All Activity

Actually what is happening with the NILs and the transfer portal is that the different schools and conferences are being organized according to the level of money available to them. You may not like the outcome but sure as daylight eventually the top leagues will be at a totally different level that the lesser leagues. They will play for the championship, the lower leagues will have their own competitions.

o I c thnx

Discussion with Schertz about the campus protests.

haha

from Slaten ?!?

last line was me & TF

You kind of went off the rails in this Dayton Flyer player discussion, and I had pretty much tuned you out. But wow, you really haven't watched much Pacer basketball, have you. Toppin started 28 games for the Pacers this year. Then they traded for Pascal Siakam, one of the elite power forwards in the league and Toppin went to the second squad. Toppin has been valuable on the Pacer's second team, which if you followed the NBA, you would know is one of the top 5 or so in the league-depends on how you want to measure. (Yes Carlisle brings in 5 guys, so that would be players 6-10. Call him a #10 if you want. Or call him #6.) Toppin averaged 40% from the arc this season. It is hard to dunk from the arc. In the NBA playoffs, coaches shorten their bench. Toppin has been a key member of Carlisle's primary 8 man rotation. He is playing the 4 and 5. He and second team PG TJ McConnell basically put the Bucks away in Game 6. Toppin has a $9.2 million qualifying offer on the table for next season. That's high cotton for a first round bust. You are kind of being rough on Greg Oden. If you forgot, he had three injuries to the same knee in his 3 years of activity. He was only able to play 105 games in his career because of injuries and surgery. A bust to you, but an unfortunate series of events to me.

I think that's exactly what it is. There are MVC programs whose total NIL budget is under 100k. They have no hope of keeping a star player who is being offered 200k by a P5.

Except that the graphic shows that they're also eating each other. I looked at the schools that we landed transfers from - like Creighton and Miami - and they have just as many transfers from other P5 schools as they do from non-power conference schools. They're so desperate to get better quickly that a lot of good players are being recruited over every year. We're in a good spot to grab players out of those situations. The question of more or less impactful is an interesting one because a lot of P5 programs are losing as many or even more players than non-P5 teams. So using a neutral definition of "impact" you could argue they're just as impacted. They just stand to benefit from having deeper pockets that can create a more positive impact more quickly. But the constant churn will also lead to plenty of expensive disasters. Fit still matters, personalities still matter, roster construction still matters, program building still matters.

Not sure what to make of that. Perhaps the MVC teams can't compete financially to hold onto their players as well as the A10 and other higher ranked mid-major conferences that may have more NIL resources.

This is a must-listen interview with some excellent non-basketball commentary at the end.

delete

The number of MVC transfers to P5 schools is impressive. Tied with the American for 4th behind the BigTen, BigXII, and ACC.

Not sure how you can call Toppin a bust. 21 minutes a game. Averages around 11. Shoots 50% . Playoff stats a little better. Star No. Bust NO. 21 minutes is not a tenth man.

Regardless of 1.2/2.0, I think this is pretty much an accurate summary of SB’s point at large. We’re lucky Schertz is an awesome person and Avila/Swoope are coming with vs. going P5 for more $.

@Crewsorlose: I can accept your stance on Holmes. Again, we shall see. The Holmes I watched this year was really no different than last year with the exception of the fact he dribbled more up the court than last (unpressured by any other big man ,.... meh) and he took 83 three pointers well above the 26 total he attempted his first two years. Which equated into only 2.5 threes per fame. In many instances that I saw, one led to the other ....... he'd rebound, dribble the length of the court to the top of the key, and then launch one because the other big didn't bother to cover him. He made like 32 which is about one per game. I think he did both of these (dribble and shoot from distance) to say again to the NBA, 'I can do more.' I'd like to know how many of his makes came from the top of the key because in the games I watched, once off the top of the key, he wasn't that good. To me, his interior game was one of bully ball. He overpowered guys like TJ Hargrove and Tre Williams and Phil Alston when covered by such. Double teams sent at him by Loyola and VCU seemed to stymie him some. And once outside the restricted zone, where he needed a move or two going away from the basket, I didn't see much. But he's great on the lower block spin move and dunk. To me, outside the occasional dunk, Toppin is a first round bust. I also think an All-American should be more than a 10th man on an NBA roster but others have failed to launch as well ..... Adam Morrison, Jimmer Fredette, Greg Oden, Jay Williams, Anthony Bennett and so on. I actually can't wait to see what does become of Holmes going forward.

Billikens hold off Lindenwood 9-4 following the heroics of light-hitting back up 1st baseman Chase Beattie. Beattie rocketed a three-run smash over the centerfield fence in the bottom of the 8th after Lindenwood, down 6-4 in the top of the frame, had runners on the corners with no out. Reliever Jack Weber ended the threat with 2 Ks and a groundout, allowing the Bills to retain their 2-run cushion. Beattie then ended all doubt about the outcome. Earlier, both Tyler Fogarty and Drew Winter homered for the Bills leading to a 3-0 margin after 3. The A-10 leaders have now won 6 straight and move to 34-11 on the year with a huge 3-game home weekend series with 2nd place Dayton on the horizon. Edited to add: This post is original material courtesy of billikenbill.

Coach on Slaten today. Interview went quite smooth https://www.spreaker.com/episode/5-7-interview-with-new-slu-billikens-mbb-hc-josh-schertz--59904433?utm_medium=app&utm_source=widget&utm_campaign=episode-title

The game is rigged for the P5. Still, the riff raff finds a way occasionally to beat the house. In 23 we had two mids in the final 4. It can happen, and when it does the P5’s hire away the coaches and pay some of their players. So the underlings are basically feeder systems for players and coaches to the biggies. SLU did it this year.

I think the transfer market boils down simply to this. P5 schools lose way more players they don't want than players they want. Non P5 schools lose way more players they want than players they don't want. I agree overall it is a 1.25-1.5 advantage for the P5 vs a 5X advantage but these schools already have some many built in advantages. It's one more thing that makes the playing field completely untenable.

These are the rules of the board for 25+ years. When we post an article you have to post a link to it or have the author's name in it. This is no different than that. Content created by someone else, posted on the board without credit. This is akin to me copy and pasting some out of town writer's game preview and posting it on the board with no attribution. Wouldn't you think I wrote it? (Caveat maybe not me but someone on the board who is smart and articulate).

I liked the graphic, aside from the sourcing debate - thanks to those who created it. It shows the A-10 almost holding its own vs. power conferences. Whereas some other "high mid major" conferences did not. Besides the major vs. mid-major dynamic, the balance will vary by outlook for playing at a specific school in any year. For this year, so far Billikens are +2 in transfers from/to power conferences. Jimerson staying home affected this balance, as he had been likely to transfer to power conference team.

What if you framed the problem being that "it's almost always P5s who are not giving up minutes to the portal while it's almost always mid major?" Meaning that the roster turnover created by immediate eligibility/NIL/Portal is less impactful to P5s than smaller conferences?