New Asst Coach

[Old guy]

The answer to the Lambo is that you will never get 35 mpg on it, and you will probably have to pay for security 24/7 for the car if you do not want it to be broken into. Pretty expensive, and this is not counting the insurance and the property taxes on the thing which may be higher than a lot of people make per year. Or the maintenance at the dealer (your neighborhood garage cannot fix a Lambo) with an assortment of parts flown in from Italy... This is a great car but it comes at a great big price out of your pocket. Owning a Lambo is like the old question: "what is a sea going yacht anchored permanently in Boca Raton, FL?" Answer: "It is a hole in the sea that must be filled with money at all times..." Better is not for everyone. This applies to all things, with no exceptions. 

[Quality Is Job 1]

I don't think anyone who can afford a Lamborghini gives any thought to how many miles per gallon it gets.

[WVBilliken]

Coach Ford will be fine.  We have never in my 46 years as a Bills fan had a better recruiter as a coach.  I am excited for 2017-18 season.  Add Goodwin and a hotshot point guard and we will have a special season.

[TheChosenOne]

Just now, WVBilliken said:

Coach Ford will be fine.  We have never in my 46 years as a Bills fan had a better recruiter as a coach.  I am excited for 2017-18 season.  Add Goodwin and a hotshot point guard and we will have a special season.

Would Romar be considered a better recruiter than Ford based on the players he has landed at UW?

[WVBilliken]

Roman never had the success at SLU recruiting that Ford has had already.  Had lots of top recruits interested, but never closed the deal.

 

[brianstl]

17 minutes ago, WVBilliken said:

Roman never had the success at SLU recruiting that Ford has had already.  Had lots of top recruits interested, but never closed the deal.

 

The players Ford has signed are better than Fisher, Kenny Brown, Mo Jeffers and Ryan Hollins?  Those are players that Romar got to commit to him.  Heck, you should probably throw Perry in there because Romar had to re recruit him after Spoon left.

If that's the case we will go deep in the tournament in year two of the Ford era.

[billikenfan05]

1 hour ago, WVBilliken said:

  Add Goodwin and a hotshot point guard and we will have a special season.

I'm just so glad we have someone with such a great basketball mind telling our coaches through a message board what type of players to recruit!

[slufan13]

7 hours ago, WVBilliken said:

Roman never had the success at SLU recruiting that Ford has had already.  Had lots of top recruits interested, but never closed the deal.

 

Same with Ford so far.

[Quality Is Job 1]

10 hours ago, WVBilliken said:

Romar never had the success at SLU recruiting that Ford has had already.  Had lots of top recruits interested, but never closed the deal.

 

Lorenzo Romar also had to contend with trying to recruit kids to West Pine.

[cheeseman]

Surprised that after all these years, people are debating the Romar career at SLU.  This topic had been beaten to death.  The general consensus was that Romar could recruit but he targeted west coast kids who were not probably going to come to SLU for a lot of reasons that were out of his control.  Midwest, name recognition, West Pine, no on campus arena, just to give a few.  When he left, he had made very good inroads with local kids but that only paid off for UW.  Of course all his west coast contacts were still in place so once again UW got the pay off not us.  Romar was not the type of hire we should have made.  We do best with coaches who have Midwest roots and also have some national context.  Ford meets that but Romar did not.

[Clock_Tower]

11 hours ago, brianstl said:

The players Ford has signed are better than Fisher, Kenny Brown, Mo Jeffers and Ryan Hollins?  Those are players that Romar got to commit to him.  Heck, you should probably throw Perry in there because Romar had to re recruit him after Spoon left.

If that's the case we will go deep in the tournament in year two of the Ford era.

Why stop there?  Fisher was unusual in that he had already signed a LOI with Pepperdine and Romar, had limited options after Romar announced we was leaving Pepperdine for SLU and, of course, followed Romar here to SLU.  Also, I believe Spoon had done the heavy lifting of recruiting Mo Jeffers but Romar deserves credit for re-recruiting him as well.  Romar does get credit for the players you mention but also gets blame for Jason Edwin, Andrew Latimer, Floyd McClain, Ross Varner, John Seyfert and Randy Pulley.  And let's not forget about his final recruiting class after 3 years on the job landing Nick Kern of Vashon whom everyone knew could not gain admission to SLU.

And how soon some forget about our best recruiter over these past 47 years -- Rick Majerus.

[ACE]

On 8/2/2016 at 9:26 AM, slufan13 said:

 

It is VERY early, but Ford appears to have pushed a lot of the right buttons early on, no doubt. Regarding Romar, he clearly has proven to be an outstanding recruiter at Washington, but his track record here was very spotty to say the least. He didn't hit the ground running at SLU the way Ford has. Giving him credit for "re-recruiting" Jeffers and Perry? Come on, that's a stretch. Those guys committed to SLU under Spoon. Sure, they could have bolted  for somewhere else, but that could have been a hassle for those kids following Spoon's sudden departure.  Romar brought in Fisher early in his tenure, which was one of his highlights, but not much else on the recruiting front until getting a commit from Hollins at the end. 

Romar is a good fit at Washington, but was not a perfect fit here. He assembled a West Coast staff and tried to recruit a lot of West Coast kids to a Midwest conference. The way Ford has gone about in the early going makes a lot more sense. His previous A-10 experience has probably helped, but I think Ford has a better understanding of what it takes to be successful at THIS job. Getting one assistant from another A-10 school who has Chicago connections, another with East Coast connections and one with local connections makes a lot of sense. Add in the contacts Ford has developed from his time at OSU and I think we are in better position for recruiting success than we were with Romar. The two coaches are inheriting different rosters too. Spoon left a nice roster: Love, Jeffers, Perry, Tatum, Heinrich, Baniak.  Ford was left a mess, but has done the smart thing by going the transfer route to try to quickly get things back to respectability.  

[brianstl]

Jeffers didn't commit to spoon.  He committed after Romar was hired.  Perry asked to be and was released from his commitment after spoon stepped down.   

Romar's track record was spotty, but it is a real stretch to say Ford has already got commitments from players that are better than any Romar got.

[SShoe]

Maybe the statement should be: "In one spring, Ford has landed a better individual recruiting class than Romar ever did during his 3 years at SLU."

[ACE]

16 minutes ago, brianstl said:

Jeffers didn't commit to spoon.  He committed after Romar was hired.  Perry asked to be and was released from his commitment after spoon stepped down.   

Romar's track record was spotty, but it is a real stretch to say Ford has already got commitments from players that are better than any Romar got.

That's simply not true. Jeffers was a JUCO from Westark, Arkansas. Does that sound like Spoon recruit or a Romar recruit?

[ACE]

BTW, Romar's initial staff was Cameron Dollar, Randy Bennett (respected x's and o's guy) and Lance Levetter, who was the women's assistant at Portland - all guys from the west coast. The staff Ford assembled seems to make more sense for THIS job. Romar's staff would have made sense for the Washington.

[brianstl]

33 minutes ago, ACE said:

That's simply not true. Jeffers was a JUCO from Westark, Arkansas. Does that sound like Spoon recruit or a Romar recruit?

Jeffers committed after Romar got the job.  Spoon was recruiting him, but he hadn't committed when spoon stepped down.

[DeSmetBilliken]

1 minute ago, brianstl said:

Jeffers committed after Romar got the job.  Spoon was recruiting him, but he hadn't committed when spoon stepped down.

Admittedly I was in high school at the time, but my recollection was that Spoon had Jeffers and Marque Perry committed when he "retired". Don't recall if they were both signed yet or not. Anyway, Romar had to convince them to stick with their commitment to SLU.

[ACE]

3 hours ago, brianstl said:

Jeffers committed after Romar got the job.  Spoon was recruiting him, but he hadn't committed when spoon stepped down.

Not according to this: http://static.espn.go.com/ncb/preview2000/139.html

Jeffers is one of the two parting gifts Spoon generally left behind for Romar.

The other is 6-1 freshman point guard Marque Perry. He will instantly compete for a starting position on a team whose only genuine playmaker in the last four seasons was Hughes.

[bonwich]

42 minutes ago, ACE said:

Not according to this: http://static.espn.go.com/ncb/preview2000/139.html

Jeffers is one of the two parting gifts Spoon generally left behind for Romar.

The other is 6-1 freshman point guard Marque Perry. He will instantly compete for a starting position on a team whose only genuine playmaker in the last four seasons was Hughes.

That's kind of weird wording ("generally left behind"?) that would imply to me that Jeffers might not have committed yet. 

[Quality Is Job 1]

11 minutes ago, bonwich said:

That's kind of weird wording ("generally left behind"?) that would imply to me that Jeffers might not have committed yet. 

I'm thinking the author meant "generously."

[brianstl]

The writer was an idiot.  His line about Hughes being the only playmaker the previous four seasons should make that clear. Justin Love just finished his first season with the Billikens when he wrote that.  It was apparent that Justin Love was a playmaker to anyone who actually paid attention to the team and knew what they were talking about.

[MusicCityBilliken]

Back in the day, Romer had a weekly coaches show on KMOX. I used to get the show on my car radio in my driveway near Asheville.

One show he brought on Mo Jeffers. Jeffers during the show indicated he was re-recruited and played hard-to-get. I don't know he was joking but for some reason I recall that show.

 

[kshoe]

It is 100% fact that Jeffers was committed to spoon in the fall of spoons final season. I get that memories fade but people shouldn't re-write history to suggest that the two best players under Romar weren't really spoon recruits.

There was a third recruit that fall named Hart (or something) from Indiana. He had issues outside of the coaching change and probably wouldn't have ended up on campus no matter what. Don't think he ever played D1.

Jeffers and perry were spoon recruits. Maybe they were "re-recruited" but that's a hell of a lot easier than getting them in the first place.

[DeSmetBilliken]

12 minutes ago, kshoe said:

There was a third recruit that fall named Hart (or something) from Indiana. He had issues outside of the coaching change and probably wouldn't have ended up on campus no matter what. Don't think he ever played D1.

Vincent Hart from Gary, Indiana. He ended up getting shot and paralyzed a few years after he finished high school. Died around a year later. Sad story.