Quality Is Job 1

Chicken Little, is that you?

Every school expects to win the next season's conference championship in the offseason!

LEDs last a loooooong time. Sodium lights aren't used indoors much, are they?

Actually, the better 2020 recruits will commit before the 2019-20 season begins.

I hope Hargrove proves you wrong.

You're leaving out Willie Reed.

Also known as "matador defense."

I didn't, but he wasn't in that recruiting class: he didn't come in with them as a freshman.

True; I guess "weird" is my middle name.

The problem in Grawer's final year was that Robinson and Skinner quit early and Irvin quit in the middle, leaving those frosh to play big roles. It was similar when Evans, Jett, McCall, and Loe were freshmen and had to bear the brunt of the burden.

You can afford to have one player who plays average or below-average defense if he shoots and scores very well, and it's not written in stone that Jimerson will be a weak link defensively. Also, the way Ford's teams have been able to develop some zone schemes — particularly the 1-3-1 — having a guy that's less than stellar on D doesn't really hurt (see Johnson, Jalen; Isabel, Tramaine).

Any chance BenFred was just summarizing Ford's interview with Cusumano, and Cuze just didn't ask Coach about Diarra?

They, along with Bell and Diarra, will have have an excellent shot at surpassing the legacy shared by the Evans/Jett/McCall/Loe cohort. I don't know if they can surpass the total number of conference exploits of their predecessors (2 reg. season titles & 1 conf. tourney championship) — but it's possible — but they should have a good shot at exceeding their total of 3 NCAA Tournament wins and getting the program beyond the 2nd round for the first time. They have the benefit of playing two years with higher caliber upperclassmen (at least somewhat so) than the Evans/Jett group had, and they'll mostly likely get some more help in the classes to follow them than Crews could bring in for Majerus's guys, because Ford is a far superior recruiter.

I can't recall anyone who transferred in at mid-year and actually played for the Billikens ever in the time since I began following in 1988-89. As far as I can recall, Ty Graves would have been the first, but (obviously) he never saw the court as a Bill. Cody Ellis and Justin Tatum each had to miss the first semester of their first season because of eligibility issues, but they weren't transfers. The NCAA mandated that Izak Ohanon and Ian Vouyoukas serve suspension at the beginning of their initial seasons because of playing with professionals internationally before coming to SLU, but the same criterion applies. Someone could be slipping my mind.

Bess's specialty — defense — doesn't lend itself to popping out of box scores. It's more of an eye test thing.