thetorch

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4:35 Fish is back in the game with 4 fouls.

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10 minutes left. Billikens are in a Timeout.

SLU basketball I agree with Ed Macauley's letter last Sunday. A perfect example was the same Sunday sports paper that had on its front page a huge illustration regarding baseball salaries and an article about an out-of-state football scandal and the Billikens are on page five. What bothers me is that this type of placement happens so often. Marilyn Hummel, St. Louis Ed Macauley complained about what he perceives to be a lack of St. Louis University basketball front page coverage in the newspaper at the expense of more favorable coverage of the Missouri basketball program. His point that SLU basketball is the city's only major basketball program and thus should be supported is correct. However, he fails to acknowledge that SLU is a private university whose basketball program has limited appeal beyond the immediate area. Missouri, on the other hand, is associated with the largest public university in the state with considerable appeal throughout all regions of the state. As such, all of us, including Mr. Macauley, have a stake in the ownership of its athletic programs. I have no qualms with the writer's obvious bias toward his alma mater and its basketball program, but suggest that he not belittle a superior program to make his point. Ken Gumper Sr., St. Charles I respect Ed Macauley and what has he done for St. Louis University and the St. Louis area. He is truly is an outstanding individual. However, I must disagree with the opinion expressed in his letter regarding the lack of coverage afforded the SLU basketball program. If success is judged by wins and advancement in the NCAA championship tournaments, not only Mizzou, but SIUC, Southwest Missouri, Illinois, and even the Washington University men's and women's programs have had one or more years which have exceeded any result achieved by the SLU men's program over the past 35 years. A large number of graduates and supporters of these schools live and work in the St. Louis area and desire coverage of their programs. The Post-Dispatch provides that coverage by a broad range of game summaries and stories. SLU supporters would be far better served to refrain from criticizing Mizzou or other conference athletic programs and look inward for ways to improve their own program's results. I would encourage supporters of SLU athletics to follow Mr. Macauley's example and become involved in their program. Coach Soderberg has been an excellent choice as head coach, and his teams deserve far better home game attendance. The university administration has a vision and a plan to improve facilities. By attending games, providing financial and moral support, boosters can assist SLU in its efforts to attract quality student-athletes and improve on court results. Gary Martin, Manchester Ed Macauley was not only an All America basketball player, but a long-time TV sports anchor in this town. So he knows a thing or two about the news business. If he wants his school to get the kind of favorable publicity for his school than the University of Missouri (my school) gets, here's a simple formula: 1) Recruit a group of players good enough to be tagged with the label potential Final Four team and have them underachieve and play horribly, losing to teams like Belmont then make an end-of-the-season, desperate bid to make the NCAA. 2) Have your point guard be ineligible for a while and then when he starts playing have a falling out with the coach and get kicked off the team. 3) Recruit a junior college player who needs to get 24 summer semester hours to come to the university. Have that same player jailed for attacking his girl friend and then have the wife of the president of the university recorded on phone calls to that jailed player criticizing the basketball coaches, the school, the town and making racially-charged remarks. Wait. The president of St. Louis University doesn't have a wife, but if he did, that would sure be front page news! Richard Buckley, Manchester

Both of us will have to win our respective conference tourneys to get into the big dance. No way mizzou can get in with less than 17 wins. The NIT must be salivating over this matchup. 20,000 at Savvis, I will be there with my blue and white muck fizzou shirt on.

SLU is no porsche. I see SLU as a big Buick LeSabre.

No way Soderberg ran off Seyfert. Seyfert was homesick he was a fish out of water in St. Louis. He would have left even if Romar was here.

Sargent is definetely on several recruiting lists for football. I thought he was a TE though? Regardless he is one the highest rates STL area players in football.

Besides the miracle in Memphis Romar did nothing for the program while at SLU. At best we ran in place, and without a guy like Soderberg working his tail off we would be much worse off thanks to Romar. The only good thing LoRo did here was bring in Brad and win that tourney. He was a good game coach but no better than the coach before or after him and his recruiting talents amounted to a lot of smoke and mirrors. I don't begrudge him his success but I am certainly happy that he is gone.

Regardless of whether he plays or not he will not be close to 100%. At most he will help on rebounds but I don't expect anything from him on offense and who knows what scary things will happen if he gets fouled and goes to the line.

This is not a team that could handle playing full court pressure unless it is the most doire of circumstances as we were last night. C'mon we started a walk on last night. Maybe with more and better players this could be a regualr thing. That said I like the full court press as a diversion not as an posession type thing. Full court press is best when the defense is playing with great intesity and the opposing team is not expecting it. Playing it every trip down the floor your players lose their edge quickly and it just tires the players out more than causing any disruptions.

I don't feel sorry for the bums who left early either. You can't leave early on senior night I don't care how bad the team is losing. I had some doubts about the outcome in the second half but I always thought a comeback was very possible. BTW a certain zany St Charles car dealership owner who sits below me was one of the guys who left early. He and his party take up an entire row and never once have stayed for an entire game this year. They made their regular early exit last night at about the 8 minute mark.

I did notice that Guy called us the winner at the end of regulation. Maybe he thought fishers shot went in. Who knows. There was also a scoreboard anomaly in the OT. At one point they were giving points to Houston when SLU scored.

There was no review.

We are probably going to play SO Miss in the first round.

Dump the Tigers Oakville Tim. I don't see how anyone could root for that bunch of underachieving bums after seeing what transpired at Savvis tonight. Down by 20 in the 2ND HALF with arguably our two best players out and couple other guys hurt but playing, a walk on starting the game and playing over 30 minutes and we still won. If the Tigers had just 1% of the heart the Billikens have they would be national champs.

Such an amazing game. This is definetely top 5 all time billikens games I have ever seen. Great job by the crowd tonight BTW. Alot of people left in my section after Houston went up by 12 but the hangers on stood and cheered the whole rest of the game. Best showing by the crowd this season, we kept it up for at least 10 minutes.

heh heh I remember the last time we played Duke. Must have been late 80s early 90s it was on Channel 11 or something.

I think we are already out of the running on Tyus. He is listing the big time schools like Kansas and Arizona. Not even mizzou or Illinois show up. He really wants to go out of state.

Without Frericks we have no one who can rebound effectively against true big men. We have no inside game on offense. Louisville could pressure the outside because they knew there was no inside capable of taking a shot outside of Izik. Izik has to ahve basically isolation plays for him to take it into the post so he really is not a true post man on offense. I don't think I saw one legit entry pass last night. Without an inside threat our offense is extremely weak. We really had no chance against Louisville. We need better players and more of em.

Hey at least these guys had to be able to read english to pass it.

I made it to 6 minutes left. As soon as I saw the L'Ville big man dribble twice at the top of the key, spin arounfd looking for someone to pass to and start dribbling again a minute later I knew I would not be able to stomach anything more. Billikens were terrible tonight. Outclassed compeltely and gave little effort.

I don't think Pitino is going to come play SLU ever again. He was lucky to get out of here with just one win.

Hockey is popular in St. Louis but the Blues are a terrible mediocre franchise. St. Louis was at one time a hockey town. Now most people don't pay attention to the Blues. I would rank em like this 1. Cardinals 2. Rams 3. Mizzou Football/bball 4. Blues 5. SLU