A Sea Of Red

The MBB roster has been updated to include the new players who have been added for 2015-16.

http://www.liberty.edu/flames/index.cfm ... 1&TeamID=6

The only minor surprise is that Myo Baxter-Bell, who is listed at 185 lb on his recruiting profiles but certainly looks much bigger than that, is apparently now a ¨robust¨ 255. I guess that´s why they are calling him ¨Big Baby¨. I doubt he is that talented, but I can see where a smaller version of Glenn Davis might cause some matchup problems in the BSC.

Looks like 11 scholarship players, although I´ve heard rumors Hoffman may have been granted a schollie for this year, which would make it 12.

There is not one single word in the roster profiles on anything anyone has done in a Liberty uniform. The data from last year hasn´t been added, and the only player on the roster who was at Liberty 2 years ago is Ryan Kemrite, who was redshirted that year.

I hope Myo Baxter-Bell has some meat on his bones because he's going to have all the post minutes he could want next season. There just anybody else but Maxwell.

Sounds like he's built like Charles Barkley during his Auburn years.

I don't even see Myo Baxter-Bell listed anymore

Good catch. And someone running the site should fix the spelling on Hansel's home country.

ATrain wrote:I don't even see Myo Baxter-Bell listed anymore

Yep. He was on there when it was first updated and now he´s not. I know there were questions about whether he would qualify. It´s possible he didn´t, or maybe it´s still up in the air and they decided it would be better to wait.

It was mentioned the kid is academically ineligible.

that may preclude them from showing him on the roster?

idk

PAmedic wrote:It was mentioned the kid is academically ineligible.

that may preclude them from showing him on the roster?

idk

I´m fairly sure a player who is not academically eligible would not be listed on the roster, which leads me to ask why he was even on there for a couple of days. AC screwup? He was on campus taking summer school courses and I believe he was working out with the team. If anyone knows his actual status, inquiring minds want to know. I don´t know that he would be a huge game changer, but with a roster as devoid of size as ours is, a big body couldn´t hurt.

With it looking more and more like we will not have Baxter-Bell this year, we now have only 10 confirmed scholarship players on the roster. If the rumors that Hoffman will have a schollie this year are correct, that will still put us 2 under the limit at 11. The question then is, are we going into this season shorthanded and saving those schollies for the next signing class, or will we have a last-minute addition ? The odds of the latter grow longer with each passing day. If this is it, with Johnson and Fields graduating, we will have at least 4 available. If one of those goes to Baxter-Bell, that would be 3, and we have a committment from Josiah Talbert, which would leave us with 2, or 3 if Hoffman is still a walkon or his scholarship is a one year deal as I suspect it would be.

I believe that is how Coach McKay played things here the last time around. I seem to remember us having just 8 healthy scholarship players for a good portion of that first season.

Sly Fox wrote:I believe that is how Coach McKay played things here the last time around. I seem to remember us having just 8 healthy scholarship players for a good portion of that first season.

That is correct. We had 10 in all, but that included Tyler Baker, who was in his customary place on the sidelines with a boot on his foot and Jeremy Anderson, who sat out the first semester with a similar injury. Of the 8 who were healthy that first semester, Ritchie clearly had zero confidence in Russell Monroe, Nate Campbell or Armon Jones, which left 5 scholarship players (Ace, Smitty, TeeJay, BJ and Rell.) Kyle Ohman, who was still a walkon at the time, was the 6th man. Anderson became the 7th man when he was able to play about midway through the season.

EuropeanProspects has retweeted that Jakub Karwowski will not be playing at Liberty.

https://twitter.com/ChristopheEPcom

In addition, Robin Jorch´s name has been removed from our verbalcommits scholarship grid, although Karwowski is still on there.

http://verbalcommits.com/schools/liberty

Looks like we can finally put the Layer/Joyce Euro pipeline to rest. I guess Poland is not the new Nigeria.

10 of the 12 players on the roster are listed as G or G/F. Maxwell is a C and Talbert is a F. The 3 swing players are Johnson, Reid and Kemrite. Of those 3 the only one I expect to play in the backcourt at all is Kemrite. I can see us using lineups that don´t include Maxwell or Talbert at times, so technically that would be a McKay 5 guard lineup again, although in 08/09 all 5 starters were listed as G, not G/F.

Our Fr PG Hansel Atencia recently led his team to a national U20 championship in an interleague tourney in his home country of Colombia.

Looks like former commit Robin Jorch is headed to Boise State. Apparently his not coming to Liberty was not about NCAA clearinghouse issues.

https://twitter.com/ChristopheEPcom

olldflame wrote:Looks like former commit Robin Jorch is headed to Boise State. Apparently his not coming to Liberty was not about NCAA clearinghouse issues.

https://twitter.com/ChristopheEPcom

Word on the street is the previous staff was playing hard ball with the European signees.

Neo wrote:

olldflame wrote:Looks like former commit Robin Jorch is headed to Boise State. Apparently his not coming to Liberty was not about NCAA clearinghouse issues.

https://twitter.com/ChristopheEPcom

Word on the street is the previous staff was playing hard ball with the European signees.

That´s ¨interesting¨. In this case we would be talking about Layer and Joyce (who was the primary recruiter and as far as I know the only one who actually met with them in person.) Was this before the coaching change? I really don´t know what kind of leverage they would have once they were let go. Jurch and Karwowski not signees btw. There were no LOI´s, only verbal agreements to play for LU, not for a particular coach. Layer is still unemployed (but doing well enough to take a vacation in Italy with his wife thanks to JB´s generous contract extension.) I don´t know what Joyce is doing. Can you elaborate at all?

olldflame wrote:That´s ¨interesting¨. In this case we would be talking about Layer and Joyce (who was the primary recruiter and as far as I know the only one who actually met with them in person.) Was this before the coaching change? I really don´t know what kind of leverage they would have once they were let go. They were not signees btw. There were no LOI´s only verbal agreements to play for LU, not for a particular coach. Layer is still unemployed (but doing well enough to take a vacation in Italy with his wife thanks to JB´s generous contract extension.) I don´t know what Joyce is doing. Can you elaborate at all?

Just connect the dots. Who had the contact information for them?

Neo wrote:

olldflame wrote:That´s ¨interesting¨. In this case we would be talking about Layer and Joyce (who was the primary recruiter and as far as I know the only one who actually met with them in person.) Was this before the coaching change? I really don´t know what kind of leverage they would have once they were let go. They were not signees btw. There were no LOI´s only verbal agreements to play for LU, not for a particular coach. Layer is still unemployed (but doing well enough to take a vacation in Italy with his wife thanks to JB´s generous contract extension.) I don´t know what Joyce is doing. Can you elaborate at all?

Just connect the dots. Who had the contact information for them?

Wow. If that is the case, I will have lost a lot of respect for them. Since they were employed by Liberty when they were recruiting them, that info belongs to the school, and quite frankly I can´t imagine why the administrative staff, as well as Omar Mance, would not have it. The other side of the coin is that I´m sure if Ritchie REALLY wanted them, he is resourceful enough that he could have found them. My guess is he decided he would rather start fresh and recruit players he knows will fit what he wants to do.

Walkon tryouts are being held Sept. 30. It´s a long shot, but maybe there is a big guy on campus who can give us a few minutes a game off the bench. I remember when we talked about the brother of the Frazee triplets, Zeb, who is 6´11¨ and was dominating intermurals possibly joining the team when we had no depth in Ritchie´s initial season the first go-round. Zeb wasn´t interested because he had a full ride as an RA and felt that was what God wanted him to do.

http://www.liberty.edu/flames/index.cfm ... 78&TeamID=

May or may not mean anything but none of the players on the current roster have tweeted for at least a week, including a couple who had been pretty prolific. I have to think they didn´t all decide to stop independently though.

A.C. Reid has tweeted at least a dozen times today.

Maybe not the best thread for this post, but I´m feeling lazy and didn´t want to dig for a more appropriate one. Anyway, Joe Retic has enrolled at Indianapolis, where he will be playing his senior season for the D2 Greyhounds.

http://verbalcommits.com/players/joe-retic-ii

olldflame wrote:Walkon tryouts are being held Sept. 30. It´s a long shot, but maybe there is a big guy on campus who can give us a few minutes a game off the bench. I remember when we talked about the brother of the Frazee triplets, Zeb, who is 6´11¨ and was dominating intermurals possibly joining the team when we had no depth in Ritchie´s initial season the first go-round. Zeb wasn´t interested because he had a full ride as an RA and felt that was what God wanted him to do.

http://www.liberty.edu/flames/index.cfm ... 78&TeamID=

If Zeb was 6'11, I'm 6'9.

TDDance234 wrote:

olldflame wrote:Walkon tryouts are being held Sept. 30. It´s a long shot, but maybe there is a big guy on campus who can give us a few minutes a game off the bench. I remember when we talked about the brother of the Frazee triplets, Zeb, who is 6´11¨ and was dominating intermurals possibly joining the team when we had no depth in Ritchie´s initial season the first go-round. Zeb wasn´t interested because he had a full ride as an RA and felt that was what God wanted him to do.

http://www.liberty.edu/flames/index.cfm ... 78&TeamID=

If Zeb was 6'11, I'm 6'9.

Never met Zeb in person, but that was what was posted here if I recall correctly.