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Jan 24 Coach's Show with Rammer: a lot of initial talk about Jimerson and how hard he has worked and how much he has improved. He needs to be moving all the time. Pretty easy to defend anyone who is not moving. Coach tells him to expect the opponent will put their best and most physical defender on him and be ready for a tough match-up. Called him the silent assassin, as he shows no emotion. Coach told him to show a little swagger - you have worked hard, so show it. Nesbitt: Rammer - a lot was expected from him in game 1. Forgot how difficult it is to play D1. Nesbitt watched a lot of film after the UMass loss, and how he wasn't doing anything to effect that game. Mostly on the D end and on rebounding. "If you don't go for the ball, you aren't going to get the rebound." Different approach in this second game, he wanted to be involved in every play: stayed involved in the game and he didn't relax. He was cheating his ability by playing only when his guy had the ball. It is all about never relaxing for Nesbitt. In HS, you can pick and chose when to defend and when to play go hard. That doesn't work in D1. Traore: talked about his dunk. Mentioned the great pass by Lorentsson. Coach didn't like the dancing but other than that said it was a great play. D is well ahead of O. He could play 30 minutes on D. He has quick feet for 6'9". The pace on O is fast for him. He executes the O just fine, just scoring is his problem. Linssen still not 100%. Basile will continue to get minutes the rest of the year. Lorentsson is still growing, probably near 6'10". Second UMass game was not a revenge game, as you can't get revenge on yourself. Team took Friday off after the loss. In Sat practice, very little discussion on UMass, most or all about what we did wrong. All the jogging had to stop. All the relaxing off the ball had to stop. Yesterday, after the game, they discussed identity. Is this (the second game) what we want to be know for? We should have established our identity by now. Everyone has to hold each other accountable. Yesterday was a team oriented defense. Off the ball, everyone was doing their job. It was 'we are better than what we showed Thursday'. Coach "I wasn't all that upset on the loss at UMass, I was more upset on how we played." Christian Nunez was on the show. Coach normally hires people he knows, but he didn't know Nunez before the hire. He was a GA and now Dir of Player Development. Coach said he normally wants his GA's to go elsewhere to get more experience, but he didn't want to let Nunez go. Rammer calls him a very positive person, balancing out Coach's negativity. Everyday he first makes sure the academics are being taken care of. He can't do much on court stuff. Began coaching at his HS for 2 years then went to Iona Preparatory. On the bench during games, Nunez 'keeps our guys together'. He helps with stats during the game and talks to the players if they 'need a hug'. Rammer, "You didn't teach Basile that dance move, did you?" GW coming in, "there is always a reason to fear your opponent". Second most transfers of any school in D1. That attributed to their slow start. GW won two of last three without 2 starters, who will be back on Wednesday. They run a motion offense that is different than anything we have seen, way different than Richmond. 1, 2 and 3's shoot most of their shots. Big's are screeners. They are always moving. They don't have great rebounding numbers, and they don't feed the post all that much. Reschedule of St. B road game - back to backs on Fri ( 8 pm) and Mon (4 pm start). "From this point on the schedule is pretty wild." You still have to take one day off each week, and that is a challenge. Tuesday LaSalle pushed back a day to Wednesday. (Coach, "I didn't know that! I'll be there. That's crazy.")

Was thinking about the Bills this morning and came to the realization that there are a lot of parallels between this year's team and the Bully Bills from 2019-20 even though the skillsets of each team are wildly different. Here's the list: 1. Underperforming A-10 team ranked in the pre-season while a new dominant team emerges: VCU & Dayton in 19-20, St. B and Davidson this season 2. Loss of stars from the year prior: Isabell and Bess in 19-20, Goodwin and French this season 3. Injuries to key players: Thatch and Jimerson in 19-20, Perkins and Linssen this season 4. Big OOC road losses to (at the time) ranked teams: Florida St. (19-20) and Memphis (this season) 5. Good road wins that aren't enough to put us in the at-large conversation: Rhode Island (19-20) and Boise St. (this season) 6. Frustrating and winnable conf. road losses: Duquesne (19-20) and Dayton (this season) 7. Head-scratching road losses: Umass both seasons 8. Close home losses after being up big against eventual top-3 teams with a lottery pick on the roster. Both teams were ranked 13th at the time we played them: Dayton / Obi Toppin in 19-20 and Auburn / Jabari Smith this year 9. Emergence of a new leading scorer: Perkins (19-20) and Jimerson (this season) 10. Key starters that are only freshman: Yuri (19-20) and Nesbitt (this season) So, in order to recreate the run that we had at the end of last year, what do we need to do? 1. Find an identity and stick with it while finding more consistency. By the end of the season in 19-20, we knew that we couldn't shoot and had to play defense and rebound in order to win. Recognizing that along with the extra offense from Perkins allowed us to become consistent and get as hot as we did. The team now is stuck in a transition period too. We have a lot more shooting and offensive talent but it's inconsistent. Our rebounding and defense is solid, but as we've seen in games against UMass and UAB we are inconsistent on those facets as well. I think that the team just needs more time together to work out those kinks and can get on a roll. After all, most Ford teams take time to mesh and perform better towards the end of the year. 2. Breakout of a new star. Like I mentioned above, Javonte's breakout last season allowed us to find missing offense. I think that the game on Sunday showed that Nesbitt can be just as big of a factor. If he continues to play the same way the rest of the season, we will be a force. TLDR: This is a team transitioning between identities like we saw 2 years ago. I think that there's a good chance that we will see a similar run at the end of the season.

Well said...how about a banner as well for Craig Upchurch as a tribute to the incompetent buffoons who have cursed this program? Coach G had a mortal lock on a big dance bid with this stud, a guaranteed glue guy to finally pound Pete Gillen, and look what happened!

Enjoy!

-you need MB73 to weigh in on this

Gives new meaning to the Q1/Q2/Q3/Q4 ranking system..............

Oh no, completely incorrect, things went just as I expected. When I feel positive about games, we lose, when I feel negative about it, we win. Went heavy on the negativity and you see the result. It’s a mystery to me why this works, but I’ll tell you right now, GW is gonna kick our butt.

Reading through this you can really see some parallels with Travis Ford's tenure and it is semi-hilarious that we have MBMs calling for him to get fired and MBMs calling for Grawer to be honored as a program savior. Examples: Grawer took over a dumpster fire after Ekker had driven the program into the ground. Ditto for Ford after the Crews fiasco, but I'll concede the program was/is in much better shape when Ford took over than Grawer. I'm seeing a lot of promising seasons undone by close road losses to lesser teams under Grawer. Sounds familiar. Folks seem to be willing to use the Upchurch thing as an excuse for what should have been a good season, but IMO Ford has similar circumstances happen a few times: His 2nd year (2017-18) after situation 2 when he lost a bunch of guys that were expected to be major contributors (Henriquez, Graves, Bishop). That team still finished .500 in the A-10 and 17-16 overall. The following year (2018-19), Luis Santos was kicked off the team & Carte'are Gordon left mid-season. That team ended up winning the A-10 This season we lost Perkins to injury right before the start of the season.

slu crapped on grawer at the end, dont see a reason he should be slu booster now

I'd love a deep dive on the 88 team from one of the players or the coaching staff. Going into the season the Billikens were favored to win the conference, were in several pre season NCAA tourney previews and made SI's top 40 preseason teams. As an 9 year old that had me the most excited as I read SI voraciously. Was it all Upchurch? Were there other things going on behind the scenes? This team had a ton of talent, maybe the most that Grawer ever had and they completely sh*t the bed.

They couldn't find him He was on the golf course.

Recent 2022 SLU commit Devin Padelford has been training with the Minnesota United first team this past week. Devin is a versatile, MF/LW, who previously was a Twin Cities 1st team All State player, (also a hooper) who plays for the U19 MUFC Academy team. (2022 SLU commit CJ Coppola is also a MUFC Academy player who is a former Iowa Gatorade Player of the Year.)

the problem was the old midwestern cities conference got zero respect from the ncaa. we were a one bid conference forever. we should have been given a spot for the douglas, gray bonner years. yes we were the second best team in the conference to xu, but those billiken teams were very deserving imo.

If the Nesbitt that asserted himself yesterday on both ends of the court is the Nesbitt we get the rest of the year..... watch out. Jimerson might end up averaging over 20 a game as teams have to account for Nesbitt.

I prefer to heavily weight (*snickers*) schedule with Q1 or 2. But always gotta throw in a cupcake (*snickers again*) Q3 early in the season. I avoid Q4s at all cost.

Feel like I noticed him around here recently giving post reactions.

I'm a big fan of the ShotQuality website. In general, I have been surprised on how high SLU has ranked on the ShotQuality leaderboards the last couple of years. If you buy into these metrics, it's a good sign regarding the coaching staff. One thing I like about ShotQuality is that it refutes the generalization a lot of analytics people make about mid-range shots being terrible. Davidson has the second lowest rim and 3 rate, but also the second best offensive shot quality. Fordham has the highest rim and 3 rate, but the 10th best offensive shot quality. In terms of dunks, Jimerson has missed a dunk, Okoro has missed 6, Nesbitt 2, Hargrove 3, so it's not that shocking that our dunk percentage is a little low. I posted the below graphic a while ago, but you can see the below values for how ShotQuality determines the SQ calculation (unadjusted):

SLU Basketball was at bedrock level rock bottom when Rich Grawer took over. The Craig Upchurch Fiasco most likely derailed Grawer’s teams from overcoming Xavier and reaching the NCAA Tournament. I do agree as is, the inability to win consistently on the road hurt SLU’s chances. However, had Upchurch been on those teams, arguably a good number of those road losses would have been wins and SLU without question would have had a stronger team competing for the auto bids in the MCC Tourneys.

It’s a great experience and opportunity for Devin. It’s also a testament to SLU recruiting and player evaluation. SLU will play him where he is needed most and fits best. But he’s played a lot of left wing and center mid. Would be a nice outside back too. Minnesota has been one of several recent, SLU friendly geographies. Devin is from Woodbury. Dylan Olson is from Minnetonka, Patrick Weah settled in Maple Grove. And CJ Coppola has been playing club ball there this past year. I think some recent SLU Soccer followers will also get to see some of the player development side of things next season as some of the players that didn’t play as much this year are pretty good. And, transfer Lane Warrington is off to a great start, and, is already showing leadership qualities on the back line.

since the ncaa now owns and runs the NIT, i wish they would consider using the NIT (lessen the nit entries to 16) as one leg of the ncaa tourney. so when we get to the final four, the nit champion is in the final four.

I know nobody likes to be 2nd best but it looks like if SLU could have finished 2nd a couple of more times under Grawer, they would have secured at-large bids. Same challenge we're facing now. So I understand GMan's comment that we're currently at the same level as Grawer's best teams. No, they didn't have our depth but we don't have a Bonner either.

Looking back at Grawer's tenure, they lost to Xavier in the MCC tournament final in 1986 (8 point loss), 1987 (12 point loss), and 1991 (16 point loss). SLU finished 2nd in the regular season MCC standings in 1986 and 1989. So 1986 was the only year when they were the clear cut 2nd best team - but they went 18-12. This was when Douglass and Gray were freshmen and Bonner was a SR at Vashon. In 1986-87 the MCC had 2 teams 8-4 and 2 teams 7-5 including SLU. IF they had just avoided road losses at sub .500 Oral Roberts and Butler, they'd have won the MCC outright (9-3) instead of being tied for 3rd and would have been 22-6 headed into the MCC tournament (where they lost to Xavier in the final) instead of 20-8. The 1988 team was undone by the Upchurch fiasco and they were just a .500 team finishing 3rd in the MCC and lost to Detroit in the 1st round of the MCC tournament. The 1988-89 team (Douglass/Gray SR year, Bonner's JR year) finished 2nd in the MCC in the regular season behind Evansville, but got smoked by Xavier in the MCC semis and 3rd place Xavier went on to win the auto-bid. Xavier (led by Tyrone Hill) ended up a 14-seed and lost to eventual national champion Michigan by 5 in the first round. That 1989 team was Grawer's best chance and ultimately they were undone by road losses to Dayton and Detroit. Also they had single digit road losses at SMS, Colorado, Memphis St and Xavier plus a 3 point loss vs top 10 Iowa on a neutral court - if they had won 2 of those resume builders and avoided the 2 bad conference losses, they'd have tied Evansville (or finished 1st if one of the resume builders was the game at Xavier) and would have been 26-4 heading into the MCC tournament instead of 22-8 and even more importantly they could have potentially avoided Xavier until the final... The 1990 team was undone by injuries/illness and suspensions and fell apart in the opening round of the MCC tournament, losing to Loyola. The MCC got 2 bids in Bonner's JR and SR seasons. Evansville (at large) and Xavier (auto-bid) made the dance in 1989 while Xavier (at-large) and Dayton (auto-bid) made it in 1990. It was tough to make the dance as an at-large but it was possible. Grawer's teams never finished 1st in the conference regular season and only once made the conference tournament final in a year when they finished 2nd in the regular season - and that team was 18-12. There was clearly a scenario where they could have made it in 1987 or 1989 - but they just didn't take care of business on the road against the bottom feeders of the MCC.

I blame Jim Bakken!

@The Wiz I read most of "Basketball on Paper: Rules and Tools for Performance Analysis" but I'll admit I'm not a stats guy. As in I'm not good with stats, I totally agree with the use of advanced stats to optimize your team as a part of the overall team strategy and game planning. Good stuff about the 3PT shot and how much it's worth.

I did not expect an answer because it was just a random thought, but here is an example: If GJ goes to the line 1 out of every 4 two pt attempts, and he shoots 90% from the line, then his true two point percentage jumps up to 55% ((90-43) / 4 = ~12; so 43 + 12). It is still smarter for him to shoot threes, but a closer decision. On another note, the Variation in shooting percentage for each team is probably calculated by someone. That would tell how likely a team is to have a horrible shooting game. Wouldn’t that also dictate how smart it is to shoot threes. No answer necessary, I am just thinking out the issue.

Rich Grawer deserves to be honored. He is the Savior of Billiken Basketball as we know it, our Moses. He led the Billikens out of the Dark Ages, out of the wilderness, but was not allowed to enter the Promised Land (of the NCAA Tournament) himself. He had teams on the threshold of the NCAA, coached 2 NIT runner-ups and 3 NIT teams.

Yes it was the same baby as the mom who crawled alongside her baby halfway!!! DQ and banned from future competitions. YES my kid was on the end right by the billiken. Shoulda got the baby blinders as one poster suggested. It's OK the real fun was the friends we made along the way. My two year old has been asking me "where'd the billiken go" ever since we left the game and i almost cried of joy how much she liked him.

As others said, after the dunk, he faced the SLU bench and did a little dance. It was one of the greatest moments of this entire season and I need it on a gif yesterday. I was slightly worried that a few of the players on the bench, especially Okoro, were going to injure themselves from falling over laughing. Totally worth the T.

Seems to me a little celebration dance clearly directed to your own bench, not toward an opposing player, should be allowed. If it were in front of the opposing bench I could see the need for a technical.

For being a complete no contest on who the winner was going to be, the race was once again an electric factory of entertainment. Hearing Track Head Coach Jon Bell has already extended a 2040 offer.

MBM's complain with a loss and complain with win because we "might not win the next one" or jimerson might miss the next shot. I enjoyed the game yesterday. As dad would say "you would bi... if you were hung with a new rope"

This is an absolutely insane take. Are you saying that yesterday and the Tulane game are Gibson's only good games shooting the ball? Apparently you need a historically great 3 pt performance to be satisfied? Gibson Jimerson is one of the best 3 point shooters in school history. He is currently 3rd all time in 3 point %, has made over 100 career 3s, and is still a freshman eligibility wise. The current team is the best 3 pt shooting team by % since 2011-2012. You seem to be missing the fact that 3 point shots are missed more often than they are made even by the greatest 3 point shooters ever. Simple math tells you that a much lower % from 3 (33%) is just as good as 50% from 2. I'm fine with any of the guys you listed shooting it from 3 if they have a decent look.

can he dunk?

I think they they could really benefit from lower concession prices if the goal is to have families come to every game instead of just one or two games a year. Keep beer prices the same, but lower the prices for soda, water and snacks. I think you could even get away with charging more for tickets if you didn't feel like you were being robbed for everything your kids wanted at the game.