Quality Is Job 1

That's how I interpreted it, also.

What he really meant to say was, "If SLU played a super-uptempo style, I would be able to play, even though I would be only the sixth best guard on the squad." I wish Darren well. I hope he puts up some really nice numbers for UTEP. The newspaper's biggest error was stating that Clarke played at SLU for only one season "but would have two years of eligibility remaining."

That's "beaucoup."

But it's the school's arena. Should they say, "Oh, we're taking a picture for the women's team media guide, so let's take the men's team banners down and then hang them back up after we're finished"? Where would it stop? Would they then have to say, "Oh, the men's team will have a lackluster season this year, so let's take down the 50-year-old NIT championship banners, because that's old news, anyway"?

Earlier in this thread you wrote, "You lie, there is no connection. I'm not VTIME!" But now you admit that you had the alias VTime and were banned for posting too much. Why couldn't you sit out the time the administrator assigned? You weren't banned forever, nor were you exiled for anywhere near the length of time aj_arete was barred from tigerboard. Are you addicted to this thing? Many of us have that problem, more or less, but I think you need help, my friend.

I'm not 100 percent certain, but I think they do display the men's banners in Bauman-Eberhardt (West Pine). I'll try to remember to look the next time I go to watch pick-up/practice. The men's team did reach those levels, so how is it false advertising?

Some have suggested that instead of spending $XX million on a new arena, SLU should spend a fraction of that on a state-of-the-art practice facility and continue to play the games off campus (at Savvis, or occasionally at Family Arena or the Ed). Here's why I don't like that idea. It will cost too much. Saint Louis University isn't really shelling out its own money to build the proposed arena. Rather, local basketball fans and SLU supporters are funding the project. Not only would it most likely help the team improve its product, but they'd also get to go to the place they helped build and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Are they going to spend their money, even only a fraction of it, to build a facility they will probably never enter? I doubt it. That means the university would have to fund the facility. They don't bring in enough revenue to do it; therefore, the students would then have to fund it, and even they wouldn't benefit from the facility, so it wouldn't be fair to them. Before you argue that people have made contributions to other campus facilities that they may never enter or benefit from, like a hospital or research facility, let me counter that there's a difference between contributing to something that will benefit the students and/or the community than to paying for something only the team would benefit from.

SLU (Biondi) doesn't aspire to anything beyond mediocrity, let alone Top 50. Miklasz must have it right. And why should it be any different? St. Louis is a baseball town that loves pro sports and couldn't care less about basketball. The best basketball players to come out of St. Louis in the last 25 years have almost nothing to do with SLU, and the school's career leading scorer can't even be enticed (for whatever reason) to be a coach/spokesman for the program. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood today, but I think my sig is in question:

It's great as it is.

...for those who may not know, Iran had visa problems and didn't get into Argentina to play, so every team gets a "win" for that game on the schedule.

cheeseman, I think I have to disagree with you and agree with Taj on this point. The Billikens this year do somewhat resemble the team at the beginning of the 1992-93 season. The nucleus of the team is young and coming off of a rock-bottom season. I will grant you that the 2005-06 squad has a better center and better freshmen than the 1992-93 squad (though it remains to be seen if those players will improve the Bills' shooting and rebounding enough to be significantly better than the '92-93 squad), but the '92-93 squad's sophomores provided significantly production than I feel we can expect from the '05-06 sophomores.

Hey, have you been cleared to play again? Will you play pro ball anywhere? What are you planning on doing with your life? Congratulations on graduating from SLU, along with Reggie and Izik!

Well, while it remains to be seen what will happen, I think there's a pretty good chance that Tommie Liddell and Kevin Lisch will both average at least 10 points per game. However, I expect Liddell to get at least 10 per game but don't expect Lisch to do so. Kevin is still coming off of a knee injury which will limit his speed and explosiveness somewhat, so it won't be as easy for him to create shots some games. And then there will be some games when his jumper isn't falling. I think he'll average just short of 10.0, but I wouldn't mind being wrong. How many players will average double digits for this team? There were two each of the last two years. I don't know if we can expect much more than that this year. The Bills scored about 63 points per game two years ago and around 56 last year. In 2003-04 (63 ppg), there were almost three double-figure scorers (Chris Sloan fell 10 points short, because he shot poorly during the postseason tourneys -- though he led the team in rebounding during that stretch). I think that the Bills may approach that this year: around 60 ppg and two double-digit scorers with one just short of 10.0. It's just that I expect Ian Vouyoukas to be the player joining Liddell scoring in double figures. Now, the 2006-07 season is the one I'm looking forward to. That year the Bills should be able to score 70 per game and have three or four double-figure scorers (if three, then at least one with an average above 15).

I was there. The Stars (featuring Cusworth, Darren Brooks, and Matt Baniak) beat East Side by about 15. They played better as a team.

I'm sorry, but I don't remember anybody by that name. If Ricky Williams played for Charlie Spoonhour, it would have had to have been at Southwest Missouri or at UNLV.

I said I'm fascinated, not perfect.

Don't look at it as an attack. It's just that I'm a writer and a person fascinated with American English homophones and other American English complexities.

But they're talking about pulling an offer because the recruit comes up short in academics or is a bad citizen. I'm sure most coaches can understand that. They're not talking about pulling an offer because the recruit doesn't develop athletically. Perhaps the main reason for not extending a formal offer so early is the possibility of career-damaging injury. It's possible to recruit/be on a player for a long time but wait to extend the offer until his junior year to see what he'll do academically.

UALR's arena has 6,000 seats, SLU's is expected to have 13,000. I imagine that accounts for much of the cost difference. Also, there's a big difference between developing property in Little Rock and developing it in St. Louis.

Doesn't U.S. Cellular already have a sports building somewhere in the country named after it?

Isn't the last Billiken to complete an alley-oop dunk Jason Edwin in the 2001-02 season?