Kenny Mainor

September 05, 2007

Drew Champlin

The hot topic of the morning has been Troy defensive end Kenny Mainor and what he was doing in the early morning hours today.

Sgt. Benny Scarbrough of the Troy Police Department got out of his meeting and called me back. Kenneth Anthony Mainor was arrested at 1 a.m. at a local lounge/bar on charges of unlawful possession of marijuana 2nd degree, a Class A misdemeanor. He was released on bond at 2:15 a.m.

His quote:

“Officers responded to a call at that lounge. An officer smelled a strong odor of what he believed to be marijuana. A subsequent investigation led to his arrest. A field test done on the substance determined it tested positive for marijuana.“

Also arrested was John Patrick Jackson, who had no current University affiliation, but John Patrick Jackson finished up his eligibility last year with the Trojans.

Next to call is Larry Blakeney, and a story should be posted shortly.

Wednesday links

Drew Champlin

This won’t be the last you hear from me this morning.

Regardless, here’s some links.

I did a feature on Troy defensive tackle Chris Bradwell.

From the Gainesville Sun, Troy has big-time ambitions, Florida’s defense should be getting some help.

From Florida Today, this defensive end leads by example.

From the Sun-Sentinel, a feature on another good freshman. Off topic, I’m glad I don’t have to worry about covering stuff like this.

Like I said, I hope to be checking back on the blog shortly….

Yippee, it’s back

September 04, 2007

Drew Champlin

The 2007-08 Troy basketball schedule has been released, again.

Marist, home and away, went off the schedule, and was replaced by a home-and-home with Texas A&M Corpus Christi. That’s actually a stronger schedule, as the Islanders were an NCAA Tourney team last year as a No. 15 seed and should have beaten No. 2 seed Wisconsin.

Lot of home games, plenty of Saturday home games too. It’s a fun pace of basketball to watch. They probably won’t be very good, but they run, gun, and shoot a lot of threes. I’ll take covering that over covering boring basketball.

Here’s the troytrojans.com link to the prospectus. Interesting to have Justin Jonus at the 5, which is what Corey Hornsby did in 2004-05 at only 6-foot-5. He was the best player that year and scored about 15 ppg. The best newcomer, from what I’ve been able to read up on, looks to be 6-foot-6 swingman Mario Telfair.

Well, maybe they won’t be that bad. Usually I’m dead off on Troy predictions. I said last year they would challenge for an NCAA Tournament berth, and that didn’t happen.

Chris Bradwell

Drew Champlin

Just wanted to let you guys know I’ve got a feature on Chris Bradwell coming tomorrow. The SR DL had five tackles - one for loss - and a forced fumble against Arkansas.

Here’s some stuff that didn’t make it into the story.

On playing at Florida - remember he used to be at Florida State

“Every game this year is going to be tough. I’m going to be ready - just don’t want everybody going there in awe because they won (the national championship) last year. They’re a regular team like we are.“

Head coach Larry Blakeney on Bradwell

He’ll be a graduate. I don’t know if he’ll be a pro player, but he’s a good player. The guy’s got leadership and our football team needs leadership.

I haven’t heard a negative word from him, and (defensive tackles coach) Mo (Crain) is hard on him. He’ll call a spade a spade. All of our coaches are like that – sing the praises if they do right, and let them know if they do wrong.

Blakeney on ESPN2 First Take

Drew Champlin

Caught the “replay” of it and here’s pretty much all of it. Sage Steele interviewed Blakeney over the phone. He wasn’t shown live - just his mug, name, and picture of a phone

On what he thought about Appalachian State over Michigan

It was a shocking event to me, but I wasn’t surprised as I thought about it. I do know Jerry Moore and Coach Carr. Great football men at two storied programs that have been around for a long time. On any given Saturday, things can happen, especially if you have a team that has the personnel that Appalachian State has.

It’s all about emotion, who you think you are and who you think they are. Sometimes coaches can do everything perfectly and not have their team totally ready to play against a team.

On the transitions between classes

The I-AA to I-A transition has been the toughest transition for us. Division II to I-AA wasn’t as tough. We got a lot of players in recruiting through the I-A transfer. The program at App State has been around for a long time. The I-A transition is the most difficult when you transition, especially without a conference which we tried to do without a conference.

What he thinks about going to Florida

I don’t think our kids will be intimidated. We hope we’ll be well-prepared and have a way to scheme and compete with the Gators. I think our guys will be excited to play and look forward to playing the Gators. THey’re an awfully good, well personnel, well-coached football programs, but we’re going in there - they’ll probably have their guard up even more based on what happened last week.

We can’t be living off what happened to Michigan ... (Florida has) a lot of speed on defense, a great quarterback and tremendous skill on offense. The Wolverines and Appalachian State is history.

I think there was too many questions about App State-Michigan, but it was good exposure for Troy.

On another note, I went 15-1 in the fearless forecasters in the Dothan Eagle, going into Week 2 with a three-game lead over whoever is in second place. Last year I was tied for last and in 2005, I held last place all by myself. Lost in the emotion of going 8-0 in the college games (my only loss was high school - Houston County beat Ashford and I had predicted the 4A Yellow Jackets to beat the 2A Lions, which didn’t happen) was losing my lead in Fantasy NASCAR. Oh well.