• Myron Medcalf
• Jeff Borzello

A lot of info - not going to try to summarize...3 minute read.

Adam Rittenberg, ESPN Senior Writer

INDIANAPOLIS -- After expanding in each of the past two summers, the Big Ten expects to stay at 18 members as it prepares to welcome four new additions from the West Coast.

Commissioner Tony Petitti said at Big Ten media days Tuesday that the league is "focused on the 18 right now," as USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington will officially join the conference next month. Petitti took a similar position toward USC and UCLA at 2023 Big Ten media days, but movement from the Pac-12 to other conferences resulted in a quick pivot and the additions of both Oregon and Washington in early August.

"A lot of work had to be done to integrate USC, UCLA, and we started that work over immediately when we added Oregon and Washington," Petitti said. "So I think we're really comfortable with where we are. We've got to get this conference right, and that's where our focus is."

Petitti praised the accomplishments of the four new members during his opening comments, noting 10 Heisman Trophy winners, 73 College Football Hall of Famers, 41 Rose Bowl championships and 173 first-round NFL draft picks, including six in the 2024 draft and the first overall selection in USC quarterback Caleb Williams. In-season travel will be more challenging for both the four schools and the Big Ten's existing members, although the league crafted football schedules to prevent cross-country trips in consecutive weeks.

"I really believe scheduling is something that has to be constantly evaluated by sport," Petitti said. "And I anticipate that we'll get a lot more right in these next couple of years, the way we've formatted and scheduled. But it's our job to listen to student-athletes, to listen to coaches, to make sure that we're adjusting and making the change we need."

Petitti announced that the Big Ten football championship game will remain at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis through at least 2028 but that alternative sites will be explored, including those on the West Coast. The league's title game has been played in Indianapolis since its inception in 2011.

"It's really important that markets around the country get to experience Big Ten championships," Petitti said. "It's a really good way to connect the conference. So over time, you'll start to see the geographic footprint expand."

Schedule


SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. - The Seton Hall women' basketball team released its official 2024-25 non-conference schedule on Thursday. The slate features 11 opponents, including six that qualified for the 2024 postseason, and eight games in historic Walsh Gymnasium.

Season ticket renewals begin Aug. 5! Those interested in renewing can do so by calling the Seton Hall Ticket Office at 973-275-HALL (4255). New season tickets are only $75 and can be purchased beginning Sept. 3.

"We're really excited about the opportunity to play this schedule, which features eight home games and a number of challenging opponents," said Head Coach Anthony Bozzella. "We have the best fans in America and we can't wait to see them in Walsh Gym on Nov. 7."

Seton Hall will open the 2024-25 campaign against Wagner on Thursday, Nov. 7 at Walsh Gymnasium. The Pirates are 10-2 in 12 all-time meetings and have won six straight in the series. Their last meeting was a 70-62 victory in South Orange on Dec. 21, 2021. The Seahawks are coming off a 7-21 season in 2023-24, which includes a 4-12 mark in Northeast Conference (NEC) play.

The Hall will return to action when it hosts Fordham on Tuesday, Nov. 12 at Walsh Gym. The Pirates are 8-5 all-time against the Rams and have won eight of the last 10 meetings including a 78-72 victory in the Bronx in 2022. Fordham went 13-17 last season with an 8-10 mark in the Atlantic 10.

On Saturday, Nov. 16, the Pirates will host Bryant University in Walsh Gymnasium. The Hall trounced the Bulldogs in their only two prior meetings, including a 73-45 victory on Nov. 12 of last season. Bryant went 15-15 overall last season, including an 8-8 mark in America East Conference play.

The Hall will head to Cincinnati for its only true road game of the non-conference portion of its schedule on Monday, Nov. 18. The Pirates will face the Bearcats for the first time since they left the BIG EAST Conference at the conclusion of the 2012-13 season. The Hall is 3-1 all-time at Fifth Third Arena. Cincinnati is coming off a 14-18 mark and a first-round loss in the WNIT last season.

The long-time rivalry between Seton Hall and Princeton will be renewed on Thursday, Nov. 21 in Walsh Gym. It'll be the ninth time in the last 10 seasons that the two New Jersey foes have faced off. Although the Pirates own a 13-9 all-time series lead, the Tigers have won five of the last seven games, including an epic 75-71 double-overtime victory in Princeton last season. The Tigers went 25-5 last season and claimed their fifth-straight Ivy League championship. They fell to West Virginia in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament.

For the third time in the last four seasons, The Hall will face national-power USC on Wednesday, Nov. 27 as part of the Acrisure Holiday Invitational in Palm Springs, Calif. The Hall has never defeated the Trojans in four all-time meetings and dropped the opening game of the Baha Mar Pink Flamingo Championship, 64-54, to them last year in the Bahamas. Led by superstar freshman JuJu Watkins, USC went 29-6 during the 2023-24 season, won the Pac-12 Championship and advanced to the NCAA Elite 8 before falling to Connecticut. This game will be nationally televised on truTV. Family and friends interested in attending can enjoy a 25% discount on tickets.

The Pirates will return to Walsh Gym on Monday, Dec. 2 to host San Francisco in Walsh Gym. These teams have played only twice, splitting the games, but haven't squared off since the 2004 season. The Dons went 14-16 last season with a 10-6 mark in West Coast Conference games.

Seton Hall will host Howard University on Friday, Dec. 6. The Hall is 3-1 in four all-time contests, but lost its most recent game against the Bison, a 63-44 setback prior to the Bozzella era on Dec. 28, 2011. Howard finished the 2023-24 season with a 15-16 record. The Bison nearly punched their ticket to the NCAA Tournament, but lost by five points to top-seeded Norfolk State in the MEAC Tournament final.

Another chapter in the epic battle for "SHU" supremacy will commence on Monday, Dec. 9 when the Pirates host Sacred Heart. Seton Hall has never lost to the Pioneers in four all-time meetings and most recently routed them, 95-69, on Nov. 6, 2019. Sacred Heart is coming off a tremendous season which featured a 24-10 final record, an NEC Championship and a third-straight NCAA Tournament appearance.

On Saturday, Dec. 14, the Pirates will host Le Moyne College in the first-ever meeting between the schools. The Dolphins are coming off a solid season, which included an 18-15 final record, a 14-2 mark in NEC play and a first-round loss to Niagara in the WNIT.

Finally, Seton Hall will close out the non-conference portion of its schedule with national-power LSU as part of the Basketball Hall of Fame Women's Showcase at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn. on Tuesday, Dec. 17. The Pirates have only played the Tigers once, a 58-40 loss on Nov. 20, 2010. LSU had another fantastic season in 2023-24 with a 31-6 final record. The Tigers won three games in the NCAA Tournament before falling to top-seeded Iowa in the Elite 8. This contest will be nationally televised on FS1.

ATLANTA – The Seton Hall women's basketball team earned a Special Mention by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association upon the WBCA's Academic Top-25 announcement on Wednesday.

The Pirates, who finished with an impressive 3.298 grade point average, placed just outside the Top 25, but received one of the WBCA's Special Mentions.

The WBCA Academic Top 25 recognizes NCAA Division I, II and III, NAIA and two-year college women's basketball teams across the nation that carry the highest combined GPAs inclusive of all student-athletes on their rosters for the entire season. The 2023-24 season is the 29th in which the WBCA has compiled the honor rolls.

Youngstown State, coached by John Barnes, finished first among NCAA Division I members with a 3.868 cumulative team grade-point average. Teams having a 3.0 combined GPA and qualifying for consideration in their respective divisions were listed as special mentions.

Spoke to Bryan yesterday. He will be doing an interview with us after he comes back from vacation. He's leaving today and will be back July 15.

Post your questions here. Bryan does not duck questions as long as they are not sarcastic or unreasonable.

Q&A by Colin Rajala with Bryan Felt


Trove: As part of your definition of success, you talked about program culture. When I think about that, particularly as it relates to the men's basketball team, I think about this past year and how the team rebounded from the lowest of lows of being snubbed from the NCAA Tournament to reach some of the highest highs in winning the NIT Championship, which I think that resiliency speaks volumes about the culture. What are your thoughts on how Sha and the men’s squad handled the whole scenario?


Felt: Oh my, it was truly, truly, truly, amazing. I give incredible credit to Sha and his staff and most importantly the young men on the team. Listen, when we talk about the whole thing, I'll be very clear – the Big East should have had at least four teams in the NCAA Tournament and Seton Hall should have absolutely been that fourth team. There is no question about it to me.

Honestly, we were completely shocked when we weren't selected for the tournament. I remember that day as well as any. I was on the phone with Sha during the day and I said to him, “Listen, we have to determine, should we not get in, what are we going to do?” If anybody knows Coach Holloway, he’s a little superstitious, so he was like “We shouldn't even be having this conversation” and “I don’t want to have this conversation because we’re in.”

I said, “I don't disagree with you, I know we're in, but we need to be prepared” and to his credit he said “Yeah, yeah, I know. Let me think on it.” Honestly, I told this to a lot of fans and donors, my initial reaction was if we didn’t get in, we probably wouldn't play because I kind of felt like more and more teams were not going to play and I didn't think it was as taboo to not do it.

I think he and I were on the same page to be honest with you, but as we talked that day, he thought the best thing to do was see what the guys wanted to do and that he probably wouldn’t do that until we knew what was going to happen.

I said “Okay, fair enough, but let's be prepared because we’re going to be in a tight window and things have to happen pretty quickly.”

So, when we found out, he went to his guys and the way he handled it, I couldn't have been any happier. He sat them in the locker room and put it to them and said, “This is hard, I know what we’re all dealing with right now is really challenging and I'm devastated by it.” The guys were devastated by it and looking them in the eyes was hard for Sha, you could see how upset they were, but he gave them the choice to play or call it a season and credit to those guys, the captains came up to his office and said, “We want to play.” So, we were happy to do it and we were certainly happy with the results.

The way the fanbase got behind these guys, the sense of everything and everyone in the building for those games at Walsh was just incredible. For them to turn something so depressing and disappointing into something so positive and uplifting, was truly amazing. In my history in this business, it really was one of the greatest things I’ve gotten to be a part of without question.

LEXINGTON, KY. - For the 10th year in a row, the Seton Hall women's volleyball team received the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Team Academic Award.

The award, which was initiated in the 1992-93 academic year, honors collegiate and high school volleyball teams that maintained at least a 3.30 cumulative team grade-point average on a 4.0 scale or a 4.10 cumulative team GPA on a 5.0 scale.

Nine of the BIG EAST Conference's 11 volleyball programs received the honor recognizing success in the classroom.

In addition to 10 straight, it's the 13th time in the last 15 years that Seton Hall has received the honor and the 15th time overall. The Pirates maintained an impressive 3.499 grade point average for the 2023-24 year.

If you voted in primary for Biden the party of democracy says too bad we will pick nominee because we are afraid of losing.We covered up his condition when we thought he could win but now the he’ll with democratically elected.And they say trump is threat to democracy LOL

For now...

The Good news is that we now have the blue on the topics.

The bad news is until it's fixed the color stays even after we read the thread.

That means for now you have to check the date of the posts to see what is new.

All day social media has been posting that Jimmy Carter has passed.

Typical garbage on Twitter. Carter is alive and kicking and about 2 months from 100.

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Associated Press

The full settlement agreement of antitrust lawsuits involving the NCAA and college sports' wealthiest conferences is expected to be filed with a federal court by the end of the week, an attorney for the defendants told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

"I expect that we will file Friday," said Steve Berman, the Seattle-based attorney of the Hagens Berman law firm.

The NCAA, along with the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern Conference, agreed May 23 to the framework of a $2.77 billion settlement of multiple antitrust lawsuits that were challenging limits on college athlete compensation.

In addition to the damages the NCAA will pay out to eligible former and current college athletes from the case known as House v. NCAA, the association and conferences have agreed to a plan to allow schools to share revenue generated by athletics with athletes. Schools will be permitted to divert about $22 million to their athletes starting in 2025, a number that is expected to rise as athletic revenues rise for power conference schools.

There were still plenty of details to work out for the revenue-sharing plan, most notably roster limits for sports that will replace scholarship limits. The conferences have been working both separately and together on roster limits.

"Yeah, there's a lot to unpack in the House settlement," Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti told reporters at conference football media days in Indianapolis on Tuesday. "That new model is going to require a lot of changes in terms of how we operate. We now have a situation where schools can provide benefits directly to student-athletes. There's a cap on that system. We have to monitor what schools are spending, so you need a reporting system there that doesn't exist."

Petitti would not provide details, but three athletic directors within power conferences have told the AP they expect the roster limit for football to land at 105 players. The current scholarship limit for major college football is 85. The athletic directors spoke on condition of anonymity because the conferences were not making their discussions public.

Berman said he was unsurprised the full term sheet was not ready to be filed in time to meet the 45-day deadline he requested.

"It's both slow and what I thought because we've got five conferences plus the NCAA," Berman said. "So you've got the conference lawyers and then they're reporting to all their schools and the schools have lawyers, and they have presidents, many of whom are lawyers, and they're all wanting to weigh in on every word."

Berman said other than the pace of progress, the negotiations are going fine.

"We're very close to wrapping," Berman said. "The amount of disputes right now are tiny."

After the full agreement is filed to the court for U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken to consider, a motion will be made for preliminary approval from the court. Berman said a motion for preliminary approval typically gets granted.

Houston Christian University, a Southland Conference school that has been competing in Division I, has already filed a motion to intervene in the settlement. The school claims schools outside the power conferences will unfairly absorb in inordinate amount of the cost of the damages to be paid out over a 10-year period.


Schools in the non-power conferences have argued that more than 90% of the damages will be paid out to football and basketball players who have or are competing in conferences that were named in the lawsuit.

The NCAA will pay out the damages from operating costs, reserves, insurance and from withheld distributions to Division I conferences.

Berman said defendants have asked the court to dismiss HCU's motion.

"There's no publicly filed agreement to be challenging at the moment," he said. "So we thought it was premature, among other defects."

Berman said if and when preliminary approval is granted, they can start the process of letting athletes know how much of the damages they will be eligible to collect. He said it's a complicated formula because thousands of eligible athletes fall into many different categories.

"So the way this is going to work out is that at some point like 60, 70 days from now, after the notice goes out, if you're an athlete, you'll be able to get on a website and put your name in and the website will tell you how much you're going to get out of the settlement," Berman said.

Bryan took well over 1 hour talking to Trove writer Colin Rajala.

Colin told me Bryan was very open in his responses and he was as I just saw part 1. He dropped a lot of unknown details about the construction near and behind Walsh. I will post some of the Q&A here tomorrow. But not the info on the practice facility. That's for our Trove member.

However, I can pass this on.....the construction could be completed by November.