Good morning!  Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend.  We have a few things to catch up on thanks to the holiday, so read up!

No news was bigger than Navy locking up the Poinsettia Bowl bid with a “why must you do this to my heart after I just ate nothing but turkey and pie for the last 24 hours” win over South Alabama on Friday afternoon.  Geoffrey Whiteside fumbled with 4:30 to go, giving South Alabama a chance to tie it late with a touchdown and a 2 point conversion.  And they did.  Twice.  But both were called back for penalties.  Brendon Clements picked off the third try and Navy got the onsides kick to seal the deal.  It was another record setting day for Keenan Reynolds, as his 3 touchdowns put him 1st place all-time for rushing TD’s by a quarterback with 61 total, surpassing Colin Kaepernick and Eric Crouch who had shared the record at 59.  Reynolds has at least 14 games left in his career, putting the all-time rushing record of 77 (held by Wisconsin’s Montee Ball) clearly in his sights.

Navy will face a Mountain West team in the Poinsettia Bowl, which gets the 2nd pick after the Las Vegas Bowl.  We’ll do a post later this week on possible opponents, but in the interim, if you can’t go to the game, head on over to NavySports.com and donate tickets so a military member can go in your stead.

It was an up and down weekend for the Navy men’s basketball team.  On Wednesday evening, the Mids overcame a sluggish and error prone first half to beat Penn St.-Harrisburg 67-42 for its second win of the season.  Freshman Jace Hogan came off the bench and lead the team with 14 points in 17 minutes of action while forward Edward Alade came one rebound shy of a double-double as he added 11 points.  But Navy would fall to Saint Francis University 85-62 less than 72 hours later as the Red Flash seemingly couldn’t miss a shot.  Navy was actually 50% from the floor, but St. Francis U was a blistering 65.4%, including an unreal 70.4% in the first half.  Navy’s home to host Penn on Wednesday before heading south to play The Citadel on Saturday.

The women’s basketball team won a pair of games over the weekend while hosting the Navy Classic.  The ladies defeated UNC Greensboro 71-64 in a game that had quite the dichotomy of halves.  After an opening 20 minutes that saw the Mids go into the break trailing 23-21, the Navy offense exploded for 50 2nd half points (the most ever in a half for a Stefanie Pemper Navy squad) to grab the victory.  That game was followed by a 60-51 win over Grand Canyon on Saturday, the 3rd win in a row for the team and 4th in 5 games.  Freshman Taylor Dunham was named to the all-tournament team after putting up a combined 26 points, 6 assists, 5 rebounds, and 4 steals.

Quick Hits:

• Navy football co-captain Parrish Gaines has been selected to the East-West Shrine All-Star Game.  The game is played on January 17th in St. Petersburg, Florida.
• Spirit spots are starting to come out of Bancroft Hall and elsewhere:
  • Does the game lose its shine after 12 wins in a row?  These mids will tell you that they still give a ship.
  • Navy EOD got in on the fun from Panama City.
  • Alright alright alright.  Fake Rich Ellerson is brought to tears reflecting on the rivalry.
  • The USS Comstock took an awful adaptation of a board game and made it in to a much better spirit spot.
  • Some may remember the 36th CAB pulling off a Go Army spirit spot last year while embarked on the USS Ponce.  Well the then-CO of the Ponce is now the XO on the USS Makin Island, and he has a few words for those guys.