3star_recruit
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Posts posted by 3star_recruit
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27 minutes ago, TheA_Bomb said:
We've reached complaining inception.
Complaining about the coach level 1.
Complaining about complaining about the coach level 2.
Going deeper complaining about the complaining about the coach not being able to talk basketball.
I knew the ignore button works and no one is stopping anyone from taking about basketball.
I'm here to talk basketball. This is a thread about the coach's show. He mentioned players not being game ready or in shape. If the team was focused on pressing and transition offense before the season started endurance is key. He even mentioned how much they practiced it. So then why are all the players out of shape? Why when we went back to a less intense offense and defense they still couldn't handle it? This is according to the coach not speculation. 18-24 year old athletes, with the benefit of trainers, diet, unlimited gym access, recovery, physical therapy, the Champions Center, paid to pay, given scholarships out of shape. Perhaps they lack winning DNA.
Not only is Parker out, Meadows has been in and out of the lineup due to health. Hughes and Thames are just coming back from injury. This was a below average defensive team at full strength. They're Swiss cheese now.
Coach Ford could have brought in better defensive players in the portal. He made a big gamble on being able to outscore teams with a Big Three + veteran role players and smoke and mirrors on defense. He lost.
Slu let the dogs out?, cgeldmacher, DOC and 1 other like this -
40 minutes ago, Soderball said:
I'm a short overweight desk jockey. So what? I am perfectly happy to share all of the opinions i share on billikens.com in person as well.
OK, i probably wouldn't diss someone face-to-face by calling for a crying towel; but let's have some self-awareness here too. You're complaining that people are being "too mean" to a guy paid 2.5 million a year to win basketball games
What am i supposed to ask Ford? "why did you recruit a guy significantly under 6 ft to play PG here?" He's gonna give me an answer i already know "he's getting better, he's a tough kid, etc" .. those are true things. There's still the problem that most guards in the A-10 are much bigger and it's a struggle and we have to recruit over him anyway. "why did you recruit an academically ineligible international player?" What's he gonna answer?
I don't know. Those are good questions. Let me know what he says when you ask them on Monday.
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4 minutes ago, TheA_Bomb said:
Yeah the you won't say it to my face people are people that have never met me. I've literally been shot at, you think I'm concerned about a 5'9, 54 yo former PG? Or a message board poster?
I don't doubt it. But most people aren't real life tough guys. First world problems.
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39 minutes ago, cgeldmacher said:
Stop being condescending. You've said a few times now that I seem like a really nice person. Well, I can be just a much of a d&#k as anyone else. Again, I am rather confident that this is all being worked out behind the scenes already. Assuming this is the case, this constant barrage being launched at Coach Ford is unnecessary and, frankly, embarrassing. After a new coach is hired and things have moved on, you will look back on this and feel embarrassed by how you have acted. Others will too. But, but all means, buy your billboard. I'm sure the people surrounding this program, including people at the university and boosters, who will all still be here after Ford is gone, will quickly forget how you acted during this difficult time of a coaching transition.
There are no consequences for ridiculing a coach or a player's abilities on a message board. A week doesn't pass without a Crews jab and he hasn't been here in 8 years. That's part of what makes the internet so attractive. You can say things that you probably wouldn't say to that person's face for fear of consequences.
Message boards turn overwhelmingly negative once many years pass without expectations being met. There's a lot of testosterone here. It's going to happen. The only way to prevent it is for the coach to do some winning and lots of it.
Whenever a new coach comes, he'll get a two year honeymoon. After that he better start winning or we'll be right back here.
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1 hour ago, Lord Elrond said:
You aren’t kidding.
1.) Assuming his son is correct, it’s a $10 million dollar buyout to end Travis Ford’s contract. I don’t see the BOT dipping into the SLU endowment for this under any circumstances, which means a donor needs to step up with at least $10 mil, plus additional money to hire the new guy. Not sure who Travis Ford’s agent is, but I want that guy negotiating for me, clearly he’s an outstanding agent.
2.) So which identities on here are Ford relatives? Just curious.
$10 million is the same buyout he had when signing a new contract at Oklahoma State so there might be something to this.
https://www.sportingnews.com/us/ncaa-basketball/news/travis-ford-coaching-rumors-saint-louis-billikens-oklahoma-state/15k4ou2ezpenk1q6yc1p373ua7
Assuming there's 4 years left on Coach Ford's contract, buying him out next year would still cost $7.5 million.JMM28 likes this -
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8 minutes ago, Pistol said:
I have a lot of questions about the offer- particularly the timing, given the downward spiral the program is in right now. I wonder what the sales pitch sounds like when other coaches are telling recruits our HC is going to be gone next year.
Parker returning and us going on a run will be the sales pitch. "You're the missing piece." We don't have anything else to refute the "our HC is going to be gone" narrative. This February is the most important month of Coach Ford's Billiken career.
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6 hours ago, Soderball said:
I just find this legitimately baffling.
He would never be on my all-Billiken team either; (Marquee Perry and KM take the cake at the PG slot hands down, no question, MUCH better individual scorers and stone cold killers late game)
He was much better than the kind of PG play we are seeing this year.I still blame the "Ford Weave" for our offensive ills. I legitimately think slufanskip's school kids can run a more complicated offense than the Bills do.
I don't care how a team scores. If you have a system and recruit players to that system, great. If you have a trio of one-on-one scorers and let them carry the offense, fine. If you have the nation's leading assist man to set the table, then do that. But if you don't have a system or multiple one-one players or Yuri Collins you can't carry out any of these options.
The cool thing about having a system is theoretically you can plug in another guy and still be somewhat effective. When your success depends mostly on players making plays and one of those key players is unavailable, you're hard-pressed to even win a game.
According to my fellow MBMs, the BVF has $500K+ to sign players. That's enough to sign a scoring point guard, a defensive stopper, pay Parker and Big Brad and the role players around them. If Coach Ford does return, he should thank Troy Robertson and company for building up a respectable war chest. -
36 minutes ago, Soderball said:
In the era of unlimited unrestricted transfers & NIL money the fastest way to get better IS to fire the coach.
I am truly mystified why people think firing a coach is some kind of dangerous decision. Look at GMU. 11 new guys this year after getting raided by Providence(who went from losing to us to being ranked) .. and GMU is still top 100 kenpom and looking to get better.
SLU is gonna fall off a cliff once we have lost our fifth and sixth and seventh year guys. Even a cliff from where we are now. Ford could go 300+ ..
Then a bewildered BOT might be forced to think outside the box for once and turn to the younger generation for advice. Otherwise the old boy network of doing things will continue.
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2 hours ago, brianstl said:
I agree with you about SLU being risk averse, but they are actually at the point where they have nothing to lose. The team isn’t even a top 200 team (much less tournament contender), recruiting has cratered and we have our worst average attendance (Not including the COVID season) since 1985-86. 1985-86 was Roland Gray’s and Monroe Douglass’s freshman season and the first winning season the Billikens had since 1972-73.
If the team makes a run when Parker returns, the case can be made that this injury-riddled, defensive disaster is an aberration. Add a defensive stopper and upgrade the point guard position and we're right back in the mix. Which is probably true. And remember, the money men WANT the sales pitch to be true.
There have been a lot of convincing cases made to make a change at the end of the season. But none of those cases suggest a course of action that the BOT would actually follow.
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3 minutes ago, cheeseman said:
What are you willing to pay for him?
We're his best offer at the moment. The high majors will come sniffing around come spring. Not only can he create his own offense, but he's a good defender. His mediocre free throw shooting will limit his high major options, though.
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27 minutes ago, The Wiz said:
I am showing The Bills are giving up an average of 76 pts /gm, not 80. So if you think with some marginal defensive improvement The Bills could knock off 3 points that makes it 73 pts/gm. SLU is currently averaging 73.5 pts on offense. It sounds like you think with some marginal improvement on defense, we could start winning some games.
I agree with you.
With Big Brad in the lineup, we're giving up 79.
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15 hours ago, The Wiz said:
I understand you've been under the weather. When you are feeling better you may wish to come back and reread some of these posts.
I was not trying to tell you or other posters things you already know about the TO problem. The point I was trying to make was that by providing the data and simulation runs, it show how just a small change in TO results (4-7 per team) can result in a huge point swing(19-21pts) in a game. And these changes are not extraordinary . Asking the Bills to hold TOs to 12/gm is not an unreasonable request since not only are they averaging that for the season but until recently they were in the 10-11 range. And also to have The Bills be able to force 12 TOs against GM was very doable. GM has not only been averaging 12 TOs/ game (5 against The Bills) but they have done so against weak teams ( SOS = D-..... Teams that are much weaker than The Bills). TOs are damaging where ever they occur....beginning , middle or end of the game. In this game as well as the LOY game they came fast and frequent in the first half....digging quick holes. Sloppy play, bad passes and protecting the ball are fixable problems. Again, this is just one way the computer saw the GM game as winnable.
Hope you are feeling better soon....sending healing energy your way and The Bills way so you may both get back to your better selves.
You are a numbers guy. In addition to being one of worst defensive teams in D-1, this is one of the worst passing teams in D-1. You're not going to survive in the 2nd half once the teams turn up the pressure if you're bad at passing AND you're bad at stopping teams on the other end.
If the players aren't good at a particular skillset -- passing, defending -- I don't think that's fixable this year. You can, for example, go from being a horrible defense to a below average defense. You can only fix that problem by bringing in players who are better defenders.
The coaching staff hoped to have a Big Three to cover up their offensive and defensive deficiencies. For much of the season they only had a Big One (Jimerson), recently they became a Big Two (Jimerson and Big Brad). Not enough. They need a healthy Parker.This team is so bad at defense, they need to average 80 ppg to win. Maybe after marginal improvement on defense they can get by with averaging 77.
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6 minutes ago, thetorch said:
At various points I have been all in on local recruiting but I have changed my mind on this.
I like having local players. We should recruit them. Right now we have the most beloved guy in STL hoops and he isn't getting us top area talent so this may be the best we can do.
What we need is a coach who has a system and can identify players that will excel in it that will come to SLU. Ford doesn't do this. Crews didn't do this. If a local kid fits the bill try to get him but there are many areas that we can recruit and with most of the kids all going to the same locations to play tourneys it makes it easier to recruit nationwide.
Our formula should be multiple smallish ball handling guards who can shoot with 2 active rim protectors. Fill in the rest with matchup problems, big guys who can shoot, small guys who can rebound, more shooters and take flyers on elite defenders.
We shouldn't be recruiting local or midwest just to recruit there. Our roster is filled with these type of players, local guys who don't fit in our system and end up being mismatched pieces sitting on the bench who either think they are good enough to transfer or just stay here and ride the pine.
The only guys that have done this in the past 60 years have been Spoon and Majerus. That's it. When you look at the likely free agent market after the season, you don't see that guy. It's Chris Mack, who could jump right back into high major D-1 if he wants, and everybody else.
There may be an up and comer in the free agent market who becomes the next Chris Mack but the risk-averse BOT isn't going to bring him here. They're culturally incapable of it. There's a reason that those kinds of success stories happen at St. Mary's and Florida Atlantic and not at so-called established mid-majors. Programs and boosters who feel they have nothing to lose are willing to take a lot bigger risks.billiken_roy likes this -
1 hour ago, slu72 said:
Yuri was a creator of assists on his own. It’s what he was in HS and he carried it to college ball. It really had little to do with schemes drawn up by Travis, Yuri had unusual court vision. As good as he was at finding the open man what did it get us 20Ws and nowhere after that. Gibby still struggled to get an open look with Yuri. Why? Because he was a marked man who Ford never schemed to get him open looks. We’re seeing the same this season. Parker is a creator that may take some heat of Gibby but even that might not be enough if you can’t defend. And we absolutely suck on D. Again, coaching. We do have a decent core of A10 players the problem is we have a JUCO coach.
I actually started feeling a little bad for all the criticism and bad mouthing Travis has been subject to on here, but then I thought the guy’s making $2.5mm a year for continually under performing. I don’t feel sorry for him anymore. Not when he’s living large while he continues to disappoint.Our mediocre defense is exacerbated that by the fact that we have to work so hard to score. I believe we'll give up fewer points once Parker becomes a significant contributor. A Big Three will mask deficiencies on both sides of the ball similar to how Yuri-mania masked deficiencies on both sides of the ball last year.
The question is will a late-season run be enough to save Coach Ford's job? Will the BOT be willing to kick the can down the road? The free-agent market will probably have bigger names by then. That seems to be the route the BOT is most comfortable with if they want to make a move.
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5 minutes ago, TheChosenOne said:
It feels unproductive to analyze this as a 12 point loss. The end of game run produces flawed conclusions. That was not a potential win that slipped away, they ran us and when the result was decided Hughes and Thames hit some 3s while they were content to run out the clock. We are one of the best garbage time teams I’ve ever seen though.
I agree. Good to see LJ get some threes to go, though. He was struggling mightily even before the injury.
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11 minutes ago, TheChosenOne said:
At least we had another late run to put some lipstick on the pig…..
This is what our losses will look like if we choose to walk the ball up the court until the final few minutes of garbage time. We just don’t defend at all, so there really is not a good answer in my opinion. And offensively we don’t have a lead guard or guys who can create shots for their teammates, it’s all one one one. I suppose by fouling and walking the ball up the court in the opening half we at least had them out of sync for a stretch. But, you likely aren’t winning many games that way with such a poor half court defense. The defense played the token pressure that didn’t do much and then when we got in the half court mixing it up some we just have no defensive fundamentals defending one of one making it largely irrelevant whether we drop into a zone or man. And always entertaining to have another unhinged Ford moment, dead man walking.
Clearly without Parker we suck. Anyone know when we get him back?
The Matthew Rocchio tweet from earlier this week said Parker wouldn't be available this week. Our next game is at home followed by two road games where we'll be double digit dogs even with Parker in the lineup.
If the goal is to put Parker in a position to succeed, I wouldn't bring him back until after the VCU game. What would you do?
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29 minutes ago, johnbj14 said:
I think there are a lot of good discussion points in here, but really curious what “salvage the season” would be defined as. If Sincere comes back and this team ends up as an 18 win team, that doesn’t really show anything. It’s just kind of an arbitrary goal post. The only question that needs to be answered is if Travis Ford is the best coach to get SLU into the tournament going forward. Sincere coming back and the team looking a bit better doesn’t answer that question, for me at least.
Salvaging the season means going .500 in January, going on a run in February and continuing that run to the conference tournament finals. Then a case could be made that if the roster had been healthy all along, the traumatic blowout losses in non-conference never would have happened.
As it stands, I don't think the coaching staff can be competitive in the transfer portal. We're not sitting on pots of money and we're at the bottom of the A-10. A salesman needs a reasonably attractive product to sell.
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42 minutes ago, cheeseman said:
The problem with retreads is they usually failed because of their own limitations. Smart had big time success at VCU so he had a real track record something retreads usually don't have. Marquette may have just got lucky also. Why we are paying Ford so much is the $64K question.
We'll never know. We can only engage in MBM speculation. I suspect it's because the clandestine old boy network known as the BOT signed off on it.
Talking about replacing a coach and an AD is therapeutic because one day that will happen. But will the BOT ever be receptive to so-called "out of the box thinking" when large sums of money are involved? I seriously doubt it.
Slu let the dogs out?, brianstl and MusicCityBilliken like this -
35 minutes ago, slu72 said:
Any coaching hire is a risk unless it’s a Pitino or a Sampson. Rick was a low risk hire because of his impressive resume. Spoon was the same, proven winners. We’re gonna have to go big if Ford is canned. Now, does anyone see a Spoon or Rick type out there? I don’t save for Mack. And I don’t even rate him in their league. If Ford goes it’s either a Kelsey or the guy from Indiana St. Ideally, May from Fl Atlantic would be great, but he’s gonna get a P5 deal. Here’s a name no one’s mentioned Carawell from Duke. AC and St Louis native. Why would he be a bad move?
I thought the consensus was that we need someone who is a top-notch teacher of the game. Somebody who can "coach up" mid-major recruits. What does a Duke assistant know about coaching up that caliber of player? I think there's a reason that Coach's K tree has been underwhelming.
billiken_roy likes this -
18 minutes ago, AGB91 said:
I don’t see Thames warming up.
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27 minutes ago, SLUMS81 said:
I have heard that Mizzou’s vaunted incoming recruits are each getting 6 figure NIL money. The returning players will need taken care of, as well.
Whatever budget we may have needs to support both recruitment and retention. Such is the cost of being competitive going forward.
The top mid-major programs basically have 1 guy who could be a high-major starter on a good team, a couple of other guys who could be in a high-major rotation and other guys who are just mid-major guys. I don't see that changing. It will just become a lot more expensive to acquire and maintain such a team.
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2 minutes ago, cgeldmacher said:
Thanks for the work putting that together. I've always said that conference season should be a wash overall to a conference's NET rankings since each conference goes .500 overall during the conference season. If you start the conference season with two wins, those two teams you beat end up playing each other. One will win, helping your NET, and one will lose, hurting your NET. Certainly, wins move you up and losses move you down, but no conference should improve or fall in the overall NET rankings due to conference season play.
If the teams in your conference happened to beat teams that did well in their conference, that would boost the NET of the former.
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There are 28 games tonight that start at 6 pm CST or earlier. TV must love that time slot.
Note: Billiken Coaches Show Debut 1/8/24
in Billikens.com Main Board
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The only reason I don't trust it is because I don't believe the money men have any interest in paying for a $10 million buyout. Or paying a humongous lump sum. SLU boosters paying more than Oklahoma State boosters to get rid of a coach? On what planet?