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This. The notion that Yuri and Big Guard are somehow colluding is totally undermined by the latter having no idea of Yuri's next step. We got to watch the best passer in Billiken history the last four years. He provided countless fun moments and highlights. He played hurt. He took a million charges. He never got a technical. He never had an incident. He graduated in May. At the end of the last home game, he stated unequivocally that he was leaving. He helped keep a team that lost Goodwin, and French, and then lost its preseason POY one game in, on the fringes of an NCAA tourney birth. Yes, last year sucked. Still, every fan should look fondly on the Yuri experience on the whole. Buy the guy a brick and thank him for the highlights.

Let’s break down the current state of the program. It’s about more than Noland and you know it. We are coming off of a season where we being picked in the top 25 prior to the season and were seen as one of the top 2 teams in the A10 before the year started. We ended the year barely inside the top 100, no postseason, and had some of the worst losses since the Crews era (SIUE at home). As of June 1st, we are still missing an assistant coach and have three open scholarships. Due to the fact that we lost three starters and several impact players, hitting the portal hard was a must. And what have we gotten? A good big that will need a waiver that he might not get, a terrible defender from a terrible team (when the current roster already has no defense), and a completely unknown Euro big (that Ford has had 0 luck on so far). And the current roster isn’t exactly stacked either. Jimerson coming back helps, and I’m super high on Parker, but what else do we have? Our only true point guard is an undersized freshman, all of our bigs are giant question marks, and we really have nobody that can actually guard a wing effectively. And that’s just looking at the surface level! It gets worse when you add context. I’ll make a list: 1. We’ve only made the tournament once in 6 possible seasons (and that only happened because Tramaine Isabell turned into prime Allen Iverson for four games). 2. We have had two de-commitments of much needed impact players and lost two assistant coaches in the last two months. 3. The A10 continues to get worse and while the Big East is likely to expand soon, we’ve completely threw away any chance of us being able to move up. 4. We haven’t made any strides in recruiting for 2024 and beyond. 5. We had a local two-time National assist leader on the roster and he never made the tournament, not exactly sending a good message to any future local recruits. 6. Our “Ace-recruiter” of a coach has a roster without a single top-150 recruit. 7. We have the highest paid coach in the conference and he has never finished higher than 4th in 7 seasons. Sit back and think about it. Are you happy about this? Does this make you hopeful for the future of the program? According to the AD and the FFC, we got our 20 wins so we should just shut up and take the mediocrity. Personally, I actually care about the program and would like to see it be better than this.

Suppose I told you we had a replacement for Noland. The sub's career slash line graded out to B / D- / F-...translating to 45.3 / 31.9 / 59.4 AND his numbers were trending down. Would you be excited with this replacement? Well there is no replacement...those are CJ Noland's numbers and grades. While his overall numbers are still too small for a forecast (except 3s) they are large enough to make a projection. I asked the computer what role would you see Noland playing in the coming year if he suited up as a Billiken in the 23-24 season. Answer...He would be a contributor coming off the bench...not a difference maker. Bottom line..There are dozens of players left on the portal who have similar or better numbers who can be a bigger part of next year's team.

Hard to tell these days.......

VCU will get in. The A10 will respond by adding Old Dominion, James Madison, & Binghamton. The A10 implodes in 3 years. SLU joins the Ohio Valley with our natural rivals Lindenwood & SIUE. Ford receives his 4th extension. He is now making more than all the other coaches in the OVC combined. He still has just one NCAA appearance at SLU....but has won 20 games 5 years in a row.

Thanks for those projected stats but at the risk of speaking for others I doubt most people saw Noland as a difference maker this season. I was happy when he committed but The commitment didn’t make my socks roll up and down. I’m not upset over Noland’s decommitment I’m worried because it was preceded by another decommitment and 2 coaches leaving for what they perceived as better jobs following what was arguably the most disappointing season in men’s hoops history. Heading into June we have 3 roster spots and a coaching position open. Add it all up and It’s bad optics. Let’s hope of those dozens of players left in the portal that are equal or better than Noland that some choose to consider SLU. And let’s hope in the back of their minds they’re not wondering WTF is going on or have others whispering in their ears about the precarious state of SLU hoops. Clearly there isn’t as much in the BVF (for recruits) as we thought there was and being able to sell a shoot ton of playing time hasn’t really been an effective tool for our great recruiter. Still plenty of time to turns things around but things have not been trending in the right direction for quite some time.

Apple used to be kind of "punk rock" in the 80s and 90s, competing as a small company against the huge leviathon of Microsoft with all its monopolies, anti trust suits, and poor product rollouts. But Apple has just become Microsoft now, and actually, they are worse than Microsoft ever was. From a business standpoint despite advances in program integration Iphones still just aren't as productive as androids can be with most companies existing software.

I think the heat on Yuri is more than fair considering the last 16 months. Aligning himself with a guy like BG, hitting the portal, coming back acting like everything is good, BG then working on behalf of Yuri including taking shots on twitter at our largest booster with complete falsehoods. Most Billiken fans seem to have just wanted him to step away from the street agent and stop jerking everyone around.

correct, this isn't about Noland. That fact that we have 3 spots open in June isn't a good thing, its a bad spot to be in. Could we potentially replace CJ with someone better? you bet. Is there a better chance we land someone worse, likely.

Nothing in sports I hate more than “it’s only a game” crowd.

Like I said, presented by Big Guard. So, yeah I find it a little friggin' irritating when your start PG is being "represented" by a guy who is actively trash talking the program and it's boosters on twitter.

SLU to the Pac 12?

Sorry, love the Billikens, but they are way down my list of what is really important. If they suck next year, I'll follow them and cheer for them realizing it's just another form of entertainment. I am not playing nor are you, so we are just watching and cheering ....... right, it's just entertainment and not worth stressing over or letting it ruin your day. Just my opinion .....

At least everyone got to take one last shot at Yuri on the way out.

That’s everyone.

I'm still here. But I was just disappointed with the season post Iona as everyone else. It was a lost season. The last 5 months of posts have all been a variation on that theme. So I decided to focus on my other hobbies instead of contributing to the negativity.

No one cares about any of this Like just show me the embedded tweet, that's it

The Pac10 had an inherent advantage in the P5 war as they were the only conference on the west coast. All the west coast major media markets (6 of the top 20 in the country), hypothetically better academic institutions, and a massive mountain range to cross to invade them. Somehow they screwed it up and are on the brink of extinction. Amazingly inept management that would make their fellow California government officials blush.

Yes, I can't find a screenshot. But he tweeted either @ Rich Chaifetz or a reply to Ross (I can't remember exactly which) in the middle of the season, claiming that they promised Yuri Collins 200k in NIL money and didn't pay him.

Great post. Yuri will always be a favorite of mine. Just had a conversation with a casual SLU hoops fan yesterday and he was upset with the news that he was staying in the draft pool and not returning. I informed him about how there was a chance that he would transfer, etc. I had told him that a decent chunk of the inner circle of rabid bills fans weren't fond of his play and aren't upset that he wasn't coming back and he was shocked. He said he was probably his favorite bill to watch since the Jett teams. He then proceeded to tell me that SLU basketball is probably falling off his sports fandom radar. I think Yuri did more for our program for the casual watcher (especially local) than people realize. As many have mentioned previously and as sad as it is to admit, SLU hoops is pretty irrelevant again to the common fan and seems to be trending in the wrong direction. Having someone on the national level kept us kind of in the news. Anyway, thank you Yuri for a fun 4 years and the memories you provided. Wish ya the best going forward.

Yeah and if my aunt had balls she would be my uncle

2023 Portal..... There were 2674 players who entered the portal this year. 1425 have committed 54 have withdrawn 1195 remaining....45% of the original total Top 10 players still available in the Portal...These players represent players from the top 5% of the original Portal. Rank....Name-Pos-Ht...............Original Portal Rank..........Last School attended 1........Grant Nelson..PF..6-11...................6th......................................N. Dak St.....$163K NIL Value 2......Mike Sharavjamts..SF..6-8.............43rd....................................Dayton 3.....David Jones..PG..6-6.......................51st.....................................St. John's 4....Zyon Pullin..PG..6-4...........................57th.....................................UC-Riverside 5....Arthur Kaluma..PF..6-8......................71st......................................Creighton 6....Aziz Bandaogo..C..7-0.......................83rd.....................................Akron 7....Kruz Perrott-Hunt..SG..6-3...............100th....................................S. Dak 8....Deshawndre Washington..CG..6-7...103rd...................................N Mex St. 9....Connor Vanover..C..7-3.....................110th...................................ORU 10...Carte 'Are Gordon..C..6-8.................118th...................................Grambling St.

TV market, in our situation, is seriously overrated. Yes STL has 4 million + potential viewers but this SLU basketball. Even during Spoonballs height, with only over the air tv, Billikens broadcast on 11 and 5 our ratings never were comparable to any sports in town and lagged behind Mi$$ou. What good is a media market if no one is going to watch your product? I'd rather have Dayton's 800k potential viewers where maybe a quarter of those could watch a dayton game than SLU's .00000000000001 portion of the area's population who would even consider watching a SLU game.

I do wonder how much a traditional DMA will matter in these rounds of negotiations versus some sort of alumni/fan/program metric. When the very first Big East/Fox deal was signed, there were about 20 million more cable subscribers and millions less streaming capable homes.

Depends on how good we want to be next year. If we want to be an NCAA team, LHJ isn't your starting PG. Don't get me wrong, I think the kid will be good. Im still not sold on either THJ or Dalger being a quality starter. Dalger was the 2nd worst defender on the 10th worst defensive team in the country. That has me pretty worried, especially since we as a board complained about defense last year. Brad could be starter - its a high risk high reward type. His 40 #s are good, but the sample size is still pretty small, its hard to tell if those will be even close to accurate. And because of that reason alone, I tend to want a starter. At the very least I think we need 2 starters to be top 5 in the A10, 3 starters to be an NCAA bubble team, just 1 keeps us in the 6-9 spot in the conference. We probably do have the best 2-3 in the conference, and if Dalger makes a huge leap defensively, we may have the best 2-3-4

Again, 3 spots in June is not a good thing. Further you wait, worse the talent pool gets, and we're getting pretty late. Its ok to have a spot open this late, but that should really be just one spot for a depth piece. We're potentially 3 starters away.

Give it a rest dude

It's only the Ford Haters Club that has been acting like their hair is on fire - from one thread to the next. CJ Noland committed?! Fire Ford! CJ Noland decommitted?! Fire Ford!

Co-sign

This household wishes Yuri the best.

moytoy GREAT to see you. you are greatly missed. need you back

One other thing that hasn't sorted itself out yet. The covid year going away and flushing out of the system will help competitive roster balance a bit as well.

1 tourney in 7 years is what's hurting us more than anything. And it wasn't even an at large.

There are still 13 scholarships per team in the P6 leagues. SLU wasn’t competing with the UNC, Duke, KUs of the world for recruits at any point in the most recent 30 years. There are plenty of P6 schools that have no NIL collective or programs setup. SLU is at an advantage not having football in this game. you can sit around and mope and ***** about how it used to be and say aw man if the NCAA hadn’t changed the rules we’d be great. Or you can play the game by the rules in place today and succeed.

I can answer the question. It just means that we're back to the same BB program hierarchy we've always had but fans spend more money and players move and get paid. Programs that had deep pockets won and they still will.

Troy Robertson doing a bang up job. Leutchefeld would've had this thing going in the right direction. I'm withholding anyway until we get a new coach. Then I'll throw down for the hookers and blow fund errrr NIL.

I assume he saw the writing on the wall, along with everyone else, that the Ford era was toast here. He also jumped to a (as much at it pains me to say) better program that just hired their top assistant to replace their departed-for-greener-pastures head coach.

Don't worry Ford has several Daniel Rivera level recruits ready to commit. They all can't break their legs can they?