With two announcements this week – one from the RTD and one from the A10 – suddenly the Spiders’ men’s hoops schedule comes into much clearer focus. The details are thus:

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A10: VCU, Fordham, Bonaventure, Dayton, GW, LaSalle, UMass, St. Joe’s

OOC: Delaware, Belmont, Minnesota, Hofstra, Ohio, JMU, Old Dominion, Coppin State

Away

A10: VCU, Fordham, Bonaventure, Dayton, URI, Duquesne, Mason, St. Louis

OOC: Florida, Wake Forest, Air Force, William & Mary

Neutral

OOC: North Carolina, Fairfield/Louisville

That’s 30 games. UR is reportedly still chasing one more BCS-esque opponent (presumably an away game).

Buckle your seat belts. Even if the A10 regresses to the mean this year with all the departures, that’s a robust schedule. Mooney (and his staff) has done a pretty good job in his tenure at UR of scheduling up or down depending on the team’s needs/expectations. Regardless of whatever optimistic cliches he spouts at media day, ramping up the opponents liking this shows where his mind is entering the season as opposed the last.

Time to grow up, freshmen.

This warrants a response.

And as a response, I’m not going to argue the case for or against D1 athletics, FCS football, or anything else.

I’m also not going to trivialize Dr. Mayes’ email and assume he was making merely A Modest Proposal.

I want to applaud Dr. Mayes for voicing an honest and reasoned opinion. He made a bold statement in going against the groupthink and crossing King Football. He did not spout off. He sent a seven paragraph email after first-hand study and consideration. He made an argument. Dr. Spider spends hours every semester trying to teach students to do the same thing. And then to encourage those same students listen to other similar efforts with an open mind. This, after all, is college. It’s what you do. Or should do. (I can’t speak to what happens at VCU.)

I vehemently disagree with him, but I’ll listen to him. And what’s more, Richmond needs him. Continue reading →

Now that the season’s completely over, it’s time to look ahead. The Spiders have already put together a solid schedule for next season. Given the talent returning and increased maturity by the freshmen, a challenging out-of-conference schedule could set the Spiders up well for at-large consideration. (Note: info for upcoming schedule gleaned from AD releases, Tip-Off Tournament site, and rumor/unconfirmed SpiderNation message board posts. Not responsible for accuracy. But you knew that already.)

A full schedule consists of 31 games. Continue reading →

Hashtags may or may not deserve their own post, but being force fed #spidernation lately has gotten me thinking about them.

I strongly dislike #spidernation. Not the concept of course, I hate the actual hashtag. It’s boring, unoriginal, and taken. Run a search for it on Twitter or set up a filtered column, and you get a lot of tweets about Concord (NC) High – their colors are black and gold and they have lots of spirit (oh yes we do, how ’bout you?).

The real problem however, is that everything now is a Nation. Red Sox Nation. Big Blue Nation. Gator Nation. Colbert Nation. Enough. We get it. “Nation” identifies a group across political (and other) boundaries. It works well for sports team fan groups. Tomahawk Nation really pulls it all together – sports, politics, indigenous people.

UR can do better than #spidernation.  Continue reading →

Two things happened last weekend: UR held its graduation exercises (congrats, all!) and the Spiders picked up their first transfer under Mooney (well, transfer who made it into the school at any rate). With that, let’s quickly update the roster situation moving forward. (Note: all language is now as of 2013-14 season.)

Returning scholarships: 9

Seniors: Cedrick Lindsay, Derrick Williams

Juniors: Kendall Anthony, Wayne Sparrow

Sophomores: Trey Davis, Deion Taylor, Alonzo Nelson-Ododa, Terry Allen, Luke Piotrowski

Incoming scholarships: 4 – Tim Singleton, ShawnDre Jones, Josh Jones, T.J. Cline (R)

Walk-ons: 3 – Zach Chu (Jr), Luke Moyer (So), John Moyer (So)

Total scholarships used: 13

Cline is following Continue reading →

Without getting into the numbers and production lost just yet, here’s a quick rundown on the shape of the Richmond roster. Of course, as significant as any other departure may be that of Assoc. Head Coach Kevin McGeehan to take over the head role at Campbell.

(Reminder: 13 scholarships available to Division 1 teams.)

Outgoing scholarship players: Continue reading →