JMM28

They should teach classes at their school, too.

Drake has underachieved this season so far compared to expectations. But they are still a much better team than SIUC. Tucker DeVries might be the best individual player SLU sees all year. Darian DeVries is a realistic candidate for next season here too. He has turned down a few offers from other schools already though.

And literally no one else was going to pay him even half of that when he was hired. Amazingly bad at the time and still looks bad a decade later.

Is there a more useless assistant coach in the country than Corey Tate?

The crazy part is that SIU isn’t some sort of powerhouse program. They’re coming into this year with a (alum) coach squarely on the hot seat. Lost their two All MVC guys to the portal. They were picked in the bottom half of the MVC.

Embarrassing.

Zero defense today. This team in general lacks fundamentals. You can tell that Ford has never emphasized that but you can get away with it when you are recruiting superior athletes. When your recruiting falls off a cliff, the detail things start mattering a lot more. And that’s how you give up 100+ to a mediocre SIU team.

There’s about 6 people in the team section behind the bench. There’s space for about 25-30 there. Always a good sign for a very drive-able road game.

Businesses should go straight to the players for endorsement type stuff. BVF could help facilitate, of course. But the idea behind collectives is that you pool a bunch of individual fans' monies into one pot and they make appearances or do endorsements for the 'brand' of the collective.

I don't, which is why I said "If it is a fact."

This is a great point. Right now the tops in the NIL world is probably spending...2-3 million on a roster? You can get a top 25 caliber team bought in an offseason for probably a million. You'd need a coach that could cobble together a team from a purchased roster though. This is an issue SLU will run into. I know there were a couple "big" programs this offseason that couldn't get interviews with several top candidates because their NIL program was so screwed up or non-existant. I think SLU is probably in a decent spot with theirs, but definitely needs some help and a better philosophy on things. I will say the BVF philosophy would make sense with a coach that can actually develop players. Your average 2-3 star HS recruit isn't getting anything huge out of HS in terms of NIL money. But if you can develop that dude to be an all conference level player by his soph/junior year, you want to make sure you have the capital to retain him.

If it is a fact, Chris May (and frankly Fred Pestello) should never be allowed to negotiate or sign off on a contract at any school in the country. That type of extension is usually reserved for guys like Bill Self or Coach K. Or the type of guys who have accomplished things at their program that haven't been done. Instead they gave it to a guy who has been the definition of mediocre.

That is last years NET ranking.

Jesus what a terrible result all around. Luckily I had a little bit at -4.5.

Here’s what is the elephant in the room. Travis had a bag before. Now everyone has a bag. The Travis Ford recruiting prowess was greatly exaggerated.

Sprinkle makes 900k a year and gets 25k more each year. Bonuses for the usual stuff.

usually when you’re overmatched in talent, you can work on fundamentals and be a try hard team. This team sucks AND is terrible fundamentally. I’m not sure what this coaching staff does in practice. No boxing out. No help D. No basics.

Loyola down by 6 at half to Chicago State. In danger of being last place in the Chicago Bowl.

A new coach with 11 new players has come in and is dominating. Weird how that happens.

This is funny in a lot of ways.

Good point on Hurley. Bryce Drew has won everywhere he's been except for the school that never wins (Vandy) and he at least made a tournament there. Agreed that need to do better though. I don't know if I trust May to be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat.

I'd at least call Gregg Marshall, too.

Brey had a weird go around with USF this past cycle. I wonder if he wants to just have a TV gig and go the way of some of the old dogs that didn't want to deal with the NIL landscape. Johnny Dawkins is like Travis Ford. Get ya 1 NCAA in 9 years and a lot of underwhelming years. I shudder at most of the Coach K underlings in general. Langel is an interesting name. He is having a mediocre start to this year but has had more success at Colgate than just about anyone. Pass on Jones. Amaker is an interesting name too, but he has passed up other (better) opportunities to stay at Harvard.

Wade wouldn't be hirable because he is on a 2 year show-cause from his various transgressions. Mack might be a good hire. I just worry that he is the kind of guy that took over a program on its high and maintained success. He has never been a guy that rebuilt a program. His situation at Louisville is also very strange, although Louisville is a dumpster fire larger than SLU at this point. Plucking a guy like Brian Wardle or Darian Devries from Bradley/Drake would be great gets. Devries has done really well at Drake and would possibly bring his son with him for a final year. Wardle rebuilt Bradley from ground zero and would bring an actual system with fundamentals and player development that hasn't been seen here since Majerus. Would Bryce Drew leave Grand Canyon for SLU? Look at Bobby Hurley if he gets canned at AzState?