Projo Sports Blog

Three University of Rhode Island players were named to the CAA Football All-Conference team Monday.

Punter Tim Edger, a sophomore who led the league with a 41.5-yard average, was named to the second team.

Shawn Leonard, a senior who had the most touchdown receptions, 11, and was second in receiving yards with 858, and linebacker Rob Damon, a junior who led the league with 11.3 tackles per game, were named to the third team.

URI finjshed with a 1-10 record, 0-8 in the league.

"There has been zero discussion about dropping football," URI athletics director Thorr Bjorn told the Journal's Mike Szostak last week during an interview about the sorry state of the State University's gridiron program.

The next question ought to be: "Why not?"

The Rams finished the 2009 season 1-10, losing at home Saturday to Northeastern, which today announced it was dropping football because it was too expensive.

As recently as 2002, the Huskies, who finished 3-8 this season, won the A-10 title. But they drew barely 1,000 fans to their final home game Nov. 14, when they beat Hofstra, 14-13.

The Rams, in contrast, have had nine straight losings seasons, and have had only three winnings seasons since 1985.

Northeastern follows in the footsteps of Boston University, which dropped football in 1999, and Vermont -- like URI, a former member of the old Yankee Conference -- which dropped the sport in 1974.

Those three schools have something else in common -- they're all members of Hockey East.

Although the Terriers are struggling this season, they are a perennial national power. BU won the NCAA championship last year in a thrilling, come-from-behind victory over Miami of Ohio, after slipping past Vermont, 5-4, in the semifinals. It was the fifth national championship for BU.

Yet URI does not have a varsity hockey team, even though the state has turned out many more Division I hockey players than football players over the years.

Football is an expensive sport and these are difficult economic times. WIth the state in a budgetary crisis, URI has had to make cutbacks in all areas. It's a legitimate question whether the school can continue to afford to play football -- especially bad football.

It's not as if the lack of a football team would hurt the school's reputation. Of the six New England state universities who were in the Yankee Conference, only URI and Maine are considered "Tier 3" schools in the annual rankings published by U.S. News & World Report. In contrast, UConn ranks 66th among "national universities," followed by Vermont (88th), Massachusetts (106) and New Hampshire (110).

UMass and UNH also play in the prestigious Hockey East conference, along with Maine, which has won two NCAA titles.

The University of Chicago, which can boast of the first Heisman Trophy winner -- Jay Berwanger, in 1935 -- and legendary coach Amos Alonzo Stagg, played in the Big 10 until the school dropped football in 1939.

Yet Chicago continued to attract top scholars. It is ranked 8th nationally by U.S. News and World Report, tied with Columbia, just behind the likes of MIT, Stanford, and Penn, and just ahead of Duke and Dartmouth.

By MIKE SZOSTAK
Journal Sports Writer

Northeastern University's decision to drop varsity football means that the University of Rhode Island will pick up another Colonial Athletic Association South Division opponent for the 2010 season and that coach Joe Trainer and his staff will try to recruit Northeastern players to URI for the spring semester.

The South has been the stronger of the two divisions in recent years. Richmond is the 2008 national champion at the Football Championship Subdivision level and is returning to the playoffs this season with Villanova and William & Mary. New Hampshire is also in the playoffs.

Northeastern announced Monday that it is discontinuing football. The Huskies' 33-27 victory over URI Saturday was the program finale. Northeastern cited "significant obstacles" as a primary reason to discontinue the program that started in 1933.

"I'm sure it was certainly a very difficult decision for Northeastern to make. After going through sports cuts ourselves, the guys on that team are having a very difficult time accepting that decision. I wish them well," URI athletics director Thorr Bjorn said Monday.

The move leaves the Colonial Athletic Association with 11 teams, five in the North Division, and raises questions as to the future of the league. Old Dominion University of Norfolk, Va., a CAA member in other sports, started football this season and will join the league in 2011. Georgia State of Atlanta, another CAA member, will launch its football program in 2010 and join the CAA in 2012. The addition of those programs will require a conference re-alignment at some point.

CAA Commissioner Tom Yeager said Monday that the league's athletics directors will begin discussing long-range planning during a conference call Tuesday. The more pressing challenge is the 2010 schedule. Northeastern's decision leaves North Division rivals URI, UMass, UNH, Maine and Hofstra plus three South Division teams with an open date for the 2010 season. The league has already distributed a revised schedule.

Northeastern players will be able to transfer and play in 2010 because the NCAA and CAA have waived the requirement that transfers sit out a year. Trainer already has his eye on a couple of 2009 Huskies who would look good as 2010 Rams.

"We'll scour the tape and not pass on anyone who can help us," he said Monday afternoon. And the help will have to be next year, not two or three years from now.

Unlike the courtship that occurs in high-school recruiting, this will be speed recruiting because, as Trainer put it, "I got to believe that 95 percent of those kids will transfer for the spring semester."

CAA coaches in the North Division are already familiar with the Northeastern players either from the recruiting trail or from playing against them.

.

The Brown Bears soccer team saw its season end today in Chapel Hill, N.C., with a 2-0 loss to the North Carolina Tar Heels. North Carolina scored a goal in each half, with the tallies coming from sophomores Billy Schuler and Alex Dixon.

Brown, which defeated Stony Brook this week in the first round of the tournament, ended the season with an 11-3-5 overall record.

Kevin Garnett hit a jump shot from near the foul line off a pass from Paul Pierce as time expired in overtime, leading the Celtics to a 107-105 victory today over the Knicks in a back-and-forth contest in New York.

The Celtics were led by Pierce (33 points, nine rebounds) and Kendrick Perkins (16 points, 13 boards), while Al Harrington scored 30 off the bench for New York.

More on the game to come. Click here to see the box score.

BOSTON -- Rather than have him sitting on the bench and not getting any playing time, the Celtics announced today that they decided to assign forward Bill Walker to the Maine Red Claws where he will get more playing time and have more of an opportunity to work on his game.

Walker is the team's first assignment to the NBA Development League this season.

Walker, a 6'6" forward, has appeared in one game for the Celtics this season and has logged two minutes of playing time. The Kansas State product has posted career averages of 2.9 points and 1.0 rebound in 7.2 minutes per game over 30 games with the Celtics.

In 15 games with the D-League's Utah Flash last season, Walker averaged 18.9 points and 5.3 rebounds in 30.5 minutes per game.

The Orlando Magic survived a furious second-half Celtics rally attempt to beat Boston, 83-78, at the Garden.

It was an uphill battle for the Celtics right from the start as the Celtics fell behind by 16 after one quarter of play.

But the Celtics refused to be embarrassed on their home court. The Celtics clawed their way back into the game and cut the Magic lead to 75-74 after a Kevin Garnett (13 points, 11 rebounds) jumper, followed by a Rasheed Wallace (9 points, 13 rebounds) steal and a Paul Pierce (21 points) layup with 5:16 remaining in the game.

Vince Carter (26 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists) answered with a jumper and free throw to give the Magic a 78-74 cushion. The Celtics missed three consecutive shots on their next possession, but got three offensive rebounds and scored on their fourth shot, a Garnett layup with 3:26 to go.

After getting a stop, Wallace tied the game up with an 8-foot jumper with 2:54 remaining, but Carter came right back with a jumper after an Orlando timeout stopped Boston's momentum.

Rashard Lewis (16 points, 10 rebounds) extended Orlando's lead to 82-78 with two free throws with 58.4 seconds left, and the Celtics called a timeout.

Ray Allen (15 points, 6 assists) tried to take the ball to the basket, but it was stolen by Jason Williams (7 points, 6 assists), who made a free throw with 10.5 seconds left to ice the game.

Orlando improves to 10-3 with the win and the Celtics are now 9-4.