billiken_roy

i agree with skip. we need inside defender and good rebounder. doubt he and okoro play much same time anyway. we got wings. a lot of wings.

Must have been a team of attorneys. They have the best erasers.

i asked this over the weekend and no one on the board really responded. what opening do we have on staff that would give conklin a spot to be hired for and be allowed to coach and recruit per ncaa guidelines? if no such spot exists someone has to be fired first before your coaching wish can happen. i believe the ncaa has strict rules as to how many actual coaches can be on staff.

As far as I know, Roby and Wilson do not/did not have jobs that would allow recruiting. I guess it could be a foot in the door for Conklin though. Betting someone could get him a recruiting asst coach job though

I didn't know we have an opening for assistant coach.

torch let's say you got an interview with a program to be a head coach. you just had an very good season at the program you are coming from. you trust and like your staff you have and you have a few select players that got you to that point that you feel made quite a difference and could easily excel at a higher level. the program you are interviewing at tells you how exactly you are going to build your staff and what players you can bring in to start off. both dont include those assistant coaches and players that got you that interview. do you think maybe that might make you pause on taking the job? wouldnt you want to build the program you are taking over if you get the job your way? you know that if you fail you will be out in just a few years regardless of how you have to approach the job. i know i would want to have my start in my own hands and do it my way.

torch of course it's "cheap". I am not sure why you expected different. As i stated, look at the track record for the Saint Louis University BoT. the only sport they spend even halfway generously on is men's basketball. probably because they bring in the most revenue. If the lady billikens ever expect to get such a budget, they need to win first. start bringing in thousands more fans per game. sure that becomes a "chicken or the egg" dilemna, but it is what it is. but until the lady billikens are producing the revenue to support big hires and spending, it just isnt going to happen. that will either be accomplished by a "sugar daddy" all about the lady billikens with specific direction to spend on the lady billikens or it will be accomplished by winning and bringing in more fans and trips to the ncaa tourney. i dont see any other path and i begrudgedly accept. when you and I get named to the BoT maybe then we can shake things up.

am i overthetop excited about Tillet's hire? no but there is no doubt that stone had plateaued and it sure didnt appear she was the final answer. sure she took us to a higher level than any previous coach. but we sure seemed stuck at a C+ to a B- level of sorts. if ford has the same plateau happen the next couple of years, rest assured the same level of impatience will come out from the fandom. is tillet the answer? who knows. as stated above i am not excited about it. but the change was definitely needed. she'll get the typical 5 year grace period that we all know so well and if she hasnt improved the lady billikens by then, we will start over again. i'm not expecting much this next year, and who knows how much the stupid changes of college sports with the transfer situation and the seemingly corrupt nil b.s. will affect her ability to progress. but i got no problem with where the lady billikens sit right now. never lose sight of the fact that the BoT for saint louis university has shown no over the top want to be a overall sports power. keep the apparent priorities and sensible (by college sports sakes) budgeting in mind. to expect we were going to hire dawn staley is rediculous. we were never going to hire a top notch already high achieving head coach. i figured it would be an unknown reach. it was. give her a chance.

Thatch isn't horrible with the ball.

what A-10 team has the "6'8", 230lb PF type" and a center as big or bigger that requires we have the same on the floor? and even if a team does is that 6'8", 230lb PF type athletic and fast enough to stay with hargrove running the floor? i.e. if we play right we turn the disadvantage into an advantage. see the golden state warriors who currently are sometimes playing 4 wings at a time and look like they are going to be in the NBA finals imo. over the years, i have noticed that NBA trends seem to turn into college trends as well. going "small" seems to be a lot more common now. personally i love this trend. seeing the lane opened up is very refreshing to see imo and has made he driving guards more attractive. and if a team has a defender stay in the paint then that defensive team is open to allow more three's. thus, they typically have to go smaller as well. now the likes of duke, kentucky, kansas, etc, get away with it because they have incredible sized and athletic inside guys that can do it all. the A-10 typically doesnt.

donnie dobbs is one of the best power forwards in billiken history. so those inches imo dont mean as much as he heart, soul and effort of the player playing there. as much as it was obvious hargrove had some attitude issues last year, they were likely caused because of playing time. i think his athleticism makes up for a lot of those inches. so i agree pf isnt our need as much as a center. ford has proven he will play either 4 out and 1 in or even 5 out as is the trend in all of college and pro basketball these days. so as long as hargrove is going to play with enthusiasm he showed his first two years, i am all in with ankiel.

im pretty sure his parents were very happy he ended up making millions wearing sunglasses, being barefoot and drinking tequilla. that's the ultra definition of success. the real american dream.

might have been because the bench for crews had zero talent.

ace my only problem with strickland is the fact ford brought him to the billikens in the first place. in hindsight there is no way he fit ford's style of play. so why waste a spot. find another fred thatch, or another francis okoro. dont bring in a track star. particulary since ford has no record of converting such a player to his style of play. this is probably my biggest beef with ford. i believe it is the biggest difference between him and mckillop at davidson. and one would think if ford started doing it, his winning percentage would substantially go up.

i know where you are going with that. i think we all agree crewsplatt's two ncaa appearances for slu were really rickma's. that team was so well prepared and taught by rickma my soon to be 94 year old mother could have coached them to the tourney.

interesting. thanks

find a post i made saying rickma was not a good coach. i have constantly said he was a basketball genius. i just never agreed with his creaming the roster approach to building his team or some of the stories of his off the court treatment of people.

disjointed probably the wrong word, but no doubt no billiken coach ran off more players than rickma. we were close to having to go on ncaa probation because of our turnover right before rickma passed away. he was the master of churning a roster.

but taj, nesbit didnt get the right look imo. now we know he was somewhat a bad teamate and gave ford the reason to more or less not give him highlight time, but still nesbit is better than hampton. gordon was a known headcase. he did it to himself. hell we were hearing the stories of him beating up freshmen teamates his junior year of high school. ford was wrong to even mess with that poison. and i am sure the other gordon teams all believed they could change him as well. not going to happen. as to the look of the roster, our fellow mbm's on the main board think this roster is nba finals ready. i just shake my head. lot of decent individual parts but this is the most disjointed roster since rickma's all star teams. imo ford has a problem. hope i am wrong.

the marquette days swore me off crean. i dont have the ability to go from hate to love. imo he was permanently damaged goods from that point.

just what we need another wing.

well the fact spring semester is almost over and we have zero depth in place for our bigs is definitely approaching panic imo. i guess we just hold our breath. oh boy. never a dull moment being a billiken fan.

turnbull wants the bight lights and big cities of the big east. let's move on. As skip would likely say, "I am pretty sure we quit recruiting him."

agree. it is a lot to wade through, but the truth is among all the weeds you have to sort through. and now that musk has taken over i suspect even less censorship. i dont trust any of the old traditional news sources any longer so i rarely read or watch anything to do with the likes of the old tv network news sources and what they report. sports rarely take any censorship hits, so you can pretty much believe you are getting all the info on the likes of the billikens. i intially only got on twitter for the billikens, but now i read through just about everything there and i am addicted to twitter.

wichita state while in the recent decade has been a good basketball program and still reaping the benefits of greg marshall imo they do not fit the profile of what the A-10 should be. it is a large public university. it is not a great academic school like the majority of the A-10 schools. even if the current coach continues the performance marshall established over his tenure, i would not be in favor of adding such a school. our non revenue sports would be at a great disadvantage to such a school. plus considering the setup of this idiotic NIL system, in all likelihood, a big public school like wichita state would have far more boosters to garner the cash to payoff players and steal the players in the equally idiotic transfer portal. i vote no.