tigerluke

The word that saves you there is "consistently" because in the last 20 years, while SLU has racked up a stunning 4 NCAA tournament births and 0 wins outside the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, Mizzou has managed 12 visits to the Big Dance, featuring 3 Elite Eight appearances. Mizzou has been a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament, and ranked in the top 5 multiple times during the last 20 years. Mizzou is not an elite program, as I said before, but they are at least a relevant program in the last 20 years.

Personally, I'm having a blast, haha.

I can't wait until Lindenwood has a really good year in Division II and their fans start calling out SLU on their message boards, saying that Chris May is ducking them. I bet they could even get Burwell to write an article in the Post.

That's really funny, because isn't the 90s the last time SLU was relevant? It's a natural rivalry because of (a) proximity - a shared border, ( b ) Mike Anderson - us Mizzou types don't care for him much, and ( c) history - Norm v. Nolan back in the 90s was classic, I'll give you that

Seriously, is this what you want to spend your time talking about? The fact that SLU is technically older than Mizzou, so I should have said "big brother" instead of "older brother." Would that make you happier? The fact is, Mizzou has a much better basketball pedigree than SLU, and the only person that would argue otherwise is someone totally in the tank for SLU. I hate Kansas more than anything in the world, but I would never find some asinine fact (such as an NIT championship from 1948) to drag up to try and claim that Mizzou basketball was better than Kansas. It only undermines your arguments when you make claims that just don't pass the laugh test.

Here's another thought, as the bigger program, even if a loss to SLU doesn't hurt Mizzou, it does help SLU immensely. If the thought is that Mizzou and SLU are ever competing for recruits, then anything that helps SLU and their ability to recruit in the State of Missouri, by extension hurts Mizzou (if only a tiny bit). Discuss.

That's probably true, but Alden's job is not to promote basketball at all institutions in the State of Missouri, it's to look out for his program.

If the game is made, great, I'll be there in person and I'm sure I'll enjoy it, but my point all along has been that Mizzou has plenty of reasons to not make the game happen, so for me, if it doesn't happen, I'm fine because it's probably better for the Mizzou program that way.

Let me be clear about my national perception argument, lest I be accused again of being intentionally imprecise: posters on this board have made the argument that other state schools play smaller private schools in their own state, so by extension Mizzou should play SLU. Those examples were Marquette & Louisville. To be clear: SLU is nowhere near as well-respected, well-thought-of, or recognizable a program as Marquette or Louisville, so the argument that Mizzou should play SLU because Wisconsin & Kentucky play schools in their state, is a fallacy. The reason SLU is a bad loss is because of their national perception, which is not that great, and it's those national folks that determine who gets into the big dance, so it matters. Also, I already said that the David & Goliath analogy was misplaced. I'm trying to stick with the older/younger brother thing now. Forgive my laziness in going to the David & Goliath cliche. However, I never said, as you claimed (and even put in quotes as if you were quoting me) that SLU was "likely to beat Mizzou in years in which SLU is terrible"... my point was this: however good SLU is in a given year, they are more likely to play above their normal level against Mizzou, no matter the year, thus they are more likely to beat Mizzou more often than they should based on the quality of the team, because of the hatred of Mizzou as the big bad in-state bully.

There's always a risk you'll lose in every game you play, but as has been said multiple times already, it's a bigger risk for Mizzou to play SLU than a comparable out-of-state team b/c of the motivation for SLU. It's the same reason Mizzou doesn't play Missouri State: all the motivation is on the side of the kid brother to take on his older and larger sibling. From that standpoint, The only thing beating SLU does for Mizzou is give them a win over a team of whatever quality SLU happens to be in that season; beyond that it means nothing. To SLU, it's a statement win if they beat Mizzou. You don't want to give other teams statement wins. If Mizzou can get the same benefit most years from playing St. Joseph's or Dayton, I'd rather Mizzou play those teams every day of the week, because they don't care about Mizzou on a personal level, and they likely won't play way over the heads b/c of a "rivalry."

I, like everyone, am guilty of hyperbole from time to time. Delete "nothing" insert "next-to-nothing" to gain. The only real plus I can see of a Mizzou-SLU game (from Alden's perspective, not a fan perspective) is playing another game in St. Louis, and another likely ESPN nationally-televised game could help recruiting in the St. Louis area, an area which Mizzou has consistently struggled to get basketball players out of. It would only help recruiting, but it could potentially hurt NCAA tournament selection, like I said above, in marginal years. Your point about Oral Roberts is right on. I never understood why Mizzou agreed to play on the road at Oral Roberts either, it just isn't worth it from the program perspective.

I think the main rationale is just that the risk outweighs the reward. Mizzou doesn't want to be sitting there on selection Sunday, in a season where they weren't great, and they're hoping to get in as an at-large team, and have to worry about the committee saying "well, they lost to SLU... that's a bad loss," when they can keep their RPI in tact and set themselves up for a better chance to get in the tournament by beating a comparable team who doesn't have years of hatred built up to motivate them to play above their normal level against the tigers. It just makes sense, there truly is nothing to gain for Mizzou until the national perception of SLU is raised. Majerus has helped that, and if they can sustain this for three to five years in a row, then maybe that'll help, but as it stands now, there's no motivation for Mizzou to rush in to this game.

Jealousy isn't a pretty color on you. There's nothing in here for me to respond to, so what's the fun in that?

See my previous comment re: football & money. It's never going to be about the money for Mizzou. That's a non-starter.

Your argument about the past is stronger than your argument about the future. Why not now? I've already said it about ten times: national perception. Plus, Mizzou is walking into at least one natural (and definitely heated) basketball rival in Arkansas by joining the SEC, & there's always still the game with Illinois, so it's not like they'll have no one to hate. The reason not to play SLU, past or present, has always been the same. All the animosity SLU has towards Mizzou (just look at how much of a kerfuffle I caused by poking my nose in over here today) is such a gerater motivator than anything Mizzou would have in a game against SLU, so it's just not worth it. It would be fun for the fans, I'd go to the games and enjoy them, but I just don't see it happening.

It's very clearly not about the money for Mizzou. Big money in college athletics comes from one main source: football. Mizzou will never be motivated by money enough to play SLU because they don't need to. That's one of the reasons it's easy for Alden to not bother with it. To Mizzou, it's only about the cost/benefit analysis of playing the game in the context of the basketball team. From that standpoint: almost nothing to gain, everything to lose. Plain and simple.

I'm still here, I can take it, I just wanted to point out the difference in tone of some (certainly not all) of the comments.

Making a statement you may not agree with about the SLU basketball team is not the same as making ad hominem attacks like those that were thrown at me as soon as I got on here.

For the record, I came over here b/c there was a story in the P-D that involved Mizzou & SLU, so I thought it would be fun to talk to you guys about it. It's not all that fun to talk to a bunch of Mizzou fans who just agree with each other. The reason the game happens is only partially b/c of the fans. The reason this game isn't happening and Wisconsin-Marquette or Kentucky-Louisville does is that the national awareness/opinion of Marquette and Louisville are substantially higher than that of SLU. College sports are all about rankings, and rankings are all about perceptions, and whether or not SLU might be better than Marquette of Louisville in a given year is irrelevant, because the SLU program is not as nationally recognizable as they are, so it's a much bigger hit for Mizzou to lose to SLU than it is for Wisconsin to lose to Marquette or Kentucky to lose to Louisville.

Fair, Mizzou isn't an "elite" basketball program, but the fact remains that there is a very real gap in program size, relevance, and national opinion between SLU and Mizzou.

Probably shouldn't have said the David & Goliath thing, the big brother/little brother analogy was more apt. Just having so much fun getting you guys all riled up, haha.

I didn't go to Mizzou, I went to Clemson & then to Wash U. - I'm a Mizzou fan b/c family all went there and I grew up going to every football & basketball game with my dad until I left for college.

The conference argument isn't weak, because when Kentucky was playing Louisville and Wisconsin was playing Marquette while they were in C-USA with SLU, guess what, C-USA had Marquette, and Louisville, and Cincinnati, and Memphis, and was a pretty good basketball conference. Then Marquette and Louisville went to the Big East and were in an even better conference, so again, it wouldn't damage Kentucky or Wisconsin much to lose to teams from a strong conference. Say what you want, but since the big boys abandoned C-USA, SLU has not been in a conference that anyone nationally sees as "big boy basketball." So I think the conference argument still stands.

The argument isn't about how good SLU or Binghampton ACTUALLY is, the argument is that since SLU is small school in the state, and Mizzou is the large state school with the bigger program, that SLU would be much much much more motivated to play the game against Mizzou than vice versa, so Mizzou would have a better chance of losing to SLU (to whom beating Mizzou would mean the world) than to a comparable team that has no reason to hate Mizzou or feel that little brother/big brother thing that motivates SLU when they get a shot at Mizzou. It's about risk management, and if you want to call it ducking then I guess that's fine, but it doesn't make sense to set up a game where the other team has all the motivation to be David and take down Goliath.

Cool, let's actually talk about reality. Thanks for having an actual conversation and not just throwing haymakers as soon as a tiger fan hops on here. If it's going to happen you are correct, this is the time, as both teams seem set up for a good next 3-5 years or so. My original point was just that it bothers me that the media blow it up like this when everyone knows it didn't make sense for them to be playing the last 5-10 years.