So they can put 20, 30. 40, 50? thousand people in their football stadium, as if to thumb their nose at everybody, to demonstrate that their student body is “family” and in no need of following the protocols the rest of the conference had to follow. That doesn’t seem to have worked out so well in basketball. They’re going to miss their 3rd straight game tonight, who knows for Saturday. Funny how they were so immune to COVID during football season, how fragile they are now. This, Buzz Williams, is a football school.
I know this is likely not borne out by facts, but it sure seems like there are more COVID issues during losing streaks. I know I am cynical, and I know some of problems were not just COVID with injuries and transfers, but couldn’t the Vanderbilt women roll out a soccer player or two to keep the basketball season going? Smart azzed, I know, but if they could draw from the student body to field a football team, surely there are some prospects on campus to play basketball, There may be reasons that they could not pull basketball together, but,at least to me, this appears curious.
I figure it’s only a matter of time before Duke will cancel the rest of their season. They can just put an asterisk next to their record for future reference, and claim COVID issues were the reason they had such a poor season.
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The list of season/Covid team closing for the year will be large in March.
Sarah Fuller could join the football team because as a soccer player she was already in their athletic COVID testing protocol. Your average Vandy student isn’t. And she was able to play the one position that doesn’t require any football skills. You can’t roll a defensive end out there and expect him to play power forward if he’s never played any hoops; there’s no kickers/punters in basketball. He could go out there and foul people; I’ve seen people get all five fouls in about three minutes if they’re totally overmatched like that. But after the fifth foul he might as well have never put on the uniform.
While my comments were really more tongue in cheek, and I know it is not as simple as my post reflects, however I would submit it to be not as complicated as you feel.
Let’s say Muss got down to 7 or 8 players because of injuries or COVID or a combination, and we were really short on bigs. The tallest player on the Hogs football team is Dalton Wagner at 6-9. Despite that, there’s no mention on his UA roster bio that he ever played basketball or any other sport. So you’d be throwing him out there to pick up five fouls (probably including a flagrant or two because he doesn’t know how to play), or just parking him on the bench to meet a roster minimum with no intention of playing him at all. So what is the point?
You probably could find some cornerback or something who had played some hoops; I’ll agree with you there. Maybe he’d even be skillful enough to compete. But there aren’t that many Matt Joneses or Jamario Bells, football players who have enough hoop skills to do anything at the SEC level.
You are working harder on this than necessary.
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I would think there are any number of players on the A&M football team that were fantastic basketball players in high school – probably capable of playing Division II basketball in a heartbeat. Some of the best hoops games at the HPER building over the last 30 years involved some Hog football players.
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Any football player who is a defensive back or wide receiver in college probably played quite a bit of basketball in high school. Georgia had a tight end a few years back who was actually quite good in basketball, can’t recall his name.
I agree with the fact that a number of football players would be capable of more than just fouling. But Swine did have a valid point that they’d need to be in the testing protocol. I’m assuming the rigid testing is only done during the season. Does anyone know if football players are still being tested 3 times a week? Wouldn’t seem necessary.
At the time Sarah Fuller went to kick for the football team, she was just removed from the SEC soccer tourney. That meant she was likely still in testing protocol.
And Vandy’s women’s basketball team doesn’t have a sport with 85 other scholarship players to choose from anyways even if they were still in testing.
I would think they are absolutely still testing football players. They have workouts and meetings multiple times per week. They are not that far from spring practice.
The solution to the Vandy women’s team is really quite fixable in the times we live in. I understand that on most college campuses there is a guy’s team that exists for the sole purpose of scrimmaging against the women’s team. These ‘guys’ would only need to identify as women, no surgery needed. and voila, Vandy has their women’s team.
Quinn Grovey comes to mind. man, he was electric in intramurals
GHG
I recall that Steve Atwater was pretty good basketball player. I never heard any stories about Jason Peters playing basketball on campus, but Jim Washburn said the first time he saw Peters was as a ninth grader in high school. Randy Garner (his cousin) took him to see Peters play. He said he was as good of an athlete as he had ever seen at that size.
The 7 - 8 number is about what CEM played last season for the most part.
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