Pistol

Let's hope Anderson isn't as stubborn as Norm, or as spineless as Q. In-state rivalries are essential to college sports.

I know what you mean: the girls, the power, other fringe benefits that may or may not be legal. But you can still have a lot of nice ladies and attention playing for a school that might be a small notch below the ACC or another top program, as long as you're not ignored because of football. I also understand the appeal for playing with a school that has a mystique to the program. Lance Stemler made it sound like that's why he went to Indiana. Too bad he said his girlfriend was a factor.

I never really thought he'd consider us, but you do make a good point. I wouldn't want to spend my career coming off the bench at a big program, and being known only as Jordan's son. At that point, everyone will just think you're on the team just because of the last name. It could be smart going to a somewhat smaller program and proving you can play.

How can JJ be considered talented? Are we watching the same player? What could Brad have said about him that was a serious positive comment, not just something to appease the people who always wonder about him? And who is possibly saying that JJ looks so good in preseason scrimmages? There is no need to "unleash the enigma." There should be no enigma- go to more practices, and see why he doesn't play. He hasn't learned anything since he got here. He hasn't gotten physically stronger by much at all. His shot isn't better. His defense is slightly better. He turns it over too much. He can't get on the same page as his teammates. There isn't much of a case for the kid at all. If anything, he's gotten too many minutes. Keep him plugged on the bench and develop players who have something to offer the team.

Washington looked at other coaches before deciding to offer Romar. He had really become connected to SLU and the players here, and didn't see it as a temporary job. He talked it over with his family, and had planned on staying here. According to him, he went to call Washington and turn it down, but decided to sleep on it another night. Then he decided to go back to the west coast. Grimes hadn't committed, but Romar had a good relationship with him. There wasn't an offer on the table yet, either. Gray was set to come here, but nothing was official, and as soon as Romar said he was leaving, Gray backed out. That whole situation was very quiet from the start.

He could- he was his team's leading scorer at the Nike Hoops Jamboree at the Simon Rec Center. Even though that was two summers ago, there was some pretty sick talent on the floor, and of course his dad was in the audience.

Do you think he'll go to UNC, or will he want to get out of dad's shadow? If he wants to do something different, I'd say yes- I've seen him play, and he'd be a great guy to have. He's a very smart, complete player for his age. And you're right, I'm sure SLU players would like to be wearing Jordan gear.

Hopefully Romar could have motivated Kalen Grimes, because he's turned out to be nothing more than a lazy underachiever. Romar may not have a lot on paper to show from his 3 years at SLU, but he was a fantastic coach who built great relationships with players and recruits. He may not have landed a couple big names, but he had the program on the verge. We were about to land a nice class of Hollins, Kern (who wouldn't have qualified at first, though), and the one people forget: Taj Gray. After that, Romar had every local talent wanting to play for him in the future. It's interesting to imagine where the program would be had he stayed, and he almost did. I'm a big Brad fan, too, but unfortunately he had to build from scratch when he started. He had no chance of keeping a very frustrated Floyd McClain, who stayed in school despite his injuries because of Romar, and Jason Edwin, who had a GPA the same as Bluto from Animal House.

I don't know how any SLU fans could still be high on JJ. He has been here for four years, including the redshirt season when he practiced everyday, and has given us virtually NOTHING. He's soft, can't get his mind right, has been suspended multiple times for off-the-court reasons, and still has that baby-giraffe-like awkwardness that should disappear after freshman (or redshirt) season. There is no possible argument that JJ could make for any pt this or any other year. What has he done? This is an example of a recruit that we took in desperation, and has turned out to be a waste of a scholarship that Brad has too much principle to drop. The play that sums up JJ's career for me was his freshman year: first attempt at a dunk during garbage time vs. Louisville at the Savvis Center. JJ goes up uncontested, rejected by the rim. SLU was down about 26 at the time, but players on the bench, as well as a couple assistants, still managed to laugh.

We called ourselves the "Academic All-Americans." Randy did the lion's share of the work and showed great fundamental knowledge of derivatives and a yeoman-like work ethic. Floyd and Jason gave a powerful class lecture on the importance of the Intermediate Value Theorem and the Bisection Method- some members of the class were moved to tears. When Randy and I followed up leading a discussion entitled "Concavity and Points of Deflection: the New Frontier," it was hard to regain the students' attention, and we quickly realized Floyd and Jason would prove to be a tough act to follow.

I'm not saying the academic standards are low at SLU, but it doesn't pose a major threat to our recruiting strategy. Occasionally, it will backfire or hurt us, such as with Brandon Morris, but we don't have to go scouring elite prep schools for recruits. Also, SLU as an institution recruits its students a lot harder at Catholic schools around the midwest than at public schools. When a student body is approximately 50% Catholic, that's quite different than the typical state school demographic breakdown. I really don't think you're saying anything different than what we already know. SLU's a good school, but not the best. We make sure our student athletes succeed here- just look at how SLU has stacked up within the CUSA or A-10. SLU is tougher than most of the 300+ D1 basketball schools, but not at the top. I don't think anyone's disagreeing about any of that. SLU just isn't an elite school or program that isn't giving anyone a sniff because the academics are so hard. That isn't true at all, no matter where you went to high school. I knew a girl there who got a 20 on her ACT (on the second try) and got accepted without any conditions or extra credits required. She then proceeded to graduate with over a 3.0 without too much sweat. This isn't the case with every SLU student, but enough to let you know that it's a far cry from Stanford.

Roy, I think the policy is closer to what you claim than some stringent academic policy. The catch is that our coaches won't start recruiting a kid in the first place if he's got major academic baggage. Tatum was an exception because he was a package deal with Larry, but we haven't had any real issues recently- Tommie qualified in his prep year. Nick Kern might have been a non-qualifier his freshman year, but that's a moot point after Romar's departure.

This is all true, except I don't know that SLU needs to "let up" on the academic standards. I think we can get by with the same policy. A lot of more academically-inclined schools are having a lot of athletic success recruiting athletes who don't only want to be athletes, and SLU basketball can do the same. The last thing we need is a scandal where academics can be called into question. Let Mizzou take care of that.

I also recently graduated from SLU and am amazed by how much people here hype up the school's academics. Of all the schools I applied to, SLU was definitely the "safety" school, and just happened to give me the best offer of the six. Soderberg has said that it is a pretty good school academically, and that we would only be able to accept about half of the top 200 recruits in the country any given year because of academics. That percentage goes way down for Stanford, who accept about 12% of applicants per year, about the same as the Ivies. It might be a little easier to let in athletes that coaches are pushing for, but they can only make the committee stretch so far. Duke operates in a different echelon altogether- they get who they want, most of which otherwise wouldn't be accepted as regular students, but who can make it by. SLU's a good school, but let's not kid ourselves here. It makes recruiting a little tougher when we don't have the PE and agriculture majors (sorry, Brandon Morris), but we can't use this as too much of an excuse. The classes I took at SLU for the most part weren't any tougher than anything I saw in high school. Athletes don't struggle at SLU any more than they would somewhere else. It's not a great party school, either, but I'd strap on a couple 40s any weekend at school.

I don't think these coaches left on their own accord, either, but since when do athletic departments publicize firing people? Normally it's the outside press that breaks that information, but wouldn't bother on coaches that aren't more high-profile. That leaves it up to the athletic department to do what they want. I wouldn't blame the SID or his people about these candy-coated stories; we probably shouldn't expect anything else. As for your resume, Billsboys, I sure hope it contains less grammatical errors than every barely-intelligible sentence you've written on this board.

Now Brandenburg has his offer from SLU, if word on the street is right. If I'm not mistaken, the only other teams to offer him so far are Missouri State and SIUC. Brandenburg has been quoted as saying he dreams of playing in the ACC someday. If that changes, and he wants to stay home or the ACC schools don't offer, then I would have to think that we have a very good shot at this kid and that we didn't offer too late. He's still young, and isn't going to have his feelings hurt that we were only the third school to offer. The first two were in the Valley, and are the programs that jump on St. Louis kids as soon as possible, hoping that others will pass. If people are still complaining about Brandenburg not being offered soon enough, I would love to hear the rationale. Also, it doesn't seem like the kid from New York was offered before Brandenburg, as many people seem to be complaining about. It looks like it was pretty close to the same time, so why is it even an issue? They don't even play the same position- probably a good indicator we want both of them. Also, the stars and list of schools next to a kid's name aren't always the best indicator of how good a player will be. So many of these players haven't been seen enough to be properly evaluated, save for the top handful in any class. So many of the people complaining are the same ones who say we should give up on the kids with 4 or 5 stars and being recruited by the top programs out there. If we can't recruit the top kids, and can't waste our time with the rest, who do you want us to recruit?

Maybe they're not as interested as speculated here last week. Has Ian's name shown up on any other team's workout list?

Roy, I agree- the bigs play a huge role in possessing the ball and getting a nice outlet pass to Kevin, Dwayne, or Tommie. However, JJ will NEVER be a "key" to anything that this team does. JJ attempting to be this type of player would just become a turnover machine.

I agree with you here, Drew: Ian can do a lot in transition, and has moves that almost no other big guys have. I would like to see him with some open space this season- he'll surprise some people.

I'm just taking his word for it. If he doesn't live up to that promise more over the next couple seasons, then I would be more frustrated as well. We probably could have pressed and run more this year, but you need both athletes and shooters to make it work. I think one thing you've never taken into account is that this was a very young team last year, and any young team is going to have some really rough nights like we had against St. Joe's. We got outplayed and outcoached in both of those games, but as this team and staff develops, we won't see games like those. If we see them in the future, go ahead and get mad and call for a new coach.

I agree with both of you- the Valley was a very solid league this year, and proved it by getting 2 to the sweet sixteen. I just don't see that happening again. Missouri State wasn't tricking anyone with their 20-something RPI. The biggest non-conference game they had was Arkansas. This was the case with a lot of Valley schools. They were smart enough not to play the Kennesaw States of the world, and that's why they looked so good in the numbers. The Valley teams won the non-conference games they should have won, for the most part, and there was a lot of parity in the conference, which helped their case as well. If the Valley continues to get 2 teams into the Sweet Sixteen every year, I'll be happy to eat my words, but this conference didn't deserve the regular-season rating that it had.

I don't know if Anderson will be quite as successful in recruiting at Mizzou as you give him credit for. In his system, every player has to run for the entire game, and no one, regardless of talent, plays more than 28 minutes unless the game goes into overtime. It's a fun style to watch, though not always the prettiest. I don't think it's a style that will land every recruit. It allows a lot of fast breaks, turnovers, and crazy plays, but it's also very much a system that every player must adhere to. Soderberg's teams have almost never played a straight man-to-man. He plays the pack defense of Dick Bennett. It has a lot of characteristics of a man defense, but also has a lot in common with a zone. The only flaw I see in it is that it gives up the perimeter too easily. Guys can close out as hard as they want sometimes, but if an offensive player is more than a foot or two outside the perimeter, he'll always be open. His motion offense is intended to give players complete offensive freedom to create their own shots. I like the idea, but SLU players have been too tentative with it. I think once we start focusing more on transition ball (and we're heading in that direction- slowly, but surely), the motion offense will become more natural. Soderberg wants to run more; he's made that clear with the press for a couple years now, but never felt he had the horses. For it all to work better, the fact of the matter is that we must have guys who can consistently knock it down from the 3-point line. Our guys are ready to run, but without someone to bury a few 3's a game, it's not going to work. We've now got guys to take it to the hole, but you can't do that every time. It's very frustrating to watch Polk burn everyone down the floor, then pull out and enter a sluggish half-court offense.

The link is here: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/bracketology He's probably not too far off. I think even if Ian comes back, it would be a surprise to the world outside the A-10 if we made the NCAA Tournament. And to expect the Valley to have another year like it did would be crazy. People realize now that all of their RPI ratings were inflated, and other conferences are going to figure out how to do the same (i.e. don't play the worst 100 teams in the RPI). The Valley was good last year, but in any normal year, 3 teams in should make Valley fans very grateful. To have Bracketology before the draft is a little frivolous, though. There are some teams that will be drastically different based on who goes and who comes back.

Missouri is definitely a major program. Recent success has nothing to do with whether a program is a major or not. Missouri is in one of the power conferences, therefore they are a high major program. SLU falls in a gray area in between the high majors and mid majors. I would consider it a major, but I wouldn't use a high- or mid- qualifier in front of it.

You must be mistaken: the athletic trainers, generally physical therapy students gaining experience under head trainer Tony Breitbach, are the ones who take care of the water. The student managers have a plethora of other duties.