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This is the most thoughtful post I’ve read on here in a long time. Perfect state of the program post. One thing omitted was any mention of kellen Thames. I think Thames is a wildcard this season. In extremely limited minutes, his length and athleticism intrigued me and suggested he had all the tools to be a lockdown defender. Combined with Hughes it might be a good recipe for stopping dribble penetration. one nit pick to the above post - we lost to edwardsville at home not semo

I get it. My take is that I think we should all continue to support the program in whatever way we have and let the chips fall where they may. Whether that money helps Ford get us where we want to be or the next coach, it still helps the program overall.

The crazy thing about this argument that is happening is how insanely inaccurate both sides are in characterizing each other's opinions. As someone pointed out, no one who thinks Ford should be gone actually hates Ford. On the opposite side, it's getting very old hearing that people who think Ford should be retained (for now) are happy with 20 win seasons. We are not fine with 20 wins if that means not winning the A-10 and not making the tournament. NoCoBillsFan's post was dead on. Neither side can disagree with anything he posted. I, personally, thought Ford should get one more chance. That doesn't mean I'm happy with the state of the team. I see everything NoCoBillsFan wrote and say "yes, we need to be better than that." The team under Ford has not met the university's and fans' expectations. There have been some extenuating circumstances, but those cannot be used as excuses indefinitely. I think that most "Ford Supporters" will say its time for him to go if this season doesn't prove that we are on track with the expectations. Can't we just cheer for our team and know that we're all, nearly, in the same place about being upset with not being better right now, without the stupidity that has made this board nearly unreadable for several months?

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.

I don’t think it’s as bad as it seems. we have had 5-6 posters total who were so extreme one way or the other than it made super frustrating. They would jump into a thread every time Ford was mentioned and either defend him to a nauseating extreme or rip him to a nauseating extreme. I think 95 percent of posters on this board are pretty level headed. Some may be happy with Ford and some may want to move on but most can understand both sides of the arguments. Personally I wish we would have moved on. I knew it wasn’t likely but that was my hope. We didn’t and I will continue to support Ford and the Billikens this year.

I understand your point and do not necessarily disagree with it but the problem is that people are wanting everyone to donate to the BVF so Ford can have the money to buy who he wants and they want people to continue buying their season tix and they want people to still donate to the athletic department. SLU wants that also but they want to not have to listen to those who are not satisfied by simply saying everything is fine when it really may not be. My issue is why would I give money to the BVF fund when I may not have much confidence that Ford will use it effectively, I probably will continue to buy my season tix but not because I am happy with where we are but because I don't want to lose my place in line when the team does turn around a couple of years down the road. Will I continue to give to the athletic department, well that is a tougher call because once again I am not sure I want to give money to a group who may not use it properly but then again I still want to support the overall athletic program. As you can see keeping Ford for one more year to give him one more chance does make it a bit more complicated for some us.

Exactly, I know nothing about him either. But anytime you see your school on a list with a bunch of bluebloods like those, you hope you can land him.

Fair enough, I edited my post. But with the guys we had last year and the expectations, making the NIT would’ve still been a failure. We weren’t even on the NIT bubble!!

While that is true, it also doesn’t mean much being right inside it, because it’s still short of what this team was supposed to be. At the end of the day, the team was supposed to make the tournament, and fell short of even the NIT.

Thank you for the kind words. The Ford debate has gotten so convoluted, I felt like we needed to get back to the roots of why there is so much criticism of Ford. Anytime I hear “bUt 20 wiNs” from now on, I’m just gonna point back to this post You see how much I’ve disassociated from that game? Can’t even get the correct OVC school. Edited my post accordingly. In an ideal world, I’d love for Thames to be a lockdown defender. He would be exactly what this team is missing. But since the beginning of the Ford era, how many guys went from only getting garbage time minutes on season to eventually contributing the next? The only guy I can think of is Demarius Jacobs. Would love for it happen, but it seems like a pipe dream imo.

IF the Big East were to expand by 1 , think we are out, Dayton or VCU . However if they wanted to add 3 , we may be included

Am I the only person that wants Carteare and Nesbit. It would just be hilarious.

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

Please note that I'm defending Yuri here and not BG: BG set up an event at Snarfs for Yuri to sign autographs for people and Yuri showed up. Based on the reports from people who attended, it didn't even seem like either made any money from the event because it was free. I don't think that means sh*t in terms of influence. You guys had BG on your Podcast and were friendly / complementary of him at the time. That doesn't mean BG has any influence over you.

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.

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.

Makes the Flyers better than anyone else.

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

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.