College Park Skyhawks make Tori Miller first female GM in G League

Tori Miller has been promoted to general manager of the College Park Skyhawks, the Hawks’ G League affiliate. Miller, who is from Decatur and previously served as assistant GM, is the first female GM in the G League. Her time with the organization began three seasons ago as manager of basketball operations for the Erie BayHawks (this past season was the Skyhawks’ inaugural season in College Park).

The Hawks announced that former Skyhawks GM Derek Pierce will continue to oversee the Hawks’ scouting department as vice president of player personnel. The Hawks also promoted Dwight Lutz to senior director of basketball strategy and analytics, Zac Walsh to director of team operations and Max Horowitz to senior data scientist, and hired Justin Howe as assistant athletic trainer/physical therapist.

We stipulate that the Ivy League isn’t like other conferences. It offers no athletic scholarships. It was the last Division I league to institute a conference basketball tournament. It also was the first to cancel its conference tournament in March. Fifty hours later, every league had canceled.

The Ivy League is not the SEC, where sports Just Means More and football plays before crowds of 90,000 and up. The Ivy League’s announcement Wednesday that it will not play football — or any sport — this autumn doesn’t mean every other conference will again fall in line. It is, however, an indication.

Speaking Thursday, this was Georgia Athletic Director Greg McGarity: “We’re still having our conference calls, and I’m sure (the Ivy League’s postponement) will be a topic we discuss at the next meeting and ongoing meetings. It’s obviously a sign that things aren’t improving, which is discouraging. But that doesn’t necessarily paint the picture for the rest of the country.”

No. It doesn’t. But college football is fighting the clock. McGarity believes a final decision to play or not to play must be made by Aug. 1. “That’s three weeks from now,” he said. “What can change between now and then? Are we going to get a vaccine in the next three weeks? I don’t know. But things are trending in the wrong direction.”

The last thing college football wants to do is to start and be forced to stop. The growing belief is the 2020 season will