DUST PLUS:  THANKFUL ABOUT BUYING FORTY-NINER FUTURES
 
With all due respect to your flux capacitor collection (circa Hollywood 1985), it is time to fire up our Forty-Niner version of Back to the Future.
 
That’s our intro to a review of LBSU sporting teams and where they are and where they might be once our boy George checks in. Ah, I hear him now. “Yes. Yes. I’m George, George McFly. I’m your density. I mean… your destiny.”
 
Thanks George. Let’s look ahead to this smoking hot rumor that the wildly popular and galatically famous University of Hawaii will send all but their football team to the conservative, (translated–almost boring) Big West conference.  The biggest smiles will come from coaches in volleyball and baseball but many of the other programs from the top of the key to the baseline of tennis are now crunching the potential impact of an LBSU life somewhere on or over the rainbow.
 
Now the ink is not exactly dry on where the UH Rainbows will look for football gold, but it will have TV bucks involved and the Big West doesn’t play that game.  Both conferences have great entries in volleyball, baseball and pretty good teams in basketball and the Beach and the Big West would love to have Hawaii in the family. To sweeten the deal, UH may have to underwrite some of the travel costs. For example, one ‘Niner coach says that her team would need $7,500 plus every other year to travel to the islands.

Next up, we peek at the future of men’s basketball. No problem with building a challenging schedule, but getting the horses for a stretch run is always problematical.  The future for the not so maniacal Woody Harrelson look-a-like Dan Monson looks good.  He actually has a big man red-shirting this year like he always did in his glory days at Gonzaga. That would be Nick Shepherd (6-9, 225) and ranked No. 139 on the Rivals.com list. Monson gushes–“Nick is the most athletic big man we have had in our program since my arrival… His upside is tremendous and he has the potential to be a dominant player in the Big West.”

For outside offense, expect James Ennis – Ventura College’s 6-foot-7 forward – to sparkle. In a recent JUCO tourney game he scored 31 points with 5 rebounds and 3 assists. The Niners also have picked a pair of ball handlers for next season, Michael Caffey and Shaquille Hunter, plus sharpshooter Jacob Thomas, a sitting-out Minnesotan who was all-world in high school where he averaged 27.0 points, 5.1 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 2.0 steals per game, while making 49-percent of field goal attempts, 39-percent of 3-pointers and 74-percent of free throws. Whew.

Baseball’s Troy Buckley and his first year Dirtbag team will add nine players for 2012 and welcomes back 14 players from the 2010 squad to join with 24 new players this spring.  That’s a lot of future, folks. The leadership for the 49er baseball future will come from Andrew Gagnon the team’s top pitcher (3.28 ERA and 65 strikeouts) who tied for the Cape Cod League lead in wins and was selected as the starting pitcher for the league’s All-Star Game, held in Fenway Park. The Dirtbags will have another signing period this spring.

For Jody Wynn and the ladies basketball future, it will get marginally better when they are able to kick about five players out of the training room. The best future note has been the play of 5-7 freshman guard Brandi Henton. In the team’s 22-point loss to USC Sunday, Hinton had a game-high 30 points and team-high seven rebounds. Next year, Jody will welcome more future including powerful Devin Hudson (a 6-foot-3 post player, who led her league in rebounding, 7.6 rpg while scoring 17.4 ppg) and Bianka Balthazar, a three-star recruit who Wynn calls, “a tough and versatile player who will fit into our system and play multiple positions.”

The ‘Niner hoop ladies play in the Waikiki Beach Marriott Rainbow Wahine Showdown tourney this weekend while on Saturday night the LB men are at home to fight LMU for the coveted (and virtually unknown) Bucket of Sand trophy. That game will finish a busy weekend in the blue-pointed building in which win or stay home Beach volleyball will play three matches, one on Friday night against Notre Dame and two on Saturday, 11:00am vs. Akron and 2:00pm vs. Seattle.

Our 49er futures report ends with volleyball.  Brian Gimmillaro has two big time talents coming in this fall, 6-2 middle blocker/outside hitter Chisom Okpala, ranked as the No. 39 recruit in the nation and setter Tori Jobe. Okpala could team with the Beach’s blond terminator, 6-6 freshman Haleigh Hampton. Jobe, a true setter out of Amarillo, Texas is 5-11 and both are Prep Volleyball Top 150 recruits. That’s very good news for the future.

Meanwhile I have to tweak my flux capacitors so finish the pumpkin pie and hit the light on your way out.