thetorch

SLCA did a recorded showcase just a few weeks ago with some teams. It was done post quarantine. Footage got out and Nesbitt shined.

Weah is huge get for the program. Elevates the team immediately. We should be expecting conference championships and deep tournament runs with him. Deent chance he could be a top 5 player in the NCAA before he leaves SLU.

Really a lost season for the Bills. Preseason expectations were super high. We were in the top 45 in SI preseason rankings and also in the Sporting News teams to make the tourney. Several things went wrong. 1. Bad recruiting by Grawer. There was no talent on our bench. Newberry wasn't ready and we had no PG at all until about game 20. Roland was playing out of position as a point forward a lot of the time. Off the bench we had Trice who was a bad 2 guard turned pg, and Jeff Ford an undersized PF. Duff stunk, Renken was worse, Leuchtefeld was a walk on and nobody realized he was good yet and then Anthony Jones. He was the real disappointment. Grawer recruited him to start at the point and we would be this run and gun team. He was awful, no handles and was essentially a 6'1 post player. 2. Our offense stunk. Grawer had intended this team to run. With no PG and no bench that was difficult. We played a 7 man rotation. Out of that rotation we played 4 PFs, 2 Shooting guards that couldn't shoot and 1 inexperienced pg. Roland could shoot from outside but wouldn't. No one else could make 3s. Bonner, Brown, Gray, & Douglas all were best operating in the paint. Our half court offense was terrible. We actually shot really well, turnovers were an issue and we just couldn't run an offense. We would have trouble getting a shot off. 3. The MCC was really good. Bonner played 6 years in the league. We played in a 6 team MCC, Xavier, Evansville, Loyola, Detroit us and Butler. He's the 6th best big man in the league. Hill & Strong at Xavier, Gotfread at Evansville, Tucker and Fowlkes on Butler were almost as good as Hill and Strong, same as us they had no guards, just Soph Thad Matta running the point. Loyola had Heyward at PF, the best scorer in the league & Kenny Miller who led the NATION in rebounding. Only Detroit really played small. Our strengths were every one else's strengths. Every team in the league but us had a 24 point per game or higher scorer. This league had 6 NBA players in it. That didn't include the 3 best players in the league at that time, Larkin, Simmons, and Heyward. We always lament the MCC but in the late 80s it was a nice league.

Big Mel was a legit 7 feet in shoes. Husak didn't need shoes to be 7 feet. Husak grew while at SLU. He was at the very least 7'2 and maybe taller. Tallest Billiken player.

They are taller than Hargrove. Nesbitt is 6'5, no taller. Kern is slightly taller just barely 6'6. Neither of them are 6'7 or 8. Not close.

Several posters figured out that this was not a list of finalists but a list of new offers and interest. He put a fire emoji on the post to indicate that his recruitment is heating up. This is not a finalist list.

Besides Burns and Mckinney, McCall may have been the fastest Billiken. I love that he was so bad defensively that he was benched for a large portion of the sophomore season, even had a dnp-coaches decision game. Comes back from it and becomes one of the premier perimeter defenders in Billikens history. Off ball defense was his specialty. He just wouldn't let his man get the ball. Another reason why he gets overlooked.

I was at both the McCluer North-Chaminade games. North had quite a run with Randy Reed. They would have the big star but he could also run out 10,11 even 12 deep of guys who could all play and defend. North was too deep for Chaminade that day. In the first game Reed assigned just 2 defenders to Beal the whole game. 2nd game he rotated almost every possession. Guys were fighting on North for a chance to take him on. Beal had a great game but it worked. North also had Jordon Granger clogging up the middle and rebounded much better than Chaminade down the stretch. A North team with zero stars gave Tatum his closest game in the playoffs his sr year. They got Cook into foul trouble, ran Gladson all over the court and guarded Tatum 1 on 1 with rotating players all game. Single possession game the final quarter. Tatum got a steal in the last minute and made Fts and won by 6 or 8. Biggest scare Chaminade had all year as well.

No and no. There are no partial scholarships for basketball or football at D1.

I wish I could respond to Mr. Kvidahl but he blocked me on twitter years back in an argument over Goodwin being on the 3rd team all metro his sr season. Several problems with the list. Liddell is not Player of the Decade. Clearly Tatum and Beal are ahead of him. I think he gets credit because he plays in Illinois and they have more talent than MO. While they do have more talent, because there are more people, Illinois HS basketball especially in Chicago has been waning. It will come back but the public schools aren't churning out superstars like they used to and their teams aren't nationally ranked as highly or as much. The landscape in Chicago just doesn't have the concentration of players anymore. Peoria's peak was years ago, same with Champaign. Liddell won 2 state title but Illinois basketball is just weaker. The best case for that is Liddell a borderline top 50 recruit being the top player in the state 2 years in a row. Tatum was a National player of the year. He is the player of the decade. Beal was also better than Liddell. Jones doesn't belong on the 1st team. Even by their own criteria. He only made 1 first team all metro. He was never POTY. He was very good but c'mon. Young, Hill, Cam, were all better HS players. Goodwin was better than him. Goodwin is criminally underrated. I argued with Kvidahl when he was a senior. Goodwin before his injury was the clear POTY. He played 2/3 of the games, his team was very very good ready to make another state run and had a chance at winning in class 4. To get relegated to 3rd team was a joke. If Goodwin hadn't gotten hurt this is his resume, 1 state, 1 state runner up with another possible final 4 run, 3 1st team all metros, led area in scoring his sr year by a wide margin. He wasn't credited for his sr year at the time and still isn't. Frankly Goodwin's case as player of the decade if he doesn't miss time is stronger than Liddell's. BJ Young should be on the list. He only played 1 year but so did Jones at least in the list's criteria. Young beat the 2nd best player of the decade head to head. I was glad that Tatum and Beal called out this list. A lot of the local hoopheads weighed in and called it trash which it is.

Spoon's teams have stunk for the most part. Was hoping he'd do better in the OVC.

This may be a recent offer list or new programs showing interest. He captioned it with a fire emoji. If it was a final list I would think he would say so.

I always heard Jay Spoonhour watched Williams play once and he stunk. Came back and said he was overrated small town kid who couldn't play in CUSA. Charlie and Jay both watched him set the scoring record at the coca cola shootout. Spoon had stepped totally back from any recruiting by this time but after seeing that if Jay wasn't his son he would have been out of a job. Gilbert and Brooks were really bad academically. Weber and Lowery's MO has always been to take academic risks and make it work. The way SLU operates Brooks wouldn't have lasted a day. Harrellson was a colossal f***up by Soderberg. By that time we knew Soderberg couldn't get it done recruiting wise. The Ahearn recruitment was a real fork in the road for him. Make the right move and be a successful HC till you retire, make the wrong move and be an asst coach lifer.

It was an AAU coach. I was one of the biggest Ahearn detractors on the board at the time. I was so wrong. Worst move ever by Soderberg. Freshman Ahearn in the rotation in 03-04 instead of Clarke and Hunt makes that 19-13 team an NCAA tourney squad. 04-05 is a wash with all the injuries and dysfunction on the team and Ahearn's attitude may have made it worse. 05-06 would have been a great team. We finished 3rd in the A10 with a breakout Ian year. Look at the the rotation for 05-06 - Ian, Ahearn, Lisch, Liddell, Drejaj, Meyer, Polk, Brown, Newborne. That was the Juan bid year for the A-10. If we won 20 games that season we were in. Then the following year we return everyone but Drejaj, we make the tourney again. How good would we have been with Sr Ian, Soph Lisch & Liddell & Ahearn? We could have started Knollmeyer at the 4 and still won the A10.

If Ahearn comes here Soderberg makes at least 1 NCAA tourney, maybe two. He might still be the coach.