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I admit to being a TJ fan. Think he brings energy to the game. Can’t understand why he is subbed out at the 5 minute mark even if he is playing well and scoring. Pickett may be hurt so why play him? I understand TJ can’t be a secondary ball handler but our recent use of Pickett and Perkins is puzzling to me. Not sure how the rotation could have worked but I might have tried TJ on Baldwin , obviously Yuri and Jimmerson couldn’t stop him.

Well the good news is that Ford can have the team unprepared in a bunch of different ways. The team can also collapse a bunch of different ways. You never know how this team will screw up you just know that they will! They keep me guessing so I keep coming back.

This team has zero heart!

No wonder Collins wasn’t on the Cousy list!

I'd rather forget it than get my hopes up.

Which is why SLU needs to move on. This program is stuck in neutral and needs to be better than that.

SLU has a new 2024 commit from Connor Dillman. Connor is a 6'2 Goalkeeper for U17 SLSG Academy, MLS Next. He attends Sacred Heart Griffin High School in Springfield, Illinois, but does not play high school soccer. Connor has also trained at Feyenoord Academy in The Netherlands. Most recently Connor and his team played in MLS Next Fest in Indio, CA. And they will be playing in the National Academy Championships in Bradenton, FL at IMG, later this month.

This. it has been by far the hardest year for me to be a fan. It is the first time I don’t look forward to game day.

Roy, H also had a coach who wouldn’t tolerate hero ball.

the best point guard in the nation doesn't play the last 5 minutes the way he played. that was beyond selfish and arrogant. he went into his poor allen iverson imitation and it was disastrous. and while his extremely embarrassing defensive effort last night vs guarding baldwin has nothing at all to do with his point guard play, it merits mentioning him my bash collins post here. yuri indeed is a very good point guard. i have always said H is the best billiken point guard ever. but i do think when yuri plays point guard and ONLY point guard (that hero ball nonsense is not him and he frankly is too small and just not good enough to be the closer) he is the best in billiken history. but H would have never ended last night the way collins did. H made the other players better all the time. collins cant stay in his element, so that alone brings him down. too bad, imo if he kept that iverson imitation out of his game he would be an nba player, but it seems he cant. he is listening to the wrong people imo. one of those people must be ford, or you would think the coach that isnt afraid to yank players for mistakes would have him sitting when he does that crap. GD i am pissed off.

To be fair Yuri looked like the best point guard in the an nation for about 8 minutes in the second half. He was getting assists, playing good defense, and taking shots WHEN GIVEN TO HIM. The problem was the other 32 minutes where he was getting absolutely cooked on defense, not making smart passes, and getting contested shots blocked.

Just an observation....Forrester had a pretty good game tonight......12pts...4 rebs...3 assts...2 blks all in 20 min ...by coincidence Okoro also had 20 min...the coincidence being they both had exactly 20 min...Okoro's totals were...4pts..5 rebs..0 assts..0 blks...this not a knock on Okoro, a fine player, but to point out that Forrester was a better matchup against VCU. With 9 min 32 sec left in the game Forrester picked up his 4th foul and came out of the game. I understand why he came out of the game. But what I don't understand is why we never saw him again. I thought with about 6 min left in the game, he should have come back in and played until the end or until he fouls out. If he fouls out , you can still put Okoro in. I thought we could use the extra scoring punch at the end plus any additional blks or assists would have been a bonus. Just my observation. In terms of what happened...I wrote a paragraph in the original post of this thread on real TO math which turned out to be very apropos...here is an excerpt from that paragraph.....bolded means from the original post. This game will be about protecting the ball ...whoever does the best job of it will win....A quick note here...the inability to generate TOs in the preceding games has been costly. It is not just the stat of "pts off TOs" but the loss of an offensive opportunity on a TO. We have 37 more TOs than our opponents. I have seen it reported in the press that we have given up an extra 46 pts on "pts off TOs". But it is worse than that. Here is the real TO math....generally when you turn the ball over a team scores 1 1/4 pts (the Bills are on target with that number)....in addition you give up 0.93 pts in a lost scoring opportunity....so every extra TO actual costs you about 2.2 pts... So if you do the math...we out turnovered them 14-10...take those 4 extra TOs x2.2pts=8.8pts ...the margin of defeat. The shame of it was the slash was pretty good ...we were only off by 1 pt (FTs)..48/40/63 Some good shooting numbers not only by Forrester...but by Jimerson and Perkins too. Of course there was the career night by Baldwin...37pts...and an unbelievable slash...80/80/100...12-15 / 4-5 / 9-9 And yet even with his dominant night we could have won.... And again this was the key line from the original post...This game will be about protecting the ball ...whoever does the best job of it will win....we didn't and we didn't...we didn't do the best job of protecting the ball and we didn't win.

The lack of discipline is amazing. For a few stretches in the 1st half we moved the ball and made the extra pass. Then we revert to selfish hero ball and Ford just let's it go. I cannot get upset with any player. Ford has 100% control of playing time, yet we've seen the same mistakes at crunch time over and over. Ford handcuffs himself by always referring to Yuri as the best PG in college basketball. How can the coach instruct or bench someone when he's already been proclaimed the best?

We went to the zone for a short time in the second half and it seemed to be working. Don’t know why we stopped.

One of them posted his displeasure on Twitter.

This team is a reflection of their coach in so many ways.

Why not try anybody else? Box and 1? The length of Hargrove on him ? The strength of Picket? Anything would have been better than nothing.

Softest Billiken team ever. At least the Jim Crews teams were tough they just weren’t any good.

1st team all defensive player my ass

Like I said, fire Ford and rebuild.

Ace absolutely dogwalked Yuri

This gets referenced quite a bit on the board and usually portrayed as a complete failure. No NCAA Tourney runs to his credit, so I think that's a fair criticism, but I think his tenure should be looked at in the context of OSU bball history. Ford made the Tourney 5 times in 8 seasons. In the 10 seasons sandwiched around the Ford era, the 3 preceding him and the last 7 seasons following him, OSU has only made the Tourney twice in those 10 seasons. Eddie Sutton had a great run, and he's considered one of the all-time greats, but prior to that, you'd have to go back to Hank Iba in the 1950s during the stone ages of college hoops to see any notable success. In the thirty years prior to Eddie Sutton's arrival (1960-1990), OSU only made the tournament TWICE. That level of futility surprised me. Yes OSU is in a P5 conference, but I don't think it's that great of a job compared to its peers. The state of Oklahoma does not produce a ton of great bball talent and even then, they are in the shadow of OU. Also, they are over-shadowed by Kansas to the East, and to the South, there are a number of strong programs in the state of Texas they have to compete with. So I don't think we should take it as gospel when OSU fans cast the Ford era is a complete failure (delusional fans from a state school, imagine that). That program is not all that and I think some context matters when evaluating Ford's tenure at OSU. He is clearly the second most successful coach that program has had in the last 50 plus seasons.

15 years and 1, yes 1 NCAA Tournament win. He has won one game in the tournament. Great recruiting but he has no idea how to coach on game day. Zero strategy, zero adjustment.

I mean, what did you expect him to say, “fords trash”? The fact he said anything, I mean really anything, is something.

my bigger problem with the game last night was what seemed to be an effort to play "his way" again. he started the game running collins to a corner and standing there while first perkins then pickett again pretended to be point guards. we again slow trotted the ball down the court, did our standard 3 handoff weave, got the shot clock under 10 seconds, then forced up some piece of dung shot. we fall behind then give collins the ball we play fast on offense get a few great scores, force a couple of turnovers turning aggression up. then we would go back to the start and repeat the above. we did that all night long. GD it. cant we just once play the entire game fast on both ends? why the piss poor results to play hoosier's (the movie, not our hof mbm) ball? there were a lot of low points we can point to for the result last night, but imo the above was the biggest problem........again.

No way Ford doesn’t go at least 20-10 at the CYC level. I think Okoro would just be to much to handle for a 13 year old.

I've been calling for a 3rd party audit for months...

Does anyone know where Jesse Leonard, "The Ghost" 1971-73 is now?

No argument about Baldwin being in the zone, but he continually shot right over Collins. Right in his face. He didn’t beat Yuri, he shot over him. My point was we needed to change it up. Go zone or get a bigger defender or double team him. They can’t shoot a lick so why not stop the guy in the zone?

We got beat. Sometimes in sports, when a guy like Ace Baldwin is in the zone like he was tonight, 37 points, flawless shooting, 12-15 from the floor, 4-5 from 3, 9-9 FT's, you have to tip your cap. The guy was a lefthanded Steph Curry tonight.

It just seems like we squander once in a decade talent every year somehow?

Exactly. A bigger defender like Hughes would have made a difference. Yuri is absolutely brutal on defense.

The good: Jimerson found his shot tonight. The defense forced a few more TOs. The bad: Everything else.

His press conferences are just run of the mill Coach-speak and nobody ever asks him hard questions. Disappointing

We play in one of the top mid major arenas in the country. Our coach is amongst the top 10 in compensation. You can jump on the fire Ford bandwagon, but you can’t say SLU doesn’t care. You don’t want to come off as BC1764 stupid.

Fans want better but does the school really care.............

Can we stop thinking pickett on an average is good for us?

This has been the most consistent theme of Ford’s tenure. The other teams best player has a career game or goes over his average. This years theme, which pretty much goes back to last season, is fold late after we go cold on offense. After we were getting whatever we wanted earlier in the game VCU adjusted but we never adjusted. Spare me the switch to zone. That’s not an adjustment that’s just changing things up not real coaching.

I’m beginning to think Collins NIL was an agreement to never be taken out of a game.

Sure he’s was on fire but a big part of that is the complete lack of defensive ability/effort by SLU. I bet he goes off again in the rematch. Because this team can’t guard decent players.

When one player beats you, I find it hard to say we didn’t play bad.

The best PG in America isn’t even the best in the A10.

I can vouch for that from 205.

Pickett. Such a regression from non-conference. Adds nothing on offensive end.

Stop jumping at head fakes!!

Pickett. Get him out. What are you doing

Yea, Bad yuri showed up again tonight. Teams have figured him out. I don’t even know what buttons Ford needs to push, just seems pretty hopeless. I guess more Parker?

Yuri is not playing up to standard tonight. That will need to change for SLU to have a chance.

Fouling the jump shooter. Check that off your billiken bingo card