Quality Is Job 1

He's just a freshman. He's still the Bills' point of the future.

There's no way that anyone can consider St. Charles to be rural.

The "real" Triangle andToo does not have a space between the "and" and the "Too." The one with the space is the imitation. All you have to do is look at the post counts. The no space one has over 1,000, and the spaced-out one has just a couple.

It appears that the master caricaturist, Triangle andToo is trying to put words in my mouth. The third part of my above question is not "my thought." Leave it to Too to make it look like I want Brad Soderberg to be gone from SLU prior to the 2007-08 season. No that's what he wants; I was just trying to clearly understand his cryptic thoughts.

Are you saying we shouldn't even give it a thought, because Kramer will definitely play for his dad at SLU, are you saying that we don't want him to play at SLU because he won't be good enough to play on an A-10 level, or are you saying that Brad Soderberg won't still be coaching at SLU (though his contract extension is certainly long enough for him to still be there) for Kramer to be in the picture? What DO you mean?

Izik Ohanon dunked against Oral Roberts on a nice pick-and-roll, the feed coming from Dwayne Polk.

I don't know how old he is, but I do know he's a 9th-grader at St. Charles West. That would probably make him 14 or 15.

Remember the first Tip-Off Club meeting when Angres Thorpe praised Meyer and Brown for their mental toughness? I'm sure they haven't lost that, but they are freshmen and will defer to the upperclassmen.

>>I'm scared for next year's game when KL and TL are around. Saint Louis will probably take a hiatus from playing Southern Illinois for the next two years while they have a two-game series with SMS, or something like that. You probably won't see Lisch and Liddell until they're juniors.

Even Frank Cusumano, today, is all over SLU for not getting young Mr. Dale. How can he not realize that it isn't plausible for the Billikens to have recruited Dale?

You're mistaken. Brad Soderberg has completed two years as the head coach and is in his third year as head coach. He was an assistant coach to Lorenzo Romar for one year prior to his becoming head coach. He's in his fourth year here. Brad could not have gotten Darren Brooks and Stetson Harrison (seniors), as they signed LOIs while Soderberg was still Dick Bennett's assistant at Wisconsin (before Bennett retired early in the season). Even if they signed during the late period, Brad was just getting settled in his new position as Romar's assistant. Mike Dale failed to qualify and paid his own way at SIU as a freshman. It's a lot easier for him to do that at a state school in the state where he is a resident than at Saint Louis U. Randal Falker and Matt Shaw chose SIU over SLU (and other schools) for reasons that are out of Brad's control. Your claim doesn't hold water, in my opinion.

Then what do you suppose is the reason that Darren Clarke isn't playing? He isn't injured, apparently.

It does seem a little slow, but it is working.

>Is that your opinion or is that based upon inside knowledge >regarding coach's thoughts on the issue? It's a mixture of the two. While I haven't picked Brad's brain on the issue, I have seen a few practices and heard Brad's remarks to the team. Nor have I seen Clarke play a whole lot, but when I have seen him play (or scrimmage), the other squad has tended to be able to put up quite a few points.

...is that he doesn't provide what Coach Soderberg wants on defense. He's a sieve. He's even less effective on defense than Reggie Bryant. If he were more effective defensively, he'd be the answer.

Actually, I suspect the opposite will happen. Because Kevin Lisch doesn't wow folks with the spectacular and reportedly is an acquired taste, people will be down on him and Roy will continue to defend him. I still say Tommie Liddell is the best incoming recruit, anyway.

I don't agree with your premise. This team will go as its seniors do. Tom Frericks needs to step up. Reggie Bryant needs to take charge and lead. Izik Ohanon needs to be consistent and eliminate mental lapses. Drejaj's performance doesn't/won't define how the Billikens do.

The season is NOT a wash. This team IS better than its 1-6 record. We cannot just mail it in.

>I think Brad is doing a very credible job just keeping >peoples' heads in the game. Remember, the 91-92 team had >McGlother walk off the court and quit, Melvin Robinson quit >in January, Ryan Grant wash out due to a debilitating >medical condition, and Carlos Skinner and Julian Winfield >transfer out after the season. I have seen no quit in this >team. I believe the sequence went as follows: Melvin Robinson quit, transfering to Arizona St. Carlos Skinner quit; Ryan Grant lost the rest of his season to a recurrence of a knee injury; McGlother Irvin quit; Rich Grawer was fired after the season; Julian Winfield and Kevin Grawer transferred.

> But isn't it true our RPI would be inflated somewhat as >the teams like ORU and Hawaii's RPI will go down once they >start to play their conference schedule? We don't care what happens to their RPI. We care about what happens to their winning percentage.

When calculating a team's RPI -- specifically the opponents' winning percentage -- the games against the team in question are removed from the winning percentage. That is, Gonzaga's record may be 7-1, but as it pertains to SLU's RPI, they're 6-1. Another way to say it is, for SLU's RPI, what is the winning percentage of the opponents for every Div I game they've played except SLU.

Post a link to the published media reports you refer to. That would go a long way towards alleviating the concerns of those poster who objected to your post and justifying your posting it.

I removed the thread because there was a considerable outcry against it and I was persuaded that the information exposed in the posts would be hurtful to the recruit and his family, regardless of where he may wind up.

AB was in the house at MS-Berkeley this afternoon. Our head coach, Gerald "Dink" Jones (Eastern Illinois), was a teammate and classmate of Bonner and Anthony Jones at Vashon. Also, Bonner has a niece at the school. AB came to help with our varsity. Because some kind of miscommunication led to the failure of every single JV player to stay after school for practice, I was able to watch Bonner's interactions with the team. He's definitely a coach in the making. In my opinion -- as I've stated in the past -- SLU should make sure that Bonner coaches for Saint Louis University; they should do whatever it takes (legally). I won't publicly quote what Bonner told Dink while I was standing there with them, but I'll say that I won't be surprised if we see Bonner working with the Billikens in some capacity next year.