Ole Miss wrapped up spring football Saturday with its annual Grove Bowl game. The Blue beat the Red (I think), 17-7. More importantly, no one else got hurt, and Hugh Freeze and Co. can turn their thoughts to getting ready for the fall. Speaking of Freeze, he has a bit of a conundrum on his hands this recruiting cycle. Ole Miss baseball took two of three from No. 1 Vanderbilt in Nashville, Malik Newman's recruiting took yet another turn and the Ole Miss basketball program mourned the loss of a friend. My thoughts on those topics and more follow here, thanks to Oxford-based RE/MAX real estate agent Harry Alexander.
1. Tee Shepard had won a starting job last August. Heck, he had dominated camp, drawing hushed comparisons to NFL cornerbacks.
Then he tore a ligament in his toe in a scrimmage. The injury required season-ending surgery. The news was devastating to Ole Miss' coaching staff.
Shepard, however, immediately found a bright side.
"It was actually a freak accident," Shepard said. "Everything happens for a season. God made me better this season.
"I was disappointed, but at the same time, it got me ready weight-wise. I wasn't ready weight-wise. I was skinny. I've gained some weight. I'm glad I went through the process. I don't think I'd be as good as I am now last year."
When you've been through the adversity Shepard has, you learn to roll with bad breaks, apparently. Besides, just days before his injury, Shepard had experienced a breakthrough, one that was a lifetime in the making.
During the first week of fall camp, shortly after Shepard arrived in Oxford from Holmes (Miss.) Community College, Freeze blew a whistle. Shepard thought he heard it.
"I was tripping out," Shepard said, laughing. "I was like, 'What is that noise, man? Do we have a bird in here?' It was pretty crazy. (Freeze) was like, 'Tee, did you hear that?' I was like, 'Blow it one more time.' It was pretty exciting."
Shepard was born with severely deficient hearing. He learned to read lips well, but he couldn't hear sounds from a distance and he had no peripheral hearing. On field of athletic play, the inability to hear was more than just a little troublesome, but there was nothing Shepard could do about it. His family's insurance wouldn't pay for hearing aids that he could wear in competition.
"You ever listen to the radio and you're trying to find the right channel?" Shepard said. "You can hear people talk but it's (full of) static. That's how my hearing aid was. It caused a lot of problems. It was frustrating.
"It was difficult. There were times when the referee blew the whistle when I'd come down and just (thwack!). There were times when they threw me out the game. The coaches would tell them I have hearing loss but they'd still eject me from the game."
Shepard, a Fresno, Calif., product, originally signed with Notre Dame but transferred to Holmes. He signed with Ole Miss in February 2014 but didn't get to campus until August.
"This is the first place that finally understood and knew how bad my hearing was," Shepard said. "They helped me. Shannon (Singletary), he helps with the training department, and he has hearing loss himself. I got connected with him and he helped me out big-time.
"The new technology hearing aids that I have are phenomenal. I got it last fall. I heard my first whistle ever. It's pretty much crazy. I'm hearing sounds I've never heard before. I'm starting to pick it up. It's tight."
Shepard closed out Saturday's Grove Bowl with an interception. According to coaches, he had an impressive camp and appears poised to start along side junior college transfer Tony Bridges at cornerback this fall. Asked if that was a lot of pressure for a guy playing his first year of Southeastern Conference football, Shepard smiled.
"It's not a lot of pressure. I've been looking forward to this moment, to be honest with you. It's been a long journey for me. I'm excited. I'm ready to go."
2. Speaking of spring football, Shepard and his Ole Miss teammates wrapped up their portion of it Saturday with the Grove Bowl. There's not much to say. The game was vanilla. If you're judging quarterbacks off Saturday's game, God bless you, you simply refuse to listen to coaches, coordinators, media, second-graders, etc. Look, until Laremy Tunsil, Aaron Morris, Robert Conyers and the rest of the walking wounded that make up Ole Miss' offensive line return, there's no way to properly evaluate much of anything.
I thought all three quarterbacks looked OK at times, shaky at others in the limited amount of access the media had this spring. The same applies for running backs. Some wide receivers, as Freeze noted repeatedly during spring, must become more consistent, but I'm not doing a lot of evaluating of that part of Ole Miss' team until Laquon Treadwell is back in the mix.
Defensively, thanks to Shepard, Bridges, C.J. Hampton and what I think will be a much improved defensive secondary, Ole Miss has a real chance to be much better in 2015 than it was in 2014. Middle linebacker is a concern; of that, there's no doubt. That will be a story line when early August rolls around.
That said, there aren't many question marks on the Rebels' roster heading into the offseason. It's a team that should, as Freeze said, compete for an SEC Western Division title. However, the difference between first and fifth in the SEC West will be minuscule --- and the teams in sixth and seventh place will likely be more than capable of pulling off an upset or two.
3. I reserve the right to change my 2015 predictions 1,000 times between now and Ole Miss' opener against UT-Martin. As of today, I'm going with 9-3 overall, 5-3 in the SEC. If you made me predict the losses, I'd go with road losses to Alabama and Auburn and a home setback to Arkansas.
That said, I believe Ole Miss has a chance in all 12 games it plays next fall, assuming Tunsil, Treadwell, Morris, Conyers and others return to full health in time for fall camp. On the flip side, even at full strength, there aren't that many sure things on the Rebels' schedule. That trip to Starkville at the end of the season won't be a walk in the proverbial park. Neither will the early-October trip to Florida, and my projection gives Ole Miss a win over LSU in Oxford.
4. Freeze has a problem on the recruiting trail. It's a good problem, mind you, but it's a problem nonetheless. Ole Miss landed a commitment from three-star athlete Greg Eisworth late Saturday. Eisworth could do a number of things at the college level and chose the Rebels over Oklahoma, Baylor and others.
The following is NOT about Eisworth, but Ole Miss is in an interesting position. The Rebels are players for several national prospects, but as you might expect, the competition is stiff. The presence of Shea Patterson is a major help for the Rebels, and a strong 2015 season would help things as well, but when it comes to Rivals100-type prospects, no school gives up easily.
Ole Miss could likely fill up its recruiting class in a matter of days if it chose to, but that would mean refusing to wait on those elite prospects. That's obviously something Ole Miss isn't going to do, but there's a gamble associated with "slow-playing" prospects ready to commit while waiting for higher-ranked prospects still weighing multiple options.
5. There are moments in a season when things turn. Colby Bortles' grand slam on Friday night might --- or might not --- turn out to be one of those moments. If Ole Miss turns this season around and makes some sort of NCAA tournament run, Bortles' heroics --- which led to a series win over No. 1 Vanderbilt --- will be one of those season-changing moments.
The Rebels still strike out too much. There are still issues all over the roster. However, winning two of three in Nashville proved this team, as Chase Parham wrote late Saturday, still has a pulse.
6. Malik Newman still hasn't made a decision. Heck, the five-star guard from Jackson, Miss., hasn't even announced a visit schedule. There could be a new wrinkle in his recruiting, however. According to Scout.com's Evan Daniels, teams from China and Europe have reached out to Newman about spending a year overseas.
"We have (heard from overseas teams," Horatio Webster, Newman's father, told Daniels. "One time he asked me about what it would be like overseas and then another time, he says, 'No, Dad, I'm not going to do that.' Of course I'm not going to make him do it."
Emmanuel Mudiay chose to play in China this past season instead of going to SMU after there were some issues with the NCAA Clearinghouse, and he reportedly signed for more than $1 million. Now Mudiay is a projected top-5 pick in the upcoming NBA Draft.
"We are talking around $1 million," Webster told Daniels. "They'll sell you on getting a shoe contract so you'd probably leave there with $1.5 or $2 million."
Newman has said that if he could jump straight to the NBA from high school he would.
7. Every so often, I talk to sources dialed into college football recruiting. Every once in a while, I'm told about some kid who is a prospect, but he doesn't graduate from high school until 2018 or 2019. I always cringe.
"I'm not calling a 15-year-old, man," I say.
And I don't.
College coaches, however, can't say the same. The AJC's Michael Carville recently asked college coaches about the offering of scholarships to prospects who haven't even started high school yet. South Carolina's Steve Spurrier just offered Atlanta-area eighth-grader Dominick Blaylock, the son of former NBA guard Mookie Blaylock.
"I'm going to answer it two ways," Ole Miss' Freeze told the AJC. "I think offering kids (in middle school or the ninth grade) is way too early, but I will be guilty of doing the same thing because it's the world we're in. Does that make sense? If I had my choice, I'd say we don't offer anybody until after the completion of his junior football season. That would be my preference. I've been a high school coach, and I've talked to the high school coaches. I just don't see it being good for anybody by doing what we're doing (with offers getting earlier). But I am guilty. I'm not sitting here saying I'm not doing the same thing. But if I could draw up any way I wanted, I'd say we couldn't offer anybody until after his junior season. That would best for all the high schools, the student-athletes, and us in college. I don't know if that makes sense to you. I'm not for it, but I'm guilty of it."
Some other answer, via the AJC:
LSU's Les Miles: "The young player, you question whether or not he will ever be good enough. If that player has very visual and easy-to-evaluate keys such as size, speed, strength and he's a physical player - it's easy to offer those guys. You also know that they're good students and a little bit about their family. You know that they are going to motivated and move in the path that will give them great success. It becomes an easy thing to do, to be honest. You don't do it very often because you can't predetermine some guys. But the guys that you can? You didn't make a mistake. You knew that that eighth or ninth grader could really play. That's always been the case. We saw La'el Collins as a tenth grader and it was so easy to see him being a great player that it was not funny. And then there have been some other guys that I can't mention right now who naturally have instincts and ability that are going to project them as a very, very early player in college. When you combine with that LSU does with them once we get them on our campus, if Lord willing they avoid injury, they'll end up being NFL players."
Oklahoma State's Mike Gundy: "We offered a high school freshman a few weeks ago. And I said I would never do it. But we had a kid who fit for what we look for. We went ahead and made that offer. It was a little unusual for us. We like to stick with juniors because you really don't know how a young player is going to develop. Our concern and my concern is with the high school coaches, and trying to keep the focus of their players on their team But unfortunately a lot of things going on out there (in recruiting) are not going to change. Everybody is trying to be the first in the door. And I think it's going to be the future. You're going to see a lot of early offers because of the availability of video out there for these college coaches to access. It wasn't as easy to access in the past. Now you can find video of young man even down to the eighth grade. So for that reason, I think you will see more of this in the future."
Tennessee's Butch Jones: "I do think it's a great challenge. Kids develop differently. They develop at different stages. It's easy to throw an offer out there. We try to guard against that. You know, you're looking into a crystal ball, and you're trying to project the future. Like I've said, they are like our children. They all develop at different paces at different stages. I have an eight-year-old right now, and if anybody is interested in offering him a scholarship, I'm all ears. I'd love to listen to it."
8. TCU's Gary Patterson hasn't said a lot about the Horned Frogs being left out of the first college football playoff last fall. That changed on Wednesday, when Patterson criticized the process in an interview with a group of reporters.
TCU dropped from No. 3 to No. 6 in the final CFP rankings after beating Iowa State 55-3 in its final regular-season game. Ohio State jumped from fifth to fourth after beating Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big Ten championship game. TCU ended up in the Peach Bowl, where it disposed of Ole Miss.
"I was told the reason we had a (selection) committee is we were going to take all that stuff out of it. (Conference) championship games shouldn't have mattered," Patterson said, according to CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd. "Their job was to watch all this film and pick the four best teams no matter who you played, what you did. All the sudden it came down to, 'Well, they played a championship game but they didn't.' That's not what we were told. We were told they were going to pick the four best teams."
Patterson said he had an inkling that would happen. On the field before that Iowa State game, he told Iowa State coach Paul Rhoads, "We're not going to the playoffs."
"I'm pretty good at gut feelings," Patterson said, according to Dodd. "I watched all the articles during the week. I actually thought that was the kiss of death moving to three. There was that motto out there, if we would have been an Oklahoma and Texas with a larger fan base and sold more T-shirts, that we would have been in the playoffs. I think we gained more possibly by not being in the playoffs --- and how we handled it --- than by being in the playoffs.
"You can't say it was the body of work, then we beat somebody 55-3 and dropped from three to six. That means you studied everybody in the country and the body of work moved us to three. But we won 55-3. The other people's body of work moved so much that they moved everybody up --- and us down --- in five days."
Something tells me Freeze --- and former Ole Miss quarterback Bo Wallace --- isn't arguing.
9. We're a week removed from a fairly entertaining Final Four, but the beating college basketball has taken hasn't stopped. The latest to pick up the whip to administer a few lashes is Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.
Cuban told ESPN.com he doesn't enjoy watching the college game, but his bigger concern is that the physical, slow-down style that has become common in the NCAA results in prospects who are poorly prepared to jump to the NBA.
"If they want to keep kids in school and keep them from being pro players, they're doing it the exact right way by having the 35-second shot clock and having the game look and officiated the way it is," Cuban told ESPN.com. "Just because kids don't know how to play a full game of basketball.
"You've got three kids passing on the perimeter. With 10 seconds on the shot clock, they try to make something happen and two other kids stand around. They don't look for anything and then run back on defense, so there's no transition game because two out of five or three out of five or in some cases four out of five kids aren't involved in the play.
"It's uglier than ugly, and it's evidenced by the scoring going down. When the NBA went through that, we changed things."
Cuban said he hopes that the NCAA's rules and officiating style change to allow faster offenses to succeed instead of rewarding teams that milk the clock and play boring basketball.
"It's horrible. It's ridiculous," Cuban told ESPN.com. "It's worse than high school. You've got 20 to 25 seconds of passing on the perimeter and then somebody goes and tries to make a play and do something stupid, and scoring's gone down.
"The referees couldn't manage a White Castle. Seriously, the college game is more physical than the NBA game, and the variation in how it's called from game to game (is a problem). Hell, they don't even have standards on balls. They use different balls. One team's got one ball, the other team's got another ball. There are so many things that are ridiculous."
As someone who watched a lot of college hoops this year, I find it difficult to argue with a single word.
10. For some reason, every time I think about Torrey Ward, I remember a night in New York, a day before Ole Miss faced Dayton in the NIT semifinals. I can't remember the details. Was I returning from dinner and having a drink in the hotel bar or was I passing through the hotel bar on my way out and into the city?
Weird. What I do remember was somehow crossing paths with Torrey Ward. My group and his group hung out for a bit and Torrey held court. I can't remember where I had dinner that night or who I was with, but I remember laughing until I hurt listening to Torrey.
He had that type of charisma. He was just fun. So it was shocking and devastating to hear that Torrey Ward died a week ago in a plane crash in central Illinois. He was 36, on his way back from the national championship game and on his way to big things.
Ward was the associate head coach at Illinois State. He was beloved there and a big part of the program's success over the past three years. His name was starting to pop up in some head coaching searches, and his goal to become a Division I head coach by the age of 40 was starting to look realistic.
Ward was engaged. He and his fiancée were expecting a child. Ward had two children from a previous marriage. People who knew Torrey much better than I have told me this week he had never been happier than he had been in the last few years.
Illinois State coach Tim Muller spoke at Ward's funeral over the weekend. It was held at Bartow Arena on the UAB campus.
"And when it comes to legacy remember this, 'The best legacy you can leave is not in some building that is named after you but rather a world that has been impacted and touched by your presence,'" Muller said, quoting a book he'd been reading when he learned of Ward's death. "Torrey Ward has a legacy, a great legacy."
He does indeed. He made people smile. He made people laugh. He made people feel important.
You'll be missed, Torrey.
