billiken_roy

those approximate 10 minutes that "the refs wont allow", are the difference between slu being a top three in the conference team that waltzes into the ncaa tourney and being a 500 team with no post season at all.

i would love to see what the scoring and rebounding breakdown was while tom was out in the second half. i bet it was staggering. i know they got at least 4 put backs during that time frame. and we probably were out scored by quite a bit. i had said that the difference would be fericks and izik vs merrit and novak. that was wrong. the difference was tom getting in foul trouble. to be fair, the two quick fouls in the second half were total b.s. that team is NOT better than us. we will beat them in st louis and thereafter. they were granted a gift from the zebra fairies last night.

i too enjoyed the get together. but i agree we need to find more friendly digs. the refusal to give us sound was just nasty considering it appeared few in the main room were watching the football game. if they had the sound on the hockey game, i maybe could have understood that.

kenny and javois are a sophomore and a freshman. they handle about 70% of the floor minutes for the two main guard spots. no matter how you spell it, that will come out to inconsistency unless you are duke, uconn or tennessee. overall, i think they have some talent. javois is going to be a nice player. she is smoooooothhh. kenny does pretty good as well. they just need experience. talent wise, they probably have more than any women's slu team has had in the jilliken years. but gotta let these two guards grow up. now the question is "how did jill get in the perdicament that she has to rely on these youngsters so heavily?" she should have had the roster turning over with juniors with two years experience ready to step in. getting janna to come back is huge. but she isnt ready to step back in yet it appeared to me during the tiger game. lewis and solomon and brown do fine on the inside.

you are so right basketbill. i for one wont give renee the benefit of the doubt until he wins me over. and if frank leaves, i dont plan on watching unless the word is that renee is a bigtime billiken booster. my guess is he doesnt know what a billiken is.

i am pretty sure he only missed one 3 pointer in the second half and that was at the buzzer of the 3rd quarter. as what has become usual in the big games, made a fortune at the foul line in the last quarter never once hitting anything but net. the more i see him the better i am convinced he will look very good in billiken blue.

the ONLY thing i remember of jj haliburton was he led the team onto the west pine floor for midnight madness doing backflips. after that it was all down hill, soon to be never heard from again as many of spoon recruits seemed to be.

he shot 9-18 last night and scored 26 points i believe. but you are correct he has been in a 2 week shooting slump. still he is close to 20 ppg and is one of the top rebounding guards in the league. he isnt kobe, but he is better than the average player. having a big time inside player would certainly help. but since arenas and shackhouse have been injured, and his support on the inside consists of high school all-stars that never went to college (kwame brown) and third players at syracuse (etan thomas) and over the hill finese inside players (laettner) i am not sure what you would expect him to do? i am doubting that kobe or jordan in his prime would have succeeded with that support.

imo the demise of basketball at any level can be traced to one aspect.....not calling fouls. make the game the ballet it is supposed to be instead of some kind of hybred form of rugby and basketball would again become the sport that the world could identify with. the problem more so with the nba is that it has taken the roughhouse trend to the extreme and made the likes of a 6'9" good with no skills that can basically only dunk, push and grab the star instead of a player like travis diener. ...........sorry one of my favorite rants.

very classy post. thank you for your visit. please visit here anytime. i agree the winner of the inside game tonite will be the difference maker. i feel scoring wise, bryant and diener can offset each other. but the inconsistent and far reaches of the output's of frericks and merritt sure could tell the story.

he was best compared to perry as a freshman before the injury. he had that kind of speed and quickness.

other than espn highlights, like you, i only follow hughes. if laurie switches his basketball expense account from paying tigers to nets, i wouldnt pay to see it except when larry came to town.

the game was exciting as can be. althoff won by 4 but it was close the whole game. i was disappointed that lisch and dentman did not guard each other though. tried to keep track in my head. seemed like kevin had over 30 and dentman over 20. they are a show as both had a couple of oohs and ahhs plays. illinois state has a steal in dentman imo.

i called in to frank's regular "nobody asked me but" segment. my call consisted of "nobody asked me, but if frank is not the channel 5 sports director then i am out as a channel 5 viewer." click. as to frank being bitter, he has not commented one bit on the air. if he wanted that job though, which i heard he did, he should have been the selection. it is obvious from his work on both tv and radio he is one hard working guy that does nothing but quality reporting with enthusiasm. i am betting he got caught in the middle of station politics. not fair to frank.

biles would have been quite a player by the time he was a senior. it is a shame he didnt do the job in the classroom to reach that potential. you are correct he too was a very very good defender.

i never said that carlos was a better defender than josh. that said, penny hardaway was a far better player than dwayne wade was and carlos did well against penny.

with the right breaks we could/should be 12-0. georgia tech was ours for 35 minutes and arizona was there for the taking. those two could have been huge for this team.

besides jeffers and josh, i would add carlos mccauley and john redden on the great defenders list. i recall penny hardaway stating mccauley was the toughest defender he played against in college.

brehms, thought i would let you know that i was at the jillikens game last sunday with my 7th grade daughter. your brother walks by us to talk to an apparent other slu student sitting there watching. my daughter wanted reggie to sign an autograph for her and when reggie was about to leave, we asked him. he willingly signed, and spent a minute or two conversing with us as well about the team and the game from the night before. he is a class act you can definitely be very proud of. he sure made my daughter's day.

why does "redshirt" have to be associated with project? i would consider ian a project. now maybe i could see him being labeled less of a project than bryce. ian appears closer to being a contributor anyway. but still i think of a project player as one who has some tool or tool that makes his future development expectations to be geometrically higher. i.e. coach brad keeps saying that ian will be vlade divac. does anyone else think that is the case right now? i sure dont. but i do see great hands and he glides around under the basket and is looking for his teamates when he gets the ball, so i can see where that might develop.

kleiza is flat out the best player on the tiger team. my guess is if $nyder used him correctly, they would have won a couple more games and klieza would be headed for the nba next year. he had to cost the boys some cash. i didnt even know they had walmarts in lithuania.

taj, from afar with no tv coverage to speak of and only boxscores to judge, there is no way to evaluate chris sloan accurately. you judged it the way you saw it from the stats in front of you. cant blame you a bit.

good point gister.

the way i heard it today from a channel 5 insider is that frank really got screwed over.

i didnt go read the article, but i assume he is now some sort of walking billboard or something. doesnt surprise me. the only honorable thing about knight is that most of his players seemed to always be true student athletes. otherwise, imo the guy has always been a jerk. he was selling that sweater in the 80's already with the shoe brand on the chest. and he was the first coach i remember getting a big "shoe deal" as i believe he was a converse man in the 70's. as butch noted, his antics off the court long ago lost any respect he deserved. hitting policemen, throwing vases at defenseless secretaries, undo mental anguish on his players, shooting his hunting partners, the guy is something all right.