Wow, basketball and baseball are doin’ so much work it’s got my head spinnin’. It’s terrific stuff from both programs. Baseball is baseball. We’re the defending national champions with a chance to repeat, and we have the number one recruiting classes for 2015 and 2016 according to Perfect Game. Our ’14 class, the group who will be freshman this season, are solid. We were ranked number two in the country until several guys opted to go to the big leagues. Still a very good class. Jason Kendall is our center fielder of the future. He has plus-plus speed, according to Baseball America, and has excellent range to go get it in center field. He has a very good bat as well and will be an excellent table setter/base stealer this season (’14-’15). Will Toffey could be our shortstop of the future also, though we have a pretty good player there this year. A guy by the name of Dansby Swanson, who will be one of the best players in the country this season. But Toffey has all the tools with a left handed bat with power and an above average arm on the left side of the infield. We loaded up on right handed pitching with Brendan Spagnuolo being our highest ranked guy. We have five right handers in this freshmen class. Lost a couple of highly ranked leftys to the majors, Justus Sheffield (ranked 23 in the country) and Cody Reed (40). We also lost the number five player in the country, right hander Touki Toussaint, and the No.30 player, right hander Dylan Cease. That’s going to happen when you recruit like Corbs does. But it’s a quality group and ’15 and ’16 look sensational. We have 20 commits for ’15 and 11 already for ’16 with highly ranked players all over the place. The future looks totally epic. And the present very much does too. We’ll have Dansby manning shortstop as he takes over from Vinnie Conde, who will be plying his way up the minor leagues in the Yankees organization. Ro Coleman will move over to second and can give us an incredible one-two punch at the top of the order with Dans. Not sure whom Corbs will put in the leadoff spot, but both are excellent options. Both guys can hit and both can motor. Should be extremely electric at the top of our order. We’ll have Zander Wiel back at first, and I bet we see Zander break out with the power numbers. Xavier Turner is back with the team and he brings an excellent arm and range at third and a solid bat. Tyler Campbell, who was outstanding in the postseason last year in place of X, will challenge X for the starting job at the hot corner. In the outfield, Bryan Reynolds, who had an awesome year at the plate, and made some huge plays defensively in the postseason, will be return in left. I expect Bryan to hit for high average, like he did last year, probably .340-.350’s, and get the power numbers up, with probably 10 or 12 long ones. Love Rhett Wiseman in right. Rhett was another major reason why we won it all last year. He’s an incredible athlete. He made that huge catch in the top of the ninth for the first out against Virginia in the title game. Rhett’s a stud. He’s strong, fast, and so athletic. He’s got ability to give us power, t oo. Carson Fulmer will be our number one guy, most likely, on Friday nights. Excited to see Carson put together an All-American year. We don’t have a lot of left handed arms, but Ben Bowden and John Kilichowski are excellent options as southpaws. Will be interested to talk to Corbs in early January and see what he wants to do with Ben and John. Both are excellent options either out of the pen or maybe as starters. And, of course, the outstanding Hayden Stone, our stellar right hander, will be back. Hayden is another guy who gives us options as a closer, middle guy or as even a starter. Hayden was a major reason we won the national championship last year, and he’s a sophomore. Walker Buehler will be back. Can’t forget about Walker and his 95+ fastball. Expecting great things from Walk. Tyler Ferguson will also return, so we’ve got a potential weekend rotation of Fulmer, Buehler and Ferguson. Will find out more when I visit with Corbs in January. We do have some left handed pitching coming in for ’15 and ’16, so we should be fine with Ben and John until more help comes there. Left handed pitching is a luxury in college or pro baseball. We also have Philip Pfeifer, who is a solid option as well. Phlip has been hurt some, but can definitely help us. Will look forward to speaking with Corbs in January and find out about our team.
So really looking forward to seeing us defend. Should be another excellent year in the SEC. LSU, South Carolina, Florida, Arkansas, Ole Miss and State should have very strong teams, and there will be some others like Kentucky, Tennessee and maybe Alabama which will be highly competitive. Should be another stellar year of Commodore baseball. Very much looking forward to seeing this year’s edition of Corbs’ boys compete.
Our basketball team won its first regular season game of the season over Trevecca Nazarene, a Division II school, 83-56. Our young freshmen are doing very well, but center Damian Jones was the story yesterday. Damian finished with 24 points and 12 boards, five on the offensive glass and seven on defense. Damian was 10-of-13 from the field. He was four-of-nine from the free throw line, so he needs to improve there, but he’s an amazing talent. He’s going to be our go to guy this year and hopefully for two more years. Luke Kornet posted 10 points and 10 boards. Nice outing for Luke. With Damian at 6’10”, and Luke at 7’0″, we have quite the front wall. James Siakam has been hurt, but he’s expected back soon, and James will only make us better with his skywalking, glass-cleaning ability. He really worked his backside off this summer, and Kevin was very excited to see him play. Need to get James back on the floor. Shelby Moats, who landed a job on Wall Street for next year in his first job interview this summer, had an excellent game in 17 minutes. Shelby scored six points on three-of-four from the field and pulled down eight boards. Josh Henderson, who has really persevered through knee injury after knee injury, only scored two points, but pulled down five caroms. Would love to see Josh reach his potential because he can be a valuable player for this team. At 6’11” , he gives us another big who can control the glass and make shots in the paint. He has a very good shot. Jeff Roberson did a really nice job. Jeff, one of our five stellar freshman @ 6″6″, 210, finished with eight points and six boards. Riley LeChance, our freshman shooting guard, was three-of-eight from trifecta. Riley is an excellent marksman from deep. Wade Baldwin IV had nine points and three assists, Shelton Mitchell, who had stellar exhibition games, finished with six points and four boards. And Matthew Fisher-Davis had five points, two boards and three assists. Carter Josephs and Nathan Watkins got a little time in at the end of the game. Still believe Carter and Nathan can both help us this year, especially working with the freshmen and also with their own individual play. Carter is an excellent assist guy. And he really takes care of the basketball. So I like what this team can do. Kentucky is absolutely loaded this year, and Florida is excellent, too. Arkansas has a good team expecting to make a run for the tournament, Auburn could be a sleeper and Ole Miss, Alabama and Tennessee will be interesting teams. The whole conference will be a battle every night we play. But we’ve got a lot of basketball to play before conference season opens up January 6th at home against Auburn. We will play Lipscomb this Thursday night at Memorial at 9 PM ET/ 8 PM CT on Fox Sports South. Headliners in the pre-SEC season schedule include Baylor and Purdue at home and Georgia Tech and St. Louis on the road. Will have more information on those games as they get closer. The Baylor game will be Thursday, December 4th, @ 6 PM CT/ 7 PM ET on ESPNU. Hopefully, we’ll get a huge crowd out for that one. Baylor is a perennial competitor for a deep run in the tournament, so this should be an excellent test for our group. The Purdue game is Dec. 13th at 8 PM CT/9 PM ET on the SEC Network. Georgia Tech is at 1 PM CT on ESPN3 on Dec. 20th @ Tech, and St. Louis is Dec. 31st @ 1 PM @ St. Louis. No TV announced yet. Also, a couple of huge games at the Barclays Center Classic in Brooklyn, N. Y. as we face Rutgers on Nov.28th @ 8 PM CT/9 PM ET on the NBC Sports Network, and, if we win, we’ll play the Virginia/LaSalle winner on Nov. 29th. UVA is a stellar returning Sweet 16 team and ranked in the top eight in the country and LaSalle is coming off an NCAA tournament appearance. They’re good too. Virginia lost to an outstanding Michigan State team in the Sweet 16. It was an excellent game and UVA has quite a few guys back from that team. So, hopefully, we can face them in the finals of the Barclays. So it should be an excellent preseason for the team. The freshman will be certainly thrown into the fray immediately. The Auburn game, Jan. 6h, is @ 8 PM CT/9 PM ET on ESPNU.
The 2015 signing class is exceptional. We signed four-star center D’Jerry Baptiste from Plano, Texas. D’Jerry is 7’0″, 250, and the second coming of the Sherman Tank. Watched D’Jerry on film and loved his game. He can dominate even more than Festus did. And if we can keep Damian around for four years, even three years, he and D’Jerry will be forces next year and in the following year. D’Jerry can dominate the glass, is highly physical, can score and play excellent defense. He will be a sheriff in the middle. Samir Sehic is a high three-star who is 6’8″, 255. Another physical player who can score and board. Samir is from the Houston area, and is originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Joseph Toye is a high three-star small forward from Indiana. Joseph is 6 ‘7″, 200 and is a Rivals 150 player at #114 and is an 88 rated by 247 sports. D’Jerry is a 93, 247 player, and Samir is an 89, almost a four-star. Camron Justice is a 6’2″, 180 pound shooter from Hindman, Kentucky. Just a pure shooter. Camron is an 88 three-star by 247. D’Jerry chose VU over offers from defending national champion UConn, Iowa, OU, and Kansas State among many others. Samir chose us over offers from Wake Forest, Notre Dame, Davidson and many others. Joseph chose us over Auburn, Missouri, Iowa, Providence and quite a few others. Camron, who has already scored over 2,800 points in his career, chose us over Tennessee, Notre Dame, Wake, Boston College, Gonzaga and others. The class is ranked in the top 3o in most all of the recruiting services and no.44 in 247 sports. Excellent class. And we will have Cornell transfer Nolan Cressler on the team next year. Nolan is apparently an incredible shooter. The present and the future look extremely bright for our basketball team.
Believe in Derek. He’s a really good man and an excellent football coach. We have played around 40 redshirt freshmen this year. It’s only going to pay dividends for the future. Johnny and Patton are our guys at quarterback. Good to have Patton back healthy. It’ll be interesting to see whom Derek starts this Saturday at Mississippi State (6:30 PM CT/7:30 PM ET on SEC Network). We’ve had to learn new offensive and defensive systems. Wade Freebeck is a talented freshman for the future at qb, and commit Kyle Shurmur is apparently awesome. We’ve got 11 solid guys in this class and it looks like we’ll be adding seven or eight more. Got some excellent guys we’re after.
It’s been an adjustment for the coaches and the players this season. But we’ll get it done with Derek. We’ll play aggressive, physcial defense and with Ralph Webb and Dallas Rivers and a couple of the commits we’ll be excellent at running back in the future. C.J. Duncan is a game changer at wide receiver and our tight ends are awesome. Most of the o line will be back next year. Latevius Rayford is an outstanding receiver too. I’ve watched a couple of these Stanford tight ends in the pros, Colby Fleener and Zac Ertz, and they are game changers. And we have the tight ends who can do that for us in Steven Scheu, a junior, Davis Dudchock, a senior, and Nathan Marcus, a redshirt freshman. All three guys look like next level players. Just gotta go for it in Starkville this Saturday and then against UT at home to finish off the season. Derek will get it done. Firmly believe that.
Jay and the Bears won yesterday. He threw for three touchdowns and 330 yards. Threw a couple of ints. If he can clean that up, the Bears can still make the playoffs. They’re 4-6, but have a shot at the wild card if they can win out or at least win five of six. The NFC is wide open in the wild card race. Detroit did lose yesterday to drop to 7-3 and we do play the Lions twice before the season is over. Have the Tampa Bay Bucs, which are fresh off at win at Washington, so gotta be ready. We have no choice. Pretty much need to win out. JMatt caught a TD pass and is playing excellent for the Eagles. JMatt is awsome. Casey Hayward had a 49 yard fumble return for a TD yesterday against the Eagles as the Packers blasted JMatt and the Eagles, 53-20. Casey has it going as he had a pick six for 82 yards last week against Jay and the Bears. Casey was hurt last year and I was a little worried about him, but he’s back with a vengeance this season. Andre Hal playing a lot for the Texas and Sean Richardson getting good playing time for the Pack. Will try to find out more about guys like Wesley Johnson, who is with the Steelers, and Chris Williams, who was starting for the Bills but got hurt. I watched Chris in the exhibition season and he was doing very well.
Always thinking about DP, Sonny, Mike, Pedro and Ryan. Excited to see the guys compete for championships in the big leagues next year.
Not sure what’s going on with John Jenkins in Atlanta. Hope JJ can stay with the team. Fes Ezeli is doing well for Golden State. Jeff Taylor got into some trouble before the season started, so not sure about his status with the Charlotte Hornets.
Will have more coming up in the upcoming days/ weeks on football, basketball and baseball.
