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There is no reason for Jacobs to leave and here are some reasons. 1) Weaver graduates means even more playing time for Jacobs. 2) Next season’s team will probably finish in the top 2 of the A10 and make it to the NCAA tournament and Jacobs will probably start again next season. 3) Name a better program for Jacobs to play on then what SLU has to offer next season? I watch every single shoot around before the games and cheer the team leaving the court through the tunnel and I see Jacobs working and interacting with his teammates and I have never seen Jacobs going through the motions. What I see from Jacobs is a player that when he sees his shots going in he plays with more confidence and that is when we see the how great he can be however when he misses shots or has a turnover or makes a mistake he plays tentative and disappears. It would be a big blow to next season’s team if Jacobs would transfer because his best has yet to come and would hurt the depth at the guard position.

Jacobs has gone from being a small school two-star recruit his junior year to playing 23 min a game a few years later for an A-10 team with NCAA tournament aspirations. Yet the perception is that he's this natural basketball talent that isn't living up to his potential. It's a testament to all his hard work that he's perceived that way.

Jacobs worked incredibly hard to improve his game over the off-season. One of the most notable year to year improvements we’ve seen from a Billiken. He seems like a great teammate. Ford is hard on him, but he always seems to take it well, and he’s shown up in big games multiple times this season. I expect him to stay a Billiken and remain on that upward trajectory.

I also dislike speculating on who is going to transfer or leave. It isnt fair to the player and i find is distasteful. When the season is over we will find out who stays or leaves.As coach ford said you can never stop recruiting, injuries, illness and "situations" happen and you have to be ready. i encourage everyone to stop the speculation and support the players until or if they leave.

I’m going to guess the Big East won’t expand again, or at least until their current tv deal expires. They will finally have a round robin schedule with the addition of UCONN. They will have a 20 game conference schedule and the economics of adding another member might not line up. This isn’t to say it won’t happen at all, but I get the feeling the Big East is closed for business for a while.

Couple things 1) jacobs has improved immensely and by his senior year he could be a real difference maker. We see evidence now that he can really change a game 2) not all offers are the same. 3) surprising to see another offer to a High school guard. Thought we might want a (grad) transfer

He’s a Sophomore. Have you seen improvement from last year?

I still think MD might be useful. He sees a great team in practice.

Imo one of the problems with Jacobs is that he's easy to guard out of a half court offense due to how slow his release on his shot is. It seems to me he's more productive as we play at a faster pace. If I was Jacobs I'd have Yuri or someone fire passes to me all summer and I'd work on getting my shot off quicker. I think he's valuable and a nice player as he is, but improving the quickness on his release will make him much better. He's obviously athletic, so I'm not sure if it's a confidence thing on the shot or if he's just overly deliberate.

The winner gets an extra pillow for Wednesday Night Pillow Fight.

This is my constructive criticism of Jacobs, it’s just my personal opinion based off of watching games this year. I think he lacks confidence. When I say that, I don’t mean that he lacks confidence in his own skills necessarily, but that he isn’t ready to really take over a game. I think he defaults too much to other guys (Has, JGood, Perkins). He’s not quite to the point where he’s looking to go find his shot. And I think a lot of that is justified. This is essentially year 1A for him, and Has and JGood are obviously the leaders on this team. I think that’s part of the reason Ford gets on him so much, because he knows what’s in there, and he’s trying to find a way to bring it out. I’ve never had a problem with Jacobs’ effort, he just needs to be more aggressive. But he’s eventually gonna find it and when he does, just imagine this team with all the options we already have, Thatch and Jimerson coming back, and all of a sudden Jacobs is firing on all cylinders. Look out A10.

He starts and plays a lot. Ford is so tough on all of his guards. I think it is natural.

Exactly. Jacobs made three baskets last year...... the entire year. He committed 18 fouls and scored 8 points. He's averaging 7ppg in 23 minutes. Nobody even knew if he would play regular minutes to start the season. He hasn't been great every game, but he's been really solid on defense, and good enough from 3 to garner respect.

Some of what you mention in your last paragraph has already begun to happen, like when Mark Smith transferred from Illinois to Missouri after his freshman year and was granted a waiver to play right away without a year in residence.

I think it is best not to speculate about spcific players. We can all look at the minutes played and guess who might leave or look at the competition at a givien position and speculate about who is at the bottom of the pecking order. I suggest that putting out a name without the player or team makiing an announcement is nothing better than gosip and that isn't fair to players who work as hard as these guys do, whether they get minutes or not. I think it is acceptable in todays game to say that 1 or more players may leave in a given season, just because that is what is happening accross division 1 basketball today. Players look for playing time on leser teams, some players look for better teams, some player look for something closer to home and some just look for a place to start over. We as fans often have no clue, all got suprised about Johnson leaving. Players will often let the coach know that they intend to leave, but don't want it public during the season or while they are attending schcool

I hate speculating which player(s) might transfer especially during the season. That is why I bad posted you. Big(ger) time programs have tons of offers out all the time even when they're full on scholarships. Some programs are often even over-committed in terms of the number of players for the team the following year. If you remember, that's actually how we ended up with Lancona because Washington State was overcommitted None of that necessarily means that a player is leaving, it is just the nature of CBB for competitive teams. Another thing to remember is that there is a difference between an "offer" and an actual offer. I'm nearly certain that all of the times we see a kid say he has on offer on Twitter don't necessarily mean the kid could get a basketball scholarship from us. I'm not a huge fan of being overcommitted, but still making "offers" / showing interest is something that we have to do and the coaches wouldn't be doing their jobs if they didn't.

Dayton really playing tight out court defense to open the game. Dickie v doing the color. I guess no acc game anywhere tonight These don't look like the same dayton and Davidson's the billikens played this. Year. Dayton playing like a number 1 seed, Davidson's looks like a non conference buy game team

Click on these two photos. Expand to full screen. Pretty cool shot of a Yuri no look pass.

Wait until you reach my age. Trust me they get hotter.

Please, be safe, Coach314!

Taj. Totally agree about players signing with the coaches, not the schools. At the same time, I had more sympathy for the new recruits who had to honor their commitment to the school while their coach breached his contract and left the school under the current rules. Not only b/c it could be a tough year for the new recruit with a completely different coach, different style, different everything but also b/c the only way to change from such a bad situation is to transfer and sit out a year. Now, if the kids can simply leave after 1 year, I have less sympathy. Even if you coach leaves, play a year and then you can move on seems reasonable. Not that I have no sympathy - just less. I also, though, feel bad for the school which is trying to put out a good product. In fact, the school probably did put out a good product - which is why they just lost their head coach. In such an event, they lose not only their head coach/staff but also they lose their incoming class, and then if both are gone, they now lose what should be their returning class? The new coach is supposed to reload the whole team - all in late Spring? And now, then I assume that new head coach will go out and try to find players - and guess what - this new coach now has alot of playing time to sell. So I am sure he can then raid the P5 schools and offer their lesser kids immediate playing time? Or will there be a deadline by when guys won't be able to transfer (which would normally seem reasonable) but which would then prevent the mid major from stealing players back? We see it all the time with the coaching carousal. P5 coach gets fired late, mid-major then loses their coach who goes to vacant P5 position even later and then lower tier D1 team loses their head coach even later as their coach goes to the vacant mid-major position. Similar run on players? If it's all about the kids - then deadlines, right? I know Travis Ford wants a deadline -- a coach has to know who will be playing for him and to prevent even more poaching by guys like Cuonzo Martin. And last I heard, professional programs who lose free agents are then awarded cash and draft picks to compensate them for time and investments. How about college basketball programs? What will their compensation be ...? I thought so.

Thank god we poached that big 10 team for Javon Bess

I'm pretty sure a lot of us will be looking for a tall bridge if those guys get recruited away from the Fetz. Think back to Sit 2 for a minute, though, would JGood still be a Billiken if this rule were in effect then? I'd wager he'd be an Illini or playing for Coach Poach. Speaking of Coach Poach and this rule, it's akin to having the fox moving his den right next door to your chicken coop. You can bet he'll be tracking SLU's players non stop. When is this rule supposed to go into effect?

The A10 will breath a sigh of relief when the Double Double Twins and the Perkulator graduate. Then they will recoil in horror as they discover Yuri is surrounded by the Splash Brothers, Dr. Dunkenstein and the new and improved Locomotive. When they foul to slow us down they will gently weep as we shoot over 70% from the line.

should all be ala carte

Concessions are outrageous. I buy very little now because of the price. It’s as bad as Busch stadium. I have decent to good seats. The 3seats cost me roughly $75 a game. Then parking is around $10. If everyone gets a soda/beer and something else like popcorn it’s another $40 or $50. So I could easily be around $200 a game to attend for 3 people. That’s starting to get up there. I know a lot of you guys spend a lot more than that. So we do almost no concessions to try to control the cost. I just tell the kids we’ll get ice cream on the way home.

BEATINGADEADHORSE would be a good Billiken.com name for you to use after you get thrown off the board again.

Nice

Keep in mind St. Joes doesnt have a legit big let alone 2 legit forwards. TJ was a great matchup for Daly, but neither he or Perkins are a good defensive matchup against a strong 4. French has problems with taller, athletic matchups, so if he is playing against a taller quick 5, he either picks up fouls or just cant' get any good shots. The bottom line is that we have to adjust our lineup to what the other team is doing to us at both ends of the floor. Playing French at the post with 4 guards works great against a lot of lower to mid Div 1 teams, but the top third of Division 1 and most of the NCAA at large bids have size and athletisism at the post positions. Coach Ford is building a top 25 team. That takes a team that can match up with teams that are strong at the forward positions. That is why he signed Bell and Diarra. He has also signed a good number of athletic guards so he can press teams that are weak or thin at the guard position. He has more recently signed some sharp shooters who can stretch the floor and break a zone. To regularly be in the top 25, a team has to be able to play and defend a good half court offense. We don't have a dominant NBA player, like Toppin, we have good players and need to matchup with opponents and play team ball. Ford has been investing in Bell from the beginning of the season because he knows that he needs him to get this team where he wants it. Bell has played some big defencs against some good inside players and in games where French got in foul trouble. I believe the investment in Bell has already paid off and will pay greater dividends going forward. Ford signed each of these players for a reason, this freshmen class is special and each of them bring something significant to the table. Diarra is the only one that we as fans haven't seen. TJ and Bell are both improving, good in some games and not so good in others, that is typical for freshmen and the matchups make a big difference.

I’m gonna say it, I don’t get a good vibe from Jacobs. I like him, hope he stays, but I could see him transferring