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you see, you didn't need me for the streets to be talking. xavier price is expected to be on campus either this weekend or next. darren is gone and so is mia johnson at this point. bad boyz for life

to correct one of your statements. UIC and Jimmy collins won the Horizon League championship game against UW-Milwaukee on UWM's home court last year to get to the NCAA Tournament. collins has also been to the NCAA tournament three times. his teams have beaten UWM a few times along the way. bad boyz for life

if you want to praise a great coaching job this season. how about Lee bennett and the job at alton he has done this year. the redbirds have won 26 games this year and are in the supersectionals against carbondale on tuesday night at siue. what makes this record more impressive is that alton's two best players (bobby and johnny hill) were recruited away by vashon when he first took over. it was a big reason why the former coach, mike brey, resigned. the two kids he was going to build his program around get recruited from up under him. put the hill brothers in alton's lineup and i would give them more than a fair shot to beat carbondale and get to the state tournament in peoria. bad boyz for life

i think the mvc was fully deserving of three bids also. they had a great year and they should be rewarded for it. i was glad to see northern iowa get the bid because they were on the bubble. bad boyz for life

Triangle and Too, romar has whipped lute olson five the past six times their teams have met. what's up with that? bad boyz for life

i think b. roy mentioned lucas in an earlier post about making the all state third team. his nashville team qualified for the class a state tournament in peoria this weekend. they will play hales francisan (no. 1 in state) on friday at 1:45 p.m. this will be a great opportunity to see lucas in action against all-state player nate minnoy and a very good front line. the games should be on charter cable, if you have cable. take a look and see what you think. word on the street is that the billikens are eyeballin' mr. o'rear. bad boyz for life

Izik committed two of the most ridiculous turnovers that i've ever seen from a senior. i almost chewed a hole through my program after those two bonehead passes. i would have yanked him too. bad boyz for life

bobby hill is a prime recruiting target for the billikens, but i think that's old news. he's been to a number of games this year. bad boyz for life p.s. how does everyone like my new pepsi truck?

stanford also offered luke meyer as well as nebraska. luke is a 4.0 student.

the bearcats are annually a good team that will dominates the cusa, but they underachieve in the ncaa tournament because you don't have gutless cusa officials working the games. they can get away with their thuggery in league play because huggins intimidates the officials, but it's hard to intimidate neutral officials for ncaa games. that's why they always get beat in the tournament. about three years ago, not only did huggins get kicked out of a tournament game, but the radio announcer got kicked out as well. for me, the sweetest victory in slu's recent history was when we beat them in the conference tournament after kenyon broke his leg (which was unfortunate). that was cincy's ONE chance for a legitimate national championship and we helped take it away from them. they will always be good, but they don't figure to be a national championship contender. that 2000 team was destined to go to the final four and maybe win the national title, until.... i remember all of the whining and moaning that the bearcat nation did after that game. bad boyz for life

kevin is just flat out fantastic. c-dale has a team talented enough to win the whole AA tournament and he goes off for 34 against a wave of defenders. i'm not surprised. i was at the sectional game at salem two years ago when he went for 37 against dentmon, gibbs and another group of talented c-dale athletes. on the side note, i really like cass from carbondale and felton from althoff. those are the kind of athletic forwards that we can use in the a-10. both are little smallish, but they are explosive athletes who love to crash the boards. cass was great at the shootout. i imagine it would be tough to get if the salukis want him. they are rolling at the top area kids (shaw, tabb) are opting to stay in the area. b. roy, i hope we have another press conference at althoff in two years announcing that mr. felton will become a billiken. i like his future if he continues to work. btw, for those on the board, who watch a lot of high school. who do you think are the top five or six players in the junior class and sophomore class right now. bad boyz for life

I'm very impressed with what the MVC has done this year. They are doing an excellent job in the nonconference. Whatsasaluki, with what they've accomplished so far, i think it might be a disappointment if at least five valley teams don't make it to the big dance and at least two of them challenge for the final four. maybe not make it, but at least get to the sweet 16 or elite eight. i think some of those teams are that good. It's been 23 years since a valley team has made it to a regional final. maybe, this could be the year it happens again. i didn't realize the valley wanted slu so much. how else can you explain the hostility you have towards the billikens' program. i enjoy the games with the salukis. The series has been kind of back and forth. even in some of our worst years, we've had some big wins of Southern and vise versa. it's a nice regional rivalry that i hope continues for the next several years. are you upset at SLU because despite the tremendous success the Southern Illinois program has enjoyed over the years, the salukis have a losing record against SLU in the last 10 meetings (4-6) and the last 20 meetings (9-11). Southwest Missouri state has their way with us all the time, but we've done pretty well against southern over the years. I believe we've split the last four meetings. There's a good chance that southern will give slu a whipping next week in carbondale, but that's okay. the chances are very good that the salukis will take a loss the next time they meet in st. Louis. the salukis have blown us out before, but the billikens usually come back and beat them on the next go round. that's been the nature of this little series. although we are not in the same conference, the have battled tooth and nail for years and that will continue. for a program that has had as much success as SIU, you should not be having as much trouble beating a program that you think so lowly of. you guys should be pounding us year in and year out, but you can't and that must really stick in your craw. don't get me wrong, i'd love to have southern's resume of NCAA's and conference titles any day of the week, but at the same time, it's kind of fun to read your silly little-boy rants about a program that your team has a losing record against. you will be the heavy, heavy favorite on Dec. 21. My advice to your boys. do not lose that game. bad boyz for life

word on the street was that many schools took a pass on troy because of kevin and his reputation. he really damaged his son's recruiting. bad boyz for life

i have a cousin who lives in evansville who attended the evansville-southern indiana game last weekend. evansville won by 13 points, but he said it was a hard-fought game most of the way. s. indiana is the preseason No. 1 team in Division II. My cousin said that many people in town thought southern Indiana would win the game straight up. the game drew a sellout crowd of more than 12,000, which was evansville's biggest crowd in years. bad boyz for life

darren is out with an injury to his achilles, i think. he has missed the last week of practice, although he did a little bit on thursday. he is probably the back-up point guard when healthy. not sure when he'll be back at full strength. bad boyz for life

Hinrich started the whole ordeal by cutting in front of hughes to keep him away from getting close to deng. had he not tried that cute play, nothing would have happened. cutting off a athlete going at full speed is a good way to injure somebody. Just ask Randy Moss. bad boyz for life

beleive it or not, IO is our best low post defender. he just can't guard the quick perimeter players. his length and quickness are valuable assets when guarding big post players inside and he did a good job. bad boyz for life

iiving over here in illinois, i saw most of the tommie-x price battles during their careers. x rarely got the best of tommie. liddell and lisch routinely dominted x in the head to head. even when they were freshman and x was already a big name, he got outplayed by tommie, who nobody even knew at the time. bad boyz for life

hargrave military academy is scheduled to play in the best of the midwest shootout the weekend of Nov. 3-4 at the family arena in St. Charles. Hopefully, tommie will be signed, sealed and delivered as a billiken by then and everyone can get out there to show their support. i think the saturday game is the day we play hawaii. bad boyz for life

what you have seen from tom this week is a player who finally figured out that he might be starting his senior year on the bench instead of being a starter. the light finally came on and he has been much more assertive and aggressive the past few days. hopefully, ian will continue to put the pressure on TF. that is what's going to make them both better, and in turn, that will make our team better. that's what been so good about the first week of practice. you have these little battles going on at all positions (save for reggie). and remember, drejaj hasn't been added to the mix yet. just turn up the intensity level about 10 more notches in practice when he is cleared to play. He's on the sidelines taking mental notes on how DC and the three freshmen guards have made early impressions. if you get the opportunity to get to a practice, take advantage of it. it's fun. Cardinals in 6 bad boyz for life

didn't mean any harm, but izik is probably the most talented and skilled big player i've seen in a slu uniform in nearly 30 years of following billiken basketball. he is also quite possibly the most frustrating slu player i've witnessed in that same time span. he's almost 25 years old, so experience and maturity are not an issue for his inconsistency. for us to have a legitimate shot at getting into the upper echelon of c-usa and getting into the ncaa tournament,it's time for him to stand up and be counted. he should be one of the most difficult players in the league to match up with, but he has to bring it EVERY NIGHT. bad boyz for life

one mistake i made in my original post. I said new and improved danny brown. I meant new and improved darren clarke. he's spending much of his time going against dwayne at point guard. bad boyz for life

it should be interesting to watch our bigs this year. for one thing, it is not a given that tom will be our starting center on opening night. word on the street is that ian has outperformed him and has a very good shot at beating him out. ian has been looking really good. he seems to be in good shape. if tom responds, then we will look really good in the pivot. plus, i cannot believe the progress that husak has made since he's been here. i don't know if he's ready to play just yet, but he will be more that serviceable in the future. He looks about 40-50 pounds heavier that he was when he got here and he can really shoot the ball. at the forward spots, i think you can almost pencil in vas'shun in the lineup. as much as i enjoyed chris sloan, VN will turn out to be a major upgrade. He's a little smaller than chris, but he is a better shooter, a better rebounder and he can finish better around the basket. he comes to play ALL of the time and he's always in the middle of the action. He's also turning into a vocal leader along with reggie. the best part about VN's presence is the difference he's made in izik. izik has been looking really good in practice and workouts. someone posted earlier that he's not shooting those crazy "dipsy doo" shots around the hoop anymore. i think IO has seen the writing on the wall from what VN brings to the table. if he continues to perform like we know he can, he will be the starting PF (with some minutes at the five on some occasions) and VN will be at the SF. If he starts reverting back to the old IO, he will sit his middle-eastern a** on the bench at watch VN at the pf and a three-guard offense and we wont miss a beat. i love it. there's competition everywhere and nobody can take a practice off. It has been a few years since we've had such a situation at the beginning of the season. the new and improved Danny Brown along with Danny Brown and Luke have made it more competitive. and this is with drejaj still on the sidelines. I can't wait to see how this group develops over the course of the season. I also saw tommie liddell on campus last week. he looks really good. signing day can't get here fast enough as far as i'm concerned. it would not surprise me if the recruiting wolves were still out there howling. bad boyz for life P.S. Don't sleep on Danny Brown

i have some sad news to report. steve randall, the father of billiken assistant Lance Randall, died last week at the young age of 53. He was the coach at Oshkosh West High in Wisconsin. Steve was one of the most respected high school coaches in the state. He also had one of the top programs going in wisconsin. One of their big rivals is fon du lac, which is coached by Dick Diener (the father of former billiken Drew and DePauls Drake). They were pretty tight although their schools played many hotly contested games. say a prayer for the randall family. lance is a really good person and a fine young coach like his father. bad boyz for life

memo to our little visitor from gonzaga your program has enjoyed a nice run of success in recent years and you should be commended. I hope slu can reach that level of success some day. But the problem with the zags is that the days of them sneaking up on the big boys are over. you are fully recognized as a top program (one of the big boys) and you haven't handled it as well. the last two years, gonzaga has received top seeds, yet you have been bounced out of the ncaa tournament in either the first or second round. we were all ready in st. Louis last year to roll out the read carpet for your appearance in the sweet 16 against georgia tech or kentucky. instead, you got your asses whipped by "Nevada?" the year before, it was wyoming. The bloom is off your rose. For you guys, it no more No. 13 seeds and shock the world and getting to the sweet 16. Now, you are EXPECTED to make deep runs into the tournament. In your first two years as an official "MAJOR PLAYER," you have failed miserably. people are no longer impressed with your 16-0 conference records in that horrific conference you play in. It's funny that you would talk smack after your humbling experience in the ncaa. look forward to the next two years.