Crewsorlose

Last year was a dud but how can anyone not be impressed at the talent Schertz has brought in this year and the recruits he's getting to campus for 2026, with a top 100 player already in the bag! To my mind he has to go to 9-10 man rotations to keep players fresh (it's not 1983 anymore; the movement on offense and the exertion to cover a spread floor on defense means that players run 2x as much as they did in a game from 30 years ago), prevent injury, and keep players invested in the program. The OOC is a steaming pile of doo doo but if you want an at large bid win (almost) all of your games, especially in the OOC. That will help the rest of the A-10 with their SOS. All boats rise.

Sort of a dumb question. Of course things aren't as good as they were then. The only real question is whether they'll get good again.

Rim-protectors and finishers: Otieno, Diakite Two-way wings with unreliable outside shots: Thames, McCottry, Hutson Drivers of offense & shooters who may need some help on D: Avila, Dunlap, Sharma? Glue guy bangers/defenders who drive winning: Anya, Warlick, Dion Brown? (he could be in the two-way wing category) Ball-handlers who can shoot and defend the point of attack: Trey Green, Quinten Jones Frosh who can stroke it but probably won't play: Kerr, Lackowski My sense is that the bolded-groups probably only ever have one of those guys on the court at the same time. Schertz wants his offense to click. What do people think?

Warlick was hurt the whole summer and fall. That was the reason for the redshirt talk. If they redshirt him now and ahead of the four frosh, they're sending the message to pack their bags. I suspect instead that Schertz is thinking of 2-3 of the freshman.

I logged back in today to find out my post was deleted and I didn't get the fun of reading everything that followed. I love Billiken basketball, have been a season ticket holder since 2018, have a little bit of insight into local STL hoops because my kids play select. I also work in higher ed. & can brink a lot of perspective to those issues. I don't think I wrote anything inappropriate but maybe an admin can send me. a DM on this site or someone else can tell why filling in the picture on SLU enrollment (which definitely affects basketball; heck, we've got a longtime thread on local development) is inappropriate.

So is the ranking on how many total minutes they have played or how much they play this season? Either way, I don't see Warlick here. For me the real issue this season is how many guys play, not the amount of minutes they play. We saw several A-10 games where Schertz didn't sub once in the 2nd half. In a season with literally nothing to play for after the Thames injury. I decided not to renew based on what I saw last season. I like Schertz as a coach and a guy but rotating guys and keeping them fresh may be his kryptonite. I certainly hope McCottry is playing more than Anya (max 15mpg on a good team). Dunlap should be better than both of them if healthy.

Welp, that went downhill quickly. It's still Easter. Happy Easter. Let's just fight over basketball!

Nobody is doubting this. But if it's the case, the deeper pocketed teams will simply pick up the transfers. So it's either get deeper pockets, be superior at identifying talent, or convince guys to stay. Those are the three paths to success. If you want SLU to finish between 4th and 8th in the A-10 every season, this is the path: constantly reshuffle the lineup, bury guys on the bench who might be able to play and want to stay, and fail to bring in any top 100 talent.

Do you want to be a program that consistently reshuffles 80-90% of the lineup every year, even though their resources indicate they'll be somewhere between 60th and 120th in an average season, or do you want to be a program that builds and develops players? There's absolutely zero point in Schertz bringing in freshman if they're just going to leave every spring. Zero point. He will never get top 100 players. We can point to McCottry but that guy was glued to the bench until Dotzler got injured and Hughes quit. And Schertz still played Kobe Johnson 3x as much. SLU can never be good if they don't develop their own players. Never. I think he runs a great system and has a great staff but if he can't figure out how to keep guys from leaving, he will not succeed. It's an overwhelmingly obvious point.

There's no 10mpg for Schertz. You are either one of the 6-7 rotation guys or you play zero minutes. Multiple games last year he made zero second-half subs.

I thought the whole point was that you earn your PT in practice. "Hey Max, we're hoping to recruit someone who's better than you." Isn't that encouraging, as opposed to "We're recruiting someone who you're definitely better than, so just take it easy this summer." Schertz gushed about Pikkar (and Dotzler). Either he's as full of sh-t as Ford was, or he's not creating good relationships with certain players.

Schertz isn't going to play the frosh 10 minutes/game. He wants a super tight rotation even for a team with no hope of the NCAA tourney. Next year he'll prefer to play Anya 34 mpg than let any of the underclassmen develop. I see no path forward if he doesn't change his thinking on playing time.

Yes, meant to say "unathletic." Too small and too slow.

If we keep everyone else, it's a massive win. I would have liked to hold on to Dotzler but maybe the medical outlook was bleaker than anyone realizes. Brockhoff had a nice collection of skills but was just too small and athletic to rebound and protect the rim in the A-10.

How would McCottry, glued to the bench in November, be "locked in" to the 2 guard spot over a player who was in the rotation before injured? Why would Dotzler be afraid of the competition to play the 1 or 2 guard when that competition is McCottry and a bunch of freshman. Maybe Dotzler, who was labeled as this totally awesome guy who was already married and a devout Christian decides to bail for reasons we'll never know. But the most probably reason is that he didn't like the coach and/or the school. If Schertz is some master of the portal who's going to recruit awesome players, that's great, but if he is what he says he is, someone interested in developing guys and trying to develop cohesion, it can't but reflect badly on him because Dotzler is one of those guys.