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with all the trouble in the world can we just love Jordan Goodwin and move on regardless of position.

First a great win over Tulane ...not because we beat a C team but because we played a strong game on offense AND defense....We finally put it all together....see the post game wrap up on the spread thread for more detail. This coming together could not have come at a better time as we face our toughest challenge of the regular season....The Bills remain as a B team (it is difficult to move up grade wise as data accumulates.) Meanwhile , we face Auburn an A+ team...rated 12th in this week's AP poll and 10th in The Wiz poll.. If we look at the trending grades (rating recent games with more value than earlier games) The Bills come in at a very nice A-...something you want to see in a new , young team that is still evolving. Unfortunately, In the trending grades, Auburn again comes up with an A+....trending spread is better but still shows Aub by 6. Before we figure out what we need to do , let's figure out what we are dealing with... Let's take a look at the report card... ..............................SLU.............................Aub.............................................SLU...................................Aub ................................................OFF................................................................................DEF............... PPG.........................C+................................A+...7th ITN............................B+.....................................C FG%.........................B-................................A.......................................... ..B+......................................B- 3Pt%........................B+...............................C.............................................D-.......................................B- FT%.........................F-... Worst ITN...........D-............................................................................................. Reb.........................A+....15th ITN.............A+.....10th ITN.......................C+........................................B OFF Rebs = total rebs...DEF rebs = opp reb Also Bills Offensive reb....A+....11th ITN Change from last game (UP means improvement ...Down means worse)....UP ..PPG....FG%...3P%....Reb..... DOWN.....FT% ( back on the bottom again)...3P% def Top 100 ITN Stls....Goodwin ...60th Assts...Collins....28th Rebs...Goodwin...11th.....French...21st Blks.....French....19th PPG...Doughty...64th Assts...McCormick...15th Reb...Wiley...62nd FG%...Wiley...11th (70.7%)...Okoro...71st...(60.3%) Being 7th ITN in PPG Aub knows how to score....Most of that scoring occurs from close in (Wiley and Okoro) ...Aub is not much of a threat from the outside...Doughty is their only shooter of importance from the arc. ..but he can go inside too....Wiley is also their reb threat....In addition, this game won't be decided at the charity line as both teams are terrible FT shooting teams. WWN2D2W...a lot....but it is doable....We need decent shooting....48/38/ 64....Our big strength this year has been rebounding...Unfortunately that is also an Aub strength....The computer shows us even with Aub on the boards...another area I like to harp on because I think it is important is TOs....again the computer shows us even with Aub.....We need to win BOTH battles (reb & TOs) by ANY amount. Wiley and Okoro will try to dominate inside....keep them to a combined 18pts......also keep Wiley off the boards ...hold him to less than 9 rebs......Doughty is their scorer ...hold him to 14 pts. Bottom line.... A lot to do but the game is winnable and we don't need to have a historic game to win...we need a consistent game to win...Off and Def.......Aub is similar to Seton Hall in that they are both A+ teams now. We are in a much better place now than we were when we played SH....We now have the potential to win...we have already played to that potential....We just need to do it ....now. Go Bills

Jacobs is to Goodwin what McCall was to Jett (sort of).

I would say Jacobs has been the biggest surprise of this young season. The fact that he is starting and 4th on the team in scoring has been a big bonus. Yes, he was pretty highly regarded when we signed him, but he did so little last year in his limited minutes. He scored 8 points and committed 18 fouls on the season. He looked like a deer in the headlights at times when he was on the court. In an instant gratification era, I don't think it would have surprised anybody if he had transferred following last season. Patience is in short supply in college basketball, where fans, players and sometimes even coaches expect instant results. Kudos to young DJ for sticking with it and for the coaching staff for believing in him. This will serve as a good example for freshmen like TH and MD who are not getting many minutes. Keep working, and your time will come.

The more Top 25 votes they get the better opportunity it presents for us on Jan 2. I hope they win their next 4 games by double digits and get several more Top 25 votes, then beating them at their place will be a great start to the A-10 season.

http://warrennolan.com/basketball/2020/conferences You have to do some clicking, but these guys figured out the formula last season. Going through Conference Tab seems to be the easiest.

Goodwin's skill set and Jacobs' skill set are very, very different. Not saying that in a bad way at all, but they're just not comparable players.

Defensively I might try Goodwin on Okoro and throw French on Purifoy. That way you have a taller guy in Purifoy's face when he wants to throw up a three. When Bell comes out you will have to throw French on Wiley and then shift Jacobs or Goodwin over to Purifoy. Fred Thatch will be missed in this game. You just put Thatch on Doughty and it would have allowed Goodwin and Jacobs to match up against Okoro and Purifoy while having French deal with Wiley. We are really going to need Jimerson or Perkins to step up defensively. Auburn has more guys that can't hurt us offensively than any team we have played this year. Their top three scorers are extremely efficient with effective FG%s above 60%. Then they bring Johnson and McLemore of the bench and don't lose any efficiency with both being above 60%. We need to get physical against Auburn. They have yet to play against any team that can get as physical as we can this season. We need to turn this game into a street fight if we are going to win. Make them earn every bucket they get.

Can we drop this. He came because Box and me did our job. Period, end of discussion. Quit trying to diminish our value to the program or I'll have to put you on ignore or even worse Box and me will start a petition to have anyone who questions us banned.

Let me preface this by saying I'm not trying to be argumentative, just want to show some love to TLIII, who is one of my favorite Bills of all time. Tommie actually did top 35% his senior year and was at 34.9% his junior year, which is still good. Here are some players Tommie shot a higher careet 3pt% than: Cody Ellis Kwamain Mitchell Mike McCall Danny Brown Rob Loe Josh Fisher Javon Bess Tramaine Isabell Tommie was not an elite shooter, but he is a good example of a guy who put in the work to make himself a good to very good shooter. And his sophomore season was one of the more impressive shooting seasons I've seen in my lifetime as a Billiken fan.

Great game yesterday! A lot more SLU fans than I expected. I'd estimate at least 60-70 (if not a few more) fans cheering for SLU. I've posted a few pictures that show the overall crowd size (small) as well as the SLU fans behind the bench. There were a few in the section directly across the court, but you'll see mostly red shirts over there - Dayton fans. (A Dayton guy came up to us outside and said he was rooting for SLU, but only for that one game.) We spoke briefly to Chris May and a little longer to Janet Oberle. My daughter recognized a SLU baseball player who was a year behind her at SLU (I'm assuming it's the one who posted yesterday), but most everyone else was in the "upper middle age" (i.e., "senior") category. I'm no basketball junkie and don't know all the terminology, but my overall takeaway from the game was that SLU is a good team, needs to be a little more aggressive on defense, needs to work on their free throws (as does Tulate!) and shouldn't rely on the 3 point shot so much (although it was very effective on Sunday). It seemed like Tulate could penetrate and get under the basket more than SLU did. But the 3 point shooting was amazing, especially Jimmerson! He was on fire. As was Jacobs. Jimmerson got a long standing O when he came out of the game. French had a great game, too, and took MVP honors Thank you, SLU, for coming to Phoenix. Come back anytime! (And play more than one game!)

Give me Larry Hughes Jr.

Didn't know why you added the "but that call ...

Agree 100%, but that call went out about the time "palming the ball" went out.

-if you are going to foul get your money's worth, a nice, hard foul that does not allow the ball to get to the rim, don't get cheated and don't allow a 3pt play and while talking about fouls, certainly don't foul a 3pt shooter, ever

I am only talking about French possibly guarding Purifoy for the first 3 minutes of the game. I probably should have made that clear. Purifoy has been a streaky 3 point shooter this season and I don't want him to start feeling it from the perimeter that early in the game. If he gets comfortable from there that early, it really could be a very long day.

Agree. Jermaine had been with SLU for longer than a few months. Other than whatever happened or did not happen with S2, he was a good teammate. I always wish guys who not only chose SLU in the first place but who also gave it their best - and yet things did not wok out for them - especially when they got a raw deal, got recruited over, etc.

Already planning all day drinking Saturday no matter what happens. LFG

Jacob's showed confidence in his abilities by staying with the Billikens. He also showed maturity by taking his time on the sidelines to study the offence and defense systems that the Billikens run, so he would know what to do when he got his next chance. I hope Hargrove sees that and takes the same path.

Sundberg. Extremely underrated catcher. He was good enough defensively that he finished 15th in the mvp vote twice despite playing for a horrible Rangers team and hitting just over league average. I believe he's tied for 4th with most GG's by a catcher.

Me and Box did our job

Not sure there was any angle other than SLU being the best offer in terms of conference and opportunity to play. I guess it depends on what you call "big boys" but the only other high offers were from Cincinnati and Kansas State, the rest are low to middle mid-major offers.

Lance Parish or Jim Sundberg?

Ya. I wrote a response. Then deleted it cause if he actually believes that there isn't much we can tell him. And I'm one of the biggest Goodwin fans there is.

We got in early and got him signed up aka he ain’t some punk loser like Pearson

that's the consistency we were looking for!

It's sh!thouse rat crazy that we're like 14th in the nation in rebounding and our average height for dudes getting more than 10 minutes a game is 6'5". Take away Jimmy Bell, who barely counts, and we're at 6'4". A team full of jimbofives sniffing top 10 in the country in rebounding. Incredible.

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