CAA & Realignment

The CAA Basketball
Landscape... for now.

The CAA is entrenched as a mid-major conference when it comes to basketball, and as Division 1.5 football in the FCS.  No one is jumping from a larger or better conference to join the CAA.  However, if/when a CAA team decides to jump ship, to a FBS conference, for whichever sport, Tom Yeager appears to have a plan in place.  In a conference call earlier today, the CAA Commissioner wanted to clarify how the constant realignment rumors are affecting the CAA and that the conference does have plans in place should it be affected.  CAAHoops.com has provided a full in-depth analysis on the conference call.  The link is after the jump.

Oh Captains, My Captains!

Saddler, McNeil, and Hagins will captain the Hens in '11-'12

Coach Monte Ross has named his captains for the 2011-2012 season.  Sophomore Devon Saddler, and juniors Kelvin McNeil & Jamelle Hagins have been chosen to lead the team into the upcoming season of Delaware basketball.

Blue Hen Ballz & the MBB Schedule Release

I figure this is a good a time as any to introduce you to the new Blue Hens Basketball Mascot: Blue Hen Ballz.  The Mid-Majority is a great source for mid-major basketball and is a must read during the season.  He travels around with his appropriately colored basketball mascot, Bally, who can be seen sitting on press row throughout the basketball season.  As Bally's popularity grew, so did the demand of the readers for mascots of their own.  Long story short, with my membership for the upcoming season, I got the chance to have Delaware represented in the bunch.  All of the site's school-specific mascots are called Ballz, so therefore, mine is dubbed "Delaware Ballz," but I feel like Blue Hen Ballz has a much better ring to it so that's what I'm going with.  You can look for him to be featured in a decent amount of the updates throughout the season.

As for the actual teams, the Men's schedule was released back on Wednesday and what better way to celebrate than to give a full game-by-game prediction of the season so far ahead of the opener at Radford.  Here we go! (All predictions based solely on gut instinct and what I know without overly researching anything)

Blue Hens Beat (Episode 2)

The second episode of Blue Hens Beat was released today by BlueHens.com.  Instead of giving a full blown analysis, I'll keep it concise with just a rundown of the episode and some quick thought, with the video linked up below.

• The Prettyman Twins of UD Field Hockey & Track talk about growing up with their triplet younger siblings and the efforts of their parents.  Nice to see that Blue Hen runs in the family.
• Blue Hen Barbara... She's a sassy one... random questions from who knows that she answers.  If she gets asked questions that are way further off topic, she could become epic!
• Former UD Football player Siddiq Haynes takes on Kelvin McNeil of UD Basketball in P.I.G. inside the BOB.  Someone can't dunk (guess who...).
• At the 9:12 mark, Scott Klatzkin gives a Sports Update for around the Campus... WORTH WATCHING THIS PART!  This includes a quick "Upcoming Schedule" for Blue Hen Sports
• Quick montage of all the Service Appreciation Night features at the West Chester game.
• Jimmy Smith sits down with Coach Keeler to go over West Chester game film (telestrator and all).  Nice little analysis of some of the highlights of the game.
• The next episode will come on the 26th.

Not as in-depth as the last one was, but good to see some of the off-field moments.  If Siddiq had be interviewing McNeil while getting his behind handed to him, it would have been a better segment.  Also, I would have liked to see one negative play mixed in to the Keeler segment, but this is produced by the UD Athletic Department, so the odds of that were slim.  Anyway, here's the video:

Alma Mater

"...We lift our voices now to sing

All hail to Delaware!"

I never liked the idea of a blog.  To me, it was always just someone who wanted a place to share their opinion and hope that someone out there cares enough to read what they type up from the comfort of their homes.  Then I met a friend who writes a sports blog (and get's paid for it).  The blog he writes and the other blogs on the main site turned out to be 100% legit.  Maybe their opinions aren't in line with my views, but the news features on these pages were impressive, creating a "best of the web" for their team with a little fan-dom mixed in.  However, there's one major flaw in this blog-o-sphere: no one is representing the Hens. I will.