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DistrictBaller

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  1. VCU won the Colonial Tournament in 2012. Shaka still hasn't won a regular season title as a head coach though.
  2. Yea I think I saw us both in the mix for Tevin Glass and Therence Mayimba, but that's all I remember. VCU's got a complete 4-man class for 2014 so I don't see them being in the mix for anymore recruits. Apparently George Mason is very interested in Mayimba though, so there's that.
  3. Yes. X is one over the limit. So is VCU for that matter, so you can take both of them off of players SLU is looking at.
  4. Gregg Marshall is making almost 1.5 million per year at Wichita State. I'm not sure Saint Louis is willing to pay the kind of money it would take to get him and he's already turned down a couple of BCS jobs like NC State and Nebraska that I know of.
  5. If so, that's a huge loss for not just SLU, but the A-10, and all of college basketball. He's one of the best there is as an in-game tactician. I share your fan base's wishes for him to be able to live a long and happy life. Really unfortunate news, and right when he really had the Billikens rolling too. Fortunately, he has left Crews with a stacked team that should win plenty of games and hopefully keep the momentum going at Saint Louis.
  6. I read it just fine. I still found it highly amusing. Stevens has a 12 year contract and Smart is in the 2nd year of an 8-year contract and they are coaching for teams that play in your conference. Sorry if that bothers you to the point of cursing. As you said, they are obviously pipe dreams for any non-power 6 schools and the majority of the power 6 schools as well as Illinois found out this spring. That said, with Chaifetz Arena being a top of the line arena, playing in the A-10, and having a pretty strong program recently, there will be plenty of very good candidates who I am sure would be interested. An established head coach may hold out for a BCS job, but you never know who may be interested. I'm sure elite assistants all over the country would give SLU a very strong look. -I like what Tim Cluess has done at Iona, although he is extremely unconventional in his recruiting approach and his teams haven't played defense. -Steve Masiello at Manhattan is a rising star who was an assistant at Louisville before leading Manhattan to 21 wins in his first season. Manhattan went 6-25 the season before. -Russ Springmann at Texas is a good assistant coach and a great recruiter who got Kevin Durant to play for the Longhorns. -Jeff Boals at Ohio State is another coach who knows the midwest extremely well having worked at Akron and OSU and is known as a very good recruiter. -Matthew Graves at Butler is a popular pick and being at a system school like Butler under Brad Stevens, it's not hard to see why he's in demand. -Chris Collins came up for the Illinois State job and he's worked under Coach K as a player and assistant for a number of years. There are a number of excellent candidates out there, but hopefully this conversation is moot and Rick Majerus is able to get back to full health and help lead the Billikens. There are few coaches in the country that can match him when it comes to coaching the game.
  7. LOL at guys name-dropping Shaka and Brad Stevens. If those guys turned down 2.5+ dollar contract offers at Illinois, there is no way they come to SLU. I know Shaka is making 1.3+ million per year at VCU, which is at the very least at the same level of a job as SLU. Stevens is over a million as well and at a superior program in Butler as well. Blaine Taylor has a very low listed salary but earns more than $700,000/year at ODU with supplementation from the Big Blue Club, which is a private booster organization at ODU. They also aren't staying in the CAA as they are moving to C-USA in 2013. He's a very good coach, but I doubt he would go to SLU. The best bet is to go for a star assistant coach at a major school or a BCS retread like Capel. He was solid at VCU in the early 2000's and as a VCU fan, it would be nice to see him get back into head coaching. Tim Cluess actually is a great suggestion too. He has recruited like crazy at Iona and just got a commitment from a 2012 top-50 recruit in Norvelle Pelle...at IONA. He's been pretty successful at Iona so far, but it remains to be seen if he can sustain it with the constant influx of JUCO's and transfers that he has been stocking and re-stocking his roster with.
  8. So the game got leaked and Belmont is coming to the Siegel Center this December 1st. They went 27-8 and lost to Georgetown in the first round of the NCAAs last year. VCU will return the trip to Nashville next season. With OOC home games against Wichita State, Alabama, Lehigh, Western Kentucky, and Belmont who all went to the NCAA tournament, we have a pretty nice OOC schedule along with the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament. We drew Memphis (I'm sure you guys are fond of them, right?) in the first round and will play the winner/loser of Duke/Minnesota depending on how we fare against Memphis.
  9. I think you are confusing VCU with Butler. Butler plays Xavier in an already scheduled OOC home game in addition to facing them on the road in conference. lol @ NextYearBill, whatever SLU gets will be well-earned. Everyone in the A-10 will be gunning for the Billikens. It's also been revealed that we face Memphis in the first round of the Battle 4 Atlantis. Should be a great match-up. Pastner wanted the VCU job pretty badly when the job opened up before we hired Shaka Smart. He obviously ended up doing fine for himself when Cal left and Memphis dropped in his lap.
  10. We actually had a tentative agreement with Murray State to start on the road this season prior to moving to the A-10. That got derailed after we made the move though. It would have been a great game. The team is similar to Murray State (racked up a lot of wins and went to the NCAA tourney) but not as high-profile. They have a shot at a top 50 RPI but I think their conference might hold them back a bit. It is a pretty strong schedule especially if we can draw and beat Duke, Louisville, and Memphis in the Battle 4 Atlantis. Getting Alabama, Wichita State, Lehigh with CJ McCollum and the unnamed mid-major team gives us chances at some nice top 100/possible top 50 wins at home. We also get UMass, St. Joe's, Butler, Dayton, LaSalle, and Richmond at home in the conference schedule who should all be top-100 teams this season. Hopefully it will give us a good profile come March. The only worry is only playing 3 road games in the OOC. Hopefully we won't be on the bubble, but I could see that being an issue with the Selection Committee if we are. With as loaded as the A-10 is, we shouldn't have to worry about that if we take care of our business and finish in the top 4.
  11. I'd say that I'd be disappointed if we're not top 4 next year with the team we have and what we return from a pretty good team last year that's adding 2 top-100 kids. I do expect a NCAA tournament bid however. I will be very disappointed if we don't. I've said that before when we initially joined the league. I fully recognize that we could fall short of that but I have high expectations of my team. As for non-conference games, I know all of them, but VCU hasn't released the schedule yet and I'm not going to leak the games that aren't out already as per their request. All but 2 games are now out, of those 2 one is a non-descript low-major game and the other is against a pretty strong mid-major program that was in the NCAA tournament last year. Both home games. Here is our OOC schedule with last year's postseason and RPI in parentheses: Nov. 9th: non-descript team (have to play them before the Battle 4 Atlantis) Nov. 13th:Wichita State (NCAA- 18) Nov. 17th: @ Winthrop (272) H&H play at VCU next year Nov. 22nd-24th: Battle 4 Atlantis, play 3 out of: (Duke (NCAA-7), Louisville (NCAA- 10), Missouri (NCAA-12), Memphis (NCAA-20), Minnesota (NIT- 63), Stanford (NIT- 69), Northern Iowa (NIT-72) Nov. 28th: Stetson (263)- buy game Dec. 1st: Strong mid-major who played in NCAA's last year. Pretty good RPI last year. Dec. 7th: @ ODU (CIT- 102) H&H play at VCU next year Dec. 15th: Alabama (NCAA- 40) Dec. 18th: Western Kentucky (NCAA- 171) Dec. 21st: Longwood (333)- buy game Dec 29th: Fairleigh Dickinson (330)- buy game Jan. 2nd: @ ETSU (172) H&H play at VCU next year Jan. 5th: Lehigh (NCAA- 88)- buy game We have a ton of home games in the OOC and some good teams coming in. We have the 11th highest home winning percentage in the country at home at 85.79% since our building opened in 1999 so it's built to get us wins and a strong RPI. We'll see how it goes but hopefully we can get some nice OOC scalps for the conference in the Battle 4 Atlantis as well as at home.
  12. That's certainly a valid argument. We've certainly played in very good conferences before the CAA that are comparable to the A-10, but that has nothing to do with the current make-up of our squad. We have certainly shown we can play and beat A-10 caliber teams as I believe we are 16-4 against the A-10 over the last 10 years. We have also shown we can beat similar or higher-level competition in the NCAA tournament as well. A lot of that has to deal with our style of play which is very problematic for most teams in a tournament setting. We didn't even really dominate the CAA under Shaka Smart so a lot of what you say does ring true, he's just an extremely good postseason coach. At the same time the CAA was a 3-bid league just a year ago so we weren't exactly playing table-scraps either. I don't disagree with anything you've said, and I do think the A-10 is a significant jump up, especially now that both us and Butler are in the league. It's just one sub-plot in a league full of them this season. It will be very interesting to watch it all pan out. I tend to think we'll be fine, but I'm also a biased fan.
  13. Yeah I remember when Majerus and Shaka matched up in the CBI finals in 2010. That was Shaka's first year at VCU. Kwamain Mitchell and Willie Reed were both nice-looking players as sophomores. I remember Cody Ellis and Remekun were on that squad as well although I think they were more role-players then. Thanks for the welcome and I think the SLU/VCU game will be a great battle. I think SLU is favored on a neutral court and should definitely be at home so I have no qualms with those who say you'll likely beat us this year since we play at Chaifetz. I really think it comes down the contenders holding serve at home and stealing a couple on the road. I think that getting Butler, Dayton, UMass, St. Joe's, La Salle, and Richmond at home is good for us, I even count Fordham at home to be a blessing since they've been known to pull big upsets at their place. SLU is obviously a very tough road game, but if there was any year to want to play X and Temple on the road, I'd think this would be it. Even so it will be a tall order to go into those places and pull out a win. @St. Bonaventure scares me since the O'Reilly Center can be really tough from what I hear. Either way the conference schedule is going to be absurdly entertaining and fraught with drama and upsets. There are no off-nights in the A-10 this year. I'm looking forward to getting to know the conference and hopefully VCU competing in and helping the A-10 get a record number of NCAA bids this season.
  14. Lol. Nice. I think SLU is the A-10's best team next year, baiting comment aside. It should be fun to watch the season pan out. I just wanted to clarify that VCU brings a whole lot back and there is a reason we're in the conversation to compete for the title, since there seem to be some misconceptions about what we're bringing back and how much we lost. FWIW, we led the country in both steal percentage (16.2% of opposition possessions) and turnover percentage (27.4%) last year. Our D is not quite as good as the Billikens, but we do what we do very well. We return 5 guys who averaged at least 1.2 steals per game last year. Our MO is very different from most of the A-10 with the exception of UMass who modeled their style after VCU's following our Final Four year. It should definitely be interesting to see how the styles clash. There are excellent teams in the A-10 next year and the fact that SLU is the favorite speaks volumes about how good you guys should be.
  15. If VCU has to replace a lot offensively, then so does Saint Louis since you guys lose Conklin. We lose our leading scorer (14 ppg) and return everyone else from a 29-7 team that went to the NCAA 3rd round and took Indiana to the wire. We have 2 consensus 4-star ESPN/Scout/Rivals recruits in the 2012 class joining the team this year as well. Melvin Johnson (#85 overall): http://espn.go.com/college-sports/basketball/recruiting/player/_/id/126605/melvin-johnson Jordan Burgess (#96 overall): http://espn.go.com/college-sports/basketball/recruiting/player/_/id/72599/jordan-burgess I think Saint Louis is rightfully the favorite, but VCU will be competing for sure.
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