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We’re breaking down the tweets of a wannabe internet sleuth doorman. He’s been given his 5 min of attention on social media. Time to move on

"The individual is asymptomatic, according to Pastner. No other members of the team were deemed close contacts through contact tracing." Hahah, this is just a farce at this point. Just stop talking about Covid if there is actually no way to be disqualified unless it is self-elimination. No team is going to self-eliminate. Kansas, Georgia Tech and UVA should all be out if the NCAA followed through with the plan they said.

You look at the two writers' content, and think Durando provides better SLU news? Honestly. Carter handled this perfectly - like "hey this is out there, it's been out here a while, just FYI." He didn't share it until it started making the rounds through a10 twitter. What he did was literally unbiased. Didn't comment on it - asked Ford to comment. That's it. This is a truly bizarre reaction to the story. Chapley provides the best billiken news and is really the only one who listens to the fanbase as far as what we're looking for in a beat guy. The only one who does anything else worth reading is @Pistolthrough the new podcast (and here). The yellow journalism take is one of the wilder takes I've seen on this site... and that's saying something

How many hundred times have we discussed this?

What did Ford say that countered anything in the tweets sent by Gardner or Chapley? Ford didn't deny anything in those tweets. Ford never said he wasn't at the party. Ford went out there and acted like the whole thing was an attack on Brooks to avoid getting asked questions he didn't want to answer. Since the loss to the Bonnies, Ford has been saying COVID should be took into account for the Billikens issues in the second half of the season. If you are going to use that as the excuse, you should be prepared to answer question about how the team got hit so hard by COVID. Especially when this story has been making the rounds for months.

They’re f.cking sick. Coach Ford threw a party for them

What did Gardner send out that was unverified? The pictures are sourced to Brooks own Instagram account. No one has said the party didn't happen. If people just wanted to nastily attack the program, this whole incident would have been brought up on the board a long time ago because it has been an open secret among many since shortly after it happened. I don't like talking about stuff that makes the program look bad. That said, attacks on people who tweeted about something that actually happened shouldn't be unanswered. Travis Ford screwed up. The full extent of the screw up is unknown, but it was Travis Ford's screw up and not Chris Gardner's or Carter Chapley's screw up.

What was not true? The pictures existed, and were in the public domain. All Carter did was point out what pictures had been posted, say he would ask coach Ford about it, asked Coach Ford, and then posted his response. Seems like more than fair treatment to me.

I think it’s safe to say Stone is the best coach wbb has ever had by quite a lot.

i have eyes and ears and nearly 7 decades, journalism is non existent'

Like I said, Gardner isn't a journalist. Chapley is. Chapley didn't write an article or post his own tweet about the party. He re-tweeted Gardner's tweet and put a disclaimer on it that he hadn't verified anything. You can clearly see Brooks Ford in the pictures and they are clearly screengrabs from his social media account. I'm not sure what sources Carter needed to retweet something & clearly state that he hasn't verified anything. I hope you know this by now, but you should be independently verifying anything you read on a message board or social media with a reputable source (or really multiple reputable sources) before believing it regardless of the source or who the source appears to be. It has always been reader beware when it comes to the internet.

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/31073067/six-ncaa-men-basketball-tournament-referees-sent-home-one-tests-positive-covid-19 Obviously I hope his health is fine but no tears here for him not working the tourney

I guess we can agree to disagree. And when did I whine about him two other times this week? Please remind me

How would you if no one asks substantive questions about it? Even aside from proof, the optics can be very bad without hard evidence it caused the COVID pause.

The thing you miss here is that nobody is really angry with Brooks. I think everyone understands a healthy 21 year old celebrating his birthday even if it wouldn’t be the best idea. That is what I thought was amazing about Ford’s comments on it. He turned it into an attack on his son which totally shifted the discussion away from the fact that people were questioning Travis and his actions, not Brooks. It was an incredible spin job. Ford did a masterful job of totally distorting what were the actual issues in question. Politicians could learn a lot from it.

willie no one is concerned about the date of the championship game. brenda's FU was moving the rest of the tourney up a week. that was a huge mistake.

@Clock Tower —- not only Cpt. Obvious but reading impaired and logic impaired. I blast you for taking 14 days to post that in-depth piece of analysis and you come back with some disconnected gibberish tying my A10 analysis into glowing reports on all teams but ours. I EXPECT Billiken fans to know their team. I don’t bother to report on what Cpt. Obvious seems to want. I did say I was done with both players. There. I said it again. Maybe they’ll go out in the Not In Tournament Tournament and look good. Won’t matter. It’s not The Dance and that is the banner of success. Nothing else measures up. Also, we were not a NCAA tourney team this year or last. Did we play in either tournament? No. I don’t know how you count but that’s how I count. Play and in. Not and out. Seems simple to even Cpt. Obvious types. Mangle that however you want. I don’t recall calling COVID an excuse but for Dayton 1.0 and La Salle. Look around the country, almost all teams affected by COVID have come back weaker —— Baylor, Michigan State, many others. But I only write off the first two games back. Then the rest fail elsewhere. I have long said we are better than the Bonnies and think Schmidt a tedious, sideline wanderer who I want nothing to do with. Yet you seem to credit me otherwise. Again, reading comprehension. And you still don’t get matchup issues between teams. Sit down and shut up. I have no clue what your son and kids recovering have in this discussion. On one hand your kid got it and recovered with no (?) problems. So kids recover? But then you say for French and others it was a big deal. Then comes “but I have no firsthand knowledge. The effects of COVID are real and no excuse.” So COVID is real and not an excuse.” WTF are you trying to say? I have long said Perkins is a scoring machine. Collins is the best pure passer since H Waldman. French and Goodwin are warriors. Gibson Jimerson is a shooter. But all are weak and exploitable from a scouting perspective. I also EXPECT Billiken fans to know that too. I calls them as I sees them. You don’t like it, don’t read my stuff.

In fairness, the Big East title game was not really competitive. That being said, the time slot of the A10 Championship game is pretty fantastic. You're on CBS on Selection Sunday during a prime sports viewing time. People like to watch sports on Sunday afternoons. Years of the NFL & golf has trained them that way. You've also had nearly a whole week/weekend of Championship week getting people hyped up about college basketball. Kudos to the A10 for getting that slot on CBS.

It's been that way for a while.......if you want to watch/read something quaint, try "all the president's men" All the time they spent verifying sources is a bad joke today. Rachel Maddow would've been on the air with the first whiff of watergate, even if the source was the McGovern campaign......

so a "journalist" is ok if they put out rumors and unsubstantiated information? if that is true in todays journalism, journalism truly is dead. the good ole days a story didnt make the news unless there were two verified sources. that's not needed anymore i guess. in fact nothing has to be verified i guess. and then it's just reader/viewer/listener beware.

Nah dude, this ain’t it. Take your shots at Gardner but I’m gonna draw the line way before anyone takes shots at Carter. That dude grinds every day for Billiken content while working at least one “day job”.

IMO whatever his previous position in local media, Gardner is a doorman and has no obligation to uphold journalistic standards. He might as well just be some random guy. If I had access to those pictures, I personally wouldn’t have shared them, but if I did, it’d be dumb to criticize me for not adhering to journalistic standards. Because I’m not a journalist. I hold Chapley to a slightly higher standard, but the only thing I feel like he messed up is he should’ve reached out to and provided Ford’s statement alongside his original retweet. For example if Ford would’ve denied that Brooks’ party happened at all, it would’ve been really important context. That’s not what happened though so I guess in the end it doesn’t matter. As a side note, is Brooks’ birthday 12/23? That’s my daughter’s birthday.

6:20, per his twitter

From my point of view what is going on is that everyone is looking for someone or something to place the blame for this season (apparently Ford in this casee). In reality if there is anything that really screwed up the team's efforts and tournament play this year, the most likely culprit is the extraordinary strictness of the Saint Louis and SLU Covid restrictions. The team should and could have been practicing and playing much earlier than they were. And, by the way, SLU deciding the Bills would not play Richmond, after they were there, due to the fact that Richmond was not compliant with the strict St. Louis restrictions, did not gain the team any friends or support this season. Another crass piece of stupidity on the same level was the cancellation of the MVC St. Louis tournament because of the St. Louis Covid regs. MVC played elsewhere, and I bet they will not bring their teams back to St. Louis for tournament for the foreseeable future. It takes a special kind of stupid to decide that your rules and regulations are superior to anyone else's. It is an application of "Deutschland, Deutshcland uber alles" to the Covid world of restrictions. Deep dark stupidity is what the St. Louis Covid regs really are. These regs are not superior in any way other that in their ability to obstruct what has been shown in the current tournaments to be a totally adequate, but much more lenient, set of Covid regulations. It appears that the supporters of St. Louis regulatory restrictions are likely to be the ones that are pointing the fingers at a different set of culprits to justify this season's disaster (and protect their own rear ends).

That’s good to hear. I’ve never shopped there either. Those commercials were just so excruciating, but it was kind of brilliant because it was impossible NOT to get them stuck in your head. Kind of lick the flying carpet commercials in front of the arch for Becky’s carpet and tile outlet whatever it was called. Absolutely awful commercials, but I bet if you ever needed carpet or tile, their name popped into your head.

"We know people like to shop on Sundays, but we just hope you take time the other days of the week to shop at our store. Give us a chance any day but Sunday. The highest technology....at the lowest price...Turn it on!" I've never actually shopped there, but I've heard various 3rd hand reports from someone who knows someone who knows him that Steve Goedeker is like the nicest guy on the face of the earth.

The media market to me seems a non factor. If you took the top 20 sources for Sports info in NYC would any of them devote more than 1% of their time or space to Fordham? What do they draw in attendance? 17

One down...

I find it very unlikely he was there given this time frame.

Nor was he asked that. Do you have any real reason to believe he was at that party since you keep harping on it? Keep in mind he would have been at the SLU game till 9:30 or 10:00 and the bar should have closed at 11 PM per city regulations. It's quite possible they simply don't know who was patient 0 in the outbreak. It's also possible they do know and don't want to make it public as doing so would be the equivalent of throwing that person/player under the bus and it really doesn't achieve anything to do so.

Yep. I was getting around to posting that one too.

Thanks Captain Obvious. What you been doing these last 14 days or so .... developing that in-depth analysis.

I don’t get denigrating Gardner for tweeting about a story that has been making the rounds for months now and his been blamed for shutting down the state’s two biggest college basketball programs. There seems like there is a story there that actually might need some answers deeper than we got today. It could be nothing, but I would like some answers better than I didn’t get COVID from Brooks.

Well a sane person would know he is implying Travis is to blame, but the Travis’s comments worked. No one in the press will ask if Travis was at the party.

Not a political rant but a fact if you paid attention. Also pretty clear he implicated Ford’s family. If it was Ford himself caught partying that’s one thing but it wasn’t. It was his 21 year old son. Leave the kids out of it.

Literally no one implicated his son for ruining SLU’s season. That’s what you wanted to read so you could go on a political rant.

All those are Valley games. Is Drake Quad 1? It's not good. They played 3 decent teams outside of conference and went 1-2. So they beat an over rated Drake twice. The rest of the MVC has net rankings of 97,121,174,194,214,229,233. Non Conference the beat 346 and 287 and 59 N. Texas at home. They lost to 27 on the road and 68 at home. They're entire rating comes from going 2-1 vs Drake and beating Mo State twice on the road. Hell they split with #120 Ind state on the road. So Q1 Wins Drake (45) away. Drake Neutral Losses Wisc (27) away, Drake away Q2 Wins N Texas (59) home, Mo State (97) away x2, Ind St (120) away Losses Richmond (68) home, Ind State away They have 1 game vs a top 40 opponent and they lost. The silliness to this is a win vs #31 at home is equal to a win vs #134 on the road. Does anyone actually believe that to be true? What are the Ken Pom rankings of Drake, N. Texas, Richmond, Mo St and Ind State.

If you're gonna do that, you've basically added another Region. Uh, Central? I'd rather retire the NIT and add some teams to the dance right from the start. Make the tourney 96 teams, for example. Sprinkle in more play-in games (and/or give the ones and maybe the twos a first round bye) to weed out some of the lower-ranked fodder and go from there.

Can we get an NIT bracket contest going? I'm dead serious about that. Someone put it together.

I totally get it. But there are some really cool, fun things about being a Billikens fan too. Perkins is coming back, we get 2 more years of Okoro starting next year. When there’s a conversation speculating about a local former 4* maybe coming home, however unrealistic, and the first thing he says is bitching that it doesn’t matter because Ford’s not a good enough to take advantage of it anyway, that’s a troll in my book. Without adding a lot of details, I used to be the type of person that only ever saw the worst in everything. And I was absolutely miserable 24/7. I’m ok with genuine criticism. I criticize the team on this board PLENTY. But when every single post is just worst case scenario, that’s a problem. Maybe it’s not technically trolling, but it’s certainly not making the team, or this board, any better.

I think if this conversation is after next season, there may be a better chance. I think I’d stay no matter what with what he has coming back. If they add a high end transfer or two they’re a preseason top 20 type team

If Chris Gardner was good at journalism, maybe he would actually be doing it. Just a thought.

Just bought 6 NIT tix center court $16 each! Booked my Hotel too, Knights Inn here I come! Not sure if I'll have time to pregame like that KU game in KC or that Seton Hall game in Jersey. So 5 buy a few extra for me to slam upon arrival section 106, biz-natches! NIT Fever Catch It!!!!!!!

This wouldn’t be shocking. If SLU isn’t going to guarantee Phil a scholarship, it makes a ton of sense for him to go elsewhere where he’ll get a free education and playing time. For SLUs sake I hope he stays, is content to backup Yuri & hopefully develops into a great player, but for his sake I just hope he finds the right situation for him.

I agree. Sometimes that allure from high majors is to strong for these young men. Hopefully Cam takes time to evaluate each option and talks to the right people. He's a good kid...I wish the best for him.

Having Phil on the squad definitely helps because they are pretty close friends. If Ford can convince Cam he has as good of a chance of going pro at SLU than anywhere else...I think SLU's chances are as good as anyone else's. This is just my opinion. I haven't heard any news at the moment.

Phil Russell put on his story, "watch this" above the fletcher transfer report.

We have not reached the level as a program where we're turning down 6'6 215 lb matchup nightmares if they want to come here. Especially not one with 4 years of eligibility.

Whether Russell remains at SLU or not won't affect SLU's relationship with Vashon. Ford really really likes Philip. Philip was told he wouldn't get many minutes this year. If Ford however decides to upgrade and go a different direction at point guard it won't affect future recruiting down at Vashon.