MisterD
The Baptist Himself
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Post by MisterD on Sept 20, 2023 14:00:26 GMT -5
Just like MLB, but in reverse, I'd want to see the numbers before simply believing the narrative.
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Post by JoeFedorowicz on Sept 20, 2023 14:10:56 GMT -5
bingo. And its not just this its jerseys and equipment and rides to all the games. But yes, this is why. Its cheaper to have women's water polo playing in the MAAC which doesn't have men's water polo. OK. - Let's take a 50 game baseball schedule where La Salle pays half the umpire cost. I'll go max rate of $400 with a full 4-umpire crew (doesn't always happen). That costs La Salle $40K for umpires. - Uniforms and equipment- Let's go high end and say $2000 per player with a 30-man roster - adds another $60K. So we are up to $100K on equipment and umpires. - Add another $100K for coaching staff (high figure for La Salle), but we are ballparking this. - If travel is below $400K...which I'm sure it is.... it's a money maker for the school, not to mention donations and fundraising on behalf of baseball and the affinity it brings for players to have "worn the jersey". Would be curious to see your math that refutes baseball as a money maker. Just out of curiosity, did baseball fly to New Mexico in 2019? Or Kansas in 2018? Maybe they didn't, but not everything is a bus trip. And even without those flights, that would push the number over what you're indicating, I bet that the travel is a lot more than you are making it out to be. You are "sure that it is?" 35-40 people spending three nights in Olean runs you how much? Or three nights in Amerst? Or three nights in the Bronx? Cause those are the overnights for their final year unless they drove to and from NY three days in a row. How much do you think that bus costs? Quick glance between 1k-2k a day. More if an overnight is included. Finally, baseball had the opportunity to be saved just like swimming was saved. They even had the help of this clown: But they came up short. Like embarrassingly short. It is sad that the school can't support a few dozen men trying to play the sport they love. But it isn't some injustice.
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MisterD
The Baptist Himself
Voted Most Popular Poster 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023
Posts: 8,558
Likes: 6,426
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Post by MisterD on Sept 20, 2023 14:15:12 GMT -5
I'd rather be without baseball than have Portnoy baseball. If it comes back soon, even better.
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Post by coqui900 on Sept 20, 2023 16:53:19 GMT -5
If we are bringing back a sport, it should be women’s volleyball. It is a fantastic sport. It is growing in leaps and bounds. They just set a record in Nebraska where 92K saw a volleyball match live — all-time record for any women’s sporting event. It is on ESPN and affiliated channels plus Fox Sports regularly. I can’t imagine the costs for it are anything wild.
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Post by coqui900 on Sept 20, 2023 17:21:22 GMT -5
Also, I am a huge college baseball fan. It is my favorite NCAA sport. The NCAA baseball tournament is March Madness but on drugs. Crazed college baseball games have the best atmosphere in US sports, even beyond college basketball or football. The biggest college stadium is either LSU or Miss State and they off the top of my head seat at most 11,000. Most of the stadiums are bandboxes with a few thousand seats. When a stadium is packed, think about what a minor league baseball game filled with deranged southern college sports fans and students would be like. Absolutely epic.
But there is no way college baseball is profitable for any school except for SEC schools (and probably not even all of them) and the Big 12 schools where they have insane followings (Texas Tech) or the random schools with crazy followings like East Carolina (my bucket list is to go to a regional there) or Southern Miss. And even that is pushing it..
II would love for us to have a team but if you have to cut a men’s sport then that is the one to axe. Northern schools are at such a disadvantage. Only a handful of any northern schools have ever made it to the College World Series over the past few decades. I think the last one may have been Stony Brook a few years ago — they somehow had a few MLB prospects on the team, but completely random they got there and like one of those years where George Mason makes the Final Four. Northern schools rarely even get at large bids, except for Big 10 schools and that is even pushing it. The only cold weather schools last year that either got an at large pick or would have were Boston College and UConn. The A-10 is at best a weak 3 seed in the baseball tournament, which is like a 14 seed in basketball. The only schools with anything are VCU and Davidson and they aren’t anything special nationally.
Recruiting for baseball is insane. You only get 11 or 12 scholarships, if memory is correct. Any good baseball player from up here is goi g to go to a warm weather school if they can. That leaves every school in the northeast (roughly 49393937 schools) competing against each other for the same level of kids who can’t play all year long. Also, city schools like ours are handicapped because kids who live in cities don’t play baseball anymore. It’s a suburb sport.
We actually are on par with the other northeast schools with our facility. Villanova plays at a bigger Little League field in Plymouth Meeting. I think Fordham does not even have bleachers or an outfield fence. Rutgers (who are actually pretty good) doesn’t have anything more than s few hundred seats.
Here is another thing that handicaps northeast baseball teams. You need lights that meet NCAA standards for night games. Down south, the Friday Night game is always the biggest matchup in a series. But you can’t host those without lighting that meets requirements. The only Big East team that has that kind of lighting is UConn, and they just got them this season because they are putting money into the program. I think BC does because the ACC made them. Rutgers does not have lights. There may be an outlier I am forgetting but schools up here do not have anything more than Rec league fields. That we even have a field on campus is something a lot of schools don’t have,
That means you have to play a doubleheader on Saturday, And it also limits your weekday games before the conference season starts.
True story: Two seasons ago, UPenn was fighting for one of the bids to the Ivy Tournament. It was only the top 2 teams that season, but they just expanded to four. Their final regular season series was against Princeton. It rained on the Saturday and they only got 3 or 4 innings in. The Quake Show then had to win three games on Sunday to make the tournament — the final part of Game 1, and then Game 2 and then the regularly scheduled Sunday game. They somehow pulled it off but lost to Columbia in the Ivy tournament.
Penn made the dance this year and actually won a few games in their regional and nearly made it to the Super Regionals (Sweet 16.) I also recommend a game at Penn’s Miekeljon Stadium. It has actual seats — maybe 75. Off first base is some kind of cooling tower that constantly buzzed. The outfield has a view of the crumbling infrastructure of I-76. Third base side has an active freight rail that runs maybe 15 feet from the field.
But, yeah. We can’t swing baseball.
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Post by belfieldhappyhour on Sept 20, 2023 18:05:15 GMT -5
joe, remember my old posts about Brennan. I'm guessing things are different now, but when he was two or three years in as AD, he told the coaches their budget was $0. Whatever they fundraised, that was their budget. I.E. that's how they paid for the yearly FLA trip, and likely that New Mexico/Kansas trips you speak of. I think the (formerly) traditional FLA spring break trip is a thing of the past. It's been replaced NM/Kansas trips, and trips to like Furman and Citadel. Point being, Glitter's ball-parking of the numbers is pretty accurate, but didn't account for fundraising paying for trips/recruiting. Regardless, it's not a money-making sport, because the tuition dollars go to the University budget, not the athletic department budget. As for your final point on them being 'embarrassingly short' on the fundraising to keep the team, remember my original post in this thread. I was told they were over half way to the target number, but the school told them not to bother because the Title IX stuff was so out of whack, they had virtually no chance at saving baseball even if they got the money they needed to get.
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Post by explorerman on Sept 20, 2023 19:14:54 GMT -5
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Post by JoeFedorowicz on Sept 20, 2023 19:18:56 GMT -5
If we are bringing back a sport, it should be women’s volleyball. agreed
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Post by JoeFedorowicz on Sept 20, 2023 19:25:14 GMT -5
As for your final point on them being 'embarrassingly short' on the fundraising to keep the team, remember my original post in this thread. I was told they were over half way to the target number, their gofundme raised like 10k of the $9M the school said they needed for long term funding.
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Post by GlitterBro #2 on Sept 20, 2023 19:49:02 GMT -5
As for your final point on them being 'embarrassingly short' on the fundraising to keep the team, remember my original post in this thread. I was told they were over half way to the target number, their gofundme raised like 10k of the $9M the school said they needed for long term funding. The $9M was unattainable and the prior administration knew it. The reason they gave that number was because they wanted it to be an endowment to cover year-on-year operating expenses. Drawing 4-5% a year from an endowment of $9M (current university finance rules) would yield $360K - $450K. That's pretty much inline with the expense I laid out earlier. Thank you for actually validating my point with the $9M. The flaw in this is that it neglects to take into account year-on-year donations and the overall operating revenue of almost $1M back to the university in the form of tuition, room, and board for the players not in the scholarships. It was a non-holistic decision where the financial rules were made up by people no longer here and who had a history of poorly executed financial decisions for the university. This is why the current administration is re-evaluating this. A made-up financial story was given to the BoT to justify the cutting without looking at the complete aspects of the cut in other parts of the university revenue stream. And a BoT filled with yes-people bought it.
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Post by JoeFedorowicz on Sept 20, 2023 20:32:43 GMT -5
Your numbers are made up.
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Post by GlitterBro #2 on Sept 20, 2023 21:00:55 GMT -5
Your numbers are made up. How so? Belfield said these numbers were fairly accurate. Do you have different numbers you can share that back up your statement? It's fascinating to me that your assertion that the accounting professor working on this is wrong, I'm wrong, others are wrong, yet you come with absolutely no numbers of your own to refute any of this. It's like facts are your kryptonite for some reason.
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Post by JoeFedorowicz on Sept 21, 2023 4:54:26 GMT -5
I’ve been pretty clear that my numbers are guesses, except for the $9M number that the school said was needed to run the team over a number of years. And the 10k number that was reported for their gofundme. Your assertions are basically that this percentage pay their own way, it costs that much for equipment, this much for travel, umpires are not that much, a certain ratio will definitely live on campus and coaches are a nice round number like $100k. They’re all not real. We don’t know anything, especially how the finances of a baseball team work. So don’t act like the school left millions on the table. This, from an article when Temple cut baseball in 2013: www.inquirer.com/philly/sports/colleges/temple/20131207_Temple_to_drop_7_sports__including_baseball__rowing.html?outputType=amp
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Post by hoopsguest on Sept 21, 2023 7:17:49 GMT -5
Isn’t the field turf? That cuts maintenance costs for it. Still a little but nowhere near as much
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Post by GlitterBro #2 on Sept 21, 2023 13:49:09 GMT -5
Your assertions are basically that this percentage pay their own way, This is true as the NCAA has a set limit for baseball scholarships and you can look at the historical rosters. I went with least revenue with a roster of 30, but it was above 30 many years. it costs that much for equipment, this much for travel, umpires are not that much, a certain ratio will definitely live on campus and coaches are a nice round number like $100k. I said all these were estimates (except umpires...you can look that up. I did max the expenses there with the highest end umpires). I went on the high side knowing what other sports pay coaches there (I have some knowledge of soccer) and on uniforms and equipment per player. So don’t act like the school left millions on the table. Where did I say that exactly? I said it was profitable from an overall university budget, but never said millions were left on the table. We don’t know anything, especially how the finances of a baseball team work. Yet you stated above when told about the accounting professor actually diving into these numbers and who has access to all the data, "I’m pretty sure he’s wrong." Kind of funny how you can be "pretty sure" someone is wrong and yet also state "we don't know anything." "You're wrong, but I have no data to prove it. I just know you're wrong." Well...at least your position is well thought out.
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Post by coqui900 on Sept 21, 2023 16:21:57 GMT -5
I am on my phone so having trouble linking. But look up an article on Talkbusiness.net entitled “UA baseball program turns rare profit in 2019.” It is about the University of Arkansas — which is quite possibly the most insane college baseball school - turning a profit of $855K in 2018-2019. The article says that less than 10 percent of D1 baseball teams turn a profit annually. Florida won the CWS in 2017 lost over $3.5 million. Texas Tech is a powerhouse and they lost $5.6 million in the 17 and 18 fiscal years.
I know those are not the most recent numbers but come on. These are schools that sell tickets, have average attendances in the thousands and etc.
You have to be out of your mind to think baseball is affordable if it is a huge expense at schools where they care about it.
Also, baseball scholarships are weird. Schools can give out to players the equivalent of 11.7 full scholarships across however many players it wants on the roster. So there is a chance that all 30 players on a team got some kind of scholarship money, just not close to a full ride. Or a lot of schools don’t give out all of that scholarship money so they get more tuition players. And, also, tuition players can also have student aide and grants and academic scholarships like anyone else.
There is absolutely no way baseball came close to breaking even. Teams from the north spend the first month (at least) on the road. That means transportation costs, lodging costs, food costs for players AND staff and that might include more than coaches but trainers, tutors, etc. Just one road trip to play Wofford for three games has to be a giant expense.
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Post by FlyingArrow on Sept 21, 2023 17:19:54 GMT -5
Max scholarships for a fully funded D1 baseball team is 11.7. Let's call it 12 (although I doubt the team was fully funded for scholarships) . If the team had 30 players, you're talking 18 paying tuition. That's about $600K in tuition revenue per year, not counting room and board and other revenue. That's also 30 kids who likely wouldn't be at La Salle otherwise. Did umpires (they make 200 to 400 a game depending on conference affiliation) and a spring trip via bus cost more than that a year? Very few students pay full price. I don't know our discount rate, but I'd expect more like $400K from 18 students than $600K. More if they're paying room & board.
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Post by FlyingArrow on Sept 21, 2023 17:27:05 GMT -5
I am on my phone so having trouble linking. But look up an article on Talkbusiness.net entitled “UA baseball program turns rare profit in 2019.” It is about the University of Arkansas — which is quite possibly the most insane college baseball school - turning a profit of $855K in 2018-2019. The article says that less than 10 percent of D1 baseball teams turn a profit annually. Florida won the CWS in 2017 lost over $3.5 million. Texas Tech is a powerhouse and they lost $5.6 million in the 17 and 18 fiscal years. I know those are not the most recent numbers but come on. These are schools that sell tickets, have average attendances in the thousands and etc. You have to be out of your mind to think baseball is affordable if it is a huge expense at schools where they care about it. Also, baseball scholarships are weird. Schools can give out to players the equivalent of 11.7 full scholarships across however many players it wants on the roster. So there is a chance that all 30 players on a team got some kind of scholarship money, just not close to a full ride. Or a lot of schools don’t give out all of that scholarship money so they get more tuition players. And, also, tuition players can also have student aide and grants and academic scholarships like anyone else. There is absolutely no way baseball came close to breaking even. Teams from the north spend the first month (at least) on the road. That means transportation costs, lodging costs, food costs for players AND staff and that might include more than coaches but trainers, tutors, etc. Just one road trip to play Wofford for three games has to be a giant expense. I assume the lost money at the big schools is just based on tickets (revenue) vs all the costs of the program. For those larger schools, tuition paid by players probably doesn't matter. If those players went elsewhere because there was no baseball, they'd just take in additional students to the general student body. So you can't really count baseball players' tuition as revenue in that case. Very different for La Salle right now - those players would be extra students and extra revenue. In that sense, baseball might turn a profit. I don't know if they would - it would depend mainly on how much travel actually costs. But certainly, there's no way that La Salle's $0 in ticket sales will ever cover the cost of the program.
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Post by lscapcrus11 on Sept 21, 2023 18:27:02 GMT -5
In 2020 when the decision was made to cut the seven sports at La Salle, I was excited that they were "reallocating resources rather than making direct cuts" to the athletic budget. However, I had major concerns because I was worried the university did not have an aggressive marketing plan to make up for the lost tuition revenue from not only the departing student-athletes but also the areas of the country that they represented.
Many people do not realize the extensive marketing opportunities that a robust athletic department can have on a current institution. It not only is the ability to compete at the highest level and receive national exposure, but it also affects your strong on-the-ground grassroots marketing.
La Salle drastically overlooked the marketing and grassroots ability that the baseball and softball programs had in particular to the recruiting process. Many of the baseball and softball student-athletes came from several "country club" markets including New York, Northern New Jersey, Washington, California, and the DMV area. These student-athletes then can open the door for more students (not just student-athletes) to become interested in La Salle who can afford to pay full tuition. I have not seen a strong presence of DMV students since La Salle has cut sports.
FlyingArrow is accurate to say that many of these reports do not factor tuition into the overall net revenue of a sport. There is no way for these outlets to know who is paying tuition and taking the NCAA maximum scholarship and dividing it is inaccurate because it does not factor in the grant-in-aid that each student receives.
I can't accurately speak to the travel issue since it has drastically changed over the years, however, I can say that NCAA Baseball and Softball are on the rise and schools are starting to see a profit. This can have a trickle-down effect on those smaller institutions in the way of guarantees, etc.
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Post by JoeFedorowicz on Sept 21, 2023 20:45:09 GMT -5
"You're wrong, but I have no data to prove it. I just know you're wrong." Well...at least your position is well thought out. Not gonna do more with this besides say random accounting professor's account carries no weight with me. Tell me who and what and we can have that conversation. All data that I can see RE: baseball and reason points to loss leader. Sorry.
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Post by GlitterBro #2 on Sept 22, 2023 8:31:18 GMT -5
"You're wrong, but I have no data to prove it. I just know you're wrong." Well...at least your position is well thought out. Not gonna do more with this besides say random accounting professor's account carries no weight with me. Tell me who and what and we can have that conversation. All data that I can see RE: baseball and reason points to loss leader. Sorry. LOL..."random accounting professor". He was asked by Allen to do it and given access to all the information needed to make the assessment. I had a couple of conversations with him about this over the summer and about the economics of the band and brainstorming ideas to get that more front-and-center to increase student engagement ...but yeah... this "random accounting professor" with access to information clearly knows less than a random message board administrator.
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Post by JoeFedorowicz on Sept 22, 2023 8:35:02 GMT -5
100%. But you relaying your conversations with him doesn’t carry any weight for me. We don’t need to keep doing this. If it made financial sense for us to have a baseball team, we’d probably have a baseball team. All evidence you can actually find indicates that not being the case. If you want to present some data, I’m happy to look at it.
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Post by giveansk1 on Sept 22, 2023 8:55:09 GMT -5
Another question for Dunphy: What analytical site/data does the staff review the most? For instance how much does the staff value KenPom/Bartorvik/EvanMiya/etc? Of the four factors for winning (efg%, turnover%, Rebounding%, free throw rate), is their one the staff emphasizes more than other coaching staffs?
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Post by GlitterBro #2 on Sept 22, 2023 8:57:17 GMT -5
If it made financial sense for us to have a baseball team, we’d probably have a baseball team. Because every decision made by the past administration was financially prudent... You can see in the credit rating posted previously that some of those financial decisions were specifically called out as having negative impact on our rating. This started with me asking HappyFortune to ask the question to the AD about the feasibility of baseball and/or men's lacrosse, taking the Title IX implications into account. You chimed in that the guy doing the analysis was wrong but provided no data or evidence to back it up, even when someone with knowledge of the numbers (Belfield) said the estimates I had were fairly accurate. Your one argument about cost of travel was refuted by someone who said donations paid for part of the travel. To be clear, I never said having baseball, existing on its own, was profitable. No sport at La Salle will be, except MAYBE men's basketball, so should all those "non-profitable" sports be eliminated? Of course not. I said it needed to be looked at in context of the whole of the university revenue and expenses, and tuition and room and board for the majority of the players, revenue for donations, other factors that get kids to La Salle as mentioned above, would make up for the expenses. The school is struggling to get butts in seats in the classroom. This decision didn't help that.
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MisterD
The Baptist Himself
Voted Most Popular Poster 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023
Posts: 8,558
Likes: 6,426
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Post by MisterD on Sept 22, 2023 9:00:14 GMT -5
LOL..."random accounting professor". He was asked by Allen to do it and given access to all the information needed to make the assessment. I had a couple of conversations with him about this over the summer and about the economics of the band and brainstorming ideas to get that more front-and-center to increase student engagement ...but yeah... this "random accounting professor" with access to information clearly knows less than a random message board administrator. I'm going to have my intern search back and find all the times you've complained about La Salle lacking transparency and going the stated or implied "just trust us" route.
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Post by JoeFedorowicz on Sept 22, 2023 10:04:29 GMT -5
You chimed in that the guy doing the analysis was wrong but provided no data or evidence to back it up, even when someone with knowledge of the numbers (Belfield) said the estimates I had were fairly accurate. Your one argument about cost of travel was refuted by someone who said donations paid for part of the travel. again, you or anyone just saying something doesn’t matter to me. Show me the data. I have how much the school said it was going to cost. I have how much they raised in a gofundme. I have quotes from other schools who cut baseball saying how it is an expensive sport. Now you can say that those things are wrong, but they’re real things. What you’ve given me in your argument is essentially hearsay. And that’s probably all that is available and I understand that. But you can’t then act like this is a slam dunk.
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Post by GlitterBro #2 on Sept 22, 2023 10:27:58 GMT -5
You chimed in that the guy doing the analysis was wrong but provided no data or evidence to back it up, even when someone with knowledge of the numbers (Belfield) said the estimates I had were fairly accurate. Your one argument about cost of travel was refuted by someone who said donations paid for part of the travel. again, you or anyone just saying something doesn’t matter to me. Show me the data. I have how much the school said it was going to cost. I have how much they raised in a gofundme. I have quotes from other schools who cut baseball saying how it is an expensive sport. Now you can say that those things are wrong, but they’re real things. What you’ve given me in your argument is essentially hearsay. And that’s probably all that is available and I understand that. But you can’t then act like this is a slam dunk. The GoFundMe wasn't the only source of donations to the program...that was just the most publicly available grass roots source and was setup after the announcement of killing the program. And you know the reason for the $9M. That's not a true cost of the program either. That was what Baptiste said they needed to cover operating expenses from an endowment that distributes 4-5% per year so as not to hit the athletic department budget. That's kind of joke and was unattainable. (And I have some knowledge of these rules about the endowments having chaired the Brother Patrick Ellis Endowed Scholarship Fund for the Alumni Board for a few years and getting a certain budget to work with each year to award the scholarships based on endowment levels).
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Post by Happy Fortune on Oct 17, 2023 11:50:39 GMT -5
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Post by coachd on Oct 17, 2023 13:21:54 GMT -5
Does he have any concrete plans to improve the student experience and environment at home games? Looking forward to 2024 with real seating behind the baskets! Can we bring back the half court shot during halftime for the students?
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Post by hoopsguest on Oct 17, 2023 15:07:42 GMT -5
Thanks for the heads up. Listening now. Dude is detailed and he knows what he is doing. I wasn’t a Brennan fan from day one. Long story. Never got a feel for Baptiste
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