3star_recruit

I have really enjoyed the start of the high school basketball season. If roster reshuffling every year really is the wave of the future in D1 basketball, I'll just go to more high school basketball games. The hot dogs are better anyway.

Yep, 16 points and 10 boards ... as a freshman. Arguably his best game as a Billiken.

Vouyoukas, absolutely. Heinrich, not much that I can recall. He was significantly better than Vouyoukas as a freshman. He didn't improve much.

It's a scary time for this team. Any coach who has seen our last few games can see that you can attack us in the first 5 minutes and end the contest early. After you start enough games down 15-5, it's easy for players to lose confidence. If the bad starts continue, so will the lopsided losses.

Per McCollum's own words, the secret to his success has been recruiting four and five year players that fit his system. But he questions whether there are enough four and five year players at the D1 level to build a successful basketball culture. Kids expect to be paid. At Northwest Missouri State he doesn't have those problems. D-2 programs don't have enough NIL money to compete for players on that basis. He is still free to coach players hard and build better men without fear of them resorting to free agency. Ironically, for MBMs who haven't seen his teams play, they play a lot like Jim Crews teams. But I'm talking the good Jim Crews, the 1992 Evansville version, with lots of ball movement, cutting, three-point shooting and tenacious man to man. The guy we got was a frustrated older gentleman yelling at clouds.

Sure I can always block posters. But I thought I would suggest a compromise. You have a legitimate grievance. But it's against Coach Ford and Chris May. It's not against me. This is similar to me being angry at my boss and taking it out on my friends. My friends didn't do anything to me. I don't want to block you. I think your anger has just got the best of you. I'll just wait for the old A_Bomb to come back.

I get it. I'm even cool if you guys pin a thread to the top where you vent about all of Coach Ford shortcomings every game. But hijacking every thread to vent about Coach Ford isn't fair to the other posters on this board. We didn't do anything to you.

There are no style points in basketball. If you outscore the other team you win. If you grab 4 more rebounds and make 3 more shots, that can be the difference between winning and losing. I get that the only narrative people want to discuss is Coach Ford no matter what the players show us on the court. I get that you will have no other narrative unless we win the A10 tournament. But what thread are we allowed to discuss the players accomplishments' if every thread is turned into a referendum on Coach Ford?

Parker is also our best rebounder. No Billiken got more than 4 rebounds last night.

Great Osobor is amazing. You have to double him and it leaves people open. Heaven forbid he goes down or that team suddenly becomes us.

SIU just got demolished in their first true road game. Guess what? SIU is our first true road game. Who knows how our guys will respond? It's not realistic to expect career highs from Jimerson every night.

I saw the same thing from LJ in high school. Struggles from three for long periods then gets hot for 4 or 5 games then goes cold again. You'll see him get hot when you least expect it.

Good to see Mike Meadows filling it up. Jimerson needs all the help he can get. Too bad Hargrove had such a tough night shooting the ball. The freshmen looked like freshmen -- overmatched. Just hope they improve each week.

Last year vs Providence.

I want the team to do well no matter who the coach and AD is. I don't control that. Until Parker returns, we're pretty limited in the teams we can beat. I expect over the next 5 weeks Thames will become a consistent 8-9 ppg scorer. LJ is basically a spot up shooter right now. The percentages will improve but it will be harder for him to be a consistent scorer because he lives and dies by his jumper.

Thames had 4 fouls in 11 minutes. Hughes was a disaster, shooting 1-7 in 31 minutes. Those are our two best underclassmen. It just wasn't meant to be that night. Hopefully they'll be better tonight. For the other freshmen to get on the floor, Thames and Hughes have to be consistent scorers. Otherwise we'll just score 65 points while our freshmen experience losing game after game.

By force do you mean going from a 3 points and 1 rebound a game to 6 points and 3 rebounds a game? Because I think that's all you can reasonably expect even with increased minutes this year. He came off the bench for his prep team. He's a fundamentally sound project.

We're going to take our lumps while the youngsters are going through their growing pains. Ideally, you want that process spread out over the course of a season. They need to become sophomores in the next 5 weeks. Otherwise, we're lucky to win 3 games.

My prediction: the computer will suddenly see a Parker effect over the next three games. The same effect that us humans have already seen by watching the previous games. Can this team even score over 70 points against a decent team without Parker in the lineup?

And USU is in the same position. And I quote from their own message board, "Without him (Great), we are 1-4 up to this point.". This is the plight of most mid majors. If your most talented scorer is in the lineup, you've got a chance to be good. If not, not so much.

It's skewed because Parker isn't playing. Wyoming didn't lack big men, we were just able to counter them with 22 points from Parker. With him we're a B-. Without him, I agree, we're a C-.

Wiz, we have no way of defending their 6'8 245 lb power forward who is averaging 20 and 10. If we don't shoot a high percentage from three, it's a wrap.

I think you nailed it. The prioritization of short-term over long term goals is evident going all the way back to Coach Ford's tenure at Oklahoma State. He doesn't seem to have the whole in mind when he recruits the pieces. His teams often have scoring droughts because the players don't complement each other. The result is Coach Ford's teams have enough talent to finish middle of the pack or a little bit better. But the pieces must fit together in order to finish in the top of the conference standings. And you're right, the short leash he has on young player's is classic short term thinking. It does not serve us in the long term.

The NIL portal is going to do to mid-majors what it's going to do. SLU hasn't been able to put the team it recruited on the floor for 4 years now, largely due to injury. That's a recipe for disappointment.