cheeseman

Your right - I do remember now hearing that.

Brich - you need to read the link to the Wash. Post article - much more detail without the spin. What Hobbs is saying is true from the stand point that he wants to give kids a chance but he can not deny that he should have had doubts about a kid that did not grad. from h.s. after 4 years and attended 3 prep schools - I use the term loosely - in two years with 2 of them being around for only one year. This the same dribble that Huggins would say when he was at Cincy and everybody was all over him - Hobbs is not much different apparently. I understand that the NCAA Clearing House approved the kid but GW still has to accept responsibility for admitting the kid - lack of institutional control from how I see it. You can not bar GW from the A10 tourney nor the NCAA but you have to still investigate them in the future.

Mark Sauer on Frank's show said that he does not believe SMS is getting in to the NCAA Tourney. He said he saw all the games at the MVC tourney and he just does not think that the MVC is as deep as people think. He was cautious about saying anything bad about the MVC but you could clearly tell he was suspect of them.

The player - was cleared by the NCAA Clearing House based on bogus information provided by the coach who submitted class offerings to the NCAA. GW apparently did not put the kid through their admission process but relied exclusively on the NCAA Clearing House. Say what you want about GW but the coach and school had to know something was up - if Missouri gets hammered because they should have known that Clemons getting 24 credits in one summer was bogus then GW should have known this also. Someone a few days ago provided the links for the whole story - take a look back a few days you should find it.

Interesting thread - the problem with any computer generated model is that once the underlying architecture is analyzied you can always find a way to beat it. Just like companies find loop holes in the tax code or regulatory laws. This does not make those companies better run or even more secure - see Enron. It just makes them look good on paper. If the MVC figured it out - well good for them, at least nobody is going to loose their investments with what they did. I applaud Elgin and the MVC for playing the system's game. Now the problem is this - Skip - no, nobody thinks that 6 of the top 41 teams in the country are in the MVC and anybody who makes that arguement is sticking their head in the sand but none-the-less the computer program says they are and that is the rule this year. Will this change - probably. SLU can tweak their non-conf. schedule easily enough to warrant a better SOS and thus RPI but those of you who have pointed out that without the rest of the A10 doing the same thing it will not have the total desired impact for us. Also, while I understand the math, I will tell you that when SLU played Iowa, Gonzaga and UNC along with their buy games I was more excited as a fan than if they had played 8 OOC with the likes of Western Kentucky, Marist, or Oral Roberts to name a few examples. I understand that strategy would have been more system friendly but not fan friendly. I am looking forward to the return game with UNC already but I could never say the same thing about Western KY. At this point, SLU needs to take care of business in the A10 Tourney and hope for a post season run/experience of some sort. The MVC will be the darlings for now and time will tell how well they do when they go Dancing this year and for next year. I still think that the MVC had the "perfect storm" so to speak happen for them this year - they got lucky that the OCC teams they scheduled in the 150 or below level performed as they had expected, they won most of those games, and the other confs had not figured the system out yet. All it would have taken is for one of those legs of the stool to not come up perfect for them and the stool would have fallen down. What I did find of interest was that the MVC's overall SOS was only 10th and the A10 was 11th. If the MVC had played such a tough OCC schedule as some would suggest - then their SOS should have been higher.

Someone posted a link last week maybe that listed all players which played in the NBA by the schools they attended. Go back and find that post and you can answer your question.

Sheltie - thanks for the explanation but still injuries, academic problems, transfers are things you can not predict about the schools you are playing 2 years out. All it takes is one of these things to happen to a couple of teams you are expecting to be a top 150 and they can quickly drop deep. Your point about the 2.5yrs. cycle indicates that maybe the MVC is going through this and this would be their 2nd year. So the question is - is next year the .5 or 1.5 year of the cycle? Skip, good point about players or starters - but your math is not realistic. First of all very few teams have an even distribution of schollies given out each year - JUCCOs cause this cycle to be disturbed, redshirting players throws it off, transfers can have the same effect. But lets look at the Bills a year ago - only 2 seniors grad from the previous year's starting line up, Sloan and Fish. Reggie, IO, and AD were all back. So we had 60% of our returning starters back and our year was a disaster. My point is the MVC having 66% of their starters back does not necessarily mean anything as a conference. It could be all the top players are graduating from a few teams or even if just one from each team was the case, it could still spell trouble for the team and conf. I have not done the research so I don't know the answer but the law of avgs. would have to point to some MVC teams not being as good next year.

I have been following this long thread and both sides make good points. One question I have is how did the MVC know when they scheduled these OOC teams a year or 2 out that they would be a 150 RPI team? They could have just as easily fallen to 200 or 250. This makes me wonder if maybe this year was a fluke - time will tell. Also, about the MVC having 70% of their players returning next year, actually it is 66% from what I heard reported - that does not necessarily mean they will be good - look at the Bills last year, we had 60% of our players returned that year and look at our record. That % being reported means nothing if the the returning players are not good.

I have had some experience with the NCAA Clearing House for schools in the past. The school or district has to send in a course listing and descriptions of any new classes not previously approved so when students apply to the Clearing House it can be checked against the approved list and the GPA verified. What the newspaper article said was that the Clearing House does not verify if what the school sends in is accurate or not. From my experience, and I have only been associated with bonafide schools or districts, the Clearing House never questioned us so I never gave it a thought. The key here is that GW apparently only relied on the NCAA Clearing House approval and not their own admission standards. This is where they screwed up - Hobbs will be off the short list at other places now. He will survive at GW if they do not go on probation since GW did not have acceptance process that caught this themselves.

Jjray - thanks for the links- now I understand what is happening. I got to say this smells to high heaven. I guess so much for going to a league that has similar academic expectations. This sounds like something you would expect to see happening at Cincy or Louisville, or Memphis. Maybe it did at those places but the papers never blew the lid off of it. I am not sure what the A10 can do at this point if the NCAA Clearing House - major screw up - approved the kid. Although I guess you do have to wonder what kind of acceptance process GW has. You got to wonder where the other players ended up and is somebody doing a follow up on them. Gee Steve did anybody look at your transcript - sorry a cheap shot.

Thanks for the link but I still do not know anymore than before. What exactly is he suppose to have done or not done?

TL was just named to the national All Rookie Team - maybe by ESPN - I just caught the tailend of the announcement.

I just heard a ***** from Slaten about how GW got caught cheating by playing an ineligible player this year. He did not go into details since he must have talked about it earlier. What happened? - Steve? anybody?

JJ was the only one who could consistently put a body on Smith. He had his hands full with him but JJ did battle.

I thought I heard that she got married and that was why she moved. Goat - what do you mean the FH search is not going well? No applicants or what?

I agree, once both parents have died, the tix should not pass on but should be opened up for others. Since SLU has been upfront about this for years then those who have continued that practice knew the consequences and at least they have 2 years to try to rectify it to their advantage.

You are only partially correct - in the last part of the first half, the Bills played great defense and great offensive. You can have both and they showed they can do it - the problem was in the second half and at the begining of the first half they were not playing good defense. Truth be told, they even fell apart offensively for awhile in the second half. It just like the old story - you got to play 40 minutes every game.

Roy, are you saying that even if your son does not have season tix because he is a Billiken Club member he goes ahead of those nonmembers who have bought season tix for years? -intersting. I guess it would make sense for the Athletic Dept to notify people of this who are not members but season tix holders so they do not get a firestorm of complaints. This being said, it just occured to me that when they do this I bet the cost of membership goes up a far amount.

My God - I think I am going crazy - I actually agree with Billiken4life this time. This simply a dumb idea.

Gister and Roy -if they use the points system which the school has repeatedly said is the way they will assign seats then how can ignore someone with higher points just because they are not Billiken Club members. Also, where did you hear that Billiken Club membership gets top priority over the points system - just curious?

Not so Roy - you get points for buying season tix. So, you could be a long time season tix owner and be ahead of a Billiken Club member who recently joined and bought season tix for a just a short time. I do agree with you that the points system in place should be the deciding manner in which season tix are distributed. I also agree that it is possible that those buying tix next year will be better off then those who buy them two years from now. All this is moot since I am not sure if the season tix sales will grow by 3000 in two years.

All scholarships awards given were announced by the Athletic Dept to honored if the athletes choose to stay.

When I read the article it seemed to me that the biggest problem was Nee not following throught with his threats. Everybody knows don't say something that you don't mean - fastest way to loose crediability. I think he got what he deserved if he was afraid to back up his words. Sorry, he did this to himself.

Sorry, this is much to do about nothing. Roy's has laid it out very clearly how and why this was done. If the golf coach felt so bad he could have stayed and this probably would not have happened. Once he decided to leave then it gave cause for a reevaluation of the situation. There is never any good way to cut a sport - the best you can be is wrong. This university has much bigger fish to fry - the arena for one than to worry over this minor issue. I thought something was funny with the field hockey situation when I heard she left. What is happening with that sport?

As far as the old guys who won't stand at the games complaing goes - without those old guys the program would have folded years ago. You can not have both ways - we need their money so we just have to put up with their non standing. By the way, I noticed during the Dayton game that somebody - old guy with lots of money - gave his seats across from the benches at the tables away to Dayton fans. They had on Dayton Flyers shirts. Now I can accept that guy not standing but to give his tickets away in that location to the enemy - well that is all I cans stands and I cannot stands no more!