Parade All-American pregnant, not going to ODU

Kaneisha Atwater

Old Dominion has announced that Parade All-American Kaneisha Atwater will not attend the school and will instead enroll at Indian River State College in her hometown of Florida. According to The Virginian-Pilot, Atwater is staying in Florida because she's pregnant.

NOTE: We don't know this for sure, but one of the reasons Atwater may have wanted her situation clarified is because we initially posted that she was not eligible to attend ODU. Now, we don't have the reach of ESPN (or ESPNU, or ESPNW, or ESPNAnything for that matter), but we do have our share of readers and information like this can spread quickly. So to Kaneisha and everyone else out there, we apologize for mischaracterizing Atwater's status, and we will re-double our efforts to provide the most accurate content possible. Kaneisha, we wish you all the best. And we've resigned ourselves to the fact that there is now zero chance the child will be named LadySwish. And now, back to our regularly scheduled post....

How much Atwater's absence will hurt ODU is unclear, especially in the short term. For while we're sure she's a fine prospect, we couldn't figure out how a player who wasn't all-state in Florida was deemed All-American by Parade. In fact, we worried that the honor was going to subject Atwater to unfair expectations, that because of the Parade honor, Lady Monarchs fans were going to be expecting a game-changer instead of a true freshman that would have likely needed time to figure things out. Unfortunately, we won't have to worry about that now.

The Atwater revelation were part of a big news day for Old Dominion women's hoops. The school also announced that sophomore center Brittany Campbell will sit out the fall semester due to failure to meet NCAA eligibility standards.

Interesting, because a few days ago, Lady Monarchs coach Karen Barefoot sent out the following message on Twitter:

Just got our team's summer grades back! Wow, way to go!! Proud of our team! Great summer! Ready for fall term to begin! 

On Monday, Barefoot told The Virginian-Pilot that Campbell's grades from last spring made her ineligible, and that a strong summer has put her on track to good academic standing in the second semester. Said Barefoot: "I'm proud we've got her to a point where it's possible to get her eligible."

Finally, Barefoot will reveal ODU's non-conference schedule this week via her Twitter account. Nice touch. We knew Barefoot would eventually start making effective use of this tool.