slu72

Bruenig was billed as an RL/CE type, but maybe with a little more inside presence. That's what I was hoping RL and CE would work on over the summer, ie their inside presence. So, we would have added a 3rd perimiter big and still be hoping for some help on the inside. Glaze is strictly an inside guy ala Conk with hopefully more athleticism. Another big body down low will definitely help. Also, you have to like the writeups about his toughness and desire to win. It would seem that's why he chose us over some of the other bigs that were looking at him. He knows he can help immediately. If I was CR I'd be worried about losing minutes to this kid unless he gets on the stick and shows us a lot more than he did last year. Got to admit the videos of him seem to indicate he needs more touch from underneath on the putbacks. Until he gets it have him toss those O rebounds back out to KM, JB, RL, CE and get us some more 3's. To those who say he appears to be another Newbourne or Eberhardt, I don't think so. They kind of operated outside or on the fringes of the inside. Glaze appears to love it down there so maybe a bigger Dobbs is on the way.

I like this pickup. Good rating #'s and they say the kid's a workhorse leader lunchpail type. Like to see him and the Conk go after it in practice. One more to go. Who can it be? Only the Shadow, aka Da Luv, knows/

If we are NCAA quality then W's at home are a given. It's time to hand X and Temple some payback. Also nice to see we won't be making the dreaded Olean's trip this year to the Welding Monastery.

KM's biggest asset is his desire to have the ball in his hands in the waning minutes of a close game. We missed that last year, ie no real leader on the floor in crunch time. Also, expect he will play w/ a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Not unreasonable to expect a big year from him. The key may very well be if JB is as good as advertised from the outside and if CE and RL can add points from there as well. With our shortcomings being on the inside, good 3 pt shooting is going to a necessity for this team.

The Whitesell thread got carried away. But it was once again leaning toward the question of will we or won't we finally make the dance this season. I'll say this right up front, we'll be a lot better than last year, but NCAA invite better? I have my doubts. First, what's it going to take? First, we'll need some quality OOC wins. Beat a couple of those tourney teams and make the finals. Beat UW? Nice to think about, but how realistic? Then the A-10. The over all talent in the A-10 may be down a little from the previous 2 years, but I still see X and Temple atop the heap and making the dance. The rest of the teams are all dealing with something or still in the rebuilding mold. So, the conference will suffer a down year and that's bad for us. What we do have to hope for is that we are good enough to finish no worse than 3rd in the league an then make it to the final game. But w/o those quality OOC wins unless we win the A-10 tourney outright, we'll be off the bubble and praying for the NIT to take us. Yes, we have KM back. And yes, we have JB, who we are hoping is as good as the hype. But after that we're looking at Sophs to carry a big load. We're looking for CE to be better than his FR year. And we may be looking at a FR to give us some quality minutes on the inside. I have little doubt we'll crack the 20w mark, but to make the dance we've got to be a 24-25 win team. W/O a real strong inside game and the fact we're counting on big contributions from our Sophs, it's hard to picture that happening.

That ain't happening. Read Billikan's post above. Look, the essence of any sport is the talent of the players and how it's used, abused or misused by the coaches. Yes, some talent challenged teams can succeed due to coaching, and that's where a guy like RM earns his keep. However, for us to make the leap to the X or Zaga level, who should be our standard, we still need more talent. More than even we currently have. This spring's recruiting period show's right where we are in the grand scheme of things. Two priority recruits were lost to BCS schools. But neither of these recruits can be considered a big time get for UT or UW. UW had a need for a big and luckily filled it when Bruenig came available. I'll be anxious to see how he fares out there as Zo likes athletic players and am not sure Bruenig is that athletic. Chievous filled a roster spot for Cuonzo. With Pearl there he may never have got a look see at UT. But the point is both kids saw no status in signing with SLU, where they both probably would have got serious minutes their first year here. These would have been good talents for SLU to land, but we've had a history of missing these types and even RM hasn't changed that. He won't change it until we start WINNING. Winning cures all ills.

What would concern me about axing RM if we don't make the dance this year would be transfers for the sophs. They'd still have two years left and might feel cheated if RM's gone. Hopefully, the powers that be take that into consideration. But it's important this program get off the schneid and start making some noise. The kid who could really help this program make a big leap is Berry, but he ain't coming if we're still stuck in mediocrity city.

If you're a national merit scholar your desire is to go to a status school, ie one of the Ivies, Stanford, Northwestern, etc. No different if you're a top 150 bb player. It's long past time for the Bills to start winning some games and making the dance.

Love the optimism. And don't want to sound negative, but it's show me time. And Da Love is right, until we become relevant from the standpoint of winning, getting guys like Bruenig ain't gonna happen.

Everheart's done a good job with DU given what little he had to work with and DU itself doesn't have much to offer in way of a campus and facilities. The fact he was able to get some very good players to sign on there says a lot about the guy.

St Louis has quite a German community as I recall. We should have taken him there. Make him feel at home. Sounds like he's a goner. His HS HC seems to support USF as well.

See Clock's post. RM's a one time deal. I'd venture to say he's the highest paid coach in the A-10 and paid more than a lot of lower level BCS coaches. I don't think Fr. B will break the bank again if he doesn't see more positive results over the next two seasons. The primary one being a chock full arena every night. I also don't think he'll go cheap like he did with UB. My guess would be RM's successor will be north of a half a mil and south of 3/4 of a mil. For those kind of bucks you should be able to land a promising up and comer or a proven mid major HC. The problem is finding him and making sure he's a good fit. For example, Zo was not the best hire we could have made back in 1999. He was a WC guy who couldn't lure WC kids here and you just knew he'd jump at the first good oppotunity to get back to the WC. Yeah, he was great at PR and with the local media, but that doesn't equate to W's. Spoon on the other hand was a great hire for SLU. Knew the recruiting territory, was a good X and O man, good track record at a mid major, beloved by the media, and had the aw shucks personality that filled seats with people from outside the SLU community. When RM does hang it up, hopefully after two years of trips to the dance, Fr. B's got to see the import of keeping it going and that means a great hire who won't come cheap.

I didn't say anything about unproven. Whitesell's only proven he could go .500 in the horizon. Trust me, right now he's done nothing to prove he can take us to a higher level. I don't even know why he was hired, since I hope we're not taking Loyola's rejects to guide this program. I guess my ideal coaching candidates in order of priority to succeed RM would be as follows: 1.) A guy who's dominated a mid major conference for about 3-4 years and been to the dance. Like the guy at Winthrop, his name escapes me, who went to Wichita. Hopefully, this guy was in a mid western conference. So that would rule out a Whitesell type who didn't dominate the Horizon. The ideal here would be Stevens, but he ain't leaving Butler for SLU. 2.) An AC from an A-10 winning program. Whoever X's AC is in waiting for the HC to depart to greener pastures would be great. If for nothing else than to disrupt the coaching heritage X has going. 3.) An AC from a BCS'er who was the primary recruiter. One has to be careful here, since my dog could be Coach K's or Calipari's AC and sign big time kids to Duke and KY, but might fall flat on his face at SLU. I think we saw a little of this with Zo. He could get kids to sign on at UCLA, but not at SLU. We don't need a Quinn Snyder type. 4.) A once successful BCS coach who left for what he thought was his final stop but it didn't work out and he didn't cheat. A guy like Crean comes to mind. IU hasn't let him go yet, but if he doesn't do something quick he could be out on the street in the near future. A Paul Hewiitt type for example.

Then why didn't you just say, the best coach we can get for a high mid major job who, if he's deemed worthy, will be rewarded with a high 6 figure contract?

The more I read about him the more he sounds like UB. No reflection on their character as they both seem decent and honoable men. But I'm not so sure that decent and honorable are highly rated factors when it comes to being a successful D1 coach, which I think is the sub text of the article. Whitesell should have 2 years to show his mettle in the recruiting game. How he does there will determne whether he replaces RM. If I was him I'd be knocking on Noah Berry's door at the first available opportunity. Landing him could land him SLU's job.

As Sgt Schultz said to Colonel Hogan, " I know noooothink.... nooothink!"

I wouldn't call KM ad MM diminutive even at 5'10". 5'7" and below in Div one is diminutive. The guy does seem to think highly of RM, however.

One would like to see OSU take it on the chin from the NCAA, but highly unlikely. They are like the big banks on Wall Street.... too big to fail. The fact that Tressel's gone wll appease the investigators and all will be well in Buckeye nation.

Wouldn't UVA be prohibited from signing him away from MD? I'm not so sure ESPN considers A-10 teams as true mids. He might just want another trip to the WC paid for by the Dons.

Hadn't he committed to MD by Feb? If not, my bad.

Hey, this is simple. Tell him we have a home and home w/ UW. So he'll get to see them twice! That ought to convince him SLU's the place to be for the next 4 years. Plus, you're gonna get a whole lot more playing time here, Herr Bruenig!

Weren't we in on him pretty strong? Big bodies are needed, but I'll guess PM will be all over him as well.

Weren't we in on him pretty strong? Big bodies are needed, but I'll guess PM will be all over him as well.

I think we're being a little too harsh in judging Spring recruiting. If we don't sign anyone, no big deal. First, last fall all we could sign was one player. And we didn't realize until probably late Jan early Feb we'd probably have one open due to WR's failing in the classroom. That's when the Chievous talk started as I recall. Yeah, Chievous might have been nice to bring on board to round out the classes a little more but when the BCS boys come calling to fill in their rosters we have little chance of competing with them. Also, Chievous may also have looked at our roster and said I ain't getting many minutes there next year. The Wisc kid clearly loved the Badgers. So he's jumping at his dream to play in Madison and the B-10. Can't compete against that mind set. As for Bruenig, he was lost once. It would be a gift to get back in his mix and it appears he'd help next year on the inside. But then even if he's lost to us, he wasn't someone we thought we had the inside track on like Chievous. Going forward my concern is next fall. RM would only be here for one year of the '12 class and 0 years for the '13 class. Basically, a lame duck. That's going to work against us. And I have no idea what kind of recruiter Whitesell is and whether or not he's allowed to sell himself as RM's replacement, which I rather doubt he will be. Of course, who knows if that's how PM sold himself to recruits. One guy who definitely has a wide open opportunity in all this is Jensen. He's young, a fomer big time player, an RM devotee. I'm hoping he steps forward and starts making connections with not only the up and coming locals but in other areas of the country as well. If he could put some notches on his belt, who knows he could find himself our HC in two years or at least somewhere else.

Hard to generalize about the reasons since each kid is different. Your list covers just about everything but the, I've always dreamt about playing at ol' state U and how the kid feels about his future teammates. But there is one general factor that I think rules the roost and that's Status, which is the sum total of all the other factors. If a 5 star selects SLU he's going to be looked down on by his peers. We have a coach w/ status but we have a program with none of it. This is what's killing us with a lot of the locals. Granted the Beals will most always choose a FL even if we were at X's level, but the next tier kids just might want to stay at home and play in front of family and friends if we were winners. I'm not real excited about Whitesell, although he sounds like a hard worker and a decent man. I'll wager Broy is happy with the hire since he almost sounds like a Brad clone. At this point I hope he's not our future coach unless he really turns on the recruiting spigots. I'll take recruiting skills over X's and O's any day of the week. I too was hoping for a guy who appeared to be the next in line type, like a Biancardi, as I fear Biondi may be so upset if we don't start filling the arena soon, he may go on the cheap for our next HC which would just set us back another 4-5 years.