Quality sources have told me that Rutgers will no longer be recruiting big men. The price is too high and the ones who are affordable are not better than what is already on the roster.

Pikiell will probably hold one 'ship.

Ex Baltimore prosecutor gets 12 month home detention for mortgage fraud and perjury as I expected.With all the civil rights lawyers saying it sends wrong message to send her to jail even though she could have gotten 20 years,Prosecutors said there had to be jail tome but went light with 20 month recommendation.Judge apparently lacked the stones to sentence her to jail.Does anyone on this board think if they were convicted of mortgage fraud and multiple perjury convictions they would get home detention.

The Nova AD just replaced him on the committee

Virginia's Kaydan Lawson Joins Pirates​

SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. – Seton Hall women's basketball head coach Anthony Bozzella announced today the addition of Virginia transfer Kaydan Lawson (Beachwood, Ohio) to the program.

Lawson is a graduate transfer and will have one year of eligibility remaining.

"We are so excited with Kaydan becoming a Pirate," Bozzella said. "She will be a tremendous addition up front for our basketball program on and off the court."

Lawson is a versatile, 6-foot guard, capable of both handling the ball and scoring in the paint. In four years at the University of Virginia, she competed in 83 games, making 21 starts, and averaged 4.4 points, 3.7 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game. Lawson made 18 starts as a junior in 2022-23 before primarily coming off the bench last season. She collected her first career double-double with 11 points and 15 rebounds against Boston College.

An All-ACC Academic Team member, she scored over 1,000 points and 500 rebounds in three years at Orange High School prior to becoming a collegian. A two-time All-State selection, Lawson averaged 18.0 points, 8.0 rebounds and 3.1 steals per game as a high school senior.

RedBird Capital and Weatherford Capital are launching a college sports-specific investment fund, one that could lend as much as $2 billion to athletic departments across the country.

Led by RedBird founder Gerry Cardinale, Collegiate Athletic Solutions (CAS) is hoping to cash in on a college sports industry in upheaval, with athletes on the verge of more robust compensation and schools seeking new funding sources to stay competitive. The structure of CAS, according to multiple people familiar with its plan, is to lend upfront money and operational expertise to athletic departments in exchange for a share of additional revenue generated under their partnership.

Weatherford Capital, headquartered in Tampa, Fla., is run by brothers Will, Sam and Drew Weatherford, the latter of whom played football at Florida State and is a member of the school’s board of trustees. FSU has been negotiating for more than a year with another investment firm, private equity giant Sixth Street, on a potential capital infusion for the Seminoles. Representatives for both FSU and Weatherford said the school was aware of his work with CAS and that he would recuse himself from board decisions that might create conflict.

CAS, meanwhile, is raising money and is already in talks with a number of other universities, said the people, who were granted anonymity because the details are private. The new venture plans to initially partner with five to 10 athletic departments, offering $50 million to $200 million to each.

Representatives for RedBird Capital and Weatherford Capital declined to comment.

CAS is one of a number of institutional funds looking to finance and profit off the increased commercialization of college sports. Legal, financial and legislative upheaval has combined to create “one of the most potentially transformative opportunities I’ve witnessed in my 30-year career in sports,” Cardinale wrote in an introductory email to Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt late last year.

“We have done a tremendous amount of work to position ourselves as a thoughtful impact partner for you and your team as you evaluate the changing landscape,” he said later in the email, which Sportico obtained via an open records request. “Drawing on both (a) our collective experience of building cutting edge sports businesses (e.g., On Location, OneTeam Partners, and Legends Hospitality) to generate more revenue for your department and (b) our expertise in partnering/operating teams and leagues (e.g., AC Milan, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, XFL, etc.), we should be a fairly unique partner to programs like yours.”

Both Weatherford and Cardinale have been at least vaguely telegraphing the premise behind their new venture for months. Last August, Weatherford posted a column on LinkedIn titled, “Amateur Collegiate Sports is Dead…Act Accordingly,” in which he argued that instead of “rest(ing) on the laurels of the traditions” of what college sports once was, the industry’s stakeholders should “celebrate” the “multibillion-dollar national treasure” it has become and “commercialize the asset” for their benefit.

In early January, Cardinale told the The New York Times that Michigan’s football team might be worth $1.5 billion and implied that the Wolverines were an undervalued asset. The week prior, on Jan. 2, a Delaware LLC called Collegiate Athletic Solutions Platform was formed, according to the state’s Division of Corporations database. The CAS website is currently password protected with a landing page that says “coming soon.”

The company has one employee publicly listed on LinkedIn—Newman Delany, the son of former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, who is identified as a senior vice president. Jim Delany is currently an advisor to the Big Ten as well as a partner at The Montag Group. The Delany family has also been a significant donor to the University of North Carolina, both Jim and Newman’s alma mater.

In a March email sent to Texas Tech’s Hocutt, Newman Delany requested a number of different pieces of financial information for CAS to develop a “tangible TTU-specific analysis as the foundation for a constructive discussion.”

That data included three years of itemized profit-and-loss statements from the athletic department; three to five years of itemized profit-and-loss projections; details on any future revenue pledged to existing projects or liabilities; a detailed breakdown of debt obligations; and a finance schedule for upcoming capital expenditures, including ROI estimates for those projects.

In response, Hocutt sent an email to deputy athletic director Jonathan Botros, the Red Raiders’ CFO and COO, asking if he had “concern in sharing this type of general information.” A Texas Tech spokesperson did not respond to an inquiry about the current status of these talks.

CAS’ approach is different from traditional private equity, or even private credit. The group does not plan to take an equity position in any athletic department’s commercial venture, nor does it intend to secure fixed payments in return for the upfront capital. Instead, a source said, the deals will be structured with returns tied to new revenue generation.

RedBird’s sports portfolio includes Italian soccer team AC Milan, Fenway Sports Group, YES Network, the Alpine F1 Team and the UFL. The firm has $10 billion under management, and recently closed its fourth fund with more than $3.28 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Founded in 2015, Weatherford Capital has raised more than $1 billion since its inception. The group’s portfolio is mostly technology and financial companies, though it invested in IMG Academy in 2023 when the company was sold by Endeavor for $1.25 billion.

(This story has been updated in the third paragraph to include comment from Florida State.)

Player profile

• Class:Freshman
• Position:F
• Hometown:Appleton, Wis.
• High School:La Lumiere (Indiana)
• Height:6-9
• Instagram:gus.bus.19
• Twitter:gusbus2023

BIO: Four-star big man Gus Yalden, a native of Appleton, Wisconsin, returns home to play for his home state Badgers. The 6-foot-9 forward ranked as the 17th best center in the country for his class, according to 247 Sports. Yalden attended IMG Academy (Bradenton, Fla.) and the Asheville School (Asheville, N.C.) during his sophomore and junior years before landing at La Lumiere (La Porte, Ind.) for his senior year. Yalden helped La Lumiere finish 18-10 in the National Interscholastic Basketball Conference (NIBC), which is considered to be one of the toughest conferences in the nation. Prior to his senior season, Yalden had a strong summer in the Nike EYBL, which included a 35-point, 17-rebound performance at the prestigious Nike Peach Jam in July.

HS Mixtape

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Stats

Did not play his freshman year.

The BE coaches in the October time frame come out with their Pre-Season poll. Perhaps we should wait till then or since their is more expertise here maybe we could give it a go now. I'm not sure there will be any more impactful team changes between now and the start of the season that will make much of a difference. Anyone want to give it a go?

1. Creighton
2. UConn
3. St Johns
4. Marquette
5. Providence
6. SHU
7. Xavier
8. Villanova
9. Butler
10. G-Town
11. DePaul

Numerous stay-or-go decisions could be impacted by the largest NIL deal on record, while players staying in the 2024 NBA Draft may be a teensy bit jealous​

By Isaac Trotter

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Former Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski shared his thoughts on NIL, the transfer portal and more with CBS Sports​

By Isabel Gonzalez

As the landscape of NIL continues to evolve, there are currently a lot more questions than answers regarding the long-term model. Mike Krzyzewski spent 42 years coaching men's basketball at Duke before retiring at the conclusion of the 2021-22 season, when NIL was just getting started.

The Hall of Famer is still involved with the Blue Devils as an ambassador to the university and he recently shared his thoughts on the current state and the uncertain future of college athletics and basketball with CBS Sports.

"I don't think there is a clear path of where it's heading, because so much of it is tied up in lawsuits with the NCAA," Krzyzewski, speaking ahead of an event for the V Foundation, told CBS Sports. "Different conference realignment, lawsuits, you do not have a parent organization that really is leading college sports right now.

"All these things, hopefully some of them will be settled this summer, the legal issues. Once the legal issues are settled, hopefully a new structure for doing things is formed. Then you can get some semblance of order. Right now there really isn't any order.

In April, the NCAA officially said schools can facilitate NIL deals with third parties — but not pay players directly. Nothing is currently black or white, and congress has had discussions on whether players should be considered employees of their respective universities.

There is also the House v. NCAA lawsuit and other antitrust cases with the main argument being how NCAA limits compensation and whether or not there is an unlawful restraint of trade.

NIL is a complex situation with multiple pieces involved and no set standard on how to do anything, despite several deals reaching six-figures and some having an even higher valuation. The lack of uniformity across the country and current legal wrangling make the landscape feel chaotic, but Krzyzewski is hopeful that in the end everything will work out for the best.

"NIL is a really good concept that has gone further than anybody from the NCAA could have imagined," he said. "There is no transparency and there are no guard rails, but overall it's a good idea."

Another hot topic of conversation in college athletics is the transfer portal as NIL opportunities became something else to consider for players who are looking for a new school. NCAA transfer rules typically dictated that a player who transfers has to sit out a year, however, that will no longer be the case. Also in April, the NCAA announced student-athletes will be allowed unlimited transfers with immediate eligibility.

"It's a good idea, but you have almost 3,000 Division I and Division II male players who have gone into the transfer portal," Krzyzewski said. "That's well over a quarter of all the young men who play in Division I and Division II. Is that good? Bad?

"It is what it is, along with NIL. It's tough to make predictions. If I knew who was leading and in charge, I think I would be more apt to make some level of prediction, but you or I cannot say who is in charge because there is nobody in charge, which is kind of scary."

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A ton of information to unpack here.