{"id":5647,"date":"2014-04-03T22:39:18","date_gmt":"2014-04-04T02:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=5647"},"modified":"2014-04-03T22:39:18","modified_gmt":"2014-04-04T02:39:18","slug":"charles-cooke-transferring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=5647","title":{"rendered":"Charles Cooke Transferring"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We hardly even knew ya<\/p><\/div>\n

We had such a nice little plan for this week. First Rob would post the ThrowbackThursday video of JMU beating UVA in ancient times and then I’d tout the new Student Appreciation Day that the football team is putting on this weekend. We were gonna be happy and not even visit the message boards and stay in our happy place at least through the Final Four next week.<\/p>\n

And then this. Men’s hoops stud Charles Cooke has been granted his release and is transferring out. Rumors had been simmering on this one, but we had hoped they were just that, rumors. Now we know that Cooke will be following Bessick and Rivard in an apparent exodus from Matt Brady’s program. Along with Bessick, the Dukes have now lost half of that fearsome foursome of freshmen that helped lead JMU back to the NCAA tourney last year and had given so many of us such high hopes for the two years remaining as a group. Now only Ron Curry, who thankfully has probably demonstrated the most growth on the court of that group, and Andre Nation, whose talent we all gape at but whose ability to maintain eligibility is about as reliable as the insanely schizophrenic tweets of @NEWERAJMUFB, remain. Talk about a buzzkill.<\/p>\n

Look, these are college kids and they seem to have tried hard for JMU the last two years. We wish them well. And we certainly don’t know Cooke’s reasons – maybe he thinks he’s the next Luke Hancock (except he can’t shoot), maybe he’s tired of hearing Nation Nation Nation even though Andre was on the court less than half the year and may not take things as seriously as his teammates, or maybe he even thinks JMU is headed for a lameduck year anyways after some last-minute conference change in the next 60 days. But what’s sad is it seems entirely more likely the kids either a) don’t believe in Brady and the staff and\/or b) are getting really poor advice. Probably a combination of the two, but the one thing we know is that this group could have been special and had a legit shot at back-to-back (and thereby 3\/4 years) NCAA runs and maybe even to develop into a Stephen F. Austin type senior-laden team capable of anything and now they’re either going to some other similarly mediocre mid-major or going to be a role-player at a perceived better program.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, Rob, our resident hoophead didn’t take the news very well today, and I think it’s fair to say this news actually drags us down about everything related to JMU Sports, including the realignment mess. It just sucks we never get a chance to enjoy things like the afterglow of a great women’s hoops run, a creative new event like Student Appreciation Day, or the red-hot run the softball team is on because Athletic’s two prize bellcows (football and men’s hoops) and the administration always seem ready to drop the other shoe on us like a cartoon anvil.<\/p>\n