(2013 Recruit Sha'ki Holines/Rivals)
For all of those worried about UMass’ New England recruiting, here’s a local kid for you.
According to ESPN Boston’s Brendan Hall, the Minutemen have extended an offer to Sha’ki Holines, a tight end, linebacker and defensive end from Springfield.
It looks like the pursuit of Holines will be an old fashioned New England recruiting battle, as UConn and Boston College are also in the mix, according to Rivals.
According to Fortt Sports, the 6-foot-3, 265-pound athlete could play offensive line at the next level:
Holines raised his game against the best competition he has likely faced and did a good job of not only keeping opponents in front of him but also putting them to the ground at times. He’s a guard or center at the next level and will be snapping center as a junior. He could be the rare prospect from Western Massachusetts who gets a long look.
Check out his highlights here.
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According to xofan.com, UMass has extended an offer to Brian Lemelle, a wide receiver from Pennsylvania. Lemelle also has 14 other offers. … UMass has also offered Sheldon Flemming, a defensive end/tight end from Lehigh (Fla.), according to Chris Nee.
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If you haven’t already heard, most of UMass’ kick-off times have been set for next season.
Check out our updated schedule, complete with television coverage, here.
I find it laughable that Umass is spending all their time in the ticket (athletic) department seating about 3,000 season ticket holders-in a stadium that holds about 70k. The 1st 40,000 seats are all good seats. How about trying to get new fannies in the remaining 67,500 seats!! Will someone please tell us they are going to things the right way? Or the same old way?
I wish I could tell you, but mums the word so far. It appears that a good amount of money is being spent on recruiting right now, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot if these athletes are playing in front of a Revolution-sized crowd. With any luck, there will be some comment from the department. For now, all we know is that more tickets are being sold than in the past, but that effort needs to multiply – and then some – if this expensive experiment is going to work.
You’re preaching to the choir. 3000-ish season ticket holders should be able to be seated in an afternoon or two. This refrain about it taking weeks (or months) to do the seating is just ridiculous. Do the *^&$% seating and start MARKETING before it’s too late.
You can also watch ESPN3 on the Xbox, that’s how I watched a lot of the regional colege football games last year. Not available with every ISP but I know mine (verizon) is.
Also think that you could see NESN or Comcast Sports or even a local channel pick up coverage for some games.
We can only hope that someone’s hard at work behind the scenes speaking with local channels and other cable outlets to broadcast these games. Hard to go bigtime with smalltime TV capability. As for radio network, I still say something has to be done here. BC has their games on some major stations and we’ve got a puny network of 2000 watt stations where you have to connect a bent coat hanger to your radio’s antenna to stand a chance of listening.
CSN covered the colonial clash and I want to say the high school super bowls, which are played in Gillette. Maybe they have some sort of connection… hopefully.
Thanks for the schedule update. Not really sure how to respond regarding the TV coverage, but it looks pretty weak. ESPN 3, (I believe), is an online outlet where you have to log in and watch on your computer. Not really a cable system broadcast at all. Is there a chance that a more widely available channel can pick up some of these games and get them on in the Boston area? Unless this TV schedule changes, we’re not going to be able to see many away games at all. Also, any word on additional radio affiliates? We’ve got 84 days (and counting down) til the season opener and no word on expansion of the UMass sports network.