Huge win for the Raptors, 73-53 over NYU-Poly.

Justin White also passed the 1,500 point threshold for his career, and set the Bard record for three-point field goals.

Read more about it here:

http://www.raptormania.com/

doubleaz87, I believe I can guarantee that no Liberty League wins will be at Bard's expense in 2009-10.

This is a breaking urgent super-important news alert by Raptormania!.

As Raptormania! celebrates its tenth anniversary, the outlook for Bard basketball has bever looked brighter. By hiring Raptors legend Adam Turner as head men's basketball coach, the Bard Athletics Department has provided the best tenth anniversary present since Larry David's wife gave him permission to have sex with that dry cleaner played by Gina Gershon on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Read our complete coverage at:

http://www.raptormania.com

All will be revealed in due course... the empire will continue expanding...

Thanks for the welcome!

Still eager to find out who will be at the helm next- could be a huge opportunity.

Bard clearly will need to step up athletics funding to compete in the Liberty League. However, I don't think they'd take this step if that weren't on the table- I certainly hope not, anyway!

Two games a year against Vassar is also going to be fantastic for on-campus participation. Vassar, for those who don't know, is Bard's arch rival. It's been upsetting not to see the two teams play in recent years.

Bard/Vassar, I assume, have to be likely travel partners.

"Any chance the LL looks for someone to replace Hamilton when they leave for the NESCAC full time in two years?"

Yes. An upgrade. Bard College to the Liberty League, starting in 2011-12. Enjoy conference titles while you still can, Liberty League members.

http://www.libertyleaguesports.org/images/release_0619.pdf

Pretty clearly, the talent at Bard has rendered the rest of the conference mute.

No, that makes a lot of sense. Frankly, there's probably more than one way to get there- but you need an AD to do this, and an administration to listen.

Cyclone and Raptor31 are chock-full of good points. Just to briefly address:

4)  How do you solve 3?  Simple...more money for athletes.  The athletes you want aren't the ones you have to lower your academics for.  But the ones that do qualify, you can't lose because of money.  That is where Stevens made their move.  They started invested more in their scholarship funds and thus had a bigger resource pool to provide financial aid and scholarships. 

This one flies in the face of 1, unfortunately- to get this an AD needs to be a forceful, effective advocate for the school providing financial aid and scholarships to prospective athletes.

Once again valid points on the academics and I agree at the end of the day you have to play ball but you also can't rip a school for "not recruiting" when you are an assistant coach at a school that has requirements of 80 avg and 1000 SAT, ya know? The disparity is what it is and the Skyline is a weird league in that way. It will be tough for Bard and Poly to compete and recruit the same class kids overall as a Farmingdale, OW, or St. Joe's. No problem and I have never brought that up until people starting ripping Coach Wood for not recruiting when they don't really understand the full situation.

This is a fair point, Raptor31- but I will also say that I like the range of schools in the Skyline. There's more than one way to get to an elite level, and it is about time Bard challenges itself athletically. As you said, I am also proud of how far the program has come and where it is going.

I guess I view Bard's standards and cost less in terms of an excuse for when Bard comes up short than something that accentuates the positives when Bard takes steps forward.

You need to join a different league or stop complaining about requirements.  This is the league Bard decided to join. 

For what it's worth, I think this is a great point, and complaining about Bard's academic requirements obscures the large leaps forward Bard has made despite this. In 2007-2008, Bard was in the playoff hunt in its first Skyline campaign, finishing 8-17, 5-13. Remember- this was a program that in 2000-2001, finished 1-19-playing in the Hudson Valley Men's Athletic Conference, and non-conference foes like Cooper Union and Webb Institute.

But Bard has done remarkably well in Skyline athletics across the board. Only time will tell, of course, but I believe this season will be the aberration, not last season.

Someone makes a post about Damien Santana becoming the all time scorer in Farmingdale history and you have the audacity to not only strike out his writing and change it to "now that's always impressive", but then continue to plead for people to give attention to Justin White.

Sad that you have the ability to cut and paste, and you still misquote me. Our friend Queens had just finished calling Bard "miserable" and was comparing Santana to White, making the implicit point that Santana was impressive, White was not. Rather than run down Santana- because why would anyone do that?- I simply responded and pointed out that what he did was "also" impressive.

I can't help but find it amusing that you are upset over my talking about a remarkable week a Skyline Conference player had on a Skyline Conference board during a week he was named... Skyline Conference Player of the Week.

If you disagree that White is worthy of praise, so be it. I don't claim to be objective- but I certainly don't think the objective numbers undermine my case.

And as for talk about other teams- who is stopping you? Is the presence of Justin White some kind of mute button on your computer?  Seriously- I'm pretty sure I can't force you to stop talking about your team and rip a student-athlete who just completed a remarkable week. And I'm certainly going to respond when people are unfairly critical of him.

Well, if a player struggles in a single game early in his development, I guess we know all we need to about him.
You stay classy, OxyBob.  It must feel good to publicly rip a student-athlete when he succeeds.

Don't know if this is inappropriate for a Skyline Conference thread, but here's a link to the Skyline's Player of the Week.

http://skylineconference.org/News/mbball/2009/2/23/skyline_winter0809_report13.asp?path=mbball

Adam Turner won't soon be forgotten. But do keep in mind that last season, Bard challenged for a Skyline playoff spot in its first season with the conference. What you say is partially true- Bard doesn't have a basketball tradition- the team is making history with every step forward. But I've seen plenty of teams that lose a ton to injury, and the star gets keyed on defensively. Generally, that leads to more turnovers and low shooting percentage. But not with Justin White.