Crewsorlose

St. Mary's is small and had zero rim protection. Walsh can excel against that. He's a very good HS player. I kind of disagree about the shot. I think he has a great shot. I just don't see the size or athleticism or the skill to be a good player in the Atlantic 10. Zyree is a bit of a risk because of his size but he just has so much in his bag and has superb court vision. I also disagree with Slaten about what it means that SLU "isn't recruiting Zyree." Scherz has been here for five minutes. He's desperately trying to get his roster for next season. I'm sure he'll scour the local ranks and I'd be surprised if he doesn't go after Zyree.

It starts around 19:00 https://590thefan.com/radio-shows/the-kings-court-with-kevin-slaten/

I saw Tate at a St. Mary's game this year. Now that Ford's gone it's safe to say that players didn't love playing under him. I don't know if Scherz likes Zyree, but odds of him coming to SLU are certainly better than they were under Ford, when it was 0%. I've seen Zyree a lot more than Walsh, but I also saw them match up in the playoffs. Zyree's game is so much more advanced than Walsh's, it's not even a comparison. Zyree does not have height (maybe 5/11") or long arms, but he has that ability to bounce of contact that all of the smaller guards need to score at the rim at the higher levels.

SBV was next to Jimerson. The only one not to give a standing O when JS came to the stage.

I was in Terre Haute yesterday for lunch. Really contemplated tracking him down. But I guess I'll have to wait for the press conference open to the public on Monday at 10am!

For all the people who don't like KenPom or advanced stats, 13 of the top 14 teams in KenPom are in the Sweet 16. Only one team below 23rd, NC State, made it this far.

Hard no on Daffron. There's a reason they didn't make him president there. And he's never been a faculty member.

I started going to more HS games this year and Tate is the only SLU person I've seen in a local HS gym. Curiously, met and chatted with Pat Sly, former SLU Board Chair, before a HS game. Great guy, totally humble for being so successful.

ISU is below 20% chance of making it. Too many bid thieves, especially yesterday. Dayton 100% in the tourney. I doubt the A-10 gets 2 NCAA teams and 4 NIT teams.

The A-10 could be a one bid league for ten years and nothing would change. Two realities are at work here: if you want an auto bid, you need to win your conference tourney. The difficulty of doing so measured by the conference you're in. if you want an at-large bid, you need to be worthy in comparison to other teams searching for that bid. It's not some kind of lottery whereby Power 5 teams have way more balls than everyone else (see Boston College). It's about being one of the 34 best teams out of the roughly 320 who don't win their conference tourney. Teams in good conferences get a ton more chances, but they have to play better competition. Dayton navigated it this year. They didn't win a magic power ball. They did it by beating St. Johns, SMU, Cincinnati, and LSU. SLU had 5 Q1 games and 10 Q 2 games. They went 1-14. Plenty of bites at the apple on our schedule this year.

What's this weird notion that certain leagues get a certain number of bids and that's just that. Five years ago this was a "Three Bid League." For all the bitching about NET, the "mid-major" Mountain West is getting more teams in the Dance than the ACC & the Pac-12. The A-10 is getting two teams in this year. And if Indiana St. hand't lost every Q-1 game they played, they'd be in. If you don't win your conference, you're competing for an at-large bid with every other team in the country. If you want have a chance, play a tough OOC and actually win the games against the teams who will play you. SLU got to play Auburn three years in a row and lost every time. All this talk of "we're in the A-10 so we have a 1/14 chance of a bid every year" is just loser talk. Dayton will get a bid because they deserve it. So will Gonzaga. Teams like Boston College don't feel their odds are better in the ACC. They haven't made the tourney in fifteen years.

Do people here have an opinion of Blake Ahearn? He went to De Smet and is an assistant on the Spurs. Would this be an attractive gig for him? Sorry if it's been covered earlier but scrolling through 40 pages seemed daunting.

Pat Sly is on the board, a former board chair, and very into hoops. I imagine he's a season ticket holder and I've also talked with him about hoops at HS games. Pistol is largely correct about the role that boards play at universities. Unless things start to go extremely sideways, the board is mostly carving out time for 3-4 meetings/year and rubber stamping things. I've been at two universities where the faculty rebelled against the president and in both cases the boards were woefully misinformed about basic matters, and were largely willing to believe any and everything that presidents and other upper administrators would tell them.

I work at SLU and this is misinformed. Lewis as Provost runs the academic side of things. He has no direct role in anything outside of that. Think of him as a VP but with a huge portfolio. Everything else--athletics, DPS, parking, student services, mission & ministry.--that's all Fred P. Biondi was a micro-manager: you had a title but he always thought he knew better and was on your back telling you how to do your job. Fred P is the opposite; he's a delegator. Which is fine if you have really good judgment in hiring your VPs and staff. SLU athletics has had a lot of success (both soccer teams, women's hoops, Champions Center, and MBB until very recently) since Fred P took over and Chris May was not his hire. His life is much easier if he can simply delegate to May, and that's largely what he's done. Fred P was at Dayton, but only as a Dean. He was Pres. at a super small-time place (LaMoyne) and the main thing he needed to do when he got here was to get up to date on the medical school (which was a dumpster fire on top of a toxic waste dump), and smooth things over with Biondi loyalists. He's largely succeeded. He's good on his feet and he has a very good speaking voice. I don't get much intel but my sense is that Fred P doesn't value intelligence as much as he does amiability. Of the VPs and upper admins I've dealt with, very few are what I'd call bright. And that trickles down. If this were Biondi, he'd have 6-8 confidants in athletics who would have been giving him negative intel for years. He'd probably be cold calling random coaches asking if Ford is really that good. He was trigger happy. Fred P is cautious and he'll gladly be talked into May saying Travis deserves another year.

To me one of the most glaring failures was in securing Yuri's replacement. Ford could sell that he developed Yuri from a mid-major prospect into a borderline All-American, all within the context of very competitive teams with deep backcourts. I'll admit, I was excited about Medley coming from a great team and stepping into those shoes. Medley is at best a nice role player who's nowhere close to being Yuri-level in Yuri's freshman year. But if that's your frosh, then at least get a legit post-grad who can take over an older team with real shooting and scoring: Ezewiro, Parker, TJ, Jimerson. But Ford got us... Meadows? Nothing was a secret here. Heck, Yuri almost left after 2022. And this was the best that Ford could do with an absolute bullseye on this position. Yuri did everything for us 2022/23. You see what Jimerson is without him. TJ gets no lobs. To me, the three guys worth keeping are Parker, Ezewiro (assuming he stays eligible) and Thames. Hughes is obviously a nice role player but really struggles in a decision-making role on offense. But I don't know how Ford fills the other 9 scholarships. Does Zhang even want to stay around when his PT is yanked around during a rebuilding year? Do we have someone who can develop bigs in the way that Rob Loe and Cory Remukin were developed?