Old guy

If these cards sell well you will see the style proliferate and become widespread. If they do not sell, the style will not last long. It is all about money folks. Laclede Gas was there forever until they modernized. They changed their name to Spire and started using a flashy orange envelope for billing. Recently I got a notification that they were going back to while envelopes, maybe they will change the name again, who knows? The really crazy thing is that each and every one of these changes costs them lots of money.

My wife and I were at the free practice this afternoon, and I was glad I went. I had not been at the Chaifetz since my hospitalization in November 2023 plus all the tough rehab that followed it. Leaving aging and decay aside, I must say I was happy to see Thames play with no evidence of cramps and able to play well. I did not recognize him while the practice was going but I asked one of the assistants iif he had played. He told me with a big smile that Thames had played the whole time wearing the number 6. I am truly very happy for Thames, they seem to have his problem under control with whatever combination of salt pills and hydration they have decided to use. I will be the first one to agree that real competitive play requires more than the degree of effort required by practice. We will see what happens when the season starts, but I think we are justified to start thinking that Thames may be able to play this season at least as a regular player.

There is play and again, there is play. Playing the hardest teams provides the best level of hard fought experience to the players, but the largest risk of loss. Playing the easiest schedule is the way to accumulate wins but learn relatively little. I prefer our team to reach the conference portion of the games ready to beat them all, rather than as a weaker team after playing only easy to beat teams.

Basketball never meant much to me until I met my wife. She had a BS and two Masters from SLU and had had season tickets since she finished her education. I must say that the love for the sport grew slowly inside me until I got hooked.

@SluSignGuy Very nice clip on Otieno, thank you for posting it.

Quentin Jones #1 and Trey Green #3 were doing well in the clip above. There were others who also did well wearing no number or a number that could not be seen in the clip. I like what I'm seen.

@SluSignGuy If you need to travel for meetings and the like and have freedom to stay where you want, it is good to choose a hotel chain with widespread geographical coverage and WiFi that is easy to use and reasonably speedy. Some hotel chains have WiFi which is very hard to connect to, or does not cover all the rooms. I have stayed in hotels where the front desk person had to get into the Windows settings in order to get a connection. A reasonably speedy and easy to connect to WiFi is something you need to have while traveling. Another thing to keep in mind, Win 11 came up with a cumulative update this past Tuesday that absolutely messed up my wife's desktop. Then they came back next day with a second cumulative update to fix the mess they had made the prior day. Good for the speedy correction from Microsoft but it does not explain why my desktop was working fine after the update on Tuesday, and my wife's was not working well at all.

In my personal opinion, nothing of a financial nature I have seen coming from Chris May indicates that he is effective handling finances. I do not expect a good outcome from May's handling the NIL program at SLU.

The event that caused Trey Green to leave Xavier is nothing extraordinary. Something similar may have been the cause for Larry Hughes II leaving SLU. In either case I would expect that whatever the cause for the departure was, it would not affect the players ability to play basketball. We will never know the actual reasons for their departure and it just does not matter. Every summer before the next basketball season the same inflation of expectations occurs about the following season develops. I hope Thames proves to be a very good player next season but know that we will not find out until the season starts. Same thing for Trey Green.

Yep, and they were also saying similar things about Perkins. Reality must be based upon reality. Perkins was a major disappointment when he came back into play, he could play, but he could never play consistently at the level he was expected to play. The best we can hope for Thames at this time is that he does not disappoint all the expectations that are held by many fans at this time. Let us hope our expectations become reality in Thames' case, not disappointments as happened with Perkins. We will find out when the season starts, not before.

I think it is too early to say anything or expect anything from Thames. When he manages to play significant minutes in actual games with no problems, that is when I will start thinking about him as active contributor to the team.

@courtside Reality is reality, and it usually is not what we hope or dream will happen, reality is what does happen and will reflect how capable we are to afford whatever this new reality is. The lawyers are loose in court suing for any new interpretation of law they can get, they are not going to stop. The way of the lawyers and courts is forward, not what is needed or even what is possible, but what they can get passed in court. SLU and every other school, including large State funded institutions, are in the same leaky boat trying to maintain some semblance of the status quo. The schools will not win this game, they will have to settle for whatever it is they can afford going forward. The process that starts by cutting employees to free money for legally required uses will expand until the landscape of collegiate sports becomes significantly changed, but mostly until it is affordable to the schools.

Think in terms of money. Pittsburgh most likely presented the head of A10 with an offer they could not refuse. By this I mean in terms of money.

If you think about professional sports teams in a different sport category, the NY Yankees fielded the top, or close to it, professional baseball team for many years by paying higher amounts than most other teams. The formula works, the problem for college sports is, and always will be, money. Professional teams do not have the monetary limitations we have.

I hope all works well for Jimerson and he has a happy life and family.