DeSmetBilliken Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 I looked this up the other day, and while we want to be better than we generally have been, I thought this was a worthwhile statistic. Ford's winning percentage at Oklahoma State, a job from which he was fired, is better than any SLU coach in the last 50 years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigMouthBilliken Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Fingers crossed +1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schasz Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Don't get me wrong, I am glad Crews is gone. I am just less than inspired by this hire. By the way, both Crews and Ford have the same number of appearances in the NCAA Tourney 6. It took Crews 28 to amass his appearances and Ford 16. Not as concerned about wins as the NCAA is one and done and SLU has yet to get past the round of 32. Ford's overall record in the A10 and he has had a number of 20 win seasons so time to take a deep breath and let him show us what he can do before completely throwing him under the bus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Box and Won Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 If Ford cuts Jolly tonight, I MIGHT get SORT OF excited about this hire. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wgstl Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Why do people forget he stayed relevant in the best conference in the country. Im not thrilled but this could have been worse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FatherB Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Where is Chris May's "Splash" hire? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STLfan Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Some youtube videos: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Box and Won Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Where is Chris May's "Splash" hire? Belly flops often make big splashes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RiseAndGrind Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Why do people forget he stayed relevant in the best conference in the country. Im not thrilled but this could have been worse. 3-15 in conference last year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Franchise_08 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Love it!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STLfan Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheA_Bomb Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 SLU AD tweeted 5 min ago.......Baseball game cancelled due to rain. No confirmation....... tick tick tick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brianstl Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Who ends up on his staff will be important. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billikenfan05 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 SLU AD tweeted 5 min ago.......Baseball game cancelled due to rain. No confirmation....... tick tick tick They won't tweet it out until a press release is uploaded to the website Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMM28 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 How did Paul Hewitt work out at George Mason? Because this hire seems very similar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slubillikens43 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 3-15 in conference last year.Not making excuses but their best player, Phil Forte, was hurt all year, and their next leading scorer was a freshman pg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Franchise_08 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 3-15 in conference last year. Did you see some of the embarrassing crap SLU was losing to the past 2 years. It certainly wasn't Kansas, Okahoma or Iowa State. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Box and Won Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Ford is one of those guys who always looks like he has a mustache, even after he just shaved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brianstl Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Did you see some of the embarrassing crap SLU was losing to the past 2 years. It certainly wasn't Kansas, Okahoma or Iowa State. OSU also lost to Goerge Mason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
okstatefan Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Oklahoma State fan dropping by, was curious to see how the hire of Travis Ford would be received. I'll be interested to see how he does. I hope he does well for your sake. I think the consensus among our fans is that he is a nice guy, but we were ready for him to move on. I see a lot of comments about him being an ###### or a bad guy, but I'm not sure it's accurate. He works very hard, a tireless recruiter, and he did have some recruiting success for us. He won on some big time recruits. What he failed to do as far as recruiting goes, is recruit a complete roster. He always had major holes at the 4 and 5 position and he'd have a plethora of thin, 6'5-6'7 "athletes" who would be forced to play in the post, and ride the bench, while we lacked true big men. Most of our fans did not appreciate his style of play. (disclaimer: this may have had something to do with most of us being accustomed to Eddie Sutton grind out, tough defense, high iq, half court ball). In fact, we sometimes questioned if he had a style of play. He promised uptempo basketball, and it seemed he recruited athletes to play this way, but it never really translated on the court. Not only did he fail to recruit true big men, he also failed to develop the few we did have. It did not seem to be an emphasis for him. It seemed his assistant coaches were pretty useless, and he didn't make as many changes as he should have, in my opinion. I'll also mention Travis had some awful luck with injuries to some of our better players, and also lost a difference maker to a questionable off the court issue. This year for example, we lost our two best players for a good portion of the season, one for the entire season. I was skeptical when we hired him. He came in and took over after Sean Sutton was fired, and took over a team with some highly rated players who had failed to perform under Sean, and took them to the second round of the NCAA tournament. He came in and multiple players really improved in his first year. I started to become a believer at that point. I was impressed by the turnaround and thought maybe we really had something. Unfortunately it was mostly downhill from there with some occasional brief moments of hope. I'll note some of his weaknesses from my perspective: NOT LEARNING FROM HIS MISTAKES. Almost every year we had one dominant player, Eaton his senior year, James Anderson, Marcus Smart. He rode some of these guys into the ground, and I think they would tire out by seasons end. We had a terrible conference road record during Ford's tenure. My impression: he did not emphasize high percentage shots. Time and again it seemed we'd either jack up a shot without running an offense, or we'd waste the shot clock then ended up settling for a low percentage shot. His offense just did not work. It did not go inside out through most of his time with us. It was very rare for us to have a post presence (which again goes back to lack of recruiting them, lack of developing them). Hell one year, our roster was so depleted we had play a walk on a few times at the end of the season, and he actually brought some life to our team rebounding, playing interior d, two things we severely lacked even before injuries. That was a small, but significant event resulting in myself questioning Coach Ford's awareness. We had decent transition D, but part of the reason was because we did not attempt to get offensive rebounds. Low percentage shots, getting dominated on the boards= terrible road record, pretty simple equation. We also had multiple end of game management/decision blunders under Ford: not remembering how many timeouts we had, missed a scoreboard error, poor player decisions. Here's his final career road record at OSU pulled from our message board: Combined: 23-62Non-Conference: 8-7Ws: Texas A&M CC, Stanford, LaSalle, Tulsa, Missouri St., S. Florida, Memphis, AuburnLs: Washington, Tulsa, Gonzaga, Wash St., Alabama, Virginia Tech, South CarolinaConference: 15-55Baylor: 1-7Colorado: 1-1Iowa State: 1-5Kansas: 1-6Kansas State: 1-5Missouri: 0-2Nebraska: 1-1Oklahoma: 0-8TCU: 2-2Texas: 2-6Texas A&M: 0-5Texas Tech: 3-5West Virginia: 2-2 I think he has some soul searching to do. Looking back, I felt we had a couple teams who could I thought could legitimately compete. His very first season we developed a guy who could score in the paint, and this gave us a fighting chance for post season success. Beyond that, we were much too reliant on a single perimeter player. I think what you need to be hopeful for is hiring an assistant who knows how to recruit/develop post players, and Ford needs to give big men a chance. You need Ford to do a better job of piecing together a complete roster instead of 1-2 studs, but gaping holes elsewhere. Ford needs to establish an identity. If he's going to recruit a bunch of "athletes", he needs to run a system best suited for them. We did have a pretty strong defense this year with Ford. One thing that was interesting with Ford teams (other than this year), his teams always seemed to fight the hardest when their back was against the wall, when you were ready to give up on them, or thought their season was done. His players always played hard for him. Anyway, sorry if that was too much rambling...too tired to proofread. I'll be happy to answer any questions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STLfan Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Box and Won Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 How did Paul Hewitt work out at George Mason? Because this hire seems very similar.Just so everyone knows, SLU went against our search firm's recommendations with this hire.(I'm referring to the search firm we operate out of my basement.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dwayne's_World Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 What he failed to do as far as recruiting goes, is recruit a complete roster. He always had major holes at the 4 and 5 position and he'd have a plethora of thin, 6'5-6'7 "athletes" who would be forced to play in the post, and ride the bench, while we lacked true big men. Might as well have just stuck with Crews then and saved the money from the buyout... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMM28 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 In that OkSt fan write up, replace Ford with Crews and it makes perfect sense. Our search firm did not recommend this guy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WestCoastBilliken Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Just so everyone knows, SLU went against our search firm's recommendations with this hire. ??? Explain Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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