Read and watch that here.

Read that here.

Washington hit with significant injuries. Leading RB Cam Davis and starting guard Gaard Memmelaar are both out for season.

Two more regular season losses plus a third if we make the conference tournament.

You must be out of your friggin' mind.

Do you know how much over 20 teams this will destroy our Directors Cup
ranking?

(Talking to you North Carolina.)

The men's basketball recruiting notes thread for August has arrived. The June/July thread is here in case you missed anything from that. Stanford is yet to land anyone in the 2024 class, so they have some work to do. 4-star point guard Jase Richardson visited at the end of July. I didn't get an exact date for that visit, but I have it marked as July 31st just so it at least got recorded. He's a name they are on pretty heavily. 4-star point guard Trent Perry is another key target. I need to reach out to him again. Last I heard from him, he didn't wanna talk recruiting during the summer sessions. Stanford was wise to get on him as early as they did.

4-star shooting guard Sir Mohammed, 4-star shooting guard Gicarri Harris, 4-star small forward Marcus Allen, and 5-star shooting guard Kon Knueppel remain top targets as well. Allen visited earlier this summer, while Harris, Mohammed, and Knueppel visited back in the fall of 2022. Perry visited last summer as well, so they've gotten these kids on campus, which is good. It's just hard to tell of that group who they have the best odds with. I would say Richardson and Allen visiting most recently is definitely an arrow up for them as is the fact that Stanford made the top six for Mohammed.

Stanford did recently offer a couple other point guards as well who aren't as highly rated: 3-star Elijah Crawford at the end of July and then Jack Stanton back in May. Same with a few shooting guards, one of whom actually is rated quite high: 4-star Andrew Crawford at the beginning of July, Anthony Batson at the end of May, and Angelo Ciaravino in mid-July.

As far as big men are concerned, 4-star 7-footer Trent Burns was offered in mid-June. So, he's kinda the main big man target right now. At least for the 2024 class. All 2025 targets are still on the board. That offers list is here. No 2026 or 2027 offers at the moment.

Finally, I did want to quickly provide a scholarship breakdown. I'm going to post a quick write up on Benny Gealer getting the 13th scholarship since that is worthy of front page news, but before I do I might as well just add the scholarship breakdown in here as well. The following guys are projected to free up a scholarship after the season is over: Spencer Jones, Max Murrell, Michael Jones, Jared Bynum, James Keefe, and Brandon Angel. Murrell and Angel are not graduate students, so they could in theory come back for a fifth year. Graduate school admissions pending. That's six names I mentioned. Not to mention the possibility that Carlyle and/or Stojakovic go pro after the season.

So, there could be a lot of turnover after the season. That makes it all the more critical that they get some guys committed soon for this 2024 class. The one piece of good news, though is that this is an older team than years past, something Jerod Haase semi-lamented about a couple years back when I first came on board this site. So, it is good to see an older team on the floor. I think this team once again will be picked to finish in the top half of the conference with an NCAA tournament bid being expected. Though as you've all come to learn, history tells us it might not be wise to hold our breath on that actually happening. But those are once again the expectations.

Read and watch that here.

Some interesting ideas being kicked around for the upcoming NFL season, brought to you by Sam Schwartzstein:

From Football Scoop

Read and watch that here.

I guess they didn’t want Muir.

Courtesy of Adam Gorney. The Stanford relevant news is 2025 4-star ILB Mantrez Walker (Michigan commit) hoping to visit Stanford this fall. I’ll keep you guys posted on a date once I get that confirmed. Stanford has been making a real effort with him, so this is naturally a positive development.

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Stewart Mandel and their SC writer both take the under on our 2.5 win total.

SC guy makes the above claim. This is objectively false, but this is what people think of us these days.

Listed on the Fall roster as a graduate student. Probably moves back to second base or corner outfield.

I think most of you now know that Tempie Brown and Erica McCall will be assistant coaches this year. Brown in her second stint and McCall returning after five years in the WNBA.

My article on Brown is here.


My article on McCall is here.

So if I'm Tony Petittei, I'm feeling pretty smug right now.

Hey, I'm the Big 10 commish and we're kicking butt.

Gonna be a lot of fun to tell those snobs from Stanford we don't want them.

Except when he looks across the table and it is Jerry Yang, Condiieeza Rice and Olliver Luck.

Read and watch that here.

Read and watch that here.

Read that here.

I was startled by the initial line and am even more startled that it's moved a few points against us, now having us favored by only 7 points. Last year's David Shaw crappy, demoralized, joyless, bad QB play, zero running backs by the end of the season, hapless defense with overmatched linemen 2022 abomination of a team would have been favored by 11.46 against last year's Hawaii team on the road. Even factoring in that Hawaii may be more of a home field advantage than most that would still mean that Vegas likes our chances significantly less than the demoralized version of Stanford football. That probably owes to all of our attrition, but still I find it surprising. The final SP+ preseason rankings for 2023 have Hawaii #120 in FBS and Stanford #92, with Hawaii expected to be bad at everything (in contrast Stanford is expected to be approaching mediocre on defense and downright good on special teams). Hawaii's defense returns a fair (though not standout) amount of its 2022 production. All in all, I am pretty startled by only being favored by 7 against Hawaii. I hope Taylor gets out of the gate with a nice statement. Conversely, I do think we have to be at least a bit nervous about this one. A seven point line equates to a 29.7 percent chance we lose. Extremely real possibility.

Looking forward to Matt or Samuel’s full breakdowin of last night’s game

Read and watch that here.

A couple of more staff promotions for men's hoops: Jack Frost now an assistant coach and Michael Reutt now director of operations.

Read and watch that here.

Just wondering where members of the old staff landed. At one time they were in high demand, or so it seemed, now?

Read and watch that here.

Heck of a read, even if we already have heard some of it…