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 <<<<< Color Voice of the Merrimack Warriors (station TBA for 94-95) >>>>>