Why Doesn’t Maine Men’s Program see “That A Bird in the Hand is Worth 2 in the Bush”, Doesn’t “See the Forest for the Maine Trees” and “Can’t See Right Under their Own Noses”?? ???

It is getting late to sign players for next season. Right now how many scholarships does the Maine Men have left to give out?

They have many needs: A legitmate Point Guard, permieter shooters, and backup support for Fraser. With the loss of Singleton and Rogers at point guard, McLemore as a perimeter shooter and Chetinov as a back up big man they certainly have big shoes to fill.

They had 15 players on this years roster, 5 seniors, 2 juniors. 1 soph and 7 freshmen.

Size is a major problem as Allison 6’9″, Fraser at 6’7″, Cato 6’7″ and Mackey 6’7″ offer any real size. They have recruited and scholarshipped one player Dimitry Coronel, a small forward. but still need a true point guard unless they plan on using Pollard or Laish at Point. This still leaves a great need for real 3 point shooters.

Losing Burnatowski was a big loss a year ago (THE BIRD IN THE HAND THAT WAS WORTH MORE THAN THE 2 IN THE BUSH) as he is sitting out his transfer year at Colgate.

Keegan Hyland from South Portland, who is as good as 3 point shooter that Maine has produced in many a year is sitting out his sophomore transfer year from Gonzaga-Vermont at Fairfield. Tom Knight, Dirigo is going into his junior year at Notre Dame. Indiana Faithful of Cheverus is at Wooford were he red-shirted his freshmen year. Sam LeClerc from Winthrop who went to D1 Bryant and then transferred to D2 Bently is an excellent point or shooting guard. These 5 players would certainly have made Maine better this past season and certainly would have been the base of next years team if they were still at or gone to Maine. Knight and Burnakoswki would have filled the size issue, Hyland would have offerd 3 point shooting skills and Indiana and LeClerc would have helped solved the point guard issues.

These are the “Maine Trees that can’t be seen because of the Forest”. Maine High school Basketball players right in our own state.

Plus, we have two fine prep school programs with one within 45 miles of Orono and one with 50 miles of Orono who regularly turn out D1 Prospects for other D1 Programs. These must be the “transplanted trees that can’t be found because of the forest”. Also, Brigdton Academy, over 100 miles from Orono also has D1 prospects.

Now there has always been and always will be “gym rats” playing basketball in the Maine Intramural leagues and playing pickup ball on a daily basis now in the Rec Center, and before in the Field House and “Pit”.

These are the players that are right under the Maine Coaching Staff’s noses that they can’t see.

How about having walk on tryouts, because there has always and always will be at least one player every year at Maine that is playing as a gym rat, because they love basketball so much that could help the Men’s Program as a walk on.

Plus, what a very good public relations feature it would be to help gain some much needed Student fan support by having yearly walk-on tryouts in either the fall or spring that would not take too much time if the pickup and intramutral games were scouted in the open scouting period.