mystery_man

Kshoe, never underestimate the power of hype. This year if we have an RPI in the 30s we'll deffinitely be in. Not because we'll have any big wins, but because those same political groups that typically overvalue "name" wins will have been hearing about us and our miracle worker of a coach all year long.

Just another case of Timmerman not doing his homework. Technically we have awarded a scholarship to Eckerle for the time being, but it is expected that following this season he will return to his academic scholarship and walk-on (freeing up another scholarship for the '08 class).

That is correct. I believe each school is limited in the number of recruits it can bring in on official visits per calendar year as well. Therefore it works in both the school and the recruits favor to make it unofficial if the proximity allows. That being said, if we're fortunate enough to host student-athletes like Tyler Griffey, Scott Suggs, Jesse Perry, and Kwamain Mitchell on official visits as well as unofficials it will certainly bode well for the future of the program.

I'm sure there are tons of technical differences, but the main premise is that the recruit pays his own way for an unofficial and therefore can make as many as he wants, while the school pays for an official visit (to include travel, lodging, food, etc...) of which each recruit can only make one (to each school).

Good point. I read April but somehow computed May in my brain (this year's ceremony is May 19th). That is weird then. I have no clue.

That is the date of next year's graduation which has been the projected opening event since construction began. The Louisville part of the scoreboard has not been changed from the 1st rendition of the website which included a video of our upset of then #2 Louisville in 2003. Not sure why it says 11 P.M. rather than A.M. May be a typo.

Fits well with the Edward A. Doisy Research Center too. Thanks a lot to the enitre Chaifetz family!

We play Dayton twice though. Plus they have a shot to be top 50 RPI, which we need to cancel out our two bad losses. If we beat them twice the standings will take care of themselves.

Does everyone realize that this team is 4-9 at the break to this point. This obviously indicates some problems out of the gate, but I have to tip my cap to the team and coaching staff for guts and determination. Clearly this team has a lot of fight in it, and could do some serious damage if we could find a way to play 40 solid minutes every game as we head into conference season.

I just posted this on the A-10 board and thought it may be of interest here as well. Per Blue Dog in another thread: "Ok if the 2 above games were road games I have us at 38-19 overall, 23-4 at home, 6-10 on the road and 9-5 neutral." Seeing that as a whole we seem to be doing a good job of protecting the home court, I thought it would be interesting to look back at all the losses to this point and determine the number of "bad losses." Obviously its too early in the season for the RPI to mean much of anything, but I figure as a general rule a loss should not be categorized as bad if it is: 1) on the road to a respectable team, 2) to a team from a power conference (whose SOS, and hence 25 percent of our RPI for playing them, will be very high), or 3) to a team from a smaller conference who is expected to be among the top of their respected leagues (as 50% of the RPI is our opponents direct winning %). Team by team our losses to this point in the season are as follows, with conference affiliation in parentheses: Charlotte (2-2): N. TX (Sun Belt), @ Syracuse (B.E.) Dayton (4-1): @ S. Methodist (CUSA) Duquense (2-3): N. Ill (Mid Am.), Oakland (Mid Cont.), @ N. Ill. (Mid Am.) Fordham (1-2): Semi-Away Tenn (SEC), Semi-Away Belmont (Atl. Sun) George Washington (4-0): Undefeated! Keep up the good work! Lasalle (3-0): Undefeated! Keep up the good work! Massachuesetts (5-1): @ Pitt (B.E.) Rhode Island (1-3): Houston (CUSA), Neutral Troy (Sun Belt), @ B.C. (B.E.) Richmond (3-1): @ Old Dominion (Colonial) Saint Bonaventure (3-2): Neutral Chi. St. (No Conference), @ St. Francis PA (N.E.) Saint Josephs (3-1): @ Penn St. (Big 10) Saint Louis (3-1): @ Tx. A&M (Big 12) Temple (0-1): @ Kent St. (MAC) Xavier (4-1): Neutral Alabama (SEC) So of the 19 losses to this point 10 were away games, 5 were neutral court losses (2 of which Pomeroy has as semi-away- no clue what that means), 9 were to teams from what I would classify as power conferences of which 8 were neutral or away (1 to the Big 10, 1 to the Big 12, 3 to the Big East, 2 to CUSA, 2 to the SEC), and 4 were to teams from smaller conference that I expect to do very well in their leagues (2 to N. Ill., 1 to Oakland, and 1 to Old Dominion). Note that I included CUSA as a power conference because I expect them to carry a very good OOC win % and not neccesarily because they will place a lot of teams in the tourney. This finally brings me back to my original point. Of the 19 losses the conference now has I would only classify 6, Charlotte's loss to N. Tx. at home, Fordham's semi-away loss to Belmont, Rhode Island's neutral court loss to Troy, St. Bonaventure's neutral court loss to Chi. St. and loss on the road to St. Francis PA, and Temple's loss @ Kent St., as bad losses. Note that only one of those losses came at home making even these more tolerable, and honestlt any of the above teams may be pretty good as I am not familiar with them. If I am correct this means that 13 of our 19 losses should be buffered when it comes to RPI calculations. Based on this data I would think that once conference play begins we'll see a slow rise in our SOS as many of our losses will turn out to be less damaging. Of course the caliber of the teams we're beating is a whole other issue and one that I don't have time to analyze. Please feel free to comment or to update this thread throughout the season as I know that I will not have the time to do so.

Cougar, That's what you get with 2 running teams. A game of streaks and runs. Your offensive rebounding killed us today. We shot 49% to your 33% I believe, but you guys attempted 20 more shots. Thanks a lot for the in depth scouting report and I'll look forward to a return visit prior to our next matchup. Good luck in CUSA, and keep the wins coming (aside from Jan. 29 of course).

Digger, That has always been the rule. For at least the last 8 years. You may have been lucky or slipped through the cracks previously, but the policy is unchanged. Once we're in our own arena hopefully things will be different, but for the time being these are the rules we're forced to deal with.

I disagree, there was no evalutation that went into signing JJ. At the time we had 5 open scholarships and no commitments because Kern and Hollins had gone elsewhere, Seyfert had transfered, and Edwin and Pulley had flunked out. The fact that Brad got committments from JJ, Drejaj, Reggie, and Izik in such a truncated timetable is nothing short of a miracle. He deserves major credit for putting together a respectable class given the circumstances, especially considering the schollies would have been lost had they not been used due to the 3/8 rule that was in place at that time. You can't choose an example from those extreme circumstances and use it to prove or disprove Brad's ability to evaluate talent. He did his best with the hand he was dealt at that time, and did a credible job in very difficult circumstances.

Actually Volfan, you're wrong again. The $76,000 raised was the record for that particular event.

Volfan, Your knowledge on the topic must be 3rd-hand because you have completely butchered the facts while throwing in small threads of the truth. It's sort of like that game where you tell a story to the person next to you and see how different it is by the time it gets to the end of the row. First, Larry was around constantly during the Romar days as his boy Tatum was still playing at that time. He had a very good relationship with Romar, and had no outward objections to his hiring. During the Romar era Hughes gave the team a shooting machine to "store" while he was away, which he would use when home during the summers. After Romar left, Hughes was unhappy that Floyd Irons was not considered when Brad was hired. He then took his machine and asked CBC to "store" it for him. At no point did we have 2 machines. Finally, he was not at the Hall of Fame ceremony Jan. 16th 2004 because the Wizards were playing his former team the 76ers at home that evening. Please get your facts straight before posting.

OK, First of all, for those of you who believe that was Ed Schwent you are incredibly gullible. No coach would ever diss the institutution they were leaving like that because it makes it incredibly hard to get a new job, and secondly golf fans (and players) don't read this board so apologizing to them here would serve no purpose. Next, the reason for this move was to allow the cross country program to more effectively recruit. Cheryl announced this move 2 months ago at a Billikens Club meeting. She stated that the CC coach was having trouble recruiting because we didn't have a track team. For those of you wondering, we will have no sprinters and no field events, our team will focus solely on long distance (unless we get walk-ons to enter other events). Finally, what's wrong with focusing our money and time in a program that people actually care about (and support)? I supported the golf team because they were from SLU but how many people attended their matches? The basketball and (some years) soccer teams bring in the money so why not focus the majority of our funds in that direction? Also, we just started our women's program 2 years ago but there was no scholarship money so don't tell me we're ruining people's futures and this was a classless move. They can still play club golf and transfer if they wish, but they're not losing any scholarship money so it shouldn't affect their lives that drastically.

Dr. B, Not trying to pick a fight it just seemed like you came down on him pretty hard without having the facts, and while I understand protecting student rights I don't see what harm congratulating someone for positive achievement hurts. FYI heres the link. http://slubillikens.collegesports.com/genrel/012006aad.html

Good God Dr. B, ease up. Not only is the information on the SLU website but the athletic department also announced all the names and paraded the kids onto half court at one of the home basketball games earlier this season. God forbid we actually congratulate two of our athletes for their high academic achievement.

Steve and Cheese, The research building and renovations of existing lab space were an 80.5 million dollar project, 67 million of that being the new building and 13.5 renovations to existing space. The school has raised the money neccesary to proceed with construction, but that is very different from saying that the building project is fully funded. Currently the fundraising for this project is somewhere in the 30-40 million range. Much like we need approximately half of the $70 million arena cost to break ground they only needed a certain percentage of the total cost to proceed (and that percentage was smaller than that needed to break ground on the arena because the research building is expected to provide a greater service to the community and a larger boost to the school's national reputation). Some of the cost for the research building will also be offset by incresed research grants to our faculty which otherwise would have been partially funded by the school. In any case, the building is on it's way up, but obviously any contribution still helps. Here's a link to check the progress if interested. I believe the webcam picture is updated daily. http://www.claycorp.com/slucam/index.php

Reggie never played with Marquee. He had transferred but had to sit MP's senior season. He did have one season with Fisher however.

Roy said, "i admit i am not an expert of conditioning, but one would think the opposite is true. that a teenager would adapt to a rigorous physical workout schedule faster than the 35 year old. i believe that this summer he got serious for the first time." You are wrong on both accounts. It would be easier for a 17 year old to improve his cardivascular conditioning but not his strenth and muscle mass, which is primarily what you were always complaining about Ian lacking. On your second point, I'll choose to take the word of Brad, the strength coaches, and the gradual results that were evident all along over your unfounded hunch that he didn't take things seriously.

Roy, The point you consistently missed on last year was accusing Ian of being lazy and not working. The physical specimen that is Ian this year was not a 3 month summer transformation but a 3 year work in progress. The evidence of his progress was there, but like so many others you wanted to see the results overnight and refused to acknowledge the slow maturation of his body. You consistently stated "If Ian would only put....hours a day in during the summer he could dominate." He had been doing so all along, but a 17 year old 6'10" body takes a lot longer to build and tone than a 5'11" 35 year olds due in part to physics and metabolism among other reasons.

His position has never changed. His ideal is to bring in all high school players, but at times a shortage at a certain position demands an immediate impact player in order to be competitve. In that case he begrudgingly looks to the JUCO ranks. Brad has never stated or insinuated that he wouldn't go after a JUCO if the need arose. He has simply mentioned that his ideal would be to build up the program to the point where we have enough depth distibuted equally among all positions that recruiting a JUCO would become unnecesary.

All the fact that he's working with the guards means is that he's not a back to the basket type player, which is what the team works on when they separate. Coach would rather have him working on his face up game and jump shot, which he may potentially use in a game. Vashun will play the 4 and rebound admirably well for his size, all the while having a 3's offensive mentality. FYI, he frequently practiced with the guards last year as well, so don't read too much about a changing role into this fact.

5 million in the current location. 15 million had it been built closer to Grand Center.