Finally we can run off some upperclassmen | Page 2 | The Boneyard

Finally we can run off some upperclassmen

is he even on anymore? Since his boy O’Reilly got jettisoned off FNC, have not seen him
 
Back to topic @ hand please before another complaint about the “P” word comes in...
 
If Harris stays committed and comes next season, how many years will he have here?

I'm not saying he isn't committed, just made that statement because I never count a kid on our team until they sign their NLI.
 
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UCFBfan said:
If Harris stays committed and comes next season, how many years will he have here?

I'm not saying he isn't committed, just made that statement because I never count a kid on our team until they sign their NLI.
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Has played two years @ Lackawanna so should be two years of eligibility left and he may be a December grad so he might be an early enrollee.
 
We have a big need at tailback imo. Need depth and a thumper. Seems like every G5 has better tailbacks than UConn when I watch games
 
Rewster said:
We have a big need at tailback imo. Need depth and a thumper. Seems like every G5 has better tailbacks than UConn when I watch games
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Boy is that true. Every team seems to have a couple of guys that 1st tacklers bounce off (not just UConn tacklers!).
 
TRest said:
Who wouldn't want to play for this guy?
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Fail. You don't have to "push out" a fifth year senior like you would a sophomore because the understanding is not that when you sign on you automatically get five years. Pushing someone out before 4 years is a totally different thing. Especially if you have your degree at the end of 4 years.
 
whaler11 said:
There isn’t any rule that requires to renew anyone from year to year is there?
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No. As a matter of NCAA rules. But the norms, which are important, is that when you sign on as a frosh you should have four years at the institution if you're showing up and keeping your nose clean.
 
UConnDan97 said:
Well, at least Pindell, Sterling, etc., are examples that show Edsall will go the JUCO / experienced route if he can. He had Courtel Jenkins ready to transfer from Miami until Houston swept him up, so he's certainly looking at all avenues...
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Not sure if this has been posted. Just found out Courtel Jenkins is gone from Houston. Glad we didn't get that train wreck.
 
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businesslawyer said:
Fail. You don't have to "push out" a fifth year senior like you would a sophomore because the understanding is not that when you sign on you automatically get five years. Pushing someone out before 4 years is a totally different thing. Especially if you have your degree at the end of 4 years.
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Tell that to any kids who redshirted their first or second year. My problem with Randy is he is willing to dump kids who have been loyal to the school and program, but weren't recruited by him.
 
Two way street now-a-days: NCAA version of a “Silent Auction” ;)

... and no, it’s not accessible to fans!
 
I see Mike Z started following a certain sophomore TE at Florida State this week who is from the Boston area. Wonder if that is a free agent/(ie transfer) name from the new portal.
 
Buffett10 said:
Not sure if this has been posted. Just found out Courtel Jenkins is gone from Houston. Glad we didn't get that train wreck.
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He's playing in the CFL right now for the Edmonton Eskimos. If he came to UConn, he may not necessarily have been a train wreck. What we do know is that he is a professional-quality player that Edsall identified from another institution as a possible transfer, which was the point of the example to begin with...
 
UConnDan97 said:
He's playing in the CFL right now for the Edmonton Eskimos. If he came to UConn, he may not necessarily have been a train wreck. What we do know is that he is a professional-quality player that Edsall identified from another institution as a possible transfer, which was the point of the example to begin with...
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Yep. And I have said this before, where I get pissed about this season is the fact that Edsall with all his years of watching freshman come in and knowing the kinds of kids we have access too (kids that need more years in the weight room), that he did not more aggressively pursue JUCOs, transfers and grad kids to bridge this rebuild. So you dont get Jenkins, then find another mature body. In the end he landed Pindell, Sterling, Eli Thomas, Buss and Fines. All five play meaningful minutes. However, we needed probably six more of those upperclassman coming in this fall which didn't happen. Where the lack of a bridge hurts us even more is now in 2019 Edsall has to dance around our woeful defensive performance on the recruiting trail. A bridge of JUCOs and transfers would probably have only add us a single additional win vs our current performance, but much more importantly, we would have been more competitive in those losses.
 
Exit 4 said:
Yep. And I have said this before, where I get pissed about this season is the fact that Edsall with all his years of watching freshman come in and knowing the kinds of kids we have access too (kids that need more years in the weight room), that he did not more aggressively pursue JUCOs, transfers and grad kids to bridge this rebuild. So you dont get Jenkins, then find another mature body. In the end he landed Pindell, Sterling, Eli Thomas, Buss and Fines. All five play meaningful minutes. However, we needed probably six more of those upperclassman coming in this fall which didn't happen. Where the lack of a bridge hurts us even more is now in 2019 Edsall has to dance around our woeful defensive performance on the recruiting trail. A bridge of JUCOs and transfers would probably have only add us a single additional win vs our current performance, but much more importantly, we would have been more competitive in those losses.
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This is largely an unfair criticism of Edsall, especially when considering that you point out 5 players that he was able to secure. If you think it's easy to get a bunch of good quality transfer / JUCO players to come to a team that has had 1 winning season in the last 7, then I've got some land to sell you in the Everglades.

The fact that he was able to secure someone of the quality of Pindell is the only thing keeping this team marginally competitive. We're forced to primarily play the "long game" with athletic young prospects and hope for a great 2020 season...
 
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UConnDan97 said:
This is largely an unfair criticism of Edsall, especially when considering that you point out 5 players that he was able to secure. If you think it's easy to get a bunch of good quality transfer / JUCO players to come to a team that has had 1 winning season in the last 7, then I've got some land to sell you in the Everglades.

The fact that he was able to secure someone of the quality of Pindell is the only thing keeping this team marginally competitive. We're forced to primarily play the "long game" with athletic young prospects and hope for a great 2020 season...
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Life isnt fair. Edsall should have done more. 5 wasn't enough, he could have found 5 more. From everything I could see in his recruiting, we did not hit the JUCO circuit very hard at all. He should have entered this fall with at least another DL body and Corner.

I'm not talking about 5 Fatusaki's, I'm talking about finding 5 more middle of the road bodies to take the reps and lessen the sting of these losses. These freshman should be doing weight room activities this fall instead of getting run over every Saturday.

So you can't sell the program to JUCO's, then how do you sell it to high school seniors? Now the current crop of 2019 kids has miles of tape watching the 2018 class get exposed.
 
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TRest said:
Tell that to any kids who redshirted their first or second year. My problem with Randy is he is willing to dump kids who have been loyal to the school and program, but weren't recruited by him.
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Agree. It will catch up with him and, I expect, sooner rather than later. Also interesting to see the comments made to the press, first.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if a few RS Sophs are gone as well.. There's a couple that I can clearly see that they see the writing is on the wall for them, but I'm surprised about one of them.. Thought he'd be great playing for us, but his PT got diminished drastically....
 
Exit 4 said:
Life isnt fair. Edsall should have done more. 5 wasn't enough, he could have found 5 more. From everything I could see in his recruiting, we did not hit the JUCO circuit very hard at all. He should have entered this fall with at least another DL body and Corner.

I'm not talking about 5 Fatusaki's, I'm talking about finding 5 more middle of the road bodies to take the reps and lessen the sting of these losses. These freshman should be doing weight room activities this fall instead of getting run over every Saturday.

So you can't sell the program to JUCO's, then how do you sell it to high school seniors? Now the current crop of 2019 kids has miles of tape watching the 2018 class get exposed.
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Good point.. Mature bodies were needed.. more of them anyways... It'd be nice to take a different approach and go with mainly HS kids, but we MUST hit the prep school (kids that are like 19 going on 20 already), JUCO, & GS route... Yeah, the pups will be a little better in '19, but only a little, because every other school's program should be that much better because they have depth we don't currently have...
 
Exit 4 said:
And so with that, here are the redshirt juniors below. I think we have to have a min class size of 20 this year. 20 broken down as: 9 graduating seniors + 4 currently unfilled scholarships + 5 redshirt juniors that do not return for their final year of eligibility (5 is a guess!) + 3 underclassman leave early (there are always 2 or 3).

Senior day should be telling when we play Temple in late Nov.

Current Redshirt Juniors:
1) Brandon Bisack (RS)
2) Donevin O'Reilly (RS)
3) Zordan Holman (RS)
4) Tyler Davis (RS)
5) Bryan Cespedes (RS)
6) Ian Campbell (RS)
7) Matt Peart (RS)
8) Philippe Okounam (RS)
9) Kevin Murphy (RS)
10) Connor Freeborn (RS)
11) Eli Thomas (RS)
12) Marshé Terry (RS)
13) Michael Tarbutt (K) (RS)
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Have to think Thomas isn’t going to play again after a stroke. Will he keep a scholly until he graduates? Taking it away would be pretty cold.
 
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Exit 4 said:
However, we needed probably six more of those upperclassman coming in this fall which didn't happen.
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Which six freshman recruits are you going to pass on? You are still limited by the number of players you can bring in each year. Going the JUCO route can be dangerous. For every JUCO you take you sacrifice a freshman. If you cannot balance the Juco Freshman ratio you all of a sudden become very dependent on JUCOs. If your AD is giving you four to five years to turn the boat you need the freshman.
 
uconnfan68 said:
Have to think Thomas isn’t going to play again after a stroke. Will he keep a scholly until he graduates? Taking it away would be pretty cold.
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NCAA provides for special circumstances like this. Player is moved to a non-athletic scholarship and the football team has access to use his scholarship. Has to be a legit situation which this obviously meets.

UConn had a center a while back that had a similar situation with a medical condition.
 
HartfordHank said:
Which six freshman recruits are you going to pass on? You are still limited by the number of players you can bring in each year. Going the JUCO route can be dangerous. For every JUCO you take you sacrifice a freshman. If you cannot balance the Juco Freshman ratio you all of a sudden become very dependent on JUCOs. If your AD is giving you four to five years to turn the boat you need the freshman.
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The staff is at 81 scholarships deployed based on our best information with 4 unused. Three of those four were taken away (for this season only) by the NCAA for paper work errors last winter. Yep, the school shot itself in the foot with technical mistakes. This was disclosed by Edsall last winter. So, we could have 4 JUCO/grad transfer kids here this fall if things were done right w/o losing a single recruit.

As for who should have been passed on from the 2018 class? Well obviously I'm not naming names. I think it would be pretty easy to pick two or so that we could have afforded to have passed on. If we passed on just two and had the four, that would be six and perhaps we'd have a better product which would boost recruiting for 2019. However, I dont disagree that passing on as many as six from the 2018 would have been easy.
 
HartfordHank said:
NCAA provides for special circumstances like this. Player is moved to a non-athletic scholarship and the football team has access to use his scholarship. Has to be a legit situation which this obviously meets.

UConn had a center a while back that had a similar situation with a medical condition.
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... Joe Akers under Edsall.
 
Everyone keeps forgetting about the admissions requirements- a kid has to have the grades to get in. It might be harder for Edsall to get JUCO's in than you think. Grad transfers- different story- but that is not how you build a program. A few yes- a lot and you have to replenish every year.
 
ktuck911 said:
I wouldn't be surprised if a few RS Sophs are gone as well.. There's a couple that I can clearly see that they see the writing is on the wall for them, but I'm surprised about one of them.. Thought he'd be great playing for us, but his PT got diminished drastically....
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Don’t be surprised if you see more than just one.
 
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