DeSmetBilliken

This is a good point. Personally I’m not convinced that Ford is the guy to get us over the hump. I think he’s plateaued here, just as he did at OSU. At OSU, his plateau was the Round of 64. Here, his plateau is 4 seed in the A10, semifinals of the A10 tournament, and a NIT berth. If the right candidate was out there and attainable, I’d replace Ford without a second thought. With that said, it’s certainly possible that SLU could fire Ford and make a mess of the search, ending up with a lateral replacement at best. Confidence in the powers that be at SLU to get it right is a different conversation. So there is a credible argument for rolling the dice on Ford for another year and hoping he doesn’t have an absolute clunker of a year like his last at OSU. Anyway, I don’t know who would be officially available this year because I’m not in a position to be part of those conversations. My ideal Ford replacement would be Chris Mack. I know he has said he wasn’t taking a job this year, and that may be, but if you removed Ford, you have to try and make him say “no”. Beyond that, Pat Kelsey at Charleston and Darian Devries at Drake would be next on my list. I had this thought when we were replacing Jim Crews, and I still think a good hiring strategy for SLU is to hire someone with experience at Xavier, Creighton, Marquette, or some other school like SLU that has had more basketball success. Tell them to build SLU’s program the way those other schools operate. Kelsey was at Xavier, and Devries was a longtime assistant at Creighton.

This is one of the best sentences ever posted on this here message board.

Something to that effect. Whether it was specifically Perkins, or someone else, Perkins was the example used. Basically they said that Ford may have been loyal to a fault as it related to existing players, as he then might have passed on a transfer because he was loyal to a player on the roster.

Just noting…a tidbit based on admittedly little to no direct information. Just putting a few pieces together.

I just listened to the Frank/Rammer segment from Frank’s show this morning. It wasn’t the “slu fans are unreasonable and stupid for wanting to go to the NCAAs” comment that has been suggested. Source: I’d fall into the “anti-Ford” camp and didn’t feel the least bit insulted. Basically they said that the team didn’t meet expectations, but it wasn’t so bad that you need to eat Ford’s buyout now. Frank also tried to backtrack from the suggestions yesterday that he was throwing players under the bus. Based on this segment, a few posts here, and a rumor I heard a year ago, I’m starting to speculate that the root of this whole thing is this: some people tried to bring some player to SLU last year with an NIL deal, and Ford shut it down. Maybe that rubbed some people the wrong way. Fast forward to this season, the team underachieved, and those people think that if their deal went through, this team would be better.

Agreed. Also, I’d think that Ford/May airing out close to half the team via Frank would be more harmful to recruits’ perception of Ford than the opinions of some MBMs expressed on a website.

True story. I had this same thought earlier.

I just remembered that 2 weeks ago during the “Travis Ford is going to be here for a long time” interview with Chris May, Frank and/or May mentioned how NIL can be helpful, but also cautioned it’s effectiveness, citing North Carolina’s heft NIL bill for this season with no NCAA tournament appearance to show for it. Now he’s citing Miami “buying a point guard” and getting to the Sweet 16?

I agree with this. I think it’s becoming clearer that there are some people (seemingly big money boosters) that want to make a change, and my guess is that probably Chris May doesn’t want to do so, or at least wants to give Ford another year. So it’s the boosters vs May and maybe Pestello.

What difference does it really make? Whether you call it second place, tied for second, fourth seed, fourth place, the bottom line is that this team had very reasonable NCAA tournament expectations going into the season and didn’t come close to meeting those expectations, and didn’t even make the NIT. It sounds like you view this idea of finishing in a tie for second as some sort of a silver lining that overrides the disappointment of the season. I just don’t agree with that. Look at Dayton. They had similar expectations as us, if not higher. They did have the #2 seed. I don’t think many Dayton fans are looking back at their season and saying “well, we were preseason Top 25, we missed the NCAAs, didn’t get in/opted out of the NIT, but we got that #2 seed in the A10 tournament, so we had a good season.”

This is basically where I am too. While a number of us are disappointed how this team has performed relative to expectations for a few years now, and Chris May’s suggestion 2 weeks ago that everything was just going great and we should be excited about it made us want to throw things, this isn’t a situation like when we fired Crews 7 years ago. The program isn’t a dumpster fire in need of someone to put out the fire, so it’s a question of whether there is someone out there that we could hire that will come and likely better advance the program than Ford. If that person exists and is interested in coming to SLU, then Ford may be gone. If not, then that’s the argument for Ford to stay.

Depending on how you count, in the last decade, men’s team has at least 2 NCAA appearances (2014 and 2019) and 2013 was 10 years (11 seasons) ago. They won a first round game (vs NC State) in 2014 and won a first round game (vs New Mexico State) in 2013.

I get what you’re saying, but even if you say that we finished second, that doesn’t make the season successful. This was a team that absolutely should have been in the mix for an NCAA at-large berth, and not only did they fail to do that, but they missed the NIT as well. I just don’t see why this “we actually finished second” argument means anything.

Did I miss something? SLU didn’t tell Crews “you’re going to be fired, AND you have to wear a sweater for the rest of the season”…did they? Because that’s actually kind of hilarious.

I’m not optimistic that this is going to happen based on initial reports, but I’m selfishly hoping that the Diamond/Ballys Sports bankruptcy blows up the blackout rules and allows me to watch Cardinals games on MLB.tv for free with my T-Mobile subscription.

Exactly. Our non-conference schedule wasn’t bad. The problem was that we didn’t win enough meaningful games to have a good NET. Sure, we beat Memphis and Providence, but we lost to Iona (badly), Maryland (badly), Boise State, and Auburn. The reality was that to be an at-large team in down year for the A10 like this year was, you probably had to win 3 or 4 of those, and avoid the SIUE loss. Instead, we lost all 4 of those and SIUE. It’s just what happens when your conference schedule gives you 5 games out of 20 against teams in the top 100. Also, out of those 5, we got 1 win. It’s not a NET issue. It’s a not winning important games issue.

Don’t forget, Chris May thinks that we should be excited that Travis Ford’s recruiting got us in a position to play a game like this.

I gave out no identifying information about you, and have no intention to do so. You weren’t doxed. Have a good rest of your day.

You’re closer to the situation than you’re letting on, because you are one of the “ones who stuck around”. Did you hear this from yourself? Out with it: what are these “concessions” that took place? The athletics department under Chris May has never been one to admit mistakes and improve, so I’m skeptical the changes are meaningful. I’m legitimately curious.

Have to upgrade. If you have T-Mobile for your cell phone service, they’ll give you a promo code for it to be free.

This. If SLU was in the 4-8 range in the A-10 when it came to coaching salaries, facilities, etc, then regularly finishing 4th or 5th in the conference would be more acceptable. But that’s not the situation with Ford. For the entirety of his time at SLU, he has had top level facilities and been paid top level salary for A10 coaches, but with the exception of 1 weekend in March 2019, he hasn’t delivered on it.

Agreed

Add in that last week we got a whopping 5k as well. Not great for conference games in February.

Heck, I was part of a discussion of Yuri vs Kyle Cassity the other night.

This stinks. What’s Chaifetz’s Venmo? I’m in for $20 towards Ford’s buyout.