Leaderboard

In Chaifetz, we see a much more direct correlation between record and attendance, although the fluctuations aren't huge. In Kiel, at least in the seasons I went back to, there's a steady growth despite the record dipping. At the Arena, the growth continues, with a major jump in 1993-1994, which was Spoon's second year and became our first Tournament appearance since 1957. Highmark, Claggett, and Waldman were juniors. Dobbs was a senior. The program was back. So we see a second consecutive massive jump in 1994-1995, building on that previous season. This was Spoon's second straight Tournament team, and the senior season for Claggs, Highmark, and H. Attendance drops for the first time since the mid-80s in the 1995-1996 season after the big three graduate. The roster is still about half local players. We've now transitioned to Conference USA. Then a more significant dip the next year, when the team goes 11-18. Then it's Larry Hughes time! 1997-1998 barely misses the record average attendance set a few seasons earlier. The place is rocking every night for the local star and SLU wins 22 games and loses in the second round of the Tournament. Then we see seven consecutive seasons of attendance declines. We never win 20 games in this stretch, culminating in a 9-win season my senior year (2004-2005). The place is as quiet as a library. This is the last season of C-USA play. The next two seasons go up because there's nowhere else to go. Sodie wins 20 games in 2006-2007 but is fired anyway. We hire Majerus but attendance drops a bit as he rebuilds. We transition to Chaifetz and attendance is around 7,000 ever since, give or take based on performance. The three best seasons are the program's best three-season stretch in the modern era, with three of the four highest win totals ever and almost no local players. I'm not taking into account external forces: The rise and fall and departure of the Rams, the ebb and flow of Blues seasons, the economy tanking in the late-00s, etc. Bottom line: The formula for maximizing attendance probably involves both winning a lot of games and having marketable local stars. We no longer have a 20,000-seat arena but we could fill 10,600 if things go well.

This one is pretty wild. Brad Soderberg played at the Catholic high school in Stevens Point. The Hausers went to the public high school and won 3 state titles. Sam was a highly recruited 4 star, Joey was a 5 star. Joey was a good football player and had ankle issues because of it. For 3 years Howard’s best friend on the team has been Sam Hauser, frequent visits and stays in Stevens Point, super close with the family. Plenty of rumors and gossip but the people who know aren’t talking yet. This is the 2nd time in recent memory that Marquette was going into a season with big final four type aspirations only to have a star player leave. Previously under Buzz Williams, coming off of an elite 8 team, NCAA breakout star Vander Blue left early for pros surprising Williams. The team fell apart with an average season. Buzz left. There were similar aspirations for next season for them. Virginia has been mentioned as a possibility. Tony Bennett almost became the Marquette coach. Perhaps Soderberg would have been an assistant there. When Tom Crean left, Bennett was first choice for Marquette. However Bennett’s wife is from Louisiana. The LSU job was open. LSU chose Johnny Jones. Bennett contact Marquette to see if still interested. Marquette had just hired Buzz Williams. Several years later when Buzz left, Marquette contacted Bennett again but this time he was settled and happy at Virginia. Marquette then had a deal in place with Shaka Smart, but Smart’s wife didn’t want to move to Milwaukee. Cuonzo Martin struggled in the interview. Wojo interviewed well and was hired. Wojo did have an interesting situation with the Ellenson family from Wisconsin. Rick Majerus tried to recruit Wally Ellenson to SLU. Wally’s younger brother Henry was a 5 star recruit. Wally wound up eventually at Marquette and Henry later signed too. Henry was a one and done recruit. After Henry left, Wally did too. But that story depends on whom you ask. Wally was more of a track star and less of a high major hooper. And it appeared Wojo dumped Wally immediately after Henry left. The real need in the Hauser situation was and is a facilitating point guard. Howard is a two guard, an elite high scoring from anywhere, great under sized shooting, and ft shooting two guard from deep, mid range, at the hoop, etc...improved his d this season but not a strong defender. The Hausers are tall, very skilled, Sam very polished stretch 4 player, can shoot it, excellent ft’s, can back down small players, very skilled. Not a strong defender and not quick or fast. Joey was just starting but was going to be similar to Sam but with even more potential. Soderberg and Bennett would do well with both of them. Sam is not a grad transfer so he would have to sit a year and play a year. The interesting thing was Koby McEwen was going to try to take the point guard role to help facilitate. To leave after 3 seasons with realistic final four expectations your final year is eye opening to say the least. Now they are a top 25 ish type team on paper. Happy for Brad this season. He was a very kind and generous guy behind the scenes at SLU and did some nice things anonymously. He’s in a great situation where he doesn’t have to be the face of a program, but he gets a lot of responsibility to do the things he likes and prefers and is good at it with player development and scouting.

There's more than one way to succeed. It's true that SLU's relationshp with local HS and AAU programs has been up and down over the years and that we needed to work the local programs harder because there's so much talent in the region. I like that we're currently at a relatively high wave in terms of local representation on the roster. Sometimes this can be a burden, like when there are local players with baggage or difficult families or whatever. It can also create additional difficulties if there's frequent coaching turnover. Bottom line is that in SLU's history, a local-heavy roster is not necessarily correlated to success. One of our most successful runs in program history - the three seasons from 2011 to 2014 - saw exactly one local player* on the roster - Kyle Cassity, whose senior season was 2011-2012. The next time we had a local kid, it was Austin Gillmann in 2014-2015 and that was the first year we started to tank under Crews. The 2019-2020 roster already has more local players (6) than we've had in any season in over a decade. We had 6 local guys in 2006-2007, 7 the following year, and 5 or 6 the year after that (depending on whether you include Brett Thompson from Vienna, IL). Aside from that stretch in 2007-2009, It wasn't routine for SLU to have about half the roster made up of locals going back to the late 90s. From 1992-1993 until 1999-2000, every team had 5 or more locals. Prior to that, it was even more. The high numbers I saw were 1987-1988 and 1991-1992, when we had 9 local players on each team (although 1-2 guys on each roster may have been walk-ons; I couldn't tell). In the modern era, here are the best seasons SLU has had in order of total wins, with the number of locals following each year and NCAA Tournament seasons in bold: 2012-2013 - 0 2013-2014 - 0 1988-1989 - 6 2011-2012 - 1 1986-1987 - 8 2018-2019 - 3 2009-2010 - 2 1994-1995 - 5 1993-1994 - 5 1997-1998 - 6 This is not an argument for or against pursuing locals. I like most of the local kids we're currently recruiting and would be very happy with more local commitments. *In my research, I had to draw a line between what was local and what wasn't. I basically include a 1-2 hour radius around St. Louis, so if someone's from a small town in the region, they're generally getting included because STL would be the biggest major city and those kids would've played AAU ball with STL-based programs. I only included scholarship players, too, and I went back to 1987.

My guess is Cragg had total control when he convinced boosters and his bosses that buying out Mullins after a NCAA tournament season was the right move because he had Bobby Hurley locked down as the next coach. When he didn't deliver on that, I am sure many people lost faith in him. I don't blame them. If I was booster that was convinced by Cragg to give a million dollars to pay Mullins to leave because Cragg promised me Hurley, I would be pissed. I wouldn't want Cragg involved anymore at all.

Are you guys serious? Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't see a scenario where Lewis gets under 25 minutes per game. We were absolutely atrocious on the offensive end last year. And that was WITH Isabell and Bess. Lewis is a proven offensive weapon at this level and has ~75 games under his belt. Freshmen are still freshmen. And Thatch has a long way to go to be an offensive threat.

Only if he wins the starting spot. Let me pose a scenario where Thatch is the starter and plays some at the 3. And this assumes the most favorable circumstances, where Jacobs doesn't play at all, Hargrove logs no minutes at the 3, and Thatch plays less than 25 min a game. Goodwin/Collins 25/15 Thatch/Lewis/Jimerson 16/14/10 Perkins/Thatch/Goodwin 25/8/7 This is why Brian and I have been harping on the importance of point guard skills for small guards. It allows them to stay on the floor. Otherwise they have to shoot the lights out.

Lewis could get starter minutes. It all depends on how well he shoots. Everything else Thatch does better. In the case of defense, much better.

Pearson asked for a release claiming his grandmother was ill and he wanted to stay near her. There was a lot of discussion in the board about this. Once he got the release he posted an "I'm now available" notice. He wanted to play for Kentucky and thought he was the hottest thing available after coming a runner up in the KY Mr. Basketball designation. He had some interest but decided to go to prep school instead. I believe he was expecting offers to rain on him and apparently none did. He is going to TCU and as I have mentioned many times before I hope he rots sitting on the bench. This guy truly thought he was too good for us. This is my recollection of the Pearson event.

Sounds like the AD at St. John's is the one who will be searching for a job soon. Butted heads with Chris Mullin, wasn't on the same page as the president, now wants a different coach than the GC. Even if they wind up with a good coach, it'll almost be by accident given how messy the process has been.

This transfer stuff which I fully support but it's really messing with a cool product. Bad enough that coaches move around so fast but now the players. Knowing the other teams in A-10 and any team is not as fun without the enjoyment from following players from year to year.

AAU programs take a lot of heat, but the local ones here have done a great job developing talent. The grade school staffs all the way up to those on the U17 programs deserve a ton of praise locally on this.

The best team isn't necessarily the best set of individual players. They have to complement each other. Every year we see teams implode that have great talent but don't play well together. Virginia and Texas Tech were not the most talented teams in basketball this year but they did have each other's back.

At this point, my only major concern with this team is who can spell French for 10-14 minutes each game. I'm not overly worried with how the guard minutes end up panning out, because they will distribute themselves based on performance, but it is fun to speculate about, especially considering our back-court stable is likely set (fingers crossed for no transfers or situations). Goodwin is probably locked in for at least 30, but then it's a total mystery. Here's what I see as what question(s) each player has to answer to get a share of the remaining ~90 minutes: Perkins: can he defend up to SLU standards? Thatch: can he shoot/score, play more on the ball? Collins: can he defend bigger guards, can he shoot? Lewis: can he defend up to SLU standards, can he distribute the ball as a primary guard? Jacobs: is he up to this level in terms of speed of thought, overall skill? Jimerson: can he defend whatsoever (/can Ford find a way to hide him), can he play on the ball at all? So Perkins and Thatch probably have the leg up to join Goodwin as starters, as they have fewer/smaller question marks to go along with more readily apparent high-level skills (scoring and defending, respectively). I don't feel like this is a particularly controversial take. Thatch was actually pretty horrendous offensively last year, so he needs to take a step-up if he wants to play more minutes than he did last year, but I'm cautiously optimistic on that front as he was a very good scorer and an average shooter in high school. On the flip side, Jimerson and Jacobs have the most to prove and are really total question marks. Jimerson might only be good at shooting and nothing else, which would dramatically limit his playing time. Jacobs so far is totally unproven beyond his highlight reel of dunks and really has a lot of work to do in terms of shooting, ball-handling, and defending. Both have tremendous upside, but who knows where they actually are right now? That leaves Collins and Lewis as the two guys most likely to get bench minutes to start, in large part because each brings one high-level skill (distributing and shooting, respectively). Ford went on record to say that Collins is an excellent defender, which is hopefully accurate and not just coach-speak. He's obviously undersized, so hopefully he shows some ability to handle post-up attempts by bigger guards and demonstrates better shooting ability than he did as a senior (when he was fresh off shoulder surgery). Lewis is a decidedly below average defender by advanced metrics, although he's about at the level that Isabell was at Drexel, and Tramaine wound up being an average defender in Ford's system so there is cause for optimism there. However, Lewis has never been a lead guard and doesn't seem to have point guard skills, or at least hasn't shown them at the college level; he's really a shooting guard in a point guard's body, which can work in the A10, but limits his upside. One of Goodwin/Collins will have to be on the floor at all times until proven otherwise. Based on this, I'd guess the minutes distribution winds up something like the following, assuming Ford doesn't go more than 9-deep on the overall rotation: Goodwin - 32 Perkins - 30 Thatch - 22 Lewis - 20 Collins - 16 Jimerson & Jacobs - scraps That said, Jimerson will absolutely get minutes if he's at all competent in facets of the game beyond shooting, which I think will be necessary for our team to be better than it was last year; if so, he'd take minutes from everyone and maybe push Collins down to like 8mpg, acting exclusively as Goodwin's back-up. Jacobs could also return from injury as a totally new player and jump over Collins and take minutes from Thatch & Lewis. Plus Perkins might need to play some minutes as a forward if we don't land a grad transfer big. So obviously this is very fluid, but I don't think I'm too far off based on what we know right now.

wait you are a regular here and only a casual fan? that's f'd up.

Always get the best players. Thats what great programs do, they dont worry too much about sentimental feelings towards players Also french and goodwin are on pace to be two of the top 3 players in our history, if they have trouble competing for spots/minutes to frosh and sophomores, either they weren't as good as we thought, or man those new players are amazing.

I'd love this because that would mean we are most likely getting two top 20 recruits..

The only guaranteed starters next year are French and Goodwin. After that it will depend on match ups it seems. Ford is also smart enough not to recruit a local grad transfer like Lewis and not give him playing time. If Lewis leaves unhappy, that will affect recruiting. We don’t want a Wojo situation

We don't know that for sure... although we expect it. At this point, assuming Lewis gets a waiver - he will play more minutes than Jimerson.

I prefer paper - newspapers, paper books, paper magazines et al. Go to Mercola.com & read about the damage to your eyes from too much screen time. Yes, I get the irony about learning such stuff on the internet

Every day in the gym needs to be a fight. If Thatch wants minutes, earn it. If Thatch wants to start, earn it. My dream is that Ford recruits over Goodwin and French, and they have to fight for their positions next season. [Would we be good or what?]

Expanding on Taj's post, here's average attendance by season, followed by record, number of local players, and arena: 2018-2019 - 6,984 - 23-13 - 3 - Chaifetz 2017-2018 - 6,225 - 17-16 - 2 - Chaifetz 2016-2017 - 5,593 - 12-21 - 3 - Chaifetz 2015-2016 - 6,757 - 11-21 - 2 - Chaifetz 2014-2015 - 7,032 - 11-21 - 1 - Chaifetz 2013-2014 - 8,428 - 27-7 - 0 - Chaifetz 2012-2013 - 7,673 - 28-7 - 0 - Chaifetz 2011-2012 - 7,757 - 26-8 - 1 - Chaifetz 2010-2011 - 6,299 - 12-19 - 2 - Chaifetz 2009-2010 - 7,149 - 23-13 - 2 - Chaifetz 2008-2009 - 7,627 - 18-14 - 6 - Chaifetz 2007-2008 - 8,837 - 16-15 - 7 - Scottrade/Savvis/Kiel 2006-2007 - 9,667 - 20-13 - 6 - Scottrade/Savvis/Kiel 2005-2006 - 9,325 - 16-13 - 4 - Scottrade/Savvis/Kiel 2004-2005 - 8,030 - 9-21 - 2 - Scottrade/Savvis/Kiel 2003-2004 - 8,918 - 19-13 - 2 - Scottrade/Savvis/Kiel 2002-2003 - 9,232 - 16-14 - 4 - Scottrade/Savvis/Kiel 2001-2002 - 11,598 - 15-16 - 3 - Scottrade/Savvis/Kiel 2000-2001 - 12,212 - 17-14 - 4 - Scottrade/Savvis/Kiel 1999-2000 - 13,631 - 19-14 - 5 - Scottrade/Savvis/Kiel 1998-1999 - 15,142 - 15-16 - 6 - Scottrade/Savvis/Kiel 1997-1998 - 17,708 - 22-11 - 6 - Scottrade/Savvis/Kiel 1996-1997 - 13,732 - 11-18 - 7 - Scottrade/Savvis/Kiel 1995-1996 - 16,986 - 16-14 - 5 - Scottrade/Savvis/Kiel 1994-1995 - 17,714 - 23-8 - 5 - Scottrade/Savvis/Kiel 1993-1994 - 13,008 - 23-6 - 6 - St. Louis Arena 1992-1993 - 8,591 - 12-17 - 6 - St. Louis Arena 1991-1992 - 7,697 - 5-23 - 9 - St. Louis Arena 1990-1991 - 6,993 - 19-14 - 7 - Kiel 1989-1990 - 6,982 - 21-12 - 7 - Kiel 1988-1989 - 6,281 - 27-10 - 6 - Kiel 1987-1988 - 5,658 - 14-14 - 9 - Kiel

Not often you see a kid de-commit from a NCAA tourney team, conference championship winning team, to play for an NIT team with a coach who has eyes elsewhere.

Only 2.5 times longer to get to Fort Worth than STL. I hope he rots on the bench there.

I guess his Grandma moved to Fort Worth!

4 stars are NOT going straight to the NBA. Many 5 stars will but not even all of them. See Tillmon, Gordon, French, Goodwin just to name a few we know about.

stu cant decide what definitively gets in the paper or at stltoday.com. talk to the sports editor. unfortunately most of the post disgrace's editors are mi$$ouri grads and feel obligated to defend the tiger$ however they can, even if that means keeping billiken news to a minimum. we do have a very nice article today on the chances of fouler tilmon going to the nba as he declared today. ha.

Mickey Pearson to TCU: Before all the comments about how much you don't care, I'm just closing the loop. TCU had been involved for the past several months.

Just stop, you can never have too much talent! I want the best players on the court. Our coach should always be trying to bring in the best talent possible. I’m not worrying about minutes, I’m concerned about winning. It’s impossible to please all 13 players on a basketball roster.

I don’t think that’s the play here. I think it’s “one of St. Louis finest products has been left stranded by a coaching change and were here for him. Take note St. Louis we care about our local kids”

Fred, get in the gym and work on that jumper. There are incoming and current players who want your job.

How many more days till billiken madness?

Blackshear now a grad transfer. Please Ford, get him and pair him with French. DEADLY

Isn't STL the closest main city to Sikeston? Most people refer to their hometown as the city nearest them. I.e Chicago etc

Could not disagree more. It sounds like you would prefer a mediocre team of local talent over a better team of regional/national talent. Give me the W's. If the original recruits can't out perform the newer recruits, if they don't want it bad enough to demonstrate they belong on the floor, I'd tell them to deal with it however they need to. I do agree that Ford is smart enough to put his best team on the floor, regardless of where they went to High School.

It would be awkward for a non alum to go all in.