by Grant Ledgister | Jun 21, 2019 | BREAKING NEWS, News Slider, Sports
Even though he didn’t hear his name called during the draft, the reigning ASUN Player of the Year is still headed to an NBA team. Garrison Mathews signed a two-way deal with the Washington Wizards. This means that, although he takes up one of the 17 roster spots for Washington, Mathews will spend the majority of his time with the Wizard’s G League affiliate (the NBA’s minor league, previously called the D League) this season. He will only be allowed to spend 45 days per season with the Wizards “big league” franchise itself throughout the duration of the contract. The Wizards were one of the four teams Mathews worked out for prior to the NBA Draft June 20. If Mathews does well enough in the G League to make it onto the primary Wizards squad, he would become the first Bison to play in an NBA game. Washington’s G League team is called the Capital City Go-Go. When at home, they play at St. Elizabeth’s East Entertainment and Sports Arena in Washington, D.C. The next step for Mathews is the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, which takes place from July 5-15 and will be his first chance to go against competition at the NBA level. If he is still on the roster after the Summer League, Mathews will play in the G League regular season that is 50-games long and begins in the fall. Official schedules for when the league begins have not yet been released. This move comes after Mathews’ record-breaking career at Lipscomb. He is the school’s all-time leading scorer (with 2,478 total points) and three-pointers...
by Grant Ledgister | Jun 18, 2019 | News Slider, Sports
The ASUN conference is getting a new challenger in athletics in the Bellarmine University Knights. The Knights will become the 10th school to join the conference, Bellarmine announced Tuesday morning. However, the university will not join the conference until the 2020-2021 school year. Bellarmine, located in Louisville, is a Catholic university with nearly 4,000 total students. It is set to become the only private D-I school in the state. The Knights were formerly competing in Division II athletics as a member of the Great Lakes Valley Conference, a conference it helped create in 1978. Out of its 22 varsity teams, Bellarmine will compete in 17 sports sponsored by the ASUN conference, including basketball and soccer. Men’s lacrosse, field hockey and wrestling will all compete at other conferences or with independent D-I status; men’s and women’s swimming will compete in the Coastal College Sports Association. Bellarmine showed it had the ability to compete at the D-II level, reaching the NCAA Division II basketball championship every year for the past 11 years and winning the tournament in 2012 under coach Scott Davenport. Knights baseball received an automatic berth into the D-II Midwest Regionals, and women’s soccer has reached its tournament six out of the past 10 years. “ASUN is a perfect fit for the Knights, because – like Bellarmine – every school in the conference is committed to putting students first,” Bellarmine Athletic Director Scott Wiegandt said in a press release. “Our student-athletes already meet Division I academic standards, and our players and coaches will be ready to compete when we join our new conference next year. The move to Division I...
by Grant Ledgister | May 22, 2019 | News Slider, Sports
Due to the academic successes of its athletes, all of Lipscomb’s sports programs have escaped classroom-related penalties from the NCAA for the 12th straight year. The Academic Progress Rate (APR) is a system put in place by the NCAA to help measure whether Division I schools are ensuring their student-athletes are doing well academically. First enforced in 2003, APR is a statistic that tracks the “eligibility” and “retention” of athletic programs and their athletes nationwide. APR is calculated by giving one point per student-athlete in a given athletic program that is receiving financial aid for athletics, and another point if those students remain above the mandated academic thresholds. These points are added up, then divided by points possible, and finally multiplied by 1,000 to get the program’s total APR score. Programs with low APR scores will be penalized, with the first penalty being a limitation on practice time (16 hours over five days instead of 20 over 6). The NCAA also averages out the APR scores from the past four years to see if the program meets the minimum 930 standards it has set, and if the program does not, it is in danger of receiving a ban from participation in championship games. “It correlates an athlete’s ability to do the coursework,” said Lipscomb Athletic Director Philip Hutcheson. “A system that has some standards as opposed to not having any is probably the better approach,” In a year that saw 12 programs across 20 schools receive penalties, all of Lipscomb’s programs received scores high enough to avoid the one of their own. Men’s and women’s golf received the highest...
by Grant Ledgister | May 19, 2019 | News Slider, Sports
Lipscomb was eliminated from the NCAA Tuscaloosa regional tournament Saturday by falling 10-1 to Arizona State. It was the second loss to Arizona State, which dropped Lipscomb into the losers’ bracket by winning 4-3 Friday. The Lady Bisons played two games Saturday, both games cut short due to the run rule, but only the first one — a victory over Alabama State — came out in Lipscomb’s favor, with a 14-0 lead after five innings enough to send the Lady Hornets packing. The scoring started early in the first elimination game Saturday against Alabama State. In the second inning, Sarah Higgins was walked, advanced to third off of a Jordan Fortel grounder that got popped into the air, and then scored on the next batter. Khayla Green then hit a single to drive Fortel to third, and with a bases-loaded walk, two batters later scored her. Alabama State then made a pitching change, but it didn’t help things for the Lady Hornets. A grounder from Graysen Gladden scored two to make it 4-0. Peyton Ward hit a line drive over a third that bounced off the wall. The hit scored two runners to make the score 6-0. A couple of batters later, the bases were loaded again. Jenna Pealor hit a grand slam, her eighth home run of the season, that increased the Lady Bisons’ lead to 10-0. Lipscomb added four more runs in the bottom of the fourth inning, and the game ended in the top of the next inning due to the run-ahead rule. The win set up a rematch with Arizona State University, which lost to...
by Grant Ledgister | May 19, 2019 | News Slider, Sports
The Lady Bisons made it close but ultimately couldn’t overcome the Arizona State Sun Devils, losing 4-3 in the opening round of the Tuscaloosa Regional tournament and road to the Women’s College World Series. Lipscomb fell to Arizona State, a team with a high-powered offense, solid pitching, and strong defense. Pitching and the outfield were the most important aspects of the game for either team through the first two innings. In the first inning, Lipscomb’s first two batters struck out before a popout ended the inning. Amy Vetula was able to record all three of the outs for Lipscomb’s defense. In the second inning, things play balanced out. Arizona State’s defense got two of the three outs (including a barehanded catch and throw from Jade Gortarez to first), while Lipscomb’s Mandy Jordan earned a strikeout and Destinee Brewer chased down a long shot to end the inning. Cielo Meza struck out four through four innings of play for the Sun Devils and only allowed two runners to reach base. A Sarah Higgins double followed by a home run from Jenna Pealor put the Lady Bisons up 2-0 in the fourth inning. The Sun Devils would respond quickly. Kindra Hackbarth hit a double in the bottom of the same inning. Two batters later, Gortarez hit an RBI single that cut Lipscomb’s lead to one and cut its momentum. Lipscomb had a chance to extend the lead in the fifth inning but couldn’t capitalize on it. A tag-out at second and a foul-out ended any chance of the Lady Bisons scoring in the fifth. Arizona State has the third-ranked offense in...
