-04:00

(New YouTube link of Munday courtesy of Mount Athletics at bottom.)

I don't know anything about Lindsey Munday. I'll be the first to admit I've never even heard of her. But the announcement of her hiring as the next women's lacrosse coach is arguably the best hire by prior credentials in Mount St. Mary's history, which is incredible considering Munday has never been a head coach.

Munday was the first assistant at Northwestern, which has been the NCAA dynasty of the last decade. Their dominance can be compared to that of the UCLA men's basketball team under John Wooden.

The Mount just hired the top assistant from the unquestionably most dominant team of the last decade, not just in women's lacrosse, but any NCAA sport (if you can think of a better one, please share.) This would have been like getting the top assistant from Duke or North Carolina's basketball team to replace Milan Brown - if Duke or North Carolina had advanced to SIX CONSECUTIVE FINAL FOURS!

This post is a little all-over-the-place/over the top, because A. I don't have a lot of time to write and B. I can't believe we hired Lindsey Munday, whoever she is.

She may only be here for two years, especially if the Mount women win an NEC title soon (I know, long way to get there), but to have her at all is a privilege we should not take for granted. I don't take back what I have said in the past about the Mount's head coach hiring practices, but I will say that I was WAY WRONG in this case. Have you ever seen so many ALL CAPS words in my posts? NEVER. She's young sure, but she was the FIRST ASSISTANT AT NORTHWESTERN. And we hired her just 24 days after Sonia LaMonica rightfully ditched us for Towson. (You really can't blame her.) This is the best shocking news since Chappy Meninger (probably spelled his name wrong, don't care) left the Mount earlier than expected due to retirement.

I feel bad for anyone whose first visit to my blog involves this post, because I'm not usually this psychotic, but wow, a big welcome to the woman of whom I've never heard, but is surely going to be an asset for our women's lacrosse program. I can't wait to see what kind of recruiting classes she brings in.

This is a feather in Lynne Robinson's cap for sure. I'm talking NBC peacock feather. I have nothing else to say. I'm sorry, but I also have no time to proofread this. Plus I'm way too shocked to edit anything.

http://www.youtube.com/user/mountathletics?feature=mhum

Evan Cleveland to join men's team, via anonymous poster

2010-08-22T20:00:00.001-04:00

An anonymous poster wrote this earlier tonight on the Bri Gauthier story:

"Any idea as to who Evan Cleveland (6'6", Fort Wayne, Indiana) is? Looks like he is enrolled at the Mount. Walk on?"

I had no clue who the kid was until A. I saw the post and B. I did a little research. Here's what I can gather:

-He's a 6-foot-6 self-proclaimed point forward, though third parties describe him as more of a wing. (Wouldn't every 6-foot-6 player like to be considered a point forward?)

-He is the most annoying interviewee I've ever watched in my life. Seriously, if I were the reporter in this video (embedded below) I would've knocked the kid out. It's nothing personal, but STAND STILL, Evan. Jeez.

-Apparently he committed to play at the Mount less than a week ago - Aug. 17.

-He threw up in workouts Friday. It's odd that he was on campus that early, but maybe it is something new Burke is doing with the freshmen because I don't know of any upperclassmen that will arrive before tomorrow.

-He's not on the roster yet, but neither are any other incoming freshmen.

Welcome to the Mount, Evan. I'm looking forward to your contributions.

---

In conference news, the Monmouth Hawks open their season Nov. 16 at 6 a.m. hosting Stony Brook, while Robert Morris plays at 8 a.m. at Kent State. The Mount was offered the lone NEC slot in last year's 24 hours of basketball circus on ESPN, but turned it down because of the ridiculous tipoff time. As a manager, I appreciated that very much. Not sure how useful I would have been at 4:30 a.m. warmups.

Gauthier to join women's staff

2010-08-18T07:34:00.001-04:00

Brianna Gauthier, a four-year starter who graduated in 2009, will return to the women's basketball program this season to be an assistant coach.

The departure of first assistant Jada Pierce to Army allowed Denise King and Lisa Steele to move into the first and second assistant positions, respectively. Gauthier will move into the third spot, which is a graduate assistant stipend position, after spending a year as a full-time assistant to former Mount assistant Mark Zacher at Norwich (Vt.) College.

In her playing career Gauthier set a school record for 3-pointers by a freshman with 33. The guard from St. Mary's High School in Annapolis was also named to the Northeast Conference All-Rookie team. She is the schools all-time leader in career games played with 116 (109 starts), ranks second in 3-pointers made (116) and attempted (490) and ninth in assists with 335. Her 1,128 points put her 18th on the all-time list, and also make her one of just eight players in program history with 1,000 points and 300 assists.

Mount not in top 610 colleges?

2010-08-12T08:51:00.002-04:00

I gave the Forbes list of top colleges a run through this morning and am disappointed to report that I could not find the Mount anywhere. Maybe I scrolled too fast, which I hope is the case, but if not, our school is not held in very high regards.

Among the Maryland institutions that did make the list: UM-College Park, UMBC, Loyola, Hood, Towson and Goucher. I mean we couldn't get ahead of Hood? Jeez.

Gettysburg ranks respectably high on the list, but not as high as top 100 selection St. Mary's (Md.), alma mater of Kevin Robinson Jr. and Dan Engelstad.

Northeast Conference schools I noticed making the cut? Quinnipiac, St. Francis (N.Y.) (?????????) and Fairleigh Dickinson (???????????????????????????).

The worst part of all, though? We're not even the top Mount St. Mary's in the nation, according to the list. That would be Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles at 266.

The top 10 are as follows:

1. Williams College (Mass.)

2. Princeton University (N.J.)

3. Amherst College (Mass.)

4. Army (N.Y.)

5. MIT (Mass.)

6. Stanford University (Calif.)

7. Swarthmore College (Pa.)

8. Harvard University (Mass.)

9. Claremont McKenna College (Calif.)

10. Yale University (Conn.)

In summary, Massachusetts is a really good place to go to school, and apparently, though I strongly disagree, the Mount is not.

Criteria: Our list of more than 600 undergraduate institutions is based on the quality of the education they provide, the experiences of the students and how much they achieve

St. Benedict's ESPNRISE story

2010-08-11T15:48:00.001-04:00

This is a story I did for ESPNRISE before getting hired with Patch.com. St. Benedict's (N.J.) is one of the most, if not the most, accomplished schools in high school soccer history and they lost their coach of 25 years to the MLS this year.

Here is the link:

http://rise.espn.go.com/boys-soccer/articles/2010/08/08-St-Benedicts.aspx

And a tease:

Perfection is the only standard by which the boys’ soccer program at St. Benedict’s (Newark, N.J.) measures its success.

“Anything less than that is just a misstep,” former coach Rick Jacobs said.

Jacobs spent more than two decades annually setting the bar higher than most programs could ever hope. But when offered an administrative position with Major League Soccer’s Philadelphia Union, he accepted. Now Jim Wandling, a former player under Jacobs, looks to carry the torch – or burden, depending on your perspective.

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Two more stories I did should be posted on Seton Hall Prep, the No. 3 ranked team in the nation, should be up in the near future.

Campaign for Jane: Part II of II

2010-08-10T08:05:00.001-04:00

Read "Campaign for Jane: Part I of II" here.

The most telling move of all by the athletic department is the hiring of Anna Nagro as the softball coach, which has yet to be announced officially. (There must be a haggling over the terms of her contract – perhaps whether she’s allowed to park in the front row at the ARCC, or if she would be relegated to the lesser lot adjacent to the baseball field instead – because this blog reported her impending hire July 21.)

Regardless of whatever trivial matters are postponing her introduction as the next softball coach, her selection offers a myriad of reasons why Karger, by equal hiring standards, would be more qualified for the women’s lacrosse position than Nagro is for the softball position 10 times over.

This is not to say, again, that I do not support Nagro; I support Mount softball as much as any other sport at my alma mater. With respect to the new coach, though, let the comparisons begin.

Karger, I presume, turns 24, or perhaps even 25, this year, as she was one year ahead of me and I turned 23 last May. Nagro, I am sure, turns 25 next month. The age factor is a wash.

So, too, is their playing experience as both were prominent players in their respective sports at their own programs – Nagro being a former catcher at St. Bonaventure.

The differences, though, lie in coaching experience and relations to the Mount.

Nagro comes to the Mount after serving as the head coach at D’Youville College in Buffalo, N.Y. While I will bite my tongue so as to not insult this college with which I am not familiar, I will point out that it is a Division III institution. Karger, however, has been a coach, albeit an assistant, at the Division I Mount for two years. That’s not to speak of the link she forges between the successes of the program’s glory days and these more recent times that can only be described as turbulent.

As Sonia LaMonica’s predecessor, a qualified Denise Wescott left the Mount for not only a better position at a school with deeper pockets, but also the Mount’s most intense rival – Monmouth University. To leave this school for the greener grass in New Jersey was not a statement of Wescott’s loyalty, but her human nature. Much like Milan Brown’s move to coach basketball at Holy Cross, Wescott got an offer she would have been crazy to refuse.

Make no mistake that any of the longstanding and fleetingly successful coaches of other sports at the Mount would just as soon do the same if given the opportunity.

So if the women’s lacrosse program loses a coach to its most bitter rival one season, and then a “young and promising” first time head coach to nearby Towson the next, what is the harm in offering the position to someone who will most certainly pay her dues at the Mount and invest a number of years on Mary’s Mountain before she or any potential suitor even considers her a candidate somewhere else?

If I were to suggest to you the hiring of Jane Karger with no explanation, you’d think I was crazy, and rightfully so. But when put in the context of the recent hiring decisions in Emmitsburg, it makes complete sense. Hire young(er) and cheap(er) is the new standard.

For the sake of thoroughness, let me dispel the notion that this would be an unprecedented venture. In the summer after my junior season the former head coach of the men’s golf team, Erin Brilhart, e-mailed the members of the team to tell us that he had resigned. Never in our careers had we been so relieved. Not a year later our second coach in as many years, Colyn Keller did the same, but without so much as an e-mail than an assumption that we would soon discover that we had another coach. That third coach in as many years, of course, was my teammate of three years Kevin Farrell. The red-headed, round-bellied boy turned 24 this past January, meaning he was 23 – my age – at the time that he accepted the position as head coach of the men’s golf team.

One difference between he and Karger, though, is that Farrell only served as an assistant for one season before taking the job, and that was in an unofficial capacity.

Seeing as they were classmates, significant contributors to the programs for which they immediately became assistants and had strong ties to the Mount, I see no reason that Farrell would be more qualified than Karger.

Farrell, Nagro, and now, Karger. Never has that potluck list of names so neatly fit into the same sentence. Whether they end up on the same page in history is to be determined, and quite frankly, irrelevant as hiring requirements go.

The Mount has a plan as crystal clear as the holy water at the Grotto – it is buying low, and if it’s lucky, selling not quite as low, and every once in awhile, Milan Brown-high. It is no longer willing to pay the price for experienced and proven candidates in non-revenue producing sports. And if that is not the plan, then someone please catch the chicken and sew its head back on.

With Karger available, and the potential for growth far more than any outside candidate could provide, the decision has been made. After all, why not? Farrell and Nagro were hired with equal or lesser credentials. Choosing Karger would not be a white surrender flag waving outside Waldron Family Stadium, for that has been done. To hire anyone else would be akin to firing a flare to signal that we don’t have a plan at all. But since the blueprint says to buy low and sell high, it has to be Jane - right?

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For the record, I predict Erin LaMotte-Koenig gets hired.

Campaign for Jane: Part I of II

2010-08-09T09:17:00.001-04:00

To deny Jane Karger (class of 2008) the opportunity to coach the women’s lacrosse team would be hypocritical.

Is it not obvious that the strategy the Mount’s athletic administration is emphasizing more than ever for finding coaches is to buy low and sell high? Being bought low is not necessarily an insult to commodities like Robert Burke – especially since he wasn’t bought low at all by Mount standards – whose background speaks for itself; Siena, Georgetown, American. And for Anna Nagro, it is not so much an insult, as it is a measure of caution, to say that she was bought cheap. (Very cheap, I’m sure.)

Many a penny stock has elevated to wealthy levels known best by giants like Amazon.com, or in our case, Jim Phelan and MilanBrown.com. Phelan and Brown both call Emmitsburg the backseat-of-the-car portion of their careers, where they first found love at the top of the coaching ranks. For Phelan, the Mount was the only partner he ever needed. And Brown may have been able to say the same if the Mount was more competitive financially, which it understandably cannot be.

I’ve known Karger since my freshman and her sophomore year, but not so much that I would be biased in my opinion of her qualifications. I do not have her phone number, I haven’t spoken more than a hello to her in months, if not years, and hell, I don’t even know if we’re friends on Facebook.

Social connections aside, one dogged fact remains as a result of the path the school has so clearly cut through the mountainside: Jane Karger is the top choice to become the next head coach of the Mount St. Mary’s women’s lacrosse program.

As a goalie for the team in her playing days, she not only earned a number of victories and the second undefeated Northeast Conference regular season in school history* (2007), but also the respect of her teammates.

The soft-spoken, but well-mannered young woman from Pittsburgh has been an assistant coach at the program for the past two seasons. That makes six seasons in total that Karger has contributed to the team. As I imagine that most, if not all, of her graduate studies have been completed in her two years as an assistant, she probably has little reason to remain in the cozy confines of isolated Emmitsburg for another year at the benefit of a lowly stipend. The only way to keep her, and perhaps some semblance of the program’s winning tradition, which, quite frankly, is hanging by a thread, is to make her the head coach.

When I was a freshman in 2005 – 2006, the women’s lacrosse team was coming off back-to-back NEC tournament titles and was favored to run through the conference a third consecutive season. The only teams that mattered were the Mount and Monmouth. Now, Quinnipiac, Long Island, Sacred Heart and Robert Morris have closed the gap. The Mountaineers grabbed the fourth and final seed in last season’s conference tournament by a single game, and it was not a disappointment when compared to preseason expectations.

By most measures, a repeat performance of last season’s first round exit in the conference tournament would be an accomplishment. What with the departure of graduated offensive juggernaut Ashley Johnson and defensive labyrinth and team MVP Jackie Kearney coupled with the departure of their highly-touted head coach of one season, Sonia LaMonica, expectations should be low in the spring of 2011.

So low in fact, that you or me could be named head coach, win two games in the conference, and if it were not for the public record of our name being listed as such, the critics would be none the wiser to the reason for the team’s shortcomings.

Jane Karger might as well be Jane Doe in terms of the choices the program will attract for the price the school is willing to pay. In fact, forming a search committee to fill this position is not even necessary.

Part II of Campaign for Jane will appear tomorrow, Aug. 10.

*The original post noted that 2007 was the only undefeated NEC regular season (8-0) in school history. In fact the team also went undefeated (7-0) in 2004, when it ended up winning the NEC tournament and made its first NCAA tournament appearance. My apologies for the error.

Buck Showalter: The exorcist

2010-08-06T22:21:00.001-04:00

I'm beginning this post before the conclusion of tonight's White Sox @ Orioles game because the result is irrelevant. That is, the positive shift in attitude and ability we have witnessed since Buck Showalter became manager cannot be negated in the remainder of this game.

This good fortune began, in my mind, the day reliever Will Ohman was traded to the Florida Marlins. The laboring, southpaw middle reliever was as effective of a pitcher as Joslyn James is at keeping secrets.

So it came as no surprise, in fact I chuckled heartily, when I watched the SportsCenter highlight of Ohman blowing a save opportunity against the Phillies in a game the Fins would lose in 10 innings.

In return for mediocre Ohman we received Triple-A pitcher Rick Vanden Hurk, who, if nothing else, has a badass name. Assuming his first name is Richard, I'm definitely calling him Dick Vanden Hurk from the moment he makes it to the majors. The not-so-incredible Hurk has an ERA of 4.68 this season. I won't complain though; the Marlins could have traded Baltimore Jim Abbott with no left hand and it would have been a net gain.

Add to that the fact that we dropped Miguel Tejada, opening the door for Josh Bell to prove himself at third, and Brian Roberts is back from the DL, and I think we have a legitimate shot to win more than 50 games.

You may say we're still in the honeymoon stage of the Showalter era, but I like to think of this as more of an affair. I'm not sure we completely deserve Showalter, the Larry Brown of baseball in some ways, so it's safe to say we are not married. We're simply keeping him from his wife on nights and weekends until she becomes suspicious and lures him back to the farmhouse. This way the excitement of getting caught is always there, as opposed to a three- to six-month, more traditional, honeymoon stage.

How else do you explain the hustle of the corner outfielders? Felix Pie's speed in pursuit of fly balls is beginning to resemble Felix the Cat as opposed to an apple pie, while Nick Markakis seems to have lost his fear of running faster than nine miles per hour without a helmet on.

I went to the Blue Jays game on a Sunday with my dad and my friend, Mike, a few weeks ago. It was the game they lost 10-1. (Which one, right?) Anyway, Pie botched multiple balls hit to left that heavily contributed to the embarrassing deficit. And on a semi-routine fly ball that died just to the foul side of the right field line, Markakis ran after the ball like it was laced with malaria, bound to infect him if he was within 30 feet of it when it landed. The ball hung up so long, I think I had a realistic opportunity to make the catch if I would have gotten an early jump from my seat in the 20th row.

So the hustle is back. We haven't seen that consistently since the honeymoon stage of Dave Trembley. (Juan Samuel didn't have that affect.) Plus Pie seems like he actually cares. He was livid tonight when his line drive to right field was trapped, but ruled an out. Showalter spent what seemed like an hour arguing with the first base empire while Pie continued his seizure on his way back to, and within, the dugout. The last time I saw Pie this fired up was when he tripled to complete the cycle against the Angels last season. (I was at that game.)

As for the pitching, what the hell has Showalter done with Brian Matusz, the Mr. Hyde side of Jake Arrieta and the 2010 Brad Bergesen? Suddenly these guys look like the highly-touted prospects we were expecting upon their acquisition. When's the last time that the no-brainer player of the game for the Orioles in back-to-back games was the starter? Arrieta surely was last night, and same for Bergesen this evening.

And timely hitting? I just witnessed a walk-off base hit for the second consecutive night. Who are these guys? They're the Baltimore ****in' Orioles, hon. And Showalter is the exorcist. That's my nickname for him. When he puts that orange and black hat on before a game it's like Jesus hosed down the entire team with Holy Water. They can do little wrong, and when they do screw something up they instantly atone for their sins. Am I calling Buck Showalter, Jesus? No, not in the same post that I compared him to an unfaithful spouse. But whatever he is, it's enough to have scared Satan away from Camden Yards and back into the depths of hell. Or maybe he just moved to Redskins camp.

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Don't worry; I have everything in perspective. I don't expect to make the playoffs next year, or even finish above .500. But at least watching Orioles games is no longer a form of self-punishment.

Towson wastes little time, officially announces LaMonica as new coach

2010-08-06T19:10:00.000-04:00

Sonia LaMonica has officially been named the head coach for the Towson women's lacrosse team. Mount U broke the news of her departure here.

Sonia LaMonica has been named the
10th women's lacrosse coach at Towson.

Here is the press release straight from Tiger U:

SONIA LAMONICA NAMED AS TOWSON HEAD WOMEN’S LACROSSE COACH

TOWSON, Md. – Sonia LaMonica has been named as the Head Women’s Lacrosse Coach at Towson University. A native of Darlington, South Australia, LaMonica succeeds Missy Doherty.

“Sonia is a perfect fit for Towson University,” Interim Director of Athletics Ted Zaleski said. “She has the experience to be a firm leader and is young enough to relate to the young women she will coach.

“She also provides Towson with continuity for our women’s lacrosse program,” Zaleski added. “She helped recruit many of the players on this year’s squad. She will hit the field running.”

As Mount St Mary’s head coach, LaMonica led her team to an 8-9 record last year and a berth in the Northeast Conference (NEC) semi-finals.

“Returning to the Tiger Family is a dream come true for me and my family,” LaMonica said. “I would like to thank Interim Director of Athletics Ted Zaleski and Senior Associate Athletic Director Nance Reed for this wonderful opportunity.

“I would also like to thank Mount St. Mary’s Athletic Director Lynne Robinson and University President Dr. Thomas H. Powell for the time I had to work with them and their student-athletes and for their support through this process,” LaMonica added.

Prior to becoming the Mountaineers’ head coach, LaMonica spent two seasons as Towson’s assistant coach and helped the Tigers win a pair of Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) championships. She coached Hillary Fratzke, who was named as the 2008 CAA Player of the Year and earned first team All-America honors, and Julie Ondrako, who was named as the 2009 CAA Defensive Player of the Year. In addition, five players earned first team All-CAA notice while two players earned second team accolades. In addition to Fratzke, the Tigers had three players earn IWLCA all-region honors during her tenure at Towson.

Before joining the Tigers’ staff, LaMonica was an assistant coach at the University of Denver, helping the Pioneers to a 15-5 record. She coached the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) Player and Rookie of the Year along with three all-conference selections and the program’s first-ever IWLCA All-West/Midwest honoree.

In addition to her success as a coach, LaMonica was a member of the Australian National Team. She helped Australia win the gold medal at the 2005 World Cup Championship and a silver medal at the 2009 World Cup Championship. Named to the 2005 IFWLA All-World Team, she was also a member of the U-19 Australian National Team that won the silver medal at the 1999 World Championships and was the recipient of the U21 South Australian Sportswoman of the Year award.

A 2003 graduate of the University of Maryland, LaMonica was a three-year starter for the Terrapins. She earned first team All-America honors and was a candidate for the Tewaaraton Trophy during her senior season as a team captain she helped lead Maryland to the Atlantic Coast Conference championship. She was a member of three ACC championship teams and helped the Terrapins win the 2000 and 2001 national titles.

She scored 111 goals in her college career, including 49 goals as a senior, along with 55 assists.

“I am charged with excitement and energy for this next chapter in my coaching career and look so very forward to reuniting with the student-athletes and staff at this outstanding institution and continuing the growth this program has experienced over the last few years.”

The former Sonia Judd, LaMonica is married to former University of Maryland men’s lacrosse standout Michael LaMonica. The couple resides in Parkton, Md. with their newborn son, Luca James.

Coach LaMonica will assume her duties as the Tigers’ new women’s lacrosse coach on August 16.

Transactions: Sonia LaMonica named head women’s lacrosse coach at Towson University.

Sonia LaMonica’s Coaching Record

Mount St. Mary’s University (2010) – Head Coach

2010 8-9 Reached Northeast Conference semi-finals

Towson University (2008-09) – Assistant Coach

2009 13-6 CAA champions; NCAA Tournament

2008 13-6 CAA champions; NCAA Tournament

University of Denver (2006) – Assistant Coach

2006 15-5 Pioneers set record for most wins in school history

Chronology of Towson University Women’s Lacrosse Coaches

Coach Years Record No. of Seasons

Maggie Faulkner 1977-1981, 1983-1985 71-62-4 8 seasons

Linda DiColo 1982 10-7 1 season

Lisa Pierce 1986 3-12 1 season

Sandy Hoody 1987-1990 27-32 4 seasons

Alison Williams 1991-1992 19-12 2 seasons

Charlotte Hennan 1993-1994 9-18 2 seasons

Ashley Duncan 1995-1998 31-33 4 seasons

Linda Ohrin 1999-2003 30-38 5 seasons

Missy Doherty 2004-2010 79-46 7 seasons

Sonia LaMonica 2011- 0-0 1st season

Scholarship offered to Manny Thomas of Xaverian (N.Y.)

2010-08-06T14:29:00.000-04:00

According to this story from the New York Post, men's basketball coach Robert Burke has offered Xaverian (N.Y.) High School senior wing Manny Thomas a scholarship.

Thomas is listed at 6-feet-5-inches and has also received offers from Fairfield (MAAC) as well as Northeast Conference foes Long Island and Robert Morris. The same story notes that he is receiving strong interest from Quinnipiac, Wagner, Princeton (Ivy League), Fordham (A10), Hofstra (CAA) and Drexel (CAA).

GothamHoops.com had this to say about him on Dec. 14, 2009:

"A long player who runs the floor like a guard and can finish in the paint with ease. His long-range jumper is great. Plays defensive with fantastic intensity."

Highlights:

BREAKING: LaMonica leaves Mount after one season

2010-08-06T13:20:00.004-04:00

Sonia LaMonica, who was announced on Nov. 17, 2009 to become the sixth women's lacrosse head coach in school history, has resigned, according to a source. She reportedly informed the players of her decision earlier today.

In her only season in Emmitsburg, LaMonica, who had a baby this summer, led the team to an 8-10 record including 6-3 in Northeast Conference regular season play. The fourth-seeded Mountaineers fell in the first round of the conference tournament to top-seeded Sacred Heart, who won all 11 of its NEC matches en route to the NCAA Tournament.

Sophomore Jordan Corteza says that although the transition will be difficult, the team can draw on its experience from last season to get through this year.

"Having dealt with it last year gives us a clue as to how things are going to go but we are still in the dark with the future," Corteza said. "The upperclassmen have done a lot of 'coaching' us and helped out with not only lacrosse but our fears that we had coming back to school. We are a very close team and like last year we will just have to depend on each other to help out with lacrosse, school, social and anything else we may need."

In her first season at the Mount, Corteza was selected to the conference's All-Rookie team. The attacker was second on the team with 20 goals and 23 assists, earning her NEC Rookie of the Week honors on two separate occasions under the first-year head coach.

LaMonica will presumably pursue the vacant position at Towson University, where Missy Doherty left after seven years to become the head coach at Penn State University. LaMonica served as a head coach under Doherty for two years at Towson, and still resides in nearby Parkton.

This marks the second time in as many seasons that the athletic department will be seeking a new coach for one of its most successful programs in the NCAA Division I era. Denise Wescott left the Mount to be named the head coach at top rival Monmouth University on Sept. 12, 2009 after four years at the Mount. Women's lacrosse will join the men's golf program (2007 - 2010) in having a different coach in three consecutive seasons.

"I know that I can depend on every single one of my teammates to help me with anything I need and that is nice to know that I have them there. So no matter what happens we will all be together and able to help each other out," Corteza stated.

This also marks the third head coaching search the athletic department will undergo since late spring when Milan Brown resigned as men's basketball head coach, followed by the firing of former softball coach Larry Alvis.

A good teammate? 'Favre' from it

2010-08-03T16:36:00.000-04:00

Don't be relieved by the rumors that Brett Favre has decided to retire for good. Forget the fact that we've been through this selfish circus multiple times before, and instead consider the damage he has done to his supposedly-former Minnesota Vikings teammates.

Viewing the 2009 NFL preseason through the rearview mirror, it is clear that Favre planned all along to play last season despite his announced retirement and relentless waffling. Head coach Brad Childress was making trips to Hattiesburg, Miss., with a pretty strong inclination that Favre would be joining the team after sidestepping training camp. So the fact that they didn't pursue another legitimate quarterback to push Tavaris Jackson turned out to be a sensible non-move.

This season, however, Childress has had little reason to believe that Favre's antics would lead to anything less than a late preseason return to get him ready for Week 1 in the nick of time. He had a surgery this year, just like last year; he was throwing with high schoolers this year, just like last year - and the list goes on.

So for Favre to apparently be retiring for real this year (and I'm still not sold that it's final) puts the Vikings in a precarious position. Behind Favre on the depth chart is Jackson and Sage Rosenfels, neither of which has proven capable of taking a team deep into the playoffs. I don't care how well Adrian Peterson, Sidney Rice and Visanthe Shiancoe play; without a top 10, or even a top 20 quarterback, the Vikings are going nowhere. This doesn't bother me from a fan perspective because it will clearly benefit my favorite team, the Eagles (since they're both in the NFC), but from a character perspective, what Favre has done this year is worse than any past offseason shunning.

The Packers had Aaron Rodgers, the Jets drafted Mark Sanchez and the Vikings have, well, not much. They would almost be better off running a wildcat all season with Peterson and Chester Taylor than trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. The biggest positive that will come from this is that we didn't find out via a one-hour special on ESPN.

What could be bumping my top six?

2010-08-02T21:49:00.000-04:00

With the men's basketball team's Robert Morris comeback at No. 7, Megan Kinsella's second place finish in NECs at No. 6, and Lizz Christiansen's record-breaking game/season at No. 5, I can't figure out what moment has knocked half of my top six choices down a slot. While I'm positive that Andrew Scalley's game-winning goal at the buzzer to give the men's lacrosse team the MAAC championship is the top moment, I have no idea whether Tom FitzSimon's double decathlon victories and Kent Worthington's no-hitter will end up at No. 2, 3 or 4, respectively. And I certainly have no clue what moment will join them in the top four.

I must also acknowledge my grave mistake in attempting to compile the countdown. In some ways I was correct, but my list turned out to be very wrong until we reached the top seven. My instincts told me that some of the events I selected would not make the countdown, but I included them anyway on the whim that each sport might have its own moment. The countdown does not - and rightfully so - have a moment for each sport. If I hadn't been preoccupied with this notion I may have been more likely to remember Chad Brown's being named the most outstanding performer at the outdoor NEC meet. Or women's lacrosse's six-goal comeback against George Washington.

That being said, I don't agree with all the picks so far, but as I said before, what good would the countdown be if everyone agreed with it?

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Although the sample size is very small, quite a few people have selected the matchup in American in the poll (at the top right of the page )as the one to which they are most looking forward. This is impressive because I assume most of these people made that selection knowing that head coach Robert Burke comes to us from American. Although this was a well-publicized fact when he was hired, I'm glad that so many people realized it, and look forward to that game more than Robert Morris or Loyola (Md.).

Schedule UPDATE: Albany to round out schedule

2010-07-27T20:28:00.005-04:00

According to an outside source, the Mount will travel to Albany on Dec. 18 for the 30th game on its 2010 - 2011 schedule.

The Great Danes play in the America East conference and are coming off of a 7-25 season in which they fell to Stony Brook in the quarterfinals of their 2010 conference tournament. The Mount and Albany had multiple common opponents last season including the New York school's fellow America East member Vermont, who the Mount will face again this season.

Albany beat American 51-50 and Robert Morris 71-66, with losses coming to Central Connecticut State 70-68 in overtime, Vermont 71-54 and 64-46 and Boston U. 79-58 and 68-53.

With the addition of Albany to the schedule, the Mount will still only have three non-conference home games this season - with only one of them coming in December or later - against Florida A&M, Navy and American. Here is the schedule in full:

Nov. 13 @ Dayton*
Nov. 15 @ Cincinnati*
Nov. 20 @ Savanannah State*
Nov. 22 @ Niagara
Nov. 27^ Florida A&M*
Nov. 29 Navy
Dec. 2 @ Sacred Heart
Dec. 4 @ Quinnipiac
Dec. 7 @ Penn St.
Dec. 11 @ Loyola (Md.)
Dec. 18 @ Albany
Dec. 20 American
Dec. 29 @ Vermont
Jan. 2 @ Virginia Tech
Jan. 6 St. Francis (Pa.)
Jan. 8 Robert Morris
Jan. 13 @ St. Francis (N.Y.)
Jan. 15 @ Long Island
Jan. 20 Sacred Heart
Jan. 22 Quinnipiac
Jan. 27 @ Central Connecticut State
Jan. 29 @ Bryant
Feb. 3 Monmouth
Feb. 5 Fairleigh Dickinson
Feb. 9 @ Wagner
Feb. 12 Wagner
Feb. 17 Long Island
Feb. 19 St. Francis (N.Y.)
Feb. 24 @ St. Francis (Pa.)
Feb. 26 @ Robert Morris
*Unnamed tournament
^Guessed date

CORRECTION 9:21 p.m.: Mount men's basketball 2010 - 2011 schedule

2010-07-26T18:01:00.008-04:00

CORRECTIONS IN NEC SCHEDULE. St. Francis (N.Y.) and Long Island games were home and away at wrong times on schedule. Teams were also flipped in second meeting near end of February.

Thanks to my previous knowledge of our schedule for next year, a couple Northeast Conference connects, and some friendly SIDs at bigger schools, I've rounded up almost all of the Mount men's basketball schedule for the 2010 - 2011 season.

For those living in the area, it isn't any more pretty than last year as far as home games. I've only confirmed three non-conference home games, but hope we can get one more, though there's not much room left on the schedule.

The ridiculous attempt by the NEC to force a rivalry week down the throat of a bunch of schools that have as much significant history with each other as they would with say, conference newcomer Bryant, continues. And as luck would have it, the conference still finds it appropriate to match us up with the Seahawks of Wagner for back-to-back games in that rivalry week, which is now later in the season. (Whoopie!)

A final note is that the league has returned its women's games to Saturday-Monday instead of Thursday-Saturday, which is the weekly format the men will continue to play, with few exceptions. This is significant because the absence of Thursday doubleheaders now means that men's games will not be at the mercy of a women's game that may go into overtime. Additionally, this makes the amount of time a men's team can take to warm up before a game virtually unlimited, as they were limited to roughly a half-hour in most cases last season. The only situation where this would still apply is Saturday doubleheaders, though most teams will probably still elect for four-hour gaps between scheduled tipoff times.

Without further ado, I give you our schedule.

As part of a yet-to-be-named tournament, the Mount will open the season with two of Ohio's powerhouses along with one of the NCAA Division I's worst teams of the last decade:

Nov. 13 @ Dayton (their schedule is posted, which led to a nice domino effect to figure out the rest of the games)
Nov. 15 @ Cincinnati
Nov. 20 @ Savanannah State
Nov. 27^ Florida A&M

^Guessed date.

Savannah State completed one of the last winless seasons in DI history and reportedly replaces Murray State on the schedule. The Racers, who scored an NCAA First Round upset as a 13 seed over No. 4 Vanderbilt, dropped this tournament, likely because of their invitation to the 76 Classic on Thanksgiving weekend. Although I have not officially confirmed Savannah St. as our replacement game on the schedule, someone with knowledge of the tournament is very confident that we will also play them and Florida A&M in the tournament. Dayton has all three of the other teams on its schedule as well, and plays Cincinnati on Nov. 27, which is why I am projecting that that's when we play Florida A&M. I also assume it's at home because none of our other games in the tournament are, and I can't imagine we'll be flying from the panhandle state and back home with only a day between games. (You'll get that in a second.)

The following are some home-and-home or annually scheduled games I still expect us to play:

Nov. 22 @ Niagara (We played them at home last year and lost.)
Nov. 29 Navy (We beat them in OT on the road last year. This would give us back-to-back home games two days apart. To follow the Florida A&M game.)
Dec. 11 @ Loyola (No explanation necessary.)
Dec. 20 American (We beat them on the road last year. They will be much improved.)
Dec. 29 @ Vermont

And the two money games I was able to confirm that we retained:

Dec. 7 @ Penn St.
Jan. 2 @ Virginia Tech

We played both of these teams down to the wire two years ago, even carrying a two-possession lead against the Hokies in the final three minutes of the game before the roof collapsed on us.

By my math, we still have another date open on the schedule after the non-conference games that I'll soon reveal. I would expect a team from the Atlantic 10, CAA, America East or Patriot League to round out the schedule. Unfortunately we are not on Holy Cross's schedule, so you can forget that fantasy for this year (and probably the near future to be honest.)

Not to brag or anything, but you guys really owe me for getting the NEC schedule. The powers that be must think Milan Brown is still the head coach because we got royally screwed as always:

Dec. 2 @ Sacred Heart
Dec. 4 @ Quinnipiac
Jan. 6 St. Francis (Pa.)
Jan. 8 Robert Morris
Jan. 13 @ St. Francis (N.Y.)
Jan. 15 @ Long Island
Jan. 20 Sacred Heart
Jan. 22 Quinnipiac
Jan. 27 @ Central Connecticut State
Jan. 29 @ Bryant
Feb. 3 Monmouth
Feb. 5 Fairleigh Dickinson
Feb. 9 @ Wagner (Wednesday game. I guess so we can have an extra day to recover between this intense rivalry.)
Feb. 12 Wagner
Feb. 17 Long Island
Feb. 19 St. Francis (N.Y.)
Feb. 24 @ St. Francis (Pa.)
Feb. 26 @ Robert Morris

That's right, we begin and finish with two games on the road. This puts even more pressure on the early NEC home games against contenders Robert Morris, Quinnipiac, and maybe even Sacred Heart. The only problem with that is that students will return from winter break Jan. 16. That means there will be only seven out of nine true home conference games for the Mount. And if we aren't somewhere near the top of the NEC standings, no students will bother coming to the last five home games except for homecoming, which I'm guessing will be the Feb. 5 game against Fairleigh Dickinson.

Of the nine road games on the NEC schedule, we played seven of those teams on the road last year and beat only one of them - 11th place Wagner, who only finished ahead of DI newcomer Bryant. The same teams we played once last year are on the schedule once this year - Bryant, Central Connecticut State, Fairleigh Dickinson and Monmouth.

If I can be frank, Bryant, FDU and Monmouth suck. Central was on the verge of sucking last season but will likely bounce back under coach Howie Dickenman this season. Bryant is coming off one of the worst DI seasons this decade, and though it will be much improved with new recruits, five players coming off of a redshirt and the return of its best player, Rafael Jordan (John Carroll grad - Bel Air, Md.), they will be extremely young. That being said, a one game and first time trip to the Rhode Island school - in January - may not bode well for the Mount. Let's pray that we drive there from CCSU and then fly home.

FDU's coach was promoted from the interim tag he carried last season, but he still looks more like he's about to be killed off in a Sopranos re-run than coach a basketball team, even if that team is from New Jersey. Not to mention that when we beat FDU on the road last season, he briskly shook coach Brown's hand before rushing off to the locker room, ignoring the rest of our coaches and the players. Even his own players apologized for his behavior as he stormed off. My point is, they're in disarray under a clown of a coach, and if you had a short list of team's in the NEC schedule you would definitely want to play twice this year, FDU would be on it along with Bryant, St. Francis (Pa.) and...

Monmouth is possibly the most dysfunctional program in all of college basketball, but certainly the NEC. Head coach Dave Calloway was a heck of a nice guy on the few occasions I talked to him, but he's losing players like the Kentucky Wildcats, though quitting or transferring is different than leaving to be a first round NBA draft pick. Four guys either quit the team or transferred out, including rising junior Travis Taylor, who took his nearly 18 points per game with him to Xavier. If that weren't enough, Whitney Coleman, who was arguably their second-most talented player, just graduated. That Monmouth zone better add some new wrinkles on the court or there will be plenty more off of it.

That we have to play Central just once is a small consolation considering the structure of the rest of our schedule. Head coach Robert Burke will certainly have his work cut out for him with Dayton, Cincinnati, Penn St. and Virginia Tech all looming large on the schedule. And that's to say nothing of road games at solid teams from Niagara and Vermont, and having to play the Catholic Clash on the road.

I won't mar the schedule with a prediction for number of wins, but I would be very pleased to earn a top four seed in the NEC tournament, and therefore a home playoff game. Essentially, equaling last year's accomplishments of the No. 3 seed and a first round win would be a success. Certainly a second NEC title in four seasons in not out of the question, but considering the players who left, the late recruiting Burke had to do, and the brutal schedule (which still needs another game that I haven't discovered) I will keep my expectations much lower than my support level, which remains as high as it can be.

Report: Travis Taylor to Xavier

2010-07-25T18:38:00.001-04:00

Travis Taylor, the talented post who left Monmouth this offseason, will transfer to Xavier University, according to Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com.

Parrish Tweeted this from his account @GaryParrishCBS about an hour ago:

"SCOOP from a Delta flght: [sic] Monmouth's Travis Taylor transferring to Xavier, source told CBSSports.com. Averaged 17.9 ppg last year."

Taylor was easily the Hawks's best player and is one of a number of players to leave coach Dave Calloway's program this offseason, only one of which was due to graduation.

In the last year of his contract, Calloway will likely need a solid regular season and a deep run in the Northeast Conference tournament to earn a new contract.

MLB Network schlop doesn't know he's still on air

2010-07-24T16:16:00.004-04:00

While doing some work for Patch and waiting for my DirecTV technician to arrive and install my HD Dish and receiver, this gem fell into my lap. I was watching a 2009 episode of "Studio 42 with Bob Costas" featuring Willie Mays (did I mention that nothing was on TV?) and they broke the show for an Alex Rodriguez 600th home run watch. While AAAAA-Rod, failed to drop an AAAAAA-Bomb, what happened after his groundout was entertainment enough. The fun starts around the 0:41 mark.

Of course we should be disappointed that this guy, who isn't even listed on the MLB Network Web site under On-Air Personalities, didn't start waxing poetic about scotch. Or even better, drop a bunch of comments about banging Cindy from accounting last night. But for a Saturday during the dog days this wasn't a bad find.

What about my HD dish and receiver, you ask? Well DirecTV just called and said my technician was in a car accident and won't be able to make it. Too bad they don't have the same guarantee that Domino's used to or I'd be getting a free installation.

UPDATE: BREAKING: Nagro to be named new softball coach

2010-07-21T21:02:00.003-04:00

Anna Nagro will be named the Mount softball head coach, a source tells Mount U.

The class of 2007 St. Bonaventure graduate comes to the Mount from D'Youville College in Buffalo. Although it's name sounds like something from a Dr. Seuss story in a parallel universe, D'Youville is a private institution in Buffalo, N.Y., where Nagro has been the coach since early February 2008.

Nagro, who is from Buffalo, played catcher and finished seventh all-time with the Bonnies in at-bats (422) and fifth in doubles (tied, with 23), home runs (eight) and RBI (65). She served as a team captain and was a physical education major at St. Bonaventure and then began pursuing her masters in sports administration from Canisius College while coaching D'Youville. It is unclear whether she completed her masters.

The hiring of Nagro will mean athletic director Lynne Robinson has met her self-imposed deadline of Aug. 1 for finding a new head coach.

The Spartans were in the North Eastern Athletic Conference for Nagro's first two seasons as coach before joining the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference for the 2010 season.

Nagro also served as an assistant athletics director and the senior women's administrator at D'Youville.

The position has been vacant since former coach Larry Alvis was fired by the school in late May due to apparent player complaints. Alvis left as the winningest coach in school history.

Update 7/22/10 - 8:14 a.m.:

Mount U has obtained an e-mail sent to the players regarding the hiring of Nagro. It was written by an athletic department administrator other than athletic director Lynne Robinson, who is on vacation.

Excerpts from the e-mail:

"I am excited to let you know that we have offered the Head Coaching position for softball to Anna Nagro and she has verbally accepted our offer ...

"I know this process may have taken longer than some of you may have anticipated but it is very important for us and the department to find the right person to lead our softball program. We feel after receiving everyone’s input that was involved with the interview process and after conducting our due diligence with background and reference checks, we have the right person for the job.

"Once all of the final paperwork is complete, we will announce the hiring of Coach Nagro to formally introduce her as a member of the Mount community. We hope to have Coach Nagro on campus by the early part of August, but she will no doubt be contacting all of you in the near future."

Nagro will turn 25 on Sept. 23.

Top 15 moments is a great idea

2010-07-21T20:21:00.004-04:00

These hot summer months, hotter than the collection of female team MVPs from various Mount teams this year, are as fertile for fresh stories as they are for planting corn. Fortunately a hot male MVP, if I may say so myself, (and I'm talking about myself, before you think I switched teams) continues to find loopholes.

This week it's the fact that MountAthletics.com is unveiling the "Top 15 Sports Moments" (no hyphen between top and 15) from this past academic year. While Nos. 15, 14 and 13 were revealed on Monday, Tuesday and today, respectively, there's still plenty of time to predict what Nos. 12 through one will be as the countdown continues Thursday.

Before I get to that, I want to throw my support out in front of the countdown. This is a great idea and a nice summer token for the fans other than schedule releases and personnel changes. I sense a pattern in the countdown already, but I'll get to that later.

First (no pun intended), I hate to ruin to for you, but the No. 1 moment is more of a lock than the Baltimore Orioles missing the playoffs. (I went to Sunday's 10-1 loss to Toronto - it was ugly. Amazing triple-comeback last night against the Rays, though.)

Any time you can put the words "buzzer-beater," "tournament MVP," "game-winner" and "championship" in the same second of the same moment - that's your winner of just about any countdown unless it involves Oprah or Beyonce - for completely unrelated reasons.

Then-freshman Andrew Scalley scored the game-winning goal for the men's lacrosse team in the 2010 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championship game as the buzzer sounded and he was named tournament MVP. What makes the goal even more special is that it was the last game to be played by the Mount in the MAAC as it will join the rest of the school's sports in the Northeast Conference next season.

After that selection I have three picks that are all great individual accomplishments (No. 1 was Scalley's "moment", but it was more of a team accomplishment than these next three), but a step below the rare combination provided by the top moment. At the same time, these are all certainly a step above any other Mount moment I can recall this year. If I'm wrong I'll put my foot in my mouth.

No. 2, in my opinion, is the dual accomplishment of rising redshirt senior Tom FitzSimons winning the decathlon in the Penn Relays as well as IC4As. Although FitzSimons did not qualify for nationals, he is surely expected to do so in his final two seasons of outdoor. What makes this an even greater accomplishment is the fact that FitzSimons was plagued by a stress fracture in his foot for parts of the last two seasons (outdoor in his sophomore year, indoor in his junior year) that caused him to redshirt unexpectedly.

The battle for the third spot is between two athletes of similar ilk. Kent Worthington allowed no hits (so yeah, he threw a no-hitter) in an 18-0 shellacking of NEC opponent Quinnipiac on March 28. Worthington's nemesis in this situation is rising junior Lizz Christiansen, who is the starting first baseman for the softball team. In her freshman season, Christiansen looked poised to break a number of single season records before incurring a season-ending leg injury while sliding into him during a mid-season game. Not quite 100 percent as the season began, Christiansen captured records that were inevitably going to be broken by the Harrisburg-area native.

In the May 7 season finale against St. Francis (Pa.), Christiansen belted a homer and knocked in five runs to give her single seasons records of 11 home runs and 50 RBI.

My nod goes to Christiansen for a number of reasons. Title IX probably won't allow us not to have a female in the top three of our countdown and she set two records in one game. Also working in her favor, and against Worthington's, is the fact that the baseball team won its game 18-0, so he had less pressure to hold a lead, and Quinnipiac was winless coming into that series (the Mount dropped the first game before taking the next three). So Christiansen's overall accomplishment was a season-long one, while Worthington's took place on a single day, although her moment was pretty big in itself since she truly "stepped up to the plate" (I couldn't resist) to get the record in the regular season finale.

To be fair, a couple things are working against Christiansen as well. The first of which, and most obvious, is that she plays softball. I'm sorry, but yeah, I said it. Secondly, the season finale against St. Francis (Pa.) was a make-up game, which neither team needed because they were about as far from the playoffs as the Orioles considering it was the last game of the season for both teams. I realize that is an unfair hit against her credibility, though, since the game was originally on the schedule and would have had to have been played if A. It influenced playoff scenarios or B. It hadn't been postponed in the first place.

With all that being said, both are great, unprecedented accomplishments as far as the Mount goes. When two moments are seemingly this close, you have to be critical to separate them. But let's not forget that they are likely top four moments for a school's entire athletic department in one season.

Outside of my top four, I can think of no other large-scale events that are locks for the top of the countdown. Two other moments stand out to me from the past year, but it's because I was involved in both of them and am completely biased.

(Skip ahead if you don't care about my first self-centered story.)

If I may wax poetic about my own accomplishment, I had a double eagle in the first round of the Rutgers Invitational in the fall. It was raining steady all day and I came to the fourth hole at +4 with six holes remaining. After hitting my drive in the right rough of the par five, I selected three iron from 229 yards as it was downwind and I didn't want to go over the green. I normally hit three iron about 200 yards to give you an idea of the wind and the rollout I was expecting.

At impact I immediately knew that I had executed the shot perfectly. That is, it was headed on a laser down my intended target line and I had hit the ball in the sweet spot. Exactly what happened next is anyone's guess because the front of the green is the upslope of a valley the begins in the last 50 yards of the hole and ends around the middle of the green. With the pin up front that day, I striped my shot, watched it disappear into the distant valley and walked down the fairway toward the green. When my two playing partners and me reached the green, we couldn't find my ball for two minutes. We searched probably 600 square yards of greenside rough without a trace of my ProV1X. Finally, the kid from Rutgers said I should check the hole. I insisted that was a bad idea as I'm very superstitious, and didn't want to unnecessarily look in the hole if my ball wasn't there. After my Judas-like denial of three times in succession, he finally checked the hole for me. Informing me my ball was at the bottom of the cup, I literally told him I would punch him in the face if he said it one more time and he was lying. Then he said it one more time and I found myself in a win-win situation: I was either going to have a double eagle - the rarest shot in golf - or get to punch a kid from New Jersey square in the face, probably multiple times, with no repercussions. It turns out he was not lying as the rain-filled cup yielded the blue markings on my ball indicating that I had in fact made an albatross. Just then my coach, Kevin Farrell, came walking through the trees of an adjacent hole like he was on the set of Field of Dreams. He just giggled that red-headed, potbelly giggle when I told him. Then I decided to yell across the course to Danny what had happened, except that it wasn't Danny it was Sage, who is considerably taller. I didn't really care, I had just hit the best shot of my life.

When we got inside for the round I found out some other bastard from Rutgers had made a hole-in-one on the par three 11th (ironically I had hit the pin on that hole earlier) and tried to steal my thunder. The next day, in the irony of all ironies, we were paired together along with the same kid from USC-Upstate that I played with in the first round. His name was Josh Gallman and he was a top 100-ranked amateur in the country. He shot 71-66 - always in the rain - and won the tournament going away. Suddenly the hole-in-one and double eagle didn't seem so amazing.

(Stop skipping now.)

The other great memory I have this year in which I was involved was the men's basketball season finale against Robert Morris. Trailing by what felt like 30 (actually 13) in the early parts of the second half, we erased a seven-point deficit with less than three minutes remaining to beat the Colonials 63-61. It was an important victory for a rivalry that was headed toward life support due to RMU's recent dominance, but suddenly turned into THE best regular season game of my five years as manager. It also guaranteed us the No. 3 seed and a home in the playoffs.

I won't begin to rate my golf moment, but I think the RMU comeback victory has to fall in the top six or seven. I would say No. 5, but I'm sure the experts in the athletic department have a surprise up their sleeves for the next moment on the list. With only one team conference championship this season, there are a number of moments in the running.

Now back to the pattern I think I'm sensing already. The first three events in the countdown were women's soccer goalie Sadie Winship scoring in a game, Chelsea Johnson winning a bunch of tennis matches to become second all-time in singles victories at the Mount and the women's basketball team scoring 86 points in a win against Quinnipiac.

I don't mind Nos. 15 and 14 because, as I said, I wouldn't know what else to put there, but No. 13 is a little shady to me. The women's basketball team had its worst season in the NCAA Division I era based on the fact that it missed the NEC tournament for the first time ever. So a high-scoring road win is hardly a top-15 (hyphen between top and 15) moment for all of our sports this season. If it had to be included, I think it should be right at the end as the 15th-best moment.

Since it was included, though, what I suspect is that each sport may get a moment in the countdown since we have - ta dah! - 15 varsity sports at the Mount. There are, however, some holes in my own theory. First is the fact that there are two teams each for cross country and track, which could cause problems. Additionally, some sports probably didn't have any moments worthy of making the countdown (ahem, women's basketball - a team of which I'm a huge fan of its players and coaches, but they just didn't do enough, along with other teams.)

So assuming that is the case with each team getting one slot, and it very well may not be, here are my selections for the best team moments this year and what order they would go in.

Actual:

No. 15: Women's soccer/Sadie Winship, above

No. 14: Women's tennis/Chelsea Johnson, above

No. 13: I don't want to say it again.

Predicted:

No. 12: Men's tennis, something involving senior Thad Mostowtt or freshman Mike Salomon. It's difficult to pick a top moment for a team sport full of individuals whose points are all worth the same.

No. 11: Women's golf, Autumn Serruta finishes fourth at team's home spring invitational.

No. 10: Women's swimming, All swimmers allowed to wear two-piece swimsuits. Oh wait, that didn't happen. Uhh, something involving Jeanne Benedetti. If it were a two-piece announcement, we shouldn't complain.

No. 9: Men's soccer, Chris Wheeler's penalty kick conversion to beat Quinnipiac 4-3 in a shootout

No. 8: Women's lacrosse, something with senior Jackie Kearney, (possibly Ashley Johnson, though) maybe being selected for North-South All-Star game

No. 7: Men's golf, if I had to pick, yeah, I'd pick my own moment, but I'm randomly putting it at seventh so it's in the middle and I don't actually think we have a moment (as I don't think women's golf, men's tennis or women's swimming will either), so there's another hole in my theory.

No. 6: Men's basketball, RMU comeback

No. 5: Cross country, Freshman Megan Kinsella second at NECs

No. 4: Baseball, Worthington no-no

No. 3: Softball, Christiansen records

No. 2: Track and field, FitzSimons decathlons

No. 1: Men's lacrosse, Scalley game-winner

So there you go. I'll be honest, the only ones I'm confident about being included are one through four. The rest are based on my theory, and are shaky selections at that. I love the idea regardless, especially the fact that it's spaced out over 15 days. Again, great idea, and let the debate begin.

Me-ami Two-Three: Ego James and his LeBron

2010-07-10T10:06:00.003-04:00

My dad walked into the living room and shook his head. "Why are we watching this?" he asked in reference to "The Decision" - LeBron James' hour-long special to announce that he'll be playing in "South Beach" next season.

I told him that one day he'll thank me for making him watch this narcissistic moment in history, much like he once promised me that I would thank him one day for grounding me. Besides, the announcement was going to be made within the first 15 minutes, I told him. At least that's what we were promised.

Nearly 30 minutes later, hand-picked interviewer Jim Gray finally swallowed his own ego and used what seemed like his 27th question to ask James where he will be playing next season. Meanwhile my dad was still watching while my mom even became engulfed in the drama. An hour before she was too appalled at the Gloria James baby daddy drama to worry about where said baby was going to play basketball next season. Now? Glued - to the television and the front edge of the couch.

This is what LeBrima Donna James did to an entire nation - he concocted a perfect storm of curiosity and drama during the past two years and culminated it with an anti-climatic announcement. Donning a shirt that looked more like a picnic blanket and a smirk that looked more like a smoking gun, James broke the heart of every non-vegetative citizen in Ohio.

It is important, though, to keep the decision (not to be confused with "The Decision") in perspective. As my friend Steve wrote on my Facebook wall, the NBA is a "BUSINESS" (he used ALL CAPS). What I mean to point out is that LeBron was free to sign with whichever team he wanted next season. If it was the Los Angeles Lakers, Harlem Globetrotters or Seattle Supersonics, I would not have held it against him.

James' final six choices of teams contained two that offer him the opportunity to contend for a championship immediately - the Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat. James left significantly more money behind in Cleveland to sign with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami, and give himself what he believes is the best chance to win a title. He also forfeit the higher amount if money he could have earned in Cleveland, and he's taking an additional pay cut so that he, Wade and Bosh can help the Heat stay under the salary cap. (But also don't forget that there's no state income tax in Florida.)

Take away the extravagant visits - or tryouts - James hosted in Cleveland, the two-year build-up he created and ESPN ran with and the one-hour "The Decision" special, and LeBron did nothing wrong. Of course the Akron/Cleveland area fans would still be heartbroken by James' decision to leave, but it would have been strictly business. This charade we all "witnessed" since the NBA Finals ended, was not strictly anything.

If you and me both watched the same telecast Thursday night there's no way in Cleveland, I mean hell, that you can convince me LeBron isn't an attention-whore. First consider the fact that the supposed motivation for the entire creation of the broadcast (not to be confused with its purpose) was to benefit the Boys and Girls Club of America in various cities. Why, then, did we go the ENTIRE hour without a single mention of the words boy or girl? Let alone any club of which they might be a part. It was 10:05 p.m. when Stuart Scott, AKA James' biggest fan, threw it back to James in Akron for a "special" announcement.

At this point James would have needed the antidote for cancer in his back pocket to win back any non-Miami basketball fan. Instead he giggled before announcing the amount of money "The Decision" raised for various cities' Boys and Girls Clubs. (He failed to mention how much he was hoping to profit from the telecast.) It is baffling that his handlers, his Web site and even James himself, justified this entire night with the fact that the proceeds were going to charity, but that point didn't come up for 65 minutes.

So how do you, LeBron, explain the fact that you waited until the post-show interviews to take credit for the money you raised for charity? It's like a guy saying he's going to marry a woman because he loves her, and even though they could elope and be done with it, he wants to have a wedding to prove it. But instead of telling her he loves her during their vows, he waits until the reception, where, only when prompted, he confesses his love for his wife on the low.

And don't get me started on the Vitamin Water nonsense. Not only did James have his own Vitamin Water commercial air during the show, but there was a fridge full of the drinks in the background of the Gray/James interview. And don't tell me that was all ESPN because the entire time LeBron's people told the public that ESPN would allow the profits for the hour to go to charity. I'm not saying you can't have commercials, but you're telling me James had nothing to do with his Vitamin Water commercial airing during that hour? Or what about his McDonald's commercial with Dwight Howard and Larry Bird? Give me a break. (By the way, how ironic is it that the beginning of the Vitamin Water jingle goes, "I'm on the pursuit of happiness" and its a song by rapper Kid Cudi?)

As for the Vitamin Waters in the fridge, I'm sure if any of those kids in the background tried to snag one they would have been tazed by Worldwide Wes. Even worse, I bet that wasn't even real Vitamin Water. Just the bottles of urine James was preparing to pour all over Ohio. Oh the kids - right. The ones who were handpicked by someone, though it's difficult to say who. Because if they were not handpicked, then why did George Willis of the New York Post Tweet this Thursday night at 6:31 p.m.:

"They're kicking Boys and Girls off the grounds of the Boys and Girls Club in Greenwich. #LeBron"

This shuffling of children and the lack of recognition for the Club during the actual one-hour special was just one of the many examples of how unprepared for the entire night James was, which is ironic when you consider that he had been hyping and preparing for this moment (the announcement, not necessarily "The Decision") since 2008.

What are the other examples? I'm glad you asked. From the jump, Gray asked James about his free agent experience and James said "I'm looking forward to it." Is this idiot thinking to "The Decision: The Heat is On - or Off? 2016" already?

Just minutes after James announced his choice to go to the Heat, Gray asked him, "How do you explain this to the people in Cleveland?" James responded: "It's heartfelt for me." What the HELL does that even mean? A nice prepared response would have sounded something like this:

"I know it's hard for them to understand right now, but I hope in time they realize that I chose what I believe is best for me personally in order to win a championship. The Cleveland organization and [owner] Mr. [Daniel] Gilbert have given me every opportunity and I will never forget that they helped get me to where I am now. I appreciate the way everyone in Akron and Cleveland and Cavaliers fans around the world recruited me, but in the end it wasn't about money, it was about going where I think I can win the most titles in the next five years. I'm sorry I wasn't able to bring them a championship [a la Donovan McNabb to Philadelphia fans] but I wish them the best of luck and I'll always be a Cavalier at heart."

Sure, people would have still been angry. And this telecast would have still been an ego-fest, but at least he would have shown some respect to a city that has given him a rim job since he was barely old enough to get it up. Instead he not only gave them the flaming-bag-of-s***-on-your-front-porch consolation prize of "it's heartfelt for me," but he also failed to thank them at any time during the hour-long show.

Instead he chose to repeatedly promote how much he thinks he has done for the city and the franchise. You want to know one thing he never did for same city and franchise? Bring home a ring. James also said, "I never wanted to leave Cleveland." That's like a rich parent putting a kid up for adoption and picking another one up at the same time. And just before slamming the door that parent says, "I never wanted to raise another child." Because that's exactly what LeBron did when he said, "I never wanted to leave Cleveland." At that point, if Gray way any kind of self-respecting sports journalist instead of a puppet not even worthy of a Jim Henson-produced cameo, he would have said, "Well good news LeBron, you haven't signed a contract yet and Cleveland has plenty of cap space." He could have smiled when he said it, even given a jolly little chuckle, but the point would have been made. You've been a huge douche about the entire thing for two years anyway, why not just stay in Cleveland since you claim you never wanted to leave?

James must have a map of Cleveland where Ohio resembles a giant toilet bowl because at this point he pulled his pants down to his ankles and dropped the Cosbys off in Cleveland. "I've done so many great things for the [Cavaliers]." Again, you mean like get swept in your only NBA Finals appearance? Or give up in this season's playoff series loss to the Boston Celtics?

Soon after, Gray finally asked a question with slightly more substance than a bowl of Jello (speaking of the Cosbys): "Ever want to go through this again?" James: "Uhh, it's tough." My head is going to EXPLOOOOODDDEEE! It's tough? You just led an entire city on for two years, cheated on it with five other cities for a week even though you were suddenly in an open relationship, then broke up with that city in front of the entire nation, and you know her parents and sisters were watching. That is going to be one awkward encounter when you run into that city again. Ohh, boy, I would not want to be you the day Cleveland walks by and you pretend not to notice.

That would have never been a problem if you were at least loyal enough to do this in a respectful manner and tell Cleveland you weren't staying with it as soon as you made the decision. Wait, what did you just say? "I know how loyal I've been," James said Thursday night. Oh did he? I know Michigan Wolverines fans who have been more loyal to the state of Ohio than James.

In the aforementioned post-show, which probably wasn't necessary considering the three consecutive hours of pre-show, plus all the hype leading up to it, James said something that is more scary to me than the notion of sharing a jail cell with JaMarcus Russell and two of Michael Vick's old dogs. When Scott was allowed to come up for air (yup), he and his hero got back to discussing the Boys and Girls Club. James discussed his hope for the benefits from the club down the road. "[We might] one day have another LeBron. Maybe. [Laughs]." For our sake, I hope he meant that about as much as all of the other rubbish we heard from him that night.

Paulus coaching an AAU team

2010-07-08T10:54:00.006-04:00

Greg Paulus may not have been selected as a coach for the Mount, but he's finding work with an AAU team. Gary Parrish, who is covering the LeBron James Skills Academy for CBS Sports, offered this Tweet at 10:47 a.m.:

GaryParrishCBS http://tweetphoto.com/31480552 That's Greg Paulus coaching his ass off. In all seriousness, some college will be smart to hire him soon.

This is in no way a shot at Robert Burke's staff selections for the Mount. I support all of the new coaches and am excited to see them at work. This is just an update on Paulus since we were teased with the possibility of having him on staff for some time.

LeBrima Donna James

2010-07-08T10:44:00.001-04:00

I'm on the side of the people who think that LeBron James is being extremely selfish and this Boys and Girls Club promotion is nothing but a cover-up. Or as Dan LeBatard said on Twitter yesterday:
"Get out of here with it's for charity. Boys and girls club, my ass. It's for his boyz. And to get girls. At the club.9:51 PM July 6th via mobile web"
So I won't go into any more depth than the linked column and pasted Tweet about why James is a prima donna. I'm just trying my turn at predicting and analyzing LeBrima Donna James' potential destinations.
I'm prefacing this analysis with two things; first is that no one really knows where James is headed and he could end up on any of these teams: Clippers, Nets, Knicks, Bulls, Heat, Cavaliers. Second is that I clearly have no inside information and am more or less doing this for fun.
When Baron Davis agreed to sign with the Clippers two years and one day ago, he thought he would be joining Elton Brand in Los Angeles. Four days later when Davis actually signed, Brand had left the west coast for Philadelphia in what has proven to be a non-beneficial decision for both players. As Davis got duped into signing with the Clippers by a player who didn't even stay in L.A., I think it would be poetic justice for James to give Davis the supporting star for whom he's been yearning. Add to that the return of last year's No. 1 overall pick in the draft, Blake Griffin, and you would have a legitimate playoff contender.
Unfortunately for Davis, this probably won't happen. James will be furthest from home in L.A., would have to share the city with five-time champion Kobe Bryant and New York City can offer just as much as L.A. in the way of celebrity attention and personal brand elevation. With that being said, the Knicks and Nets round out the top three teams that could offer James the increased attention he so strongly desires.
Beginning with the Nets, who still play in northern New Jersey but plan a move to Brooklyn, James would be more spoiled under the ownership of Mikhail Prokhorov than he would with any other team. The Russian business mogul knows no limitations for his budget and wants nothing more than an NBA title. Rest-assured that if LeBron didn't get the supporting cast he wants upon signing, he would have it within a couple years via ridiculous trades and free agent acquisitions.
The Knicks can't offer the same limitless luxuries of the Nets' owner, but it can boast the NBA's most storied arena, Madison Square Garden, in addition to the brightest of all the league's spotlights. Besides the fact that James tends to light up the Garden every time he plays there, he'll have the business world by the tail not only during his career, but upon retirement in 10 or so years. And let us not forget that LeBron wears a Yankees hat in what seems like every public appearance, including to a Cleveland Indians home game. The signing of Amar'e Stoudemire makes the Knicks even more attractive to James - or does it? Sure, he's a talented big man who has put up good numbers, but he's highly-vulnerable to the Steve Nash Syndrome that plagued Shawn Marion upon leaving the Suns. That is, it is more difficult to score when you don't have one of the best point guards in the league on your team. Add to that the fact that Stoudemire is injury prone with his bad knees and Oakley-protected eyes. Maybe if the Knicks had landed Carolos Boozer instead of Stoudemire, I'd be more inclined to believe that James might sign there.
Ahh, yes - Carlos Boozer. The unsung hero of this free agency class who signed with the Chicago Bulls. The same franchise that was home to the game's all-time best player, Michael Jordan. It appears that James' personality is more passive than killer, and the idea of competing with Jordan on a historical scale in the same city in which a statue of Jordan was erected (right outside the Bulls' arena) is hard to fathom. But it seems to be even less of a problem when you consider who James would have to work with in the Windy City. Derrick Rose is one of the game's great young point guards and only entering his third season in the league as a 22-year-old. Boozer is one of the more reliable posts in the NBA and won't reach 30-years-old until next November. Add to that the fact that he played for Jerry Sloan's disciplined Jazz team for six seasons, was James' teammate in Cleveland in 2003 - 2004 and wouldn't want to hog any of the spotlight from James, and suddenly you have a viable trio around which you can build a title contender in a basketball-supported city. (And though I cannot stand Joakim Noah, he's a maturing energy player who will continue to make great contributions.) Chicagoans are probably still a little disappointed that native Dwyane Wade stayed in Miami instead of coming home and this would soften the blow.
You can't blame Wade for staying in South Beach, though, since former Raptors forward Chris Bosh joined him on the Heat. Now Wade has filled the big-man void left by Shaquille O'Neal after the two won a title together in 2006. But here's the thing about Bosh - he's never won a playoff series, and that was on a team for which he has been the star for years. Add to that the fact that he was only named second-team All-NBA one time, and it's clear that he's not the mega catch that everyone made him out to be. An all-star? A worthy starter? Bosh is definitely both of those, and may turn into the league's premiere post while in Miami, but for now he may not be the big man Wade and James need if they want to win a title right now. Honestly, though, I'm probably splitting hairs with that point because Bosh is a good player. But if anyone has to take less money for all three to be able to play in Miami, it should be him. (Especially so they could keep Michael Beasley.) One legitimate reason for James to avoid Miami, though, is that he, like Bosh, would be a supporting player in the fans' minds. Wade has already brought the city its first title and as long as he is on the team I can't see how anyone else - even James - could become the top dog.
The one place where James undoubtedly holds the key to the city, and the ability to change all the locks whenever he wants, is Cleveland. It's essentially where James grew up, it's where he has already reached an NBA Finals series, and its where he will most unconditionally be loved. The problem is that the supporting cast is not only weak, but unlikely to get any better this offseason. Other stars simply don't want to play in Cleveland. Whether it is because they do not want to share the spotlight with James, or because they simply realize that Ohio, for the most part, sucks, no one will join James in his home city. Before signing with Miami, Bosh himself openly said he wanted to play with James next season, but wouldn't do so in Cleveland. If James does not choose Cleveland, and worse yet remains in the Eastern Conference, he will probably be shunned by his lifelong neighbors for, well, the rest of his life.
All things considered, I think James' best choice would be Chicago or Miami. The Bulls offer the reliable, humble Boozer as well as the young and talented Rose at point guard. Miami would be a great choice as well as Wade (who already has a title) and Bosh's talents speak for themselves. If LeBron truly, truly wants to win sooner than later - he'll be a Bull or a Heat. (That's how you say that, right? A Heat? Maybe a Hot?) But if he wants to be loyal, loved, and continue to build his own legacy, he'll stay in Cleveland, which is what I believe he'll do. I don't care what all the reports are saying - it has been reported as a done deal that James was going to multiple places since free agency began July 1. Until he announces his team tonight on his ridiculously vain hour-long special, and even further, until he actually signs the contract (free agents can't officially sign until tomorrow, July 8) I won't believe anything. Whether James already has his mind made up we cannot say. Where he is going is even less in doubt. The choice seems to be simple (although it is surely anything but): win now with Chicago or Miami, or stay the path with Cleveland. Some people are going to be thrilled with James' decision, others are going to be hurt and confused. I think James will be a mix of both.
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All the teams that cleared salary cap space for James and don't land him should do one or two things depending on who they sign. The teams who do sign a big name with the money they cleared (apparently the Heat, sort of the Bulls and Knicks) should strongly consider lowering ticket prices next season, and surely not increase them. You could let the Heat off the hook for this task because they got the other big fish in Wade and signed what many people believe to be the best supporting character in Bosh. But the Bulls and Knicks, who got Boozer and Stoudemire, respectively, need to make sure not to punch their fans in the gut anymore than LeBron could do tonight.
And for the teams who don't land one of the top free agents (Wade, Bosh, James, Boozer, Stoudemire, Joe Johnson, Dirk Nowitzki), they definitely shouldn't waste that money on a less-deserving free agent just because it is available. Lower your ticket prices and pursue someone like Carmelo Anthony next season. It's the right thing to do.
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LeBron's latest Tweet at about 10:05 a.m.:
KingJames

Good Morning! It's your chance to ask me a question about my decision, use #lebrondecision to submit and I'll answer them tonight.

Really? Your own third person, vein hash tag of #lebrondecision? Give me a break.

My question: Is it true that Delonte West was nailing your mom?

LaMonica has baby boy / New look for part of MountAthletics.com

2010-07-07T17:57:00.002-04:00

Congratulations to Mount St. Mary's women's lacrosse head coach Sonia LaMonica and her husband Luca on the birth of their baby boy, Luca James LaMonica.

LaMonica will be entering her second season as the women's head coach this year.

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MountAthletics.com has made a few some visual changes to its site on the roster and bio pages. If you hover over someone's name in the roster list a thumbnail pops up. And if you go to the actual bios the format is a little different. I like the new look here. Yup, I used my own bio as the example.

Henry, Atupem officially on staff

2010-07-06T12:13:00.002-04:00

As first reported here, Matt Henry (assistant coach) and Sam Atupem (graduate assistant coach) were officially announced as members of the men's basketball staff on MountAthletics.com today.

Ahmad Dorsett and Mike Farrelly are expected to be announced soon as they probably have to fulfill the remainder of their contracts at Bowie State and Hoop Group, respectively.

It appears the staff has already been to work based on this Tweet by coach Dorsett on July 1 at 12:05 p.m.:

"Lunch time @ Rocky's with the Staff!"

Rocky's, of course, is the pizza place in Thurmont, Md., frequented by Mount students and employees.

Suarez is Uruguay's savior - not a cheater

2010-07-03T16:29:00.002-04:00

Luis Suarez is not a cheater - he is a hero. He is the primary reason Uruguay has advanced to the semifinals of the World Cup after a dramatic shootout victory against Ghana. So the fact that FIFA was considering a two-game ban that would prevent him from playing in the Cup final or consolation match - depending on how they fare against the Netherlands - is ridiculous. (It ended up limiting the suspension to the semifinals.)

If you're not familiar with the qualities of a cheater, allow me to enlighten you with an example. After one my practices this spring, head coach Kevin Farrell told us Navy had withdrawn from Towson's spring invitational, one of the biggest college golf tournaments in the area, and we got a 12th hour invite.

We left the next day, played our practice round and prepared to get crushed by some nationally recognized programs like the Tigers, Kent State and UNC Greensboro. Sitting in dead last after the first day (two rounds), there was little we could do in the final round to make us look any worse. Little, but not nothing.

As the low scorer on the team from the first two rounds, I was the last player off for the final round. After I turned in my scorecard and grabbed lunch from the buffet, I returned to the dining area to find - well, none of my teammates. I can't say I was surprised; no one had played particularly well and we didn't move out of the basement so I figured they were in the van waiting for me to eat. I was right about the van part.

Two of my teammates came inside moments after I sat down and told me we had to leave. I told them to let coach know that I'd be out in five minutes after I ate. They let me know that that probably wasn't a good idea, because of Brandon's incident. I knew who Brandon Powers was, but I knew nothing of this incident. (Yes - his initials are "BP".)

A sophomore and a player who had one of the higher ceilings for potential on our team had a major lapse in judgment that day. Powers was struggling and everyone knew it. So when he walked off the ninth green (we started on the back nine) and proudly signed for a score of 79 that contained multiple birdies, Farrell was baffled.

Not only had Powers told everyone during the round that he wasn't close to breaking 80, but that he also had no birdies. After doing a little detective work and going through Powers' scores hole-by-hole, Farrell got Powers to non-chalantly admit that he actually shot 87. A combination of the embarrassment of his poor play and the fact that he couldn't handle the pressure led him to shave eight strokes off his final score. That, my friends, is cheating.

It did not just disqualify him from the tournament, but it humiliated our program. Although my eligibility has been exhausted, the returning players will probably suffer through not being invited to some tournament's because of Powers' selfish act. It was bad enough that we finished last in the tournament with the strongest field in school history, but absolutely nothing positive came from his decision to cheat.

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon and the final moments of extra time between Uruguay and Ghana. The match was tied and the final whistle surely about to blow when the home-continent Black Stars initiated one final onslaught. With just precious seconds remaining, a goal would have spelled the end of Uruguay's pursuit of its second modern day FIFA world title and made Ghana the first African team to ever reach the tournament's semifinals.

But with the goalie beat and the ball headed for the back of the net, Suarez did what any level-headed, competitive person would have done and blocked the ball with his hand.

If he hadn't done that Ghana win* 2-1. Instead, Suarez was rightfully given the automatic red card for an intentional goal-preventing hand ball. What made this play justified was that the final whistle was seconds from blowing, meaning that Uruguay would not have to play the rest of the match with 10 men and would still have a chance to win in penalty kicks. That is, as long as Ghana didn't convert the penalty kick for Suarez's foul inside the box. Asamoah Gyan, though, blasted the potential game-winner off the top of the crossbar.

*Does it bother anyone else that countries with singular spellings are treated as plurals by all the commentators? Instead of Ghana wins, they say Ghana win. Spain just won its match against Paraguay and the commentator said "Spain celebrate!" In the second half yesterday, you wouldn't say Brazil sucks, you would say Brazil suck. Brazil suck what? Never mind - don't answer that. I'm just rolling with it.

So Suarez was gone, but his team was not. With the gift of a second chance in the shootout thanks to Gyan's gaffe, the Olympic Sky Blue won the match 4 - 2 on extra kicks and is one result from the final match. Without Suarez's handball, Uruguay would be on a plane home (hopefully without incident).

There were many actions in the World Cup far more despicable than what Suarez did, because his act wasn't despicable with which to begin. When an Ivory Coast player ran into Brazil's Kaka (one of the best players in the world) in a group play match and flopped to the ground, the referee sent Kaka off because it appeared as if he decked the Ivory Coast player in the noggin. And in the waning moments of the USA's loss to Ghana, there was the Black Star who laid on the pitch in the fetal position until carried off by a stretcher, only to jump off the stretcher as soon as he reached the sideline. This, of course, was a grimy, time-wasting tactic that further thwarted the Yanks' chances to force a shootout. Actions like those make you want to lock those players in a cage with Mike Tyson's tiger and throw away the key.

But Suarez? His only intention was to win. He deceived no one, hid nothing, and was punished with the proper red card and one-game suspension. This is the same, on a smaller scale, as fouling an opposing player who has a breakaway layup in basketball, or tackling a wide receiver for pass interference before he outruns you for a sure touchdown. If you say you would not have done the same thing then you're either not competitive or hate your country (in which case I hope you're from North Korea). What Suarez did in fact was an athletic sacrifice of the most beautiful kind. With little regard for the fact that he would not be allowed to play in the semifinals - against the world's second-ranked Dutch squad - he made sure that he would at least have an opportunity to reunite with his team in the finals.

Spoiler alert for this paragraph: It's like at the end of Amageddon when Bruce Willis stays behind and detonates the asteroid so that his daughter's boyfriend, Ben Affleck - Willis's fellow astronaut - could return to earth and marry her. The only difference is that Willis was never going to be able to go to the wedding.

I forgot the match was even on to be honest. I had watched the Flying Dutch stun Brazil that morning, but was in Bel Air to work all afternoon and met my parents downtown so they could help me pick out a television for my new apartment. (I went with a 40" Samsung from Best Buy.) As fate would have it, I walked into the first store just in time to see the last 10 minutes of extra time and penalty kicks. What better way to begin TV shopping than to watch an epic, chaotic ending to a World Cup match?

My first reaction to the ending was shock. All I knew was that I had seen an amazing finish. But as time passed I realized how great of a play Suarez had made to keep Uruguay's hopes alive. Then to hear murmurs that he was being called a cheater was appalling. And let us not forget that not only did Ghana have a chance to beat Uruguay in penalty kicks, but Gyan could have also won it with his Suarez-produced penalty kick.

When I was about nine years old and my little league team was trailing by a run in the bottom of the sixth inning, I stood on first base with two outs. Some kid who I think was named Travis hit a double to left center as I sprinted for home. I made it safely and when I returned to the bench my dad asked me if I had missed third base. Embarrassed that he noticed I told him yes, but at least it wasn't on purpose. We ended up winning the game. And yes, despite my good intentions, that was cheating. But at least I never shaved eight strokes off my scorecard in a tournament.

Baseball's assistant, Smith, to move on

2010-06-25T10:41:00.000-04:00

Mount St. Mary's assistant baseball coach Eric Smith has resigned from his post with the program to pursue other endeavors. Smith made the decision after the Mount's season ended this year and informed his players Wednesday.

Smith, class of 2007, coached for three years after completing a record-breaking career that will stand as one of the best in Mount history. The first baseman graduated as the school's all-time leader in hits (198), runs (127), RBI (139) total bases (304) and number of times hit by a pitch (33). In 2008 senior Josh Vittek surpassed Smith in all of those categories except for times hit by a pitch. Smith was serving in his first year as an assistant coach in 2008 as the Mount won the Northeast Conference tournament.

A three-time second-team All-NEC selection, Smith also ranked third all-time in home runs (21), games played (173) and at bats (581). He was fourth in batting average (.341) and sixth in doubles (37) when he graduated.