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peel just opened their third restaurant in Clayton. i love peel

As I noted in my first post: not drawing any conclusions about anything from one viewing. Pistol - no set 5v5 groupings today. Lots of different combos. I am fairly comfortable in stating: The depth of very athletic bigs is unreal for a non-power 5 program. Goodwin and Bess are damn good and are clearly the leaders of the group. Coach considers the size/strength/depth of this roster to be a major team strength. They know that they're gonna be able to wear opponents down and that they need to play in a manner that does so. Consistent outside shooting still a question. If they find that.....scary good.

Just curious why one of the three mods haven't moved much of this thread to an OT : Food thread? I go to this topic to read about Billiken basketball not pizza or wings reviews. Sorry for being old school. Nothing against good food, but it just deserves its own thread!

"Felix's Pizza Pub" in Dogtown is fantastic. Been meaning to try out the new "Cork and Slice" in the CWE. Can never go wrong with Pi or Vito's. Stefanina's out in St. Chuck is highly underrated. Their STL style thin crust is way better than IMO's, IMO.

Not sure if you can call him a forward but Harry Rodgers is an all time Billiken great whether he was on the All Century Team or not.Harry is top 5 all time in my book.

im curious why you quoted the fredzilla post about pizza to make your basketball centered post? good post though. while bonner may have entered slu with somewhat raw skills and a yet to be matured body, i am waiting to see if gordon plays with the fury and intensity full time that bonner did. that is what will set gordon apart and possibly above bonner.

Blackthorn

Had the pleasure of taking in practice this morning. Coaches were introducing a lot of new stuff, so don't want to draw any premature conclusions re: anything specific. However... the strength/athleticism/skill-level of the 4 bigs is OFF THE CHARTS. And they are getting after it. Coach said (paraphrasing): There's teams out there with one or two bigs better than our guys, but nobody has four as good as our four. The talent on the floor in 5 v 5 at practice is light-years ahead of the last few years. And that was without Isabel, Wiley, or Thor. You also get the sense that these guys know they've got something cooking. Gonna be a fun year!

+1...here are preseason predictions from some key people in the media who cover A10: https://www.daytondailynews.com/blog/dayton-flyers/predictions-roundup-saint-louis-favored-most/dyxqhoKhCG8wJHmef84fBN/

Especially if Band Legend brings his homemade pizza.

Nobody goes there anymore from 4-6pm on Fridays. It’s too crowded.

Aren't we banking on the same thing being true for SLU? Talent is talent. Duquesne has upgraded. They're not going to win the conference but they should get incrementally better this season and next, at the very least.

I admit to being shocked at this but Duquesne comes in at #105 ... noted as the seventh best team in the A10. I've got to read this rationale ..... .... and I think it's full of shite. The basic rationale is Keith Dambrot always wins at least 21 games except his first year at Akron and his first year at Duquesne. And now he has "his type of players." Craig Randall averaged 5.2 ppg at Memphis as a freshman. Meh -- not that impressed. With the stat nor the fact he's coming from Memphis. Memphis is living on a dead reputation as far as I am concerned. Tavian Dunn-Martin averaged 4 in a season under Dambrot at Akron. Double meh. The piece places Mizzou transfer Frankie Hughes, all 6'4" of him, in the starting frontcourt. Marcus Weathers, also a MAC transfer from Miami of Ohio, came close to 10 ppg in his sole season with the Redhawks but my question will be how do MAC players do in the A10? Not that the A10 is that much better just curious. I do think Mike Lewis II and Eric Williams are nice returning pieces but until the newcomers show something, who really knows. This is purely a speculative piece with no substance other than baking on Dambrot. So we'll have to wait and see, They do have a four-star commit in PF Gavin Bizeau. He's 6' 11" and a strapping 210 pounds. Jordan Goodwin outweighs him. He's listed as a four and hails from Indiana. I don't think that will go too, too well. Just my opinion. I see Elliott Welmer. Dambrot did bring in 13 new players. Added to the two that stayed around. So 15 kids on scholarship at Woe-Be-Gone U. Something has to give. You can only have 13. Maybe math wasn't Dambrot's strong suit. Someone (or two) has to go home. As to bauman above, Duquesne must be replacing one of bauman's seven remaining suspects. Wonder who that will be? I guess one of the historical picks (Dayton. The Bonnies) will have to go.

Fμck the lame, monotonous, off season basketball conversation, I want more OT pizza and fishing talk!

Imos > everything

@RiseAndGrind thanks for posting, such an odd prospect. At least this will save @Pistol from trying to figure out what is going on with a guy who has seemingly been a mystery.

Also surprised nobody has mentioned the pizza at U.R.B.

You thought it sucked? They came in 2nd at the Pizza championship 4 years in a row.

A few underrated spots: Ami's in Rock Hill, Twin Oak in Brentwood/Richmond Heights/Whatever, Guido's on The Hill, Onesto in Southampton. I need to try Hugo's by SLU and Pizza Head on Grand. One of my friends raves about Pizzeoli in Soulard. I also want to try Monte Bello in Lemay. It's in what appears to be a house.

Pizza-a-go-go

Imo's hands down. It is the only St. Louis pizza. Everything else is a take off on NY or Chicago pizza and doesn't compare to the real thing.

Best pizza no one thinks about: CWP

They're both bad pizzas.

Just wanted to thank Neighbor Dave and the other posts that followed his. Really enjoyed what he had to say.

If I had to pick an A-10 team to be good at the same time we are and develop into a rivalry every year as we are fighting for A-10 titles, it would be St. Joe's. I think a good St. Joe's program brings notoriety to the league.

On the topic of whether star ratings of recruits "matter," I found this post to be pretty interesting: https://basketball.realgm.com/article/229173/Star-Ratings-In-Depth tl;dr: On average, based on statistics, better-ranked recruits end up contributing more to their college teams. However, I would add that this article is based on averages, and as we all know, an average doesn't say much (if anything) about any particular individual. Further, if you have a coach like Majerus, who had a known ability to pick out diamonds in the proverbial rough, star ratings are going to mean less. It's also obvious that plenty of low-ranked players end up far exceeding their recruiting star rankings. If memory serves me correctly, Ron Baker at Wichita State wasn't ranked at all, and Frank Mason, who ended up POY, wasn't ranked highly coming out of high school. There's also something to be said for 3-4 star recruits who stick around for 4 years compared to one-and-dones. The true answer is definitely somewhere in between "a team with 4 star recruits will be automatically better than one with 2- and 3- star recruits" and "star rankings don't matter at all." Although some of you who are saying the latter may be trolling GloryRavs because it's fun and easy to do...in which case just ignore this.

Jacobs is a two star per Verbal Commits. Certain MBM's - not mentioning names - aren't excited about him as his recruiting rank is too low. Me, I'm all in on Mr. Jacobs. I don’t care how many stars he has.

The one where gloryravs isn’t