cheeseman

Bon - I was not defending the practice just pointing out that it is SOP today.

Do you think MU talked to season ticket holders when they did their seat fee program - if so there would not have been all the complaining. The Cardinals I am sure did not talk to their season ticket people about their plan either. The truth is there will be some seat fee - what it looks like is what is up for grabs. My guess is when they are formulating the plan a focus group of season ticket holders will be talked to about their ideas. At this time all they are doing is looking for someone to put the plan together.

Grawer got local talent but he generally got the second tier group. He never landed a top local player except for Upchurch and we all know that silly a## story. He got players that had histories and he rolled the dice on them. Unfortunately, his - my way or the highway approach - did not sit well with those types of players and they did what their history suggested would happen - rebelled and left. Gray and Douglas were very good players but they were not good enough to take us to the NCAA - now I do realize that then it was 48 teams not 64. Bonner was a great player but when he was being recruited, he was not a big name local talent. He was a late bloomer and we benefited from it. Many may not remember but we almost lost AB to SIUC. It came down to them or us and even Grawer did not know which school he was going to pick. I remember at the news conference, both Grawer and Herrin were there. Don't you think if either knew his selection and they were not it they would not have shown up! Who wants to be there when the other guy wins and you lose. Brad is getting top tier players so he will have better results than Grawer. I give Grawer kudos for saving the program but he did not have the salesman pitch necessary to take us beyond where he took us. Yow made a good call and Spoon delievered. Now Roy, I know he could have recruited harder but he did take us to the NCAA - what 3 times I think. No other recent coach in Bill's history did that.

As we have spoken about before on this board, anybody who thought the best seats in the house were not going to be required to pay some seat fee were kidding themselves. As far as SLU not talking to ticket holders about their plans - what school or team does. The arena is going to have lots of good seats so everybody will be able to renew with a good location it just may not be 3 rows from the floor.

We have no problem selling to V players. The problem is when the V has a player that is truly D1 and has the grades to qualify, Floyd has tended to steer them away. Polk as I said was gotten by going directly to the parents. Brad has been here 3 years and he has recruited one V player the others we talked about already - Muse, Gordon were not academically qualified to go to SLU. Enough said about all of this - Vtime, we want the V players that want to come to SLU, meet the academic requirements, and fit our needs. I think we will see that Brad is watching the V very closely.

If you want to put one of the centers out there at the top of the key and you can get the pf to rebound then maybe but Roy is correct - we need the centers for rebounding and to hope that they will get all the long rebounds coming of of 3pts assumes that they will be able to beat a smaller/quicker man to the ball. That is usually where the guards get their rebounds.

First of all, Floyd has not been a big fan of SLU for whatever the reason(s). Second, for Brad to get Dwayne, he had to go directly to the parents and rumor has it that Floyd was not very happy. Now, all that being said, Floyd has cooled on Quinn and is at least on the surface open to SLU but probably still not a big supporter. Brad is looking at all of the talent at Vashon but he clearly has to recruit by position needs.

I am sorry - putting your centers out on top makes no sense to me. You would be asking them to guard smaller and much quicker players. You want to play a zone then 3/2 makes the most sense.

Tee - do you know if the matching money is still available for smaller contributions or has that been all met yet?

A few years ago, Coke entered into several long term exclusive contracts across the country with school districts and colleges. For the exclusive rights, Coke sold all their products at a discount to the schools and paid a big up front check based on their projected sales along with a commission check for actual sales. If you were a good negotiator you got a good deal. I saw some get what I thought was very little extra and others who worked the process got really nice paydays. Coke has kind of stopped doing this because they got beat up in the press about selling soda to kids. They still will sign these deals but they like to do them way under the radar screen.

Weber's run last year will not bear recruiting fruit for at least 2-3 years. Kids who are going to be seniors already have coaches deep in on them. Before Weber can be evaluated as a top recruiter you have to give him a couple of more years to be fair. That being said, his ability to recruit at that level was a concern some had at IL when he was hired.

Skip, interesting story you tell - no wonder Jill could not recruit consistently and could never get attendance up. Cherly did the correct thing letting her go. Jill's behavior was not only poor but just plain rude.

Who would not have problems when big strong athletic defenders are covering you. If DM can not make the adjustments necessary then Brad will simply have to devise an offensive scheme that gets him open. Nothing new about that - all teams have to do that. Great news about his play - thanks for sharing.

Roy, I don't disagree but I do think that there is more help on the way for next year then Spoon had coming his first year. Basically, that team lost players - Winfield for one and all the defections during the year - and only Dobbs, I am not sure if Robinson came that year or the next. Dobbs turned out to be a good addition but and really Robinson was also but I think KL, TL and maybe Obie will bring more to the table so we could play better than a 12-17 record. I am somewhat worried about our nonconf. schedule hurting us.

SBall - say what you want but Ahern was benched because he would not play defense as reported by TV announcers of their games. Ahern would not be playing if he was at SLU because he would not play the kind of defense that Brad requires. Yes SMS eventually put him back in because of his shooting but if they had had somebody else they would have continued benching him. Lets wait and see what happens this year.

While we don't own the hospital anymore - the overall work is still guided by the university in many respects as per the contract. Larry came to SLU and paid his debt to us. He is never moving back to St. Louis nor does he have any reason to be beholding to us.

Roy, thanks for your clarification - and I agree, Brad must really want this kid to make that kind of a promise. Of course, if I read the statement correctly, it was for only this upcoming recruiting period and with KL, TL, DP,DB, LM he is loaded at the perimeter position. Also with AD having one more year, DM will be here the next year an so we will still have 6 perimeter players. You have been correct in saying that 6 is more than enough - in fact it may be too many to assure quality pt min. So, Brad's promise is really not much of a risk on his part.

BBill - I think you make two excellent points. One is this year's team has to show improvement on the record. At or above 500 is very important. Two - I was thinking just the same thing as I reflected on the this thread. When in the last 9 years have we had as much talent returning or coming to this team? We played over 500 in all but maybe 2 years in that span with last year being the worst. Will this team play above 500 who knows - can this team play above 500 absolutely. The youth thing is critical but I think we will know if when we get done with our nonconf schedule we are at 500 or very close. If we are 2-6 or 1-7 then I think this goal will be difficult to achieve.

Roy, thanks for some reason I can not stop thinking JJ is going to be senior.

Who do you think Brad can sign? If he could have he would have already. We have JJ, VN, and now Obie, hopefully he can play. Roy is correct, another forward would clogg things up and cut down on playing time for the others. Use the schollies next fall - VN is gone and I think JJ also after next year.

No problem with the card. The point I was making was that just because someone posts and uninformed comment doesn't mean you have to keep repeating it. Once informed information is posted regarding it then just ignore what some other uninformed poster says. Once again - in the context of my statement is was offering a possible reason for your behavior not a statement of fact. Jalensdad has said more than once that TL's grades are great - all Bs with maybe one C so continued posting about maybe he won't qualify has no merit. KL's knee injury has been widely discussed here and no one who has contact with the situation has ever said anything other than that KL is doing fine - heck he started running a week or so ago. Obie - he has said he is expecting to be cleared to play in 2-3 weeks. That was in the link from the newspaper reporting his signing. He did say he would work with the team's medical staff to see what they think he should do but it is May and practice does not start until later in Oct. a lot can happen. DM's quotes in the article about his verbal committment were rock solid in his selection. You post a lot so I assume you read all the other postings. Therefore, all the information above should not be knew to you. As I said, just because somebody makes an uninformed post doesn't mean you have to continue repeating it.

72 - no need to send me a Xmas card although it was a nice thought. Ryan Hollins signed a LOI and backed out when Romar left. He did not back out on his verbal. As far as TL is concerned, my comments about what has been written about his status stands so refresh your memory with those threads. KL did have an ACL blowout - so his recovery is less complicated. Obie - as I said time will tell but he says he is within a 2-3 weeks of being released. I am not going to call him a liar until he proves that he is. Finally, I did not call you a liar - all I said was perhaps you have been lied to or have lied to others. No statement of fact there all I was trying to figure out was why you are so worried about DM not being truthful to us. Also, why would DM dump us for IL - they told him that they could not offer him a schollie now so he simply took the sure thing from one of his top 3 schools. Sounds pretty solid to me. By the way, TL did not back out of his verbal - he waivered but realized he needed to stand by his word.

On several occasions I have shared that local h.s. coaches had told me that LM had limited if any man to man experience and they were wondering if he could make the switch in college - obviously their concerns did not come to pass. LM did make the transition as the year went on so why is that DM can not do the same thing. If he is a good shooter then Brad will find a way to utilize him - Brad surely saw something in his style that makes him think he can be successful in our system. As far as Ahern is concerned, everyone told me he could or would not play defense and his time at SMS has played that out - he spent time on the bench this year because of it even though SMS could have used his shooting. At this point, we are better off that Blake went to SMS. Time will only tell who is right about DM - Brad or Roy.

Skip, good question. Personally, I have been reading 72's posts for some time now and he is simply someone who is always looking for the negative. He continues to harp on the TL qualifying issue even though we have heard from people close to TL that he is doing very well in school and should not have any problems qualifying. All we simply have to do is wait for this semester to end to make it official. Given that schools are not out for at least another week or two and possibly later we won't hear anything for awhile. He continues to raise this issue about KL's knee when everything being reported from the medical staff and KL's people is he on schedule and they are not expecting any problems. The new recruit - Obie - we don't have much info there about his knee but we do know that he said he will be cleared to play again in less then 3 weeks so he has plenty of time to get back into shape so once again, things look good but patience is still required. The DM issue is very confusing - why he think this kid is going to back out on his verbal is beyond me - maybe he has been lied to often or maybe he has lied to others often. Either way, we have every reason to believe that DM will honor his announcement.

Apparently until this school year is over we are still in the CUSA technically. Now in June it will change. Why did the kid give us a verbal and not send in the papers to Brad?