The Lady Eagles softball team is making some noise in the C-USA tourney.  This morning they took down #3 seed East Carolina.  They lost the nightcap agains DePaul.  Overall, it was a good day for the Lady Eagles (29-31).

In baseball, USM's RPI improved another place over night (to #31). The Eagles host USF this weekend.  USF swept a mid-week series against in-state foe Florida.  This sweep is good for the Eagles strength-of-schedule wise.

On to something really interesting.  Today a member of our team met with an important local contact.  It was this contact who gave us the bones of the story about the Harrington family's withdrawal from supporting USM athletics, that another poster on this board so thoroughly filled us all in on.  Well, today that contact informed us that Shelby Thames has given Jeff Bower some marching orders that he will fulfill in short order or he's out.  The main one is that he sign more local football talent.

When we heard this, we immediately had a few thoughts.  First, this seems to give more weight to the Harrington family story that we heard.  Second, DT posted a story on USM's rivals.com page a few days ago entitled something like "Bower recruiting Lamar County hard.."  I don't believe there is any speculation in that piece related to the Harrington story or the tidbit about marching orders we were given today.  Finally, although many EagleTalk posters believe finding/bringing in Marcus Raines was all Bower's doing, we have been hearing that it was mostly an SFT affair.  The story from Raines' own mother that she was sending letters out to university presidents/administrators about her son's desire to play somewhere certainly makes a Thames-initiated recruitment possible.  Now, with this other tidbit, a Thames micromanagement scheme is all you have to believe in to make this all plausible (and we think you all can believe something like that, right?).  The bottom line: Shelby Thames may now be responsible for everything football at USM, except for the "Xs" and "Os," and it probably won't be too long before he assumes responsibility over those.  It looks as though Bower did a masterful job of "screening" the Raines recruitment (e.g., personal interviews, a team vote, etc.) so that he's covered in this whole affair.  But, the ball started rolling on it only after a push from Thames. 

[Our contact also reported that people are buzzing about Eustachy's PYT.  "Hot" is the word we heard most often.]

In a future installment, possibly this weekend, we will present the Cox-Purvis Awards.  These recognize things in USM athletics over the 2004-2005 year.

Finally, the Sylvester Croom visit was well covered by Daimon Eklund in the HA.  There was a very large crowd at the event and the Bulldog booster group is swelling in numbers around here.  Croom is a first class act, and was very gracious to those who occupied him on a one-on-one basis after his talk.