What I’m about to write won’t make anybody happy. In fact, it may evoke outrage and an outright boycott of this publication by the very party in question. Hey, they’ve threatened to do it before.
    Last year about this time, I questioned whether the Georgia Southern basketball program should make a change in a new direction. I never implicitly put forth my attitude on the situation, rather placed forth the pros and cons of the current state of Georgia Southern basketball. Oh the ridicule I endured. Woe is me.
    But what a difference a year makes! Oh wait, no it doesn’t.
    Here the Eagles sit, after the third 20-win season in the past five years, Southern Conference tournament dropouts once again. No NCAA tournament, 0-5 against the RPI top 100 this year,  0-2 in ESPN BracketBuster games all time and 0-1 in the one and only postseason game in the last nine seasons. Maybe I’m nitpicking — but you can’t spell nitpicking without NIT.
    Yet, seems I’m the villain. I’m just some 25 year-old twerp toying with the lives, careers and futures of grown men who spend more time worrying what the local paper is saying rather than what the results on the floor are.
    In the past nine years, the Eagles are an average 137-111 — I saved you the time of subtracting all the non-Division I wins. That’s a winning percentage of 55 percent. Similarly, The Eagles have gone 8-8 in the SoCon tournament. Mediocrity lives here.
    I’m not an athletic director, nor do I pretend to be. I’m not a big shot booster with old money who sympathizes with the under-funded program over there at Collegeboro. I’m not an irrational fan devastated by another early SoCon exit.
    I’m just a kid with a pen, remember. Don’t be upset with the state of Eagle basketball, throw your ire towards me and then start that countdown towards kickoff. Football’s the only thing that matters in this town. Looks like it’s going to stay that way, too.

Eagle baseball
    Well I might have been a little bit greedy last week, calling for 40 runs and a 3-1 road trip for the Georgia Southern baseball team. But hey, I came pretty close. That makes my season tally 5-8, treading water just below .500.
    The Diamond Eagles went 2-2 and put 25 runs in four games. Twenty five, 40, they’re pretty much the same number.
    This past weekend in Greenville, N.C., GSU got big wins over Meeechigan and Pittsburgh. That’ll help the ol’ RPI.
    Now Southern has a whole day to catch their breath before playing seven games in eight days. That stretch kicks off Tuesday with USC Upstate — thank God the powers that be never decided to call GSU “UGA Low country” — and includes a rare four game series with Columbia out of the Ivy League. Hmm, rather, quite.
    So, with greed being my downfall last week, let’s hop right back on the glutton express — Eagles go 5-0 heading into Monday afternoon’s series finale with the know-it-all’s from New York.

Da foosball
    Well it’s that time of year again. If it were up to some folks, we’d be playing football all year round.  Luckily that hasn’t happened yet.
    Chris Hatcher and his attacking Eagles are probably already back to work as you read this. C’mon coach, 8 a.m.? I’m hitting my alarm clock while I write this.
    There’s plenty to watch for over the next month out at the BEC. Who will be quarterback come September? How many kids will try out for offensive line? Who’s going to step up and be this year’s playmaker? Will we get to see the real version of the mysterious ‘Hatch Attack’? Will the jerseys still be inside out? How many tackling dummies will Ty Hatcher conquer? We can only sit back and daydream the answers to these mind-blowing questions.
    And what’s a better place to do that on the banks of Beautiful Eagle Creek? See you out there.