The NCAA released its APR scores today and FIU continued its improvement with five teams (women's cross country, golf, soccer, tennis and softball) scoring a perfect 1000. And 10 other FIU teams also improved their scores.
Men's basketball had the biggest leap of 155 points from 800 to 955. The minimum score the NCAA requires is a 925. MC's football team made a 74-point leap from 891 to 965.
While the FIU baseball team raised its score (917) from its multi-year rate of 873 and had every player eligible and every baseball player that was scheduled to graduate ended up graduating, the NCAA gave FIU baseball some penalties: practice time reduced from 20 to 16 hours per week; reduced the playing season from 132 to 125 days and the schedule goes down from 55 to 54 games in 2010. No scholarships were lost and all FIU teams have their full allottment of scholies.
WHERE'S LATAVIOUS?
Although it has not become as popular a question as Where's Waldo?, there are 3 teams and possibly just 2 teams waiting to find out where 6-8 power forward and 5-star recruit Latavious Williams will play hoops this fall.
Still waiting on a call back from LW for a GPP interview, but heard two different scenarios about LW today. One has LW deciding between Georgetown, Memphis and FIU and the other scenario has LW deciding between just Georgetown and FIU with the Hoyas being the favorite. Let's see what LW can tell us.
A-ROD THE PAINTER
If this baseball thing doesn't work out for Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, then there might be a future in painting for him.
The person that donated the paint job to University Park Stadium is none other than A-Rod. He owns the construction company that painted FIU's baseball stadium. FIU coach Turtle Thomas recruited and signed A-Rod to play across town back in the early 1990's.
With 7 games left (including tonight's game at Florida State) in the FIU baseball regular season, we have 4 contestants (Crazy Cane, TheChampionUnderdog, Gooch7 and Yandro) eliminated thus far from our WIN A GPP BASEBALL BLOG contest.
With FIU currently at 30-18, the most games the Panthers could lose would be 25 if they did not win the rest of the season. With the 4 contestants predicting FIU's loss total to be more than 25, they have gone over the loss total and are eliminated. (Closest to the actual FIU record without going over the loss total is the winner; Tiebreaker is closest to actual runs scored by FIU without going over) FIU has scored 398 runs as of Wednesday.
Here are your predictions from back in February:
FIUUuu (40-16, 392 runs); Baltimore Panther (37-19, Regionals, 409); Posterchild (37-19, Regionals, 449); Joel (36-20, Regionals, 410); Roman (36-20, Regionals, 385); Baseball Fan (35-21, Regionals, 420); Clawing Cancer (35-21, Regionals, 400); FIU_GPanther (35-21, Regionals, 408); Max (35-21, SBC finals, 401); FIUBlueandGold (34-22, Super Reg, 392); FIUcanesFan (34-22, Regionals, 409); FIUPantherFan (33-23, SBC semis, 370); OC Panther (33-23, Regionals, 425); 2006PA (32-24, SBC champs, 320); FIU Fanatic (31-25, SBC semis, 402);
**** Yandro (30-26, SBC semis, 374); Gooch7 (29-27, SBC semis, 390); TheChampionUnderdog (26-30, no postseason, 385); Crazy Cane (25-31, Regionals, 350).
Q&A
FIURage: Pete any info on Byron Blake...did he sign w/ FIU?
PP: No, he signed with Arkansas State.
Fomenter: All I've seen mentioned, in your blog and Barry Jackson's, is that UM had a change of heart. Have I misread any article in which it shows that they initiated the conversation with FIU in regards to scheduling a basketball game? Please address this
Pete, I know you are a horrible journalist, hence you covering FIU and the Marlins, two of the worst represented sporting interests in the Metro-Dade market, but I suggest you get your head out of your ass and do some simple research on the attendance. . .I was able to attend a few of [UM] home games this year and my associate attends all their games as he is a die hard, and I assure you that there was not less than 30k actual attendance at any game
PP: Thanks for the compliment and your readership. To answer your questions (which by the way for being an avid Florida State fan, you're also UM's top defense attorney).
1) There has not been any article written about the talks. How do I know UM initiated the talks, because I have sources from both schools close to the situation. And both groups of sources tell me the same thing: Kirby Hocutt called Pete Garcia and invited him to lunch to open talks about playing FIU again in basketball. But initially, this lunch was going to happen later this summer and it was to discuss the 2 schools playing in other sports, not necessarily basketball. Then Isiah Thomas gets hired and the lunch invitation to PG suddenly gets moved up and playing FIU in basketball is the priority......Guess, it's a coincidence Barry had the same story, but not as many details?
2) As far as the attendance at Joe Robbie Stadium, now I'm not a lawyer, but I played one on TV. And I know you say you are a lawyer and you're kind of a big deal. In sifting through the sitcom between you and the FIU bloggers, I noticed you mention something about facts being more important than speculation.
So if that's the case, unless you grabbed the P.A. microphone at Joe Robbie Stadium when you were at a UM game and told the crowd: "Everyone please sit in your seats, because I am going to do a head count", then you can't really state for a fact that there were 30,000 or more people there, because you didn't do a head count and those large pockets of empty orange seats sure don't help your case, counselor. Sounds like you are speculating on attendance.
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