Ute news: Battle 4 Atlantis moved to South Dakota

Battle for Rapid City?

Many reports that the Battle 4 Atlantis will be played in the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls. Dates are TBA. The field is Duke, Ohio State, Memphis, West Virginia, Creighton, Texas A&M, Wichita State, and Utah.

The primary building sponsor is Sanford Health, who have done well with the testing for the PGA tour.

Can’t play in the Bahamas due to travel restrictions. If I were a player, I’d be a bit bummed about going to South Dakota in stead of the Bahamas.

At least the ‘crowds’ might be larger. I’ve seen a few Atlantis games over the years, and there is never anyone there.

They may not let much if any crowd in to watch. All things considered, I’d rather be in the Bahamas.

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From Jon Rothstein on Twitter:

The Battle 4 Atlantis has sent out a press release saying that its 2020 event has been cancelled.

Plans continue to play the event at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls and not in the Bahamas.

I dont know if we have been in a field this competitive in a long time. Any game we win there will be huge and the experience will be great for this still fairly young team.

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It’s cute that you think we’ll win any of those games. I like the guys on our roster but our HC is useless. Our team will be very young once again, though we should see improvement over last year.

I’m most excited to see he Carlson and Jones mature and progress.

now its been cancelled

It sounds like the teams minus Duke are still going to try and do something in south dakota. I hope they can, or we can at least get a couple of them on the schedule.

Dayton replacing Duke. The show will go on in Sioux Falls. Still a strong field.

source: https://twitter.com/GoodmanHoops/status/1312193290620428289

This is a tremendous opportunity to battle before conference play starts, get some experience and start building a resume. Kudos to all involved for ensuring it happens!

Ill be interested to see what else we do.

With this tournament + 20 game conference schedule, I hope we do not head down to Provo. It should be pretty clear that they tampered with Lohner and we dont need to do them any favors as a result.

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Yeah…no.

Tampering may well be part of the game, but that doesn’t mean anyone, especially a team in a P5 league, should ever take it and move on. With this season being what it is, I have no idea if contracts for games after Nov 25 are still valid or if we are tossing everything and starting over. If its the latter, I would do them no favors. Otherwise, I wouldnt even make an effort.

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I disagree with this. I applaud the cancelling of the BYU game, it was the right move given BYU was unapologetic about the dirty play. BYU ended up looking bad after they defended Nick Emery only to see him stab them in the back.

Um, I think he was talking about the Nick Emery episode. They hardly looked good in the court of public opinion. IIRC, the zoobs tried to justify Emery’s punch to Taylor. Now, if you’re talking about us buying out the next game with byu-provo, I hardly think they “won” that fight. They had plenty of egg on their face given Rose’s non-action and their athletic department’s failure to discipline Emery.

If you’re talking about the local media, well…they certainly aren’t biased. I don’t know if this even got airtime on the national media. I could be wrong, because I often am. Just ask a few folks on this board.

In other words, the local media’s opinion didn’t matter, and so it became a “fight” of opinions between zoobs and Utes.

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Well…If Moose is going to come here and take my side, then i might just flip and join sancho’s side, although at this point im unclear as to what we are arguing.

I agree with that. I only disagreed with your premise that we were the only ones who looked bad in the Emery episode.

In hindsight, Larry should have expressed frustration to the media about Nick and Rose and left it at that (easy for me to say now). I think if he would have let things settle for a few weeks he may have made a different decision.

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Refusing to travel to Provo for the hoops game would do nothing but make Utah look very bad. Best we show up. As far as losing Lohner. Yes they may have played rather dirty in snatching him, but if he has the kind of values that he would go back on his word in that manner, may be best to not have him anyway.

And it could very well end up being their turn at a home game in front of no fans anyway then next year (lord help our country if we aren’t back to normal by then) they can come to the friendly confines of a packed and rowdy Huntsman Center.

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I wanted to clarify my position; Im not saying we should refuse to play there…Im just saying that if the craziness of COVID requires that changes to the schedule happen, we have no need to toss them a bone.

As far as I understand it, that game is still on the table as long as they can demonstrate appropriate testing/safety protocols. But its not a guarantee right now.

And indeed if the game can’t be safely played and is cancelled, just as our football team will play twice in a row in Provo, their hoops team can make a second straight trip to play in our back yard.