Jon Greene writes:
>The announcement that O'Connor will attend UMass-Amherst means that
>they will have a very interesting team next season.
Agreed...this is a team that already had a decent amount of talent and
seemed to be mainly lacking in strength and experience (as well as
depth). I have tentatively picked the Minutemen 9th, but I think
there is a distinct chance that they could finish a spot or two above
that. That would really be remarkable. At the least, they should
pull off a few upsets and surprise some people. I think they are well
on the way to building an outstanding program.
BTW, as I have it, this is their NC schedule. The full schedule is
available from LISTSERV with the command "get 9495msch mass-am".
Mass Amherst Hockey East
H 11/04/94 ___ ___ Colgate ___ nc
H 11/05/94 ___ ___ Union ___ nc
A 11/11/94 ___ ___ Air Force ___ nc
A 11/12/94 ___ ___ Air Force ___ nc
H 12/18/94 ___ ___ Princeton ___ nc
H 12/30/94 ___ ___ Notre Dame ___ nc
H 12/31/94 ___ ___ Notre Dame ___ nc 2:00 ET
H 01/17/95 ___ ___ Bowdoin ___ nI [HE has 12/6?]
H 01/24/95 ___ ___ Army ___ nc
A 01/31/95 ___ ___ Holy Cross ___ nc [@UMA by HE]
There are a few conflicts between the last version of the HE composite
and other schedules I have seen. One is that HE had the Governor's
Cup taking place at UMass over Thanksgiving, but with 10 other NC
games, this may have already fallen by the wayside.
>They had already
>signed Dan Gaffney (D) and Brian Regan (G) who were sixth and tenth
>round picks, respectively. In addition, I saw on Tony's summer league
>rosters that Dan Juden, another sixth round pick, would be attending
>UMass. Not bad for a second year program.
Where are these two from? Is Gaffney any relation to either Mike
Gaffney of St John's of Shrewsbury, or the Bowdoin Gaffneys? How
about Regan - any relation to Tom Regan who played several years ago
for BU?
And if Juden is from Salem, MA, I would guess he is related to the
Juden (Joe?) who is the pitcher who was selected extremely high by the
Houston Astros a few years ago. Some impressive recruits.
>On the other hand, they must be almost out of scholarships for the
>next few years. I remember seeing a quote last year from Mallen that
>he had given out 10 scholarships. I thought that was strange given
>the extraordinarily late start (he wasn't hired until the spring).
>Now, in addition to the four above, he has signed several other
>recruits. If most of this year's class is on scholarship he would be
>closing in on the maximum of 18.
I've lost track of the number of players Mallen has brought in this
season, but a number of them seem to be from Mass. So, I wouldn't be
surprised if he was able to divide just a few scholarships among those
new players. Even if a kid received a half scholarship and was left
to cover the rest, for an in-state student, half the cost of UMass is
not much at all, especially compared to most of the other DivI schools
in the area.
What I am curious about is how Mallen divided his scholarships the
first year. With about 25 freshmen on the roster at the beginning of
the year, even if you figure he split 10 scholarships 20 ways, that
still leaves only 8 to split 10 ways the next 3 years. So I doubt
that more than, say, 12-15 of the UMass freshmen were getting something.
That makes it even more amazing that they were as competitive as they
were last year.
My guess would be that the out of state kids, like the Canadians, got
more (like 3/4 or a full) and that the Mass. kids who did receive a
scholarship got closer to a half or a quarter.
>Then again, he did spend quite a few years at BC, so maybe that's not
>considered a problem :-)
Holy cow! Warm up those lawyers. :-)
--- ---
Mike Machnik [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc. *HMM* 11/13/93
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