With soccer opening up this weekend, here are a couple videos from around the league to get you pumped up.
The first, representing A-10 Women's Soccer, comes from the University of Dayton and highlights their stellar defensive resume:
And the second from the University of Rhode Island Men's Soccer team during a recent outing to Gillette Stadium to watch the Houston Dynamo, and former Ram and 2007 A-10 Midfielder of the Year Geoff Cameron [#20], take on the New England Revolution.
Looking forward to getting our fall seasons underway- be sure to send us your pictures if you attend any A-10 soccer games this weekend- email them to photos@atlantic10.org
NBA lock out got ya down? Counting down the days to college basketball season A-10 Nation? Here's a snippet to hold you over...
Temple Men's Basketball head coach Fran Dunphy answers questions about the landscape of college basketball and what the Owls need to do to contend for the A-10 title this year while featured on the August 17th, 2011 edition of Katz's Corner on ESPNU.
Stay tuned for more as Saint Joseph's Phil Martelli and Rhode Island's Jim Baron are both being featured on Katz's corner on ESPNU at 5pm tonight!
The University of Dayton men's basketball team is three days into its 11-day, four-game European exhibition tour.
Today the Flyers posted a video of Luke Fabrizius' comments after UD's win over the Dutch U23 team:
Additionally, members of the team are writing
player diaries during the team's trip to Europe. Here are three
entries that have been written so far:
BRIAN VONDERHAAR (Aug 9)
We arrived in Amsterdam around 11:45 pm, which would have been 5:45 AM
our time back in Ohio. We then hopped on a bus and immediately stopped
off to see a small town / village to see the windmills. The weather
here in the Netherlands is surprisingly chilly and windy, which helps to
power the windmills for various tasks (sewing, churning cheese, etc.).
After that, we checked into our hotel and we all took a nap because of
the lack of sleep on the plane. I am rooming with Matt Kavanaugh. For
dinner, Kav, Mitch, Fab, Alex, JP, CJ and I walked to a pizza / pasta
bar. We learned very quickly that it is not cheap here! The average
price for an entrée is about 10 Euros (just over $14). After dinner we
walked around downtown Amsterdam to see the city and the canals. It is a
nice city, however it is a little dangerous walking around due to the
bike paths. They blend in with the sidewalks and the people use bikes
as a major source of transportation. These bikes stop for nothing and
have frequently hollered at us to get out of their way.
MATT KAVANAUGH (Aug 9-10)
Upon landing in Amsterdam, I immediately recognized several cultural
differences while being in the airport alone! Walking around on the
first day was definitely fun. Day two was another very fulfilling day
starting with the Anne Frank House. It was amazing to actually be in
the same rooms where those eight people had to cram together and hide
for over two years. I could not imagine anything that horrid happening
during my lifetime. My teen years were some of the best years of my
life so far and I just cannot imagine what Anne Frank and her family had
to go through. From there we walked back to the hotel to rest up for
the game. We started out slow in the first half, but picked up the
intensity in the second and won 70 to 66. Now it is dinner time and
then we will walk around to take in Amsterdam for awhile, then it is to
bed.
JOSH PARKER (Aug 10)
This has been a very exciting day for us…well I know for me it has! To
start it off, we went to the Anne Frank House. Having read the Diary of
Anne Frank, it was very interesting to me to actually see the house
they lived in and hid inside for over 700 days. It was amazing and sad
to see the way they lived and how they survived for the amount of time
they did. My favorite part of the house was seeing Anne’s room. Her
room was extremely small and she tried to decorate it to make it feel
more home-like even though it was truly a hiding space. All of the
pictures she clipped and put on the wall were still there and it was
interesting to see. I really enjoyed my visit. Additionally, our first
game here was fun and interesting. There are many different rules
compared to our rules in the U.S. including timeouts, calls…everything
seemed different! I really enjoyed playing with the guys.
Sounds like the team is taking in the sites and having a great time- any recommendations of places they should visit in Amsterdam, Belgium or France?
LONDON - In advance of the London 2012 Olympics,
former St. Bonaventure men's basketball player Ogo Adegboye '11 is featured with rap
stars Snoop Dogg and Warren G in an Adidas advertisement for the Games.
Adegboye (wearing No. 6 in blue), a two-year member of the Bonnies,
was called up to the Great Brittain senior men's team last summer, where
he earned a starting spot in helping GB qualify for this summer's
Eurobasket Championships in Lithuania. He led the nation in minutes per
game (39.0) in his final season at St. Bonaventure and averaged 11.2
points per game to help SBU to its first winning record and postseason
appearance since 2001-02.
The advertisement features a 3-on-3 pickup game with members of the
national team squaring off against the rap stars and reigning
world-champion triple jumper Phillips Idowu.
Marketing Director for Adidas UK, Nick Craggs said: "To celebrate one
year to go we wanted to give the consumers a glimpse of what to expect
from adidas over the next 12 months and capture the imagination of those
who are perhaps not yet engaged by the Olympics."
In a recent ESPN article, columnist Dana O'Neil discusses the ever-growing issue/debate/conundrum of whether paying collegiate student-athletes is a realistic possibility and the potential effects that would have on college athletics.
Commissioner McGlade spoke to O'Neil for the column and the excerpt is as follows:
On the football field a financial disadvantage may not make such a
big difference. So what if someday Ohio State is able to offer a COA
stipend and Ohio University doesn't? The two schools aren't recruiting
the same athletes anyway.
But what about basketball, where the talent gap continues to shrink despite monstrous budgetary chasms?
"In
the Atlantic 10, it's absolutely critical to be able to offer cost of
attendance if the schools we're competing against do,'' said conference
commissioner Bernadette McGlade. "We want to be able to continue to
recruit the same student-athletes as those other schools.''
Thanks
to the regular successes of Xavier, Temple and Richmond, the A-10 has
positioned itself as a basketball conference to be reckoned with. The
league annually bumps one of the top six conferences from among the
ranks as the most competitive in college basketball.
But
it relies on basketball almost entirely for its revenue. There is no BCS
football or any of the accompanying bells and whistles -- big
television contracts, for example -- in the A-10. McGlade understandably
doesn't want her conference being passed over by recruits who might
someday base their college decisions on who does and does not offer that
extra stipend.
But she also realizes that, however important such a commitment is, it will also require difficult choices.
"It's
going to come down to an individual institutional decision,'' she said.
"Schools already say that they're going to be nationally competitive in
one sport and fund it accordingly and regionally competitive in another
and fund that to a lesser degree. It will be up to the individual
institutions to make those decisions and figure out how to make it work
with Title IX.''
There is no magic remedy. For cash-strapped institutions, even for those
that desperately want to keep up with the Joneses, where is the money
supposed to come from?
What are your thoughts on the issue? How do you think it would affect college athletics and the A-10? Leave your thoughts in the comments section of this post!
Check out the press conference welcoming Justin Harper to the Orlando Magic:
NEWARK, N.J. - For the second time in three years, two student-athletes from the Atlantic 10 Conference were selected in the NBA Draft. On Thursday night, Richmond's Justin Harper and Temple's Lavoy Allen were both drafted in the second round.
Harper was selected as the 32nd pick in the 2011 NBA Draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic traded for the 6-foot-10, 225-pound Richmond native later Thursday evening. Allen was selected by the Philadelphia 76ers with the 50th pick.
Orlando only had one of the 60 picks in the 2011 NBA Draft and that selection was not coming until 53, but the Magic clearly made Harper there man by offering Cleveland two future picks for his rights.
"You don't do a trade unless the guy you like (is there)," President of Basketball Operations/General Manager Otis Smith said. "There were two guys we liked and the guy (Harper) happened to be the top of the two, so it's a good value pick."
Harper averaged 17.9 points and 6.9 rebounds as a senior in leading the Spiders to a school-record 29 wins, the Atlantic 10 Championship and an NCAA Sweet 16 appearance.
"This is probably the best feeling I've felt to this point, besides graduating from college," Harper said. "This is like your dream coming true right in front of your face."
Harper was the second highest player selected in school history, behind Johnny Newman who was the 29th pick in the 1986 NBA Draft. Newman played 17 seasons in the NBA.
Allen is the 32nd Temple player selected in the NBA Draft and the first since Mardy Collins was taken with the 29th pick (first round) of the 2006 NBA Draft by the New York Knicks.
"I am excited to be selected and it is even more special that it is by the 76ers, where my family and friends are able to support me," said Allen. "I can't wait to get started with my professional career."
"I am very happy for him," said Temple head coach Fran Dunphy. "He accomplished so much as a college basketball player. It is a great reward to be drafted and to go to the Sixers is icing on the cake."
Allen, the 2011 Philadelphia Big 5 Most Outstanding Player, ended his career as Temple's all-time rebound leader (1,147) and 24th on the all-time scoring list with 1,421 points. He also moved into third place on the all-time blocked shots list with 213 and his 98 career wins in a Cherry and White uniform place him eighth in program history.
A two-time first team All-Atlantic 10 selection and three-time all-defensive team honoree, the Morrisville, Pa. native (Pennsbury High) led Temple and ranked second in the A10 in rebounding (8.6 ppg.) while placing third on the team in scoring (11.6 ppg.). He also led the Owls in blocked shots with a career best 61 and compiled 41 career double-doubles, including eight in his last nine games.
The footage of Harper's name being called: (turn your volume up!)
Louis Suttman, a three-year manager of the Dayton Flyers women’s basketball team and 2009 UD graduate, has challenged himself to bicycle over 4,000 miles from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean in order to raise heart health awareness.
Suttman has been personally affected in many ways by various heart ailments within his close circle of family and friends.
In 1972 his grandfather and namesake, Louis “Frosty” Suttman (UD Class of 1951), was one of the first recipients of an artificial aorta valve due to a heart birth defect. As this was new technology at the time, the valve sadly only lasted six years and Frosty passed away in 1978.
During Suttman’s freshman year at the University of Dayton, the wear and tear of cancer treatment surfaced in his uncle Eric Suttman’s heart. The Dayton graduate - and current faculty member at the University -successfully underwent a quadruple bypass surgery while also receiving an artificial aorta valve.
During that same year, Louis Suttman became an official member of the University of Dayton women’s basketball team. It was then that he first met his mentor, Head Coach Jim Jabir. Suttman admired Coach Jabir’s intensity, dedication, and more importantly, the gigantic heart with which Coach ran his program. Suttman was shocked to find out halfway through his first year with the team that the same wonderful heart that he admired so much, had nearly taken Jabir’s life in 2004. It was then, while coaching his team, that Jabir was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmia; a condition through which he has preserved and continues to coach with today.
“Throughout my time with the team, Coach Jabir and I grew especially close and developed a bond that will last a lifetime,” said Suttman.
