Another edition of the ASOR Mailbag! Thank you for submitting your questions and continue to send them in and we will be happy to answer them in our next feature. You can send them to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, e-mail, or as a comment on the site. We had a ton of great questions this week, so let’s get right to it.

The Bream family are huge supporters of Liberty University. Shannon Bream, current Fox News reporter, is married to Sheldon Bream, the brother of Sid Bream. As for who is the bigger celebrity, it would probably be Shannon at this point in time. It has been nearly 30 years since Sid last played in the MLB, and, outside of a few pockets of diehard baseball and Atlanta Braves fans, I would imagine the vast majority of the American population has never heard of him. As for Shannon, she is currently in the limelight and well-known for her time on Fox News and as an author.

With Darius McGhee back in the fold, this is an obvious question as the Flames have one scholarship available for this coming season. Coach McKay was asked about it earlier this week and here is what he had to say:

“I would like to err on the side of caution, make sure we don’t get off track about the pursuit that, I think, has allowed or at least accentuated our growth in our program. We are going to continue to be selective. If we find the right guy, we’re certainly going to try to add him to our family, that could be next week, it could be in the Fall recruiting class.”

So, it doesn’t sound there’s a clear answer at this point in time. Based on social media, which isn’t the end all be all of course, it doesn’t appear the Flames have been very active in the transfer portal market since the season ended. Perhaps some of that was waiting to see what McGhee would decide. Now, that we know that answer, it would make sense if McKay and the coaching staff make a run at a few names in the portal.

Trying to come up with some names when there are over 1,000 guys that have entered the portal. In my opinion, I think it would make sense to target a veteran point guard that has one or maybe two years of eligibility remaining. This would allow the young point guards in the system – DJ Moore and Colin Porter – the opportunity to to develop and grow more naturally without McKay being forced to play them before they are ready. Remember, both Moore and Porter entered college a year early. This would also allow McGhee the opportunity to play off the ball more and not be required to not only be the team’s primary scorer but also the primary ball handler. It doesn’t mean that the team would never play through McGhee as the “point guard” on offense, but it would take some of the burden off him.

I’ve also seen several clamor for a transfer big man. Sure, that would be great too, but there aren’t many prototypical big men in the college game today. Even look at some of the top programs in the country, they more often than not have forwards that like to play on the wing and are able to shoot from distance. Not to mention, the Flames have several forwards on the roster already – Kyle Rode, Shiloh Robinson, Blake Preston, Bryson Spell, Zach Cleveland, Ben Southerland. Those are the type of “bigs” that McKay has been targeting in recent classes as he puts an emphasis on recruiting “position-less” players that can play pretty much any position on the floor and can also play alongside several different players, giving McKay ultimate flexibility in his rotation and lineups.

It’s way too early to be answering this question as we don’t know exactly what the full rosters for either team will look like or have the schedules, but we will entertain it nonetheless because it is fun. The women’s team had the better record this past season, finishing at 28-5 overall compared to the men’s finish of 22-11. Both teams lost in the ASUN Tournament semifinals. The men return basically their entire team from last year with the exception of Keegan McDowell, and they should be able to improve upon their record. For the women, they have a few key losses, most notably Bridgette Rettstatt and Priscilla Smeenge, and it will be hard for them to duplicate the success from last year as there will be virtually no margin for error in the non-conference. Still, six games is a lot for the men to make up, but I will say, behind McGhee, the men’s team ends up with more wins than the women. I do expect both to have very good seasons once again, with both reaching the 20-win plateau.

This seems to be a random question. Searching for a QB for the 2022 season? I find that hard to believe as the Flames already picked up Charlie Brewer in the portal in late December and have four quarterbacks competing for the starting job this coming fall. Head coach Hugh Freeze and his staff are probably more worried about losing one of those four in the portal prior to the start of the season than looking to add someone.

I think Liberty softball has strong support. That doesn’t always translate to butts in seats for a number of reasons. First, because of the type of school Liberty is. It’s a younger school with very few kids that have grown up as Liberty fans. There are also aren’t a ton of people in the Lynchburg community that are Liberty fans without some sort of tie to the school. Additionally, the school draws nationwide and even internationally, so when those students become alumni there is a large number that return to where they are from and don’t stick around Lynchburg. So, to expect there to be several hundred or even thousands of fans showing up to a Wednesday evening softball game isn’t realistic. I’m a huge Liberty fan, including softball, and I went to the game against the Blue Devils on Wednesday, but I’ve only been to a handful of softball games this year. Schedules are busy, the weather has been cold, and it is so convenient to watch the game from the comfort of my own living room while getting other chores checked off the list. I haven’t been there for a ton of games, but that doesn’t mean I don’t support the team.

Also, just for some data, I tracked down 2019 NCAA Division I softball attendance numbers. These were for the year prior to the pandemic since attendance was limited for most programs in 2021 and the 2020 season ended up being cut short. That year, only 21 programs in the country averaged more than 1,000 fans, and only 52 programs averaged more than 500. So far this year, Liberty is averaging 394 in attendance. There were 380 at the Duke game Wednesday night. These numbers should continue to trend up towards the end of the season as the weather continues to improve. For example, there were 1,114 in attendance for the Virginia Tech game last week and 611 at the last home game played on a Saturday.

One more year in the ASUN with our new friends that we’ve enjoyed getting to know over the past several years. Switching conferences certainly is bittersweet. It’s good for the program and the brand to move to Conference USA, but there have also been some friendships made through social media and other channels these past few years. Time heals all wounds, right?