Pistol

But it doesn't help our RPI this year- if people consider that a factor at all.

I don't really understand why he frames it as an article about the teams' outlooks for the postseason, then just basically gives updates on individual players. There isn't much on "where the teams stand" except for records and tidbits on select players. Weak.

That conference would be a dream come true- pretty much as strong as the Big East so no one really loses in this scenario. 14 might be too big, but if ND in fact wouldn't bite, than you could let Fordham be the odd man out on the east or there might be another one that wouldn't go for this setup.

Mario looks like a poor man's version of Sack Lodge from Wedding Crashers, only with worse hair. Mario seems about that likeable.

Thanks, just curious as to how it actually worked. I wanted to make sure I wouldn't miss what was going on. Plus, Metz wasn't well-liked here but was always an entertaining read. Hoops88 just isn't worth bothering with unless you like run-on sentences and tons of exclamation points.

There is no feasible way we can have a bigger athletic budget than ND. They don't have to spread out their obscene football revenue to a conference. It's a completely different model without football, and doesn't make sense to compare. That's not the total budget or endowment (which still still are long shots to ever reach ND levels), just athletic. With that said, I like Brian's idea of more scholarships to the non-revenue sports and a good marketing budget (and put it to use!).

Not to mention back-to-back national player of the year awards to David West and Jameer Nelson in 2003 and 2004. To be fair, that's based on the Rupp and Oscar Robertson awards; the Wooden and Naismith awards in 2003 went to T.J. Ford over West, but Nelson got all 4 in 2004. I would be a lot more surprised to see those kind of players in the Valley again after Hersey Hawkins took the Robertson and Rupp awards in 1988 and Bird won them all in 1979.

But with the 'Ignore User' feature, then wouldn't you miss what everyone's getting upset about? Wouldn't the threads make less sense because a lot of the sequential comments from one user would be missing? It seems to me that it would just be easier not to respond than to miss what's being said, even if it is moronic drivel.

While this is an up year for the A10 compared to the last few, I don't think it could be considered an up year overall. It's more of a step back in the right direction, or return to form. With the recruiting classes being assembled by A10 schools, it shouldn't be as weak as the past few years again for a long time. The Valley was at an absolute peak (no pun intended) while the A10 was at its nadir. If I were drawing a graph, this year would be their intersection. I would think, or hope, that the selection committee is smart enough to see through the RPI numbers and see what the bottom feeders of the A10 do to the rest. The Valley doesn't have any complete RPI killers, but no one is necessarily that strong, either. I gotta hand it to Elgin and the coaches in the Valley, they figured out the system before any other non-power conference did. But the top half of the A10 is no joke this year. Compare it to the Valley and I don't think it's even close. Watching Creighton and XU play a couple weeks ago was like watching Penn play UNC. XU could have and should have beaten them by much more but got lazy and let them back in within 10 in the second half. If those are the best each conference has to offer, then that tells me a lot. I'm not going to get cocky about the SIUC win, but they didn't seem to be as high-level as billed, either. SLU is a middle of the pack A10 team this year, and SIUC was supposed to win the Valley. I just don't see the RPI as a compelling argument for the Valley over the A10 this year, and if it has to be, then I would point to the 4 A10 schools in the top 20 and the bottom half of conferences do not matter come tournament time anyway.

I tend to agree that we are rivalry-free. I should have been more clear, stating that SIUC is the closest thing we have to one. I would personally like it to be Mizzou, and wish Norm wasn't such a jerk all those years. I look at UK-Louisville, Marquette-Wisconsin, and so on and get jealous by the big in-state rivalries. But at this point Mizzou only cares about KU and don't want to play SLU for fear of a "nothing major to gain- win or lose" kind of situation.

Rivalries aren't rivalries unless both sides agree. SIUC is probably our only one in that regard. Xavier considers Cincinnati and Dayton bigger rivals, and Dayton looks at XU as their primary rival. I agree about building the geographic rivalries for the long term. They have to start somewhere, and rivalries create more interest in programs but don't spring up overnight. I like the idea of playing SIUE annually when they have full D1 status, keeping SIUC on the schedule each year, and continuing to call Mizzou and tell them we have a date open (as was the practice of Romar and Soderberg, but Mizzou always turned it down after that incredible 3-year series when Q was first there). MSU I could take or leave because it's farther away, we'd already have a Valley team on the schedule with SIUC, and SIUC is generally better than MSU.

This team is tough to predict. The answer to your question is "probably a little of both." I just like to think about how different this game would have felt in the new arena. A half-filled Scottrade with a lot of Carbondale fans mixed in is a sold out Chaifetz and it would have been much louder throughout. I'm looking forward to that change in atmosphere.

Big time- much different tone than the board lately. They have spent equal time raving about Majerus, Lowery and his D coaching, and the Valley.

FT by Liddell to break the scoreless streak. Shaw looks awesome, beating us by himself. 21-14 SIUC at 5:15.

No, I'm on my couch in Cincinnati watching on ESPNU. The picture is terrible on this channel, by the way- blurry and washed out, kind of like watching Larry Rice's channel in St. Louis. They also must not think many people are watching- the commercials have been for radio controlled helicopters, wall hooks, and jacuzzis. 13-12 SLU at the under 8:00 media timeout.

That was a nasty fall- Shaw landed right on his head. Hit both Shaw and the floor hard, and hopefully there's no concussion. He looked dazed when he got up.

But that one did have Wood and Prior...well, then maybe it was a Cubs fan. They're still bitter about how that pair played out (and Prior is officially gone from the organization).

I'm still waiting for some publication (or someone on here) to compile a quick list so I don't have to keep scrolling through the 409-page pdf. From what I've seen, the names aren't quite the caliber of the original list we saw in this thread. No Pujols is the key- that would have broken my heart. Some of the others are surprises, some not, some are too small of names to care.

The key is for those 4 or 5 not to cannibalize each other. All of them have to win every game against the bottom half and without looking at who each plays twice, they can't dominate one another. I don't see the conference getting 5- everything would have to break right for that to happen- but 4 isn't impossible. I'm still thinking we will get 3 and will see a couple more on the list of teams that just missed the Tournament, just a hunch. No one was counting on the A10 being this improved, and the powers that be won't let a conference that has gotten 2 bids the past few years suddenly get the same number that the BCS conferences get.

This doesn't surprise me so much. I think of the student body currently attending SLU there might be more from the Valley areas, but the graduates move on to different, bigger, more spread out cities. I look at my group of friends from SLU, a lot from the areas of St. Louis, Milwaukee, KC, Indianapolis, Columbus, Bloomington/Peoria, Chicago, Omaha, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and various small towns in the Midwest, and the ones who have left St. Louis have gone on either to the bigger of those cities (Chicago, KC, Cincy) plus NYC, Boston, DC, Phoenix, Houston, Denver, and a lot of other big cities in the US and overseas. I guess my point is that a lot of students may come from surrounding cities and small towns in the Midwest, but they don't necessarily go back there after finishing SLU because the good jobs are mostly in the big cities. Where SLU gets students from and where they disperse are much different. That said, I'd like to see the school be able to recruit more from the coasts and have more of a geographically diverse student body.

Romar went after Grimes early in his high school career (he loved that class and even said when they were young that Tommie would be the best of them), then Brad picked up his recruitment for a bit, but wasn't exactly heartbroken to see Grimes head in Mizzou's direction (I think any chance of Grimes coming to SLU was gone when Romar left). Grimes was a bigger name, and picking up where Romar left off with his recruitment might have been a good idea at the time in order to give the program some continuity after a coaching change. Didn't work out that way, but I see where he was coming from. Shaw was on Brad's radar all along, and SIUC did offer first. SLU offered and tried to make it clear he was top priority but I think there were a few reasons he was more comfortable with SIUC. I don't think he was ever considered a back up plan to Grimes, nor would Soderberg have seen them both as 4s and directly in competition for a spot. Brad and his staff wanted Shaw badly. He had a habit of offering kids a little too late, but I think Shaw had an offer from us longer than is being said. I also was never a fan of Grimes. By the time he was a junior or senior in high school, it was obvious he was about the laziest player on the floor. I loved his size and ability, but he never played with any urgency- in short, just not a winner, as his career and subsequent life choices have shown.

Good points, Doc. I would have loved to perform a hostile takeover of SAB and push for something the students aren't used to- quality entertainment- but I was too heavily involved with another SLU organization to be able to do so. I also like the second point. It is virtually impossible to make everyone happy. My point with this, though, is that they are settling on bands with some mainstream appeal- i.e. won't offend anyone, played on mainstream contemporary stations ("Familiar Favorites from the 80s, 90s, and Today")- but these are bands that don't appeal to college students. We don't want to open the arena with music that the students will make fun of, seriously. People would be surprised to see the list of fairly big name bands you can book for $50,000 or less, and in some cases, a lot less. Why settle for the bland sounds of corporate radio rock when there are so many exciting acts that could at least be intriguing enough to bring students out? You could also bring down the extra cost to the general public and bring in music fans willing to pay (Are thousands going to flock to pay an extra $40 for bands a lot of the students won't see for free? Probably not, because I don't think this will be as highly publicized as when those bands go to UMB Bank Pavilion or wherever). Some ideas off the top of my head that would cost less than what SAB is going to spend on those other names: -The Flaming Lips: best live band touring today, pretty big name, been around for almost 25 years, passionate fan base, and I guarantee everyone that goes has a good time. They sell out every venue they play- see their show and you'll see why. -Lupe Fiasco: widely-known rapper and protege of Kanye West, not an offensive gangsta rapper that will scare off alums or censors, great music that's also crowd-pleasing. -2 or 3 slightly smaller bands that would be known to college kids- tons of these pretty well-known bands can be booked for a small fraction of the $50,000 SAB is throwing around. SAB would be smart to find a few different bands with strong college fan bases and different appeals- each one's fans would show up. I could go on with lots more ideas, but all of these could attact both college and community fans, appeal to others who just want to check out the spring fling event and the new arena, and save SAB some budget money. If they are willing to spend the remainder of the budget on the event, give everyone with a SLU ID (and legal age) a couple free beer tickets. There won't be anyone skipping that. I just want them to put on a memorable event, not an "eh, I had nothing better to do" event.

I'm not sure it can be called 'evidence' though. He's watching the same team that everyone here is watching, so naturally the same issues will be addressed in his blog and articles. If I didn't look at this page all season but saw all 11 games this team has played, I'm still pretty sure I could guess the major concerns on this board. Maybe he comes over here to check what's going on, maybe he doesn't.

I wasn't trying to defend Majerus in this instance- I just wanted to clarify the false assertion that Majerus is the only one to skip them and Brad never did. I still think the coach is responsible for all facets of his job, even after a tough loss.

I saw the Billiken Club's lineup a few times. They're doing an amazing job over there booking under-the-radar bands, a few of which are getting some national love from the music press. I always had hoped SLU would come up with something to rival the Gargoyle at Wash U, and it looks like they finally are getting something done.