ODU's Campbell plans to play closer to home

Brittany Campbell said she never got a chance to prove herself at Old Dominion.

The 6-3 sophomore center said coach Karen Barefoot told her during the middle of last season that her best option would be to find another team. Campbell said Barefoot told her she did not fit into ODU's system for the 2012-2013 season.

"I was surprised," Campbell said Wednesday. "The whole time she had been telling me I was doing everything right. I never got the chance to show what I could do."

Campbell and redshirt senior Jo Guilford will not return as Lady Monarchs next season. Guilford will play her final season at Hampton.

To say that Campbell, recruited by former ODU coach Wendy Larry, has played sparingly would be an understatement. In two years she has been on the floor a total of 41 minutes, scoring 6 points. That included five games during an injury-plagued freshman season when she spent much of the time in a boot. Campbell was healthy this year, but ineligible during the fall due to academic issues. As a sophomore, she played in 4 games for all of 13 minutes.

Still, Campbell said she loves ODU and her teammates. "I thought it was a perfect fit," she said.

Campbell said she is weighing options from two schools: Chicago State, which finished 6-24 last season, and Division II Lincoln Memorial in Harrogate, Tenn (one hour north of Knoxville). The Railsplitters finished 14-13 last season.

"As far as transferring, I want to be closer to home," said Campbell, who is from Indianapolis.

Campbell said she will decide in early May. Barefoot said she is happy that Campbell will be able to play for another program.

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.