3star_recruit

My favorite article was the classic: Why NBA scouts prefer Kenny Brown over Arthur Johnson. We love you, Roy!

Man, you've just figured that out? I'm a regular subscriber of the Roy's Contrarian Newsletter. Great feature this month about how Drew Diener almost gained an extra year of eligibility ;-)

Clemons committed to Mizzou during the juco basketball season, 24 hours short of his associate's degree. Then during the summer he miraculously accumulates these 24 hrs. The Barton coach had nothing to gain by orchestrating this academic fraud if Mizzou was not paying him off.

How does Gary Pinkel find the time to coach the both the Mizzou football and SLU basketball teams?

A system where only 25% of your scholarship players shows improvement isn't a very successful system.

I'm more concerned that the players who enrolled in the program as freshmen and have been here at least a year have regressed under this offense. Drejaj's best stretch was the end of his freshman year. Clarke putting up worse numbers than last year. JJ putting up worse numbers than last year. Vouyoukas putting up worse numbers than last year. Considering how bad three of these four players were offensively last year, how can this be?

"Brad is trying to implement a new system, but has found we do not have the horses besides Dwayne that can truly get out on a fast break." When did he find this out? I don't see a perimeter player taking off on a regular basis when the shot comes off the rim. All of guards staying in the offensive halfcourt until they see that the ball is secured vitually kills off any chance we have of getting numbers in transition. That split second cheat can make all the difference.

This is IO's last season.

"Knowing that we were entering the season with a freshman point guard and a new starting forward, would it have made sense to open the season at home against a couple of cupcakes?" Austin Peay without their best player and Troy are cupcakes. It took us 45 minutes to score 45 points in one game and the Troy game was nip and tuck for 38 minutes. The problem goes deeper than competition level.

To add on to what you've said, I keep reading posts that opening the game won't work against higher echelon teams. To that I say, so? That doesn't mean we should struggle the other 24 games trying to execute a game plan that has a steep learning curve, losing more confidence with each successive failure.

If the team doesn't regain their confidence, they won't even beat Oakland and the lower tier CUSA teams.

When it comes down to it basketball is a game and games are supposed to be fun. There is nothing fun about the tentative, overly conservative, utterly predictable way the Billikens play basketball. There is no point in playing if the actual act of playing isn't fun AND you don't win. Quality recruiting becomes almost impossible.

These games are being lost in the first 5 minutes of the game when we don't score. If scoring 10 points in the first 5 minutes restored his players' confidence in their offensive abilities even if it means deviating from his ideology, Brad needs to bite the bullet for the good of the team. Throw your five best athletes on the floor early in the game, press the other team and get some layups. Get Reggie some open looks off the secondary break while the other team is still trying to match up on defense. Oakland is a poor defensive team -- this is totally doable.

A lot of teams run some variation of the motion offense. Weber ran the same motion offense at Southern Illinois but they were just an average offensive team. What sets the Illini apart is their ability to run their teams out of the gym from end line to end line. http://www.lincolncourier.com/sports/03/11/22/sb.asp "I get mad when they say the Big Ten is a slow, plodding league," Weber said. "When Tom Izzo had his run at Michigan State, they were the best fastbreak team. We called it the jailbreak. He also had good defense, but they had athletes." Michigan State won or shared four straight Big Ten titles. The Spartans won the NCAA title in 2000. So trash the notion that it can’t be done in the Big Ten. Illinois already has the athletes on the roster, Weber said. A fast-paced team with a motion offense will recruit younger players to Illinois. This isn’t just what’s best for this year’s Illini, Weber said. This is how he wants to play. "Last year in the Final Four, Kansas just ran past Marquette," Weber said. "They had the athletes and ran by them." Let the track meet begin. About a month into preseason practice, "it’s not as fast as I want them to go," Weber said. "They’re starting to get in the habits of it. There’s nothing better than your opponent scoring bucket, you get out of net, hit your point guard and you get a layup before they get back."

Man, I really would have liked to have seen a true Lisch/Walker matchup. The refs must have wanted to get home after all those overtimes in the previous game. You had rugby matches going on all at the Shootout and Kevin got nailed with two touch fouls in 40 seconds. It was really a disservice to Althoff and all the locals that stayed late.

A California forward we've been listed with for months has expanded his school list: "Rashad Austin 6-7 210 PF Santa Ana, CA Mater Dei Early list of schools showing interest include: St. Louis, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, Washington, Cal State Fullerton, San Diego, and Pepperdine."

Kevin scored 20 points in the first half, including four three pointers against a decent Marion squad last night. He finished with 26 points and 6 steals for the game. It was like night and day from the bogus three fouls in three minutes, frustrated kid trying to do too much in the 2nd half situation Lisch was subjected to on Thursday night. The Althoff players were clearly on a mission. It sucks being the next opponent right after a disappointing loss.

For you guys that can't make it to the Shootout, Rammer is doing the play by play on 590. Supposed to start at 9:15 pm but you know how these games tend to run late. I'm about to hit the road in about a half hour. According to the KFNS updates, the local boys teams are 0-2 thus far.

So teams that have had lousy shooting percentages for an entire season just aren't playing hard enough? I wish it were that simple.

He was posting the score of the Arizona vs. SLU game two years ago.

Good heavens man, situational traps and pressing for a few minutes a game is not "UAB ball". There are teams without UAB-level athletes that do it to get easy baskets. All I'm asking is that the staff try it for a couple of games to see if it jumpstarts the offense. Or they can continue on the present course, which is to have about 10 points at the 10 minute mark of the first half.

Every team on your list except Hawaii -- where Sensley hails from and only returned to after bouncing from at least three different schools -- average at least 70 ppg and get up and down the floor. It's a much more attractive brand of ball to athletic big men. I commend the staff for bringing in a strong crop of guards but talented, athletic guards WAAAAY outnumber talented, athletic big men. If the best the staff has to offer is 53 ppg and the halfcourt Chinese drill, it may be another 15 years before a Bonner quality power forward signs here.

Athletic big guys are the most sought after commodity in college basketball. You'd have to do a hell of a snow job to get them to come to SLU when there are so many run and dunk opportunites out there to entice them, from UConn to Louisiana-Lafayette.

"Let's scrap the Billiken style of Old, and let Polk have his fun." I don't know about scrapping but situational press and traps to get some easy buckets is our only hope, IMO. As Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. These kids' confidence continues to erode with each game and is probably down to a nub right now. In the last five minutes of the game, they were just throwing up anything in hopes that the Almighty would have mercy on them. If we can get some transition buckets early in game and get on the scoreboard, maybe the kids will build some confidence and those jumpers in the halfcourt set will start to fall. Not only does Coach run the risk of wrecking the kids' confidence for the rest of the season, he runs the risk of scaring off recruits. I can't imagine Jarod Leonard or Bobby Hill looking at our games and saying, "I'd love to become a part of THAT!" 53 ppg and visibly bewildered kids is a very hard product to market. http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/...uis_mojf106.jpg

It's always hard to project these things but when you look back on our freshman point guards over the last 15 years, none of them averaged 3 assists a game. If the team can get back to shooting 42% from the field instead 36%, Polk will average over 4 assists a game as a freshman.