Bay Area Billiken

This is just tremendous PR for SLU, overall, in the Chicago (#3 nationally) media market. SLU has never had a Coach like this in my over 3 decades following the team who could be on WGN Radio in Chicago in prime time for almost an hour.

5 or 6 A-10 NCAA bids v. 1 MVC NCAA bid is overwhelming evidence. The A-10 has 6 teams with RPI's better than the 2nd best MVC team.

Check the number of NCAA bids. A-10 could get 5, even 6, most likely at least 4, 3 at the very minimum. MVC will be lucky to get 2, more likely just Juan Bid if UNI wins that MVC Tournament. The MVC had its time a few years ago. The A-10 looks like a much stronger league now with number of NCAA bids as the main factor.

Reading the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette blog, following last week's comments from the coach, my conclusion is that this latest firestorm is primarily about the chartered flights. Does anyone close to the SLU scene know the situation, what really happened, from the beginning to today, re chartered flights? Is any of this being addressed at SLU?

There's more to it than this. SLU was in a conference when some Eastern schools were still independents. At one time, before the expansion of the NCAA Tournament, the NCAA took only the conference champion. And SLU was in a conference with Louisville, Cincinnati, among others. SLU does have 18 NIT appearances (19-17 record) and one NIT Championship.

Per the RPI, the A-10 would have 5 teams in the NCAA: #11 Temple, #13 Xavier, #19 Rhode Island, #37 Dayton, and #41 Richmond, with a 6th team #50 Charlotte being the first team left out of the NCAA field. The MVC would only have 1 team (Juan Bid) in the NCAA: #20 Northern Iowa. These statistics speak for themselves in this endless A-10-MVC debate. Other than geography, the evidence in favor of the A-10 is overwhelming, not even close this year. As shown in other posts, travel time in terms of hours is really a wash between flying a couple of hours in the A-10 and going on long bus rides in the MVC. Maybe the real issue is that the A-10 is too strong. ...

The A-10's RPI makes it the 6th best conference as of this morning- source realtimerpi.com. The only conferences ahead of the A-10, in order from the best, are the Big East, Big 12, ACC, SEC, and Big Ten. The Pac-10 is #7, the Missouri Valley is #9, C-USA is #11, and the Horizon League is #13. So from a strength of conference perspective, SLU being in the A-10 is the best place SLU can be currently. SLU's RPI is 113, which would put SLU at #23 out of 32 for one of the 2 new post-season tournaments (CBI or CIT), of which SLU was not interested in participation last season. The NCAA would cut off at #49 VCU; the NIT, before accounting for the lesser conference regular season winners that don't win their post-season tournaments and thereby get automatic NIT bids, would cut off at #87 Oklahoma. It would be good to get some more road wins, which help the RPI.

The Pac-10 is really down this year. If it were a mid-major, it would be a Juan Bid league this year. But I doubt that will happen. It is a BCS league with schools in major media markets, and it is doubtful the NCAA would have the fortitude to give the Pac-10 only 1 bid. There would be a major outcry from powerful forces in the West if that happens.

Re the WCC, there is also talk about Denver. Seattle U and Pacific were both once members of the WCC. Pacific was a charter member, but left due to football, which it has since dropped. Gonzaga is believed to not be keen about Seattle U rejoining the WCC, which could affect Gonzaga's fiefdom in the Great Northwest, including Seattle proper. That's interesting since both Gonzaga and Seattle U are Jesuit schools. I saw Gonzaga in person last Thursday at St. Mary's. Gonzaga has reloaded and may well be the best team in the West.

Rick Majerus is a nationally recognized coach. For example, most basketball fans out here know his name. Some don't know he is at SLU now, but they've heard of Majerus. Somehow this current situation, whatever it is, needs to be resolved quickly. Surely it can be. Rational heads need to prevail. To borrow from the Musketeers: "All for one, and one for all." The talent level, 1-10, on this SLU team is unprecedented. The future looks bright. SLU should strive to get positive PR in the national media. That will come with more wins and hopefully post-season tournament bids. SLU does have some national TV exposure on CBS College Sports, ESPNU, and Fox Sports Midwest, all of which are available on DirecTV. It is not the Big East and ESPN proper, but some of the SLU games are available with a little looking for them. The Pac-10 is generally not on ESPN either- the Pac-10 plays on the Fox Sports and Comcast regional outlets, which combined make it national.

Having travel partners and TH/SAT games works very well in the Pac-10 and WCC. It would help SLU with these scheduling and travel issues. One suspects that in the bus league part of the A-10, schools didn't want to have 2 road games and 2 potential losses in the same week.

Re scheduling, at least this year the A-10 has SLU making what could have been 3 2-game roadtrips: Duquesne and Charlotte, GW and Richmond, and LaSalle and St. Joe's, albeit with 2 1-game trips, UMass and Dayton. But on that first trip, we read that SLU came back to St. Louis before leaving again for Charlotte. It would be better from a travel standpoint if the A-10 would let these road games be on Thursdays and Saturdays, as opposed to Wednesday, which for whatever reason is a big A-10 game night. The Pac-10 plays Thursdays and Saturdays/Sundays, usually Saturdays. The WCC has largely returned to this model. Both leagues play 2 road games near to each other (for example, teams play Cal and Stanford on the same trip, UCLA and USC on the same trip, Gonzaga and Portland on the same trip, etc.) Much of the A-10 consists of an East Coast bus league. When SLU was in the MCC (now Horizon), that league involved 2 game trips, usually on Saturday and Monday. Before that, when I was at SLU (Ekker days), we had friends on the team, and know how much travel and missed class time is involved with being a D-1 athlete. And that was when SLU was in the Metro Conference with much nearer opponents like Louisville and Memphis. The longer trips then were to Tulane, Florida State, and Virginia Tech. And is painfully true how hard it has become to get to St. Louis by air. For us out here, TWA once had 6 non-stops from SFO to STL alone, along with at least 2 from San Jose and Sacramento. All that is left is 1 non-stop American flight from SFO, which is being cut. United is starting 1 non-stop daily this year. We wish Southwest would take over the Bay Area to St. Louis non-stop route, preferably from Oakland, or even from SFO, but that has not yet happened, despite Southwest going to fly non-stop from San Diego to St. Louis. The Bay Area is bigger than San Diego.

I'm ok with Conklin starting too, but I think Reed should start ahead of Remekun. Cassity is playing better. That was a hugely clutch 3 that he hit late in regulation. Nevertheless, I agree with others that SLU still needs a shooting guard. Today was not a good day for outside shooting. Hopefully, as he plays more and practices more, Cody Ellis will be able to bury those outside shots consistently. I expect that he eventually will do so. All this dribble penentration from the opponents- SLU has problems stopping it. I realize Rick Majerus will not play a zone. But if you don't have the physical ability to stop this stuff, then a zone from time to time might be a good option. At 2-1 in A-10 play, SLU is at least a game ahead of what I expected at this point.

Agreed. Jon Smith has a tremendous upside. He has long arms and good quickness inside. He is also a very good shot blocker, giving SLU 2 shot blockers when he and Willie Reed are both in the game.

SLU was only 12-20 on free throws. That's the ballgame right there. Refs missed (or simply refused to call) a clear traveling late when 2 Charlotte players had the ball at the same time, with Majerus and the SLU bench pleading for the call. Also, Kwamain Mitchell was clearly fouled (no call) on a "turnover" in the OT. SLU's best 5 are Cody Ellis, Jon Smith, Willie Reed, Kwamain Mitchell, and Kyle Cassity. Those five were the five in the game at crunch time, but Willie Reed, for sure, if not also Jon Smith, should be starting. SLU gave away points and couldn't score itself at the beginning of both halves when its best players were not on the floor. Willie Reed should be starting, period, especially in key conference games. The "coaching decision" was made. It is now two games past time to move on from it. SLU must not take Fordham (2-14, 0-3) lightly. Fordham has been competitive in all 3 conference losses, but has little depth and has run out of gas in the second half of the games. Depth is thin mostly because Jio Fontan (USC) and Mike Moore (Hofstra) have left the school. Freshman Chris Gaston (6'7") had 29 points in yesterday's loss to Rhode Island.

Willie Reed also did not start in the Eastern Illinois game.

My vote is that Cody Ellis should play this year and not redshirt. The future is now. I was back there and in attendance at the Eastern Illinois game, and SLU still needs more options on offense IMO. Also, as noted in this thread, Ellis will probably not be a Billiken in 2013-14 anyway.

Cheryl Levick may well have been in charge of the transition from C-USA to A-10. Woolard left and went to South Florida. But my recollection is that when the search was occurring the year before, Woolard was still the AD. Most of us were not happy with Marquette at the time. We heard that DePaul, Marquette, SLU, and Charlotte were a 4 school block. But what ultimately happened was that the Big East took DePaul and Marquette, basically leaving SLU and Charlotte.

As I recall, the SLU Athletic Director during the search for a new conference home, which resulted in the A-10, was Doug Woolard.

SLU still needs to elevate the program so it is not in a position of contending for that last pick. The program elevation appears to be in process. A while back someone from Notre Dame, the former baseball coach, as I recall, had Creighton in the proposed conference and not SLU. That is all the more reason for SLU to not return to the MVC IMO, and have to fight it out with Creighton.

I don't see how the hypothetical move of SLU to the MVC would aid getting SLU into the new Big East. If anything, such a SLU move would be counterproductive IMO. All along it has been my opinion that SLU has basically parked itself in the A-10, albeit and hopefully building alliances with Dayton and Xavier during this period. This being said, many not close to SLU, including even on the West Coast, scoff at the notion of SLU being in the Atlantic 10. People ask me SLU's conference, some think SLU is in the Missouri Valley (from the past), and when I tell them that SLU is in the Atlantic 10, I'll get a strange look. Atlantic and St. Louis do not exactly mesh. But when all the factors are considered, SLU and the MVC do not mesh either. SLU is better off staying put in the A-10 for now and waiting for what happens with the Big East, if anything. And hopefully, the SLU program will be a strong one that will be wanted by the new Big East, Papal Conference, whatever it is called. When I discussed the SLU situation with a well informed Jesuit from another school (East Coast), he said that the A-10 is not big enough for SLU, primarily from a financial aspect, TV money, and also noting SLU's new Arena. When I asked where SLU could go, he thought for a minute, and ultimately answered the Big East. There's no room in the Big East for SLU right now, but hopefully that will change over time. Patience is a virtue in this case.

I saw Iowa State play at Cal in Berkeley on Sat. night. ISU played with Cal for 3/4 of the first half before Cal pulled away in a lopsided 82-63 win. Knowing Cal, the game result was probably in large part based upon the venue and time zone. But ISU had trouble with Cal's little point guard, Jerome Randall. It looked to me like ISU had 2 good players, including the big 6'10" guy, Brackins, as well as Gilstrap (6'7"), but looked weak at guard, at least in this game. I'm a bit surprised that SLU's guards didn't fare better against Iowa State.

On second thought, skip any warning. I say just win the game.

Rather than dropping the series- the two schools have played 50 games, perhaps SLU should issue some type of warning to SIU to clean up its act or else. Then if SIU's tactics persist, SLU would be on strong ground to put the series into hiatus. Enough is enough.

I don't like what I've read, heard, and seen in other games re the SIU tactics. SIU's idea of good defense is to foul on almost every play, seeing where the refs set the limits, and knowing that the refs cannot and will not call fouls on every play. As long as no one gets injured, which was not the case with the takedown of Kevin Lisch in Carbondale, the way to deal with the SIU thuggery is just what SLU did on Saturday night: Defeat them on the scoreboard, win the game- SLU 71 SIU 61. Good job, Billikens! Since SIU cannot beat SLU in St. Louis in hoops, maybe in two years' time SIU can try to resurrect Wrestling at the Chase.