Quality Is Job 1

Bill Cartwright's Bulls played in an era when zones were outlawed in the NBA. I missed the first half of the game, and was just listening to a radio broadcast, anyway, but wasn't Austin Peay playing some zone? It's very difficult to establish a low-post game against a zone defense.

Some poster(s) enjoy harping on the negative so much that they forget that some people get their news from this site. Why not report the result and the score before shoving opinion down people's throats?

Welcome back, Too (I think). Exactly where would opponents get any game film of SLU's first game and two exhibitions? None of them was televised. Sure, the television stations had footage of the exhibitions courtesy of Savvis in-house work, but I don't think anyone would be able to acquire complete recordings. And there wasn't even footage of the PJT game shown, so I don't think there was anything more than radio present.

http://www.paradisejam.com/game_upload/men/APSU-SLU.HTM Shooting was the problem. The Bills had the advantage in every other facet of the game (they even had more offensive rebounds and were outrebounded only because they missed so many shots). Did I read correctly that Austin Peay hadn't even played an exhibition coming in? That makes things worse, in my opinion.

The Billikens fought back to take a three-point lead into the last 20+ seconds of the game, but Hampton hit a three with 2.5 seconds left to force overtime. http://slubillikens.collegesports.com/spor.../111904aaa.html

>True, it didn't meet the 3:30 pm deadline, but this time I >did it before tip-off. > >It's really too early to get down. Brad's teams typically >start off slow. We're a small team that must knock down the >shots to win. Sometimes they fall, sometimes they don't. I entered your pick, hoping you'd be wrong. Even though you were late (the rule is 60 minutes before the start, not any time before tip-off), I counted it, and even though I hate that you were the only one who picked the Bills to lose, I won't deny you out of spite just because you will be the only one with points and will have a 13-point lead. Next time, however, I will enforce the deadline.

Not only did Austin Peay beat SLU on the court tonight, their distribution of the game to their supportors far exceeded SLU's by an astronomical margin. KFNS needs to stop lying, with their claim that "The Billikens game can be heard on our brother station, 1190 the zone." Lie, lie, lie. No one in St. Louis could hear the game on 1190. The game couldn't be picked up on the Internet without a user having to pay an extra fee. The game wasn't even on Gametracker. I'm just upset, right now.

I don't care to listen to the Governors again tomorrow. The Billikens game Sunday will be on KMOX.

So much for my delusions of grandeur. So much for a higher-powered offense. It sounds like the defense was typically tough, but the Billikens couldn't score. They got tons of shots blocked, and I think I heard they went something like 3-15 from 3pt, at one point. Final score 52-45 in OT, Billikens lose. Bryant led the way with 14 points.

It's hard to "follow" a game by refreshing the board, so BlueCrewPres and Sluwx, I appreciate the link. The Austin Peay announcers are butchering the names of Drejaj, Vouyoukas, and Ohanon. I haven't heard Newborne's name being called; has he been playing?

Are we absolutely certain that Mojo from the Marquette Rivals board is the same person as Billiken Law? Why hasn't BLaw responded here?

It's one thing for someone out of the area to have to subscribe, but I live in St. Louis and shouldn't have to pay to hear the hometown team that should be on the public airwaves.

Don't be surprised if you can't hear the game on the radio tomorrow (and I believe that's the only way fans will be able to follow the game -- the local broadcast). KMOX 1120 isn't airing the game, and KFNS 590 is relegating the broadcast to its "sister" station KFRT 1190, based in DeSoto. It's a daytime only radio station, and the sun sets at 4:45 p.m., shortly after the game starts. The station has a strong daytime signal (10 kilowatts), but its nighttine signal is a mere 22 watts. Folks, your refrigerator light bulb is stronger than 22 watts! I don't think the AM radio in a house across the street from the transmitting antenna can pick up the signal, let alone any radio in St. Louis. I've already tried to pick up the station, but all I'm picking up is some strong station out of Texas (I think). I think it's bush league of KFNS to shove the Bills broadcast to 1190 as if it were really providing a service to its constituents. Now, if 1190 is able to maintain its 10 kilowatt signal for the duration of the Bills game and I'm able to listen to the game, then I'll come back and apologize, but I doubt it will happen, because from what I can tell, the station's license is to broadcast in the daytime. Is SLU aware that no one in St. Louis is going to be able to hear the broadcast?

I have (finally) set up the spreadsheet to do the contest for this year. Details will be forthcoming both here and on the Pick-em board.

http://slubillikens.collegesports.com/ot/s...ad-message.html

Well, it already happens in football conferences with more than eight teams. But there is the conference tournament. There's the possibility of facing a conference-mate in the Tourney that a team didn't face during the conference season. Personally, I would love it if all conferences had no more than eight to ten teams and would play a true double round-robin, but the problem is that there are too many Div. I teams to fit into a reasonable number of conferences (34).

I feel that Saturday demonstrated that the Billikens' offense won't be merely a one-trick pony. Reggie Bryant isn't all SLU has. Someone will step up each game. I'm confident that Vas'shun Newborne will join Bryant as a double-figure scorer, and I think that Tom Frericks and/or Izik Ohanon might, also. Hey, Bryant was the Bills' leading scorer in only about a third of the games last year, and the Bills did well, so I think this year will be even better.

They shouldn't even rank the teams until at least seven or eight real games have been played. In fact, don't even pay attention to the rankings until about halfway through the conference season.

10-3 Non-conference 10-6 C-USA 2-1 conf. tourney 1-1 NCAA Tournament

Obviously, Truman isn't Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, Charlotte, or Gonzaga, but I was still impressed by how effectively the Billikens scored without being able to look to Reggie. Dwayne Polk, Anthony Drejaj, and Danny Brown all took turns creating offense for the team. It was my first time seeing Brown play, and I like what I saw. He's athletic and has a good basketball body. When he gets more experience, he'll be somewhat like Vas'shun Newborne: he'll do too many things well to keep him off the floor. Newborne will probably lead the Billikens in minutes. He doesn't do much to draw attention to himself, but then you look up and see that he's gotten 15 points and 7 boards (generalization, not specific). I think he'll be the second-leading scorer this year. Polk was fantastic, but he didn't play a perfect game, by any means. He'll still get better. It seemed to me that Polk was switching on picks when on defense. Is that by design? I thought it was Coach Soderberg's policy that players shouldn't switch. I agree that Izik Ohanon had an unimpressive game. He didn't stand out, at all. He didn't shoot much, and he didn't rebound much, if at all. Ian Vouyoukas is still a work in progress -- he's just a sophomore, so posters (like Roy) should stop expecting him to play like a senior -- but I thought he played decently today. In all, for the Bills not to have their best player -- a likely all-conference pick -- they looked good.

>i agree dwayne was the best player on the floor. the little >right handed runner he hit in the first half on the baseline >was pretty tough. remember he is left handed. he needs to >be a little more wary of driving into the basket in the half >court game. he isnt going to have a lot of success with >that and got caught under the basket a couple of times with >no where to go. I agree with most of what you've said, Roy. I, too, found Polk's insistence on driving into a crowded lane perturbing. He did it two or three times. He also made some good forays into the lane. Furthermore, he once went coast-to-coast on a one-man fastbreak and got a layup -- he went past all five Truman players on that play. Polk is right-handed, but he shoots jumpers with his left hand. He frequently shoots with his right hand around the basket, so don't be overly impressed by that. The one baseline teardrop in the first half that Roy is referring to was quite pretty, but earlier he had attempted a similar shot and hit the side of the backboard. The most impressive part of his game was his passes to bigs who had sneaked behind the zone defense. Considering his smallness of stature, I'm amazed at how he can ferret out those passes. The Billikens haven't had such a point guard since H Waldman.