Tennessee Martin Lady Pacers

[jordanmom]

Why are the Lady Pacers are so bad this year? Have they won any games this year? I am new to the area but why do they not recruit the local girls from west Tennessee? There are alot of local players that would love to play for the Lady Pacers that end up going to school in Martin. Can someone explain the reasons for this?

[warmachine7954]

They are the Skyhawks now, have been for a while. No, they don't recruit to much locally. They past on Kayla Hudson 2 years ago didn't even bother to look at her. She could have helped them some. Martin doesn't really havemuch to offer like other towns. Budget is low and the town is small hard things for a college coach.

[13aafanatic]

Can someone explain the reasons for this?

 

 

The Skyhawk women's team is 1-9 overall and 0-2 in the OVC.

 

Not sure. But a few points here. A majority of rural West Tennessee's most talented players over the past few years have gone major D-I or NAIA. Right now - Union has 6 area players, Freed Hardeman has 3 and Lambuth has 2. (Belmont has two great area players in mid-major D-I Atlantic Sun, as well.) It is hard to compete with D-I programs that are playing on the national stage or NAIA programs that are always playing for a national championship.

 

I remember reading an ESPN article a couple of years ago that said Tennessee-Martin had one of the smallest D-I athletic budgets. That has to play a part, too.

 

Head coach Tara Tansil-Gentry, a Greenfield native, does a good job. They actually have two area players on the roster this year - Cali Cupples from Dyer County and Whitney Malone from Munford.

 

UT Martin has recently stepped up their local recruiting in football and men's basketball. Maybe the women's program will follow.

[Greenfieldfan]

Dont get me started on why UTM doesnt recruit local girls? Its a real shame. You have posters on here who have argued that our local girls cant play Division 1 basketball. Let me just say UTM is the weakest Division 1 school in America and Union University would beat UTM by 20 or more every year of the past 10 years. You could have put an All Star team together just in the last few years from local girls playing from our area.

 

Not to mention the crowd they would have at their games. Instead of having 150 people at their home games they would fill the place up with local girls playing. There is no reason for recruiting out of state girls when there is as much good local talent available.

 

You could have fielded a pretty good team from just 5 local schools: Westview, Bradford, Gleason, Obion and Gibson County. That team would have beaten UTM's team the past few years.

[oldskoollu37]

I agree with greenfieldfan but the fact is this: no one wants to go and play ball at martin, when they struggle every year and you have to option of going to union where they compete for a national championship every year or lambuth who have constantly improved and actually won the national championship themselves in 2006 (i believe it was 06' lol). The players want to go where they can be successful and that partly the reason UTM doesn't get much local talent because the girls don't want to go play for a program that doesn't win. In turn that makes the coaches have to recruit in other states and sometimes countries to get quality players.

[howboutthemdogs]

I know some of the girls that went to NAIA schools in years past would have went to UTM. They were not recruited and are alot better than who they have!

[warmachine7954]

If some of the girls where shown interest from UTM then they might consider. When your not shown interest I would't wanna attend either. The men's side is a bit different the rural West TN for boys is different than rural West TN for girls. There are allot of girls from that area that could have gone to UTM and competed for spots. Instead UTM shows no interest and they got to Union, Freed, or Lambuth.

[Indian]

This needs to go to the college topics.