LUOrange wrote: ↑June 26th, 2021, 4:15 pm
This was probably asked and answered before. But what happened with Gardner? Why'd he leave us? i only remember the hype around his recruitment.
His public statement was that he wanted to be closer to home. While technically he achieved that, The Master's U was still over 1000 miles from his family in AZ. He was not likely to be driving that often, so we're talking maybe an hour or 2 shorter flight than Lynchburg (plus he did not have $6,000/year FCOA stipends at Master's to cover travel bills.)
I strongly suspect it was mostly a basketball issue, where he didn't like the role he had in Ritchie's system, with the roster we had. He played mostly in the post his FR year, and the rest of the time at PF. I think Brock saw himself as more of a swing guy who could handle the ball and make plays both outside and inside. I suspect he was not a big fan of the pack line either, and he certainly got to play in a way more up-tempo system at the NAIA level.