billiken_roy

answer the question. dont confuse the issue with other halfway related points. williams alone was not responsible for siu's ncaa success just like perry and jeffers were or were not. please tell us which of perry and jeffers spoon should have passed on to take williams that fall. your reasoning should be interesting.

if there is no rule to govern paying recruits parents for temporary employement that does not require a special skill that that parent might possess i would be shocked. the possibilities of exploitation of such opportunities are mind boggling.

thank you mr ahearn for that passionate speech. be sure to visit after each and every sms vs slu game to remind us of the score. i personally still dont want him. after the two times that i saw ahearn play, i fail to see much more than the next drew diener. i admittedly havent seen darren clarke play yet, but it sounds like he has much more overall game and potential than blake the shooter. if you are proposing that we should have taken blake before brandon morris, i have been told on numerous occassions that when it comes down to it, morris will be the plum of this billiken recruiting class, so i am doubting that there was a chance in hell brad was going to take blake over morris and i am fine with brad's view. but as you said, i dont recruit for slu. good for sms that they got the next pete maravich. why you feel the need to get us to all want blake and cry we screwed up is beyond me. i have very little problem with the billiken guard recruits for next year. and it should be obvious that no one is crying about it here and i guess you will have to deal with it. as to kent williams, spoon did recruit him and asked him to wait until the spring to sign. kent refused and wanted a spot in the fall. in the fall the billikens were committed to marque perry and maurice jeffers. which one would you have preferred the billikens not sign at the time in order to sign kent? had kent waited until the spring, the hart kid that also signed had by then not made the grades and a spot would have been available. so dont blame spoon for screwing that up. anyone that is advising even in hindsight to have taken williams over either perry or jeffers is nuts and it shows your lack of knowledge.

so you see nothing wrong with a very active and vocal tiger booster that runs an all-star game bringing in the father of the tiger's top recruiting target for next year to coach this all-star team that he has nothing to do with and keep in mind mr horton has never coached this team before, now getting cash and prizes for this grand gesture that could have just as easily been fulfilled by any of the local high school or aau coaches? i guess then as someone else has presented, maybe a slu booster should start his all-star game and pay rusty lisch to coach it as well. and dont give me the experience line, rusty coaches/has coached all of his kids summer league teams since they have been able to walk and imo that is about as much experience as any aau coach would have. i couldnt care less if johnson invites the slu players or not. as was stated above, other than getting the kids to the game, that is about the extent of effort that is put into making the slu players stand out. yet mckinney and gardiner are given perferred minutes and roles. i.e. the game is a highlight opp for the tiger player(s) imo. as to the crime, i get mailed information each year about the extent of involvement a booster can have with a program and those players that the program has on scholarship and is recruiting. ultimately the program is responsible for the actions of the boosters even if the boosters are acting on their own. (see michigan) and if the actions incurred by the booster are obvious to all concerned and the missouri a.d. and coach do nothing, imo that exhibits lack of institutional control big time. i have no problem with the game itself, but to out of nowhere bring in the father of the top recruiting target and compensate him for doing a joke of a job, doesnt seem to be within ncaa guidlines or close to ethical.

i call it the way i see it. dont think i have changed my perspective a bit. like i said in the other string, we had more "known facts" about the team last year than we do this year. i question whether we will replace our two best players from last year that is all. come december, i will make a stance.

boy that does smell. i wonder if anyone has or will ask demetrius to tell us if horton's dad got paid or the freebies for coming up and being that coach? frank c. ask for us?

actually i might not be as pessimistic as what it seems. i just dont want to make statements yet at this point without seeing how a couple of key spots are fulfilled and who becomes the go-to and step up players. last year it seemed a heck of a lot easier to predict as good if not a better record than the year before since we returned the entire starting five. this year we dont and we lost our two best players. thus my reluctance to step up at this time.

i guess if i step back and try to think about this from a different viewpoint, i can see what kshoe is saying. it makes sense to me.

admittedly chris was injured a couple of times during his billiken career, but i wont argue about his worth the last couple of seasons. chris more or less regressed each season. some of that could have been a diminished role, but he probably had a diminished role due to the fact he wasnt playing any better than before. i too agree he SHOULD be easy to cover. but i will wait to see how johnson, i/o, fericks and the greek perform before backing you on that thought.

ace said, "It's not being too optimistic to think that the Johnson/Greek duo can produce more than what Braun did. While Frerichs might not be quite as good as Kenny, we should be bigger and more athletic, and have more options with our back-up bigs." I hope you are correct. even then, replacing chris braun's input both offensively and defensively is not my biggest concern. even still, you are relying on two pretty big question marks in your above statement. all the more reason to wait and see.

right now, unless the greek is a BIG pleasant surprise, my guess is that i/o will have to play the inside spots with sloan and fericks. there will be no one else to play the needed minutes. the lion's share of the minutes at the point guard, and two wings will be garnered by fisher, drejaj, bryant and morris. i bet when the season is over and you compare minutes, fisher and drejaj will be the same as they were last year playing time wise, and bryant and morris will equal the time that deiner and perry shared. so the question is, will bryant and morris exceed the output of perry and diener? if so, it wont be by much.

great points tseugnekillb. i am not freaking out either, i am only trying to temper the rolling thoughts that this upcoming season is bound to be better than last. i state again i want to wait until december to judge if we have suitable replacements for our outgoing group. i dont agree with your statistical view of replacing brown and braun. simply because of how defensively effective kenny brown was last year which wont show up in those numbers. from a scoring standpoint, i have no doubt that sloan and i/o and johnson and fericks would match the offense of sloan and i/o and braun and brown. but i tend to envision that our opponents will run roughshod over sloan and i/o and johnson and fericks compared to the defense that our frontcourt provided last year.

when spoon recruited chris braun, the billikens also had baniak, heinrich and tatum in hand. btw, as a freshman, i believe chris braun led the billikens in rebounding and blocked shots at the miracle in memphis tourney run. from all accounts from saturday nite, it does not sound like bryce is at the level chris braun was as a redshirt freshman. chris was all-state his senior season in high school and was capable of giving quality minutes from day one. but spoon had the luxury of redshirting chris since he had depth at the inside spots already.

3 star what is scary is it appears we arent even replacing braun and brown. and we are also faced with replacing one of the best crunchtime players in billiken history. i dont see it yet. but as i have preached, we have to wait until december to see what we have. all i am saying is no one should expect to improve on last year at this point in time.

no the way i had heard it was that one of either husak or the greek would redshirt, however brad would wait until the fall to decide which would sit this year. so i had held out hope that maybe one or both would be credible right away and they were just using the luxury of having two big guys to pick from. now i have to wonder if it is a question who to redshirt, and we know husak isnt capable of playing now, is the greek also that green? if so, that leaves fericks to pick up the slack and that scares the hell out of me.

he got better coaching at an obscure junior college than tuteledge from a past nba guard and a previous ncaa national championship point guard and former college point guard brad gave him at slu? ok, if you say so. still it seems suspect that you ripped randy pulley to pieces two years ago and now you are all but ready to proclaim him a lottery pick.

you can call me roy mueller as well. doesnt bother me in the least if you use billiken roy or roy mueller.

that wasnt your point goofy. you inferred that kevin would be afraid to come to st louis university because the billikens had already recruited dwayne polk and he couldnt beat him out. you f'd up on this one. need to admit it.

bigmac, i understand what you are saying, my sigh is in relation to those masses that a couple of weeks ago were just so sure that we were going to have a better record than last year. i said i was hesitant to say anything near that since we were losing marque and kenny brown and i wasnt sure we had replacements for either. i was slapped around for a number of days for having the audacity to think that kenny brown would be difficult to replace and it was inferred that our inside recruits, would all be ample replacements. i said it sounded to me they wouldnt even be the equal of heinrich let alone kenny brown again i was all but crucified. all i am saying is that the first of 3 revelations of our actual inside position has been uncovered. that is my sigh. i truly understand that bryce has to be developed. hell, if brad wants me to, i will visit the gym daily and throw the needed thousands of entry passes to him in the pivot to get to that point. but i hope we are done fantasizing that the current billiken team is a lock for the ncaa tourney. i prefer to say "let's wait and see how the other two inside players and reggie bryant pan out before making any predictions".

your point about kenny brown also needing a couple of years to become a credible basketball player is well taken. but let's also point out that kenny's two years of preparation to get to the player he will be remembered as a billiken came at the expense of a roster spot at an iowa juco and not on the billiken bench that needs frontcourt players now. as i stated before, i have no problem saying husak needs time to develop. and in another time and situation, i would welcome bryce on the billiken roster, but i fail to see how the current version of the billikens has the luxury to park a couple of inside projects and still be able to compete at the same level the billikens have been at the last two seasons.

aj, if we had the luxury of having 2-3 returning inside players i would defend bryce to the end. i agree he deserves the time to develop. however, to bring in such a raw player when our inside presence is virtually nothing right now seems suicidal for next season imo. right now i am more worried about next season than being content to say, "you just wait until 2006".

aj, i have made one appearance on the tigerboard in my entire life. i came one night to describe chris braun to the tiger fans who were just wondering. i do not believe we have any business on their board. i would not engage the tiger faithful in their house for any reason. now if they come here though spouting ignorance........:-)

if that is true, it was a very slick recruiting move by the tigers considering the ego's most of these aau guys have.

actually dave in my day of playing in local leagues and pick up games, i seemed to play better when i WASNT playing with my gang. i dont know, but maybe i wanted to show the unknown's my best stuff, whereas when it was my normal group, it seemed to always digress into one sloppy night of running and gunning. after reading all the posts today, there are two things i think i am hearing. first, husak isnt going to even replace chris braun this upcoming season let alone contribute towards replacing kenny brown. might as well redshirt him right now. but my point i have been making about our bigs being a disappointment and probably not 2003-04 contributors, is 1/3 of the way there. i just hope bryce isnt a huge mistake and can put in the time and effort to become a contributor in three or four years. as to clarke vs ahearn, way to early to tell, but the one aspect no one has commented on was the defensive effort of either. the two times i saw ahearn, he might as well have set up a lawn chair on the offensive end and sat there each trip down the floor because he was totally worthless defensively. he put on a show shooting both times i saw him, but damn near gave up as much on the other end. i can guarantee you that would make brad nuts. i was always under the impression that clarke was a better athlete and if he played any kind of defense, there is your reason why brad picked him over ahearn. good luck to ahearn in springfield, but i personally dont want him. and to whomever compared him to kent williams, kent williams played defense. i dont want to say who, but a friend here on the board e-mailed me and suggested that maybe the problem with our spring recruits was the fact that brad committed to going after juco's early on and then the new academic rule came out which obviously made getting juco's into slu much more difficult. by then, our staff was too far behind the needed size and quality high school big men to get much better than what we got to properly switch gears. so we were faced with holding our breath that the likes of dennard abraham would pass his ACT (he didnt) or something else falling in our lap (like maybe the greek kid might be). i remain totally pessimistic about fericks. i just dont picture the guy being much more than what travis tadysak was considering the size the guy is and the lack of other attention he garnered. i hope i am wrong, but i think our hopes for an improvement with the upcoming season lie in bryant and morris and the hopeful improvement of i/o, sloan, fisher, and drejaj. of course the one big piece to the puzzle missing in that list is any kind of a big man. the thought of possibly playing louisville, memphis, cincy, marquette and charlotte without a center is scary as hell. maybe we can get the shot clock rule rescinded and play 4 corners next year.

sighhhhhh.........i wish i had been wrong. i only hope there are not two more sighs coming.