MBB: Last game before A10 tourney, held on for last-second win 66-64 @ home vs. Fordham. Finish regular season 20-10 (11-7), possibly #4 in tourney, maybe better.

WBB: Sub-.500 season but in A10 first round beat LaSalle 54-49. Round Two vs. Duquesne on Thursday.

WBB note: 5-26 overall, but they lost their stellar coach Tori Verdi to Pitt after he led the Minutewomen the last two years (was a 7-year HC) to a two-year record of 52-13, an A10 title, and trips to the NCAAT and WNIT. Welcome to the MAC, where good coaches sometimes head for greener pastures.

Thanks! It's been a super tough recovery for the Women's team after losing Verdi. That dude was great for the program.

We're guaranteed at least the 5 seed in the A10 tournament, and could be the 4 seed and get a double bye if Dayton does what they're expected to do and beats VCU on Friday.


We're allowed to play in the tournaments this year and next despite already announcing we're leaving because it's a very amicable split, so we're hoping to make some noise. If we get the double bye this year and win the first game we feel pretty decent about a potential NIT at large. To make the NCAA we'll obviously need to win the whole tournament...which is a long shot. We did only lose to Dayton by 3 earlier in the year though, so crazier things have happened.

Just happy to see us outperform expectations and finish with 20+ wins for the first time in a decade. Frank Martin has us in a better place. Lets hope we keep him when we join you all.

Thanks pvk75!

Watched parts of both on ESPN+. Apparently the A10 allows all 14 into its tourney (MAC has top 8 of 12, at least for now ... might change if MAC gets a #14).

BTW, Verdi is apparently suffering first-year blues. Latest record I saw was 8-24 (2-16 ACC).

New UMass WBB coach Mike Leflar at least appears to have them on the upswing. Tough schedule, with losses to Washington State, Maryland, Boston College, and Yale and Harvard (Ivy has some good wbb teams). Also, lost to LaSalle twice during regular season, but beat them here in tourney.

Your teams have really good o-o-c schedules.

As for MBB o-o-c, beat USF (now ranked #25), West Virginia and Old Dominion.

If your football builds as intended toward 2025-26 and your BBall holds up, a huge asset to the MAC.

Did you see senior @EliSlovin smile when he read the paper our AD Ryan Bamford gave him. Then our Chancellor tapped him on the shoulder. UMass gave him a scholarship for the spring semester. He is a student, director of Vibes

(03-06-2024 10:57 PM)Steve1981 Wrote:  

Did you see senior @EliSlovin smile when he read the paper our AD Ryan Bamford gave him. Then our Chancellor tapped him on the shoulder. UMass gave him a scholarship for the spring semester. He is a student, director of Vibes

For basically everyone who isn't a UMass fan:

Eli Slovin is an Amherst native who was getting big in the UMass Twitter space prior to going to UMass. Turned his announcement into "picking UMass" into a kind of thing you'd see from a top recruit.

He then went on to be a pretty good student spokesman for the athletic department.

Awesome to see this happening.

(03-06-2024 09:55 PM)e-parade Wrote:  Thanks! It's been a super tough recovery for the Women's team after losing Verdi. That dude was great for the program.

We're guaranteed at least the 5 seed in the A10 tournament, and could be the 4 seed and get a double bye if Dayton does what they're expected to do and beats VCU on Friday.


We're allowed to play in the tournaments this year and next despite already announcing we're leaving because it's a very amicable split, so we're hoping to make some noise. If we get the double bye this year and win the first game we feel pretty decent about a potential NIT at large. To make the NCAA we'll obviously need to win the whole tournament...which is a long shot. We did only lose to Dayton by 3 earlier in the year though, so crazier things have happened.

Just happy to see us outperform expectations and finish with 20+ wins for the first time in a decade. Frank Martin has us in a better place. Lets hope we keep him when we join you all.

For those who don't know, Verdi is a fmr. EMU WBB HC.

The current Pitt AD is a fmr. EMU AD.

Someone, who isn't a UMass fan, is expecting us to make a bit of a run in the tournament:

https://cbbreview.com/2024/03/11/2024-at...t-preview/


Note: it would not be as devastating a finish as he predicts if we do not win the tournament.