TheRaginCajun

Skip, I will be sending an apology to him as well as letting him know that I will write anyone within the athletic department if that is what he wants. I had no idea of anything on Horace Dixon's academic situation other than him being a late qualifier and hearing most schools back off of him because they did not think he would qualify. I am not sure how legal actions could be brought against that. I feel like everything has really gotten blown out of proportion here. I am a recent college grad having a little fun on a message board. Maybe I should not have put Brian Bertucci's name as my identity and that is something I will address when I email him an apology. I do not feel like anything I did was malicious. I did not say anything concerning Horace Dixon that was harmful or based on information received illegally. I am willing to discuss the current situation with Steve and the other moderators if such a meeting is necessary. I am more then willing to reveal my identity to them and to discuss anything that has occured on this board with them.

Roy, do you think this is something that I should do? I will definitely be sending Brian Bertucci a note of apology, but do you think Cheryl may be a little annoyed to receive such an email? I feel like your giving to the university and the athletic department should be enough to give you merit in the opinion of the athletic department.

I will send an apology to Mr. Bertucci and let me know if you think it is appropriate to cc anyone in on that one; i.e. people in the athletic department. I will not be returning to this board. I am not even much of a Billiken basketball fan anyway. I will give Steve my name in private and any contact information to ensure I never post on here if that is what he wants.

Let me be the first to say that I had no information on Horace Dixon's academic standing. I questioned whether he would stay eligible based on the fact that he was such a late qualifier and then I kind of played it out that I had some inside information. I had no information on that other than questioning why we would target a kid who most schools backed off of for acadmic reasons.

TheRaginCajun is signing off and will no longer be posting on this board. I apologize for all of the negativity I brought to the board and for often destroying what is a nice message board where Billiken fans can discuss the program maturely and honestly. I acted immaturely on this board and I apologize to everyone on here. I am very sorry for all of the anger I may have caused and that admittedly was a large part of why I came to this site. I feel like it has gotten out of hand the past week and it is best for me to stop.

We will accept any decision made by Steve raguarding the future of TheRaginCajun. It does not seem like we can really defend our actions. We came to raise issues with Brad Soderberg and we feel like we have done a fairly good job of that. TheRaginCajun was never more happy then to turn in to the local radio station and hear caller after caller say that Soderberg needs to go. TheRaginCajun has stirred some things up and I feel like our job here has been a success.

Skip, you make it sound like you confronted Brian Bertucci about the things being posted on .com by a user with his name in their profile? I question how anyone could see the Cajun mouthing off with Brian Bertucci's name in their profile or glowingly using his name as a source and honestly believe that someone in his position would engage in such behavior.

You did miss the Cajun suggesting to Mr. Liddell that his son should transfer out of the program.

Thats funny, all of the kids who post under this name graduated from SLU with high honors. The reason for this name being developed was because we were fed up with the negative things we were hearing about Soderberg when everyone on the message board had a love fest with the guy. We decided that we needed the real state of the program to be revealed, since someone could read the site and would assume we have a fantastic game coach who is getting is done recruiting. Everything we have posted has come from credible sources and thats how we were able to defend our positions, we knew the things we were posting were correct and would prove to be correct. We were just amused when people say things and claim them to be fact when we can go to their reported source and hear the truth. If anything, we came to this board to bring attention to the dificiencies of Brad Soderberg as a coach. It is unfair for kids like Tommie Liddell, Kevin Lisch, and Luke Meyer to have to put up with this crap.

The other thing is, there are about six or seven individuals who sign in on this name and post various things. TheRaginCajun is actually a group of individuals.

Mr. Liddell, I apologize for suggesting that your son should tranfer last week on this board. I did not realize your identity when posting that. You should be very proud of your son and the quality of man Tommie is says a lot about how he was brought up and his parents, you have done a great job.

I really am not here to build credibility. I read all of you people with your high praise of Coach Soderberg and sat in Grand Forest and heard things and realize you all were very mistaken with your praise of that man. I used to consider myself a pretty big Billiken fan, being a member of the Blue Crew my first year of college and attending most of the games thru my time at SLU, and when I started hearing some things concerning the program I kind of lost a lot of my reason for hope heading into the season. If Brad Soderberg remains the coach of this team I will no longer be a fan of this program and you all can be happy to not have to deal with me anymore. I just feel bad for certain individuals I know to be class acts who will not reach their goals because Brad Soderberg has let them down.

Roy, I have lied about who my source was or sources were the whole time. I am not going to tell you where I hear these things and lets just say that you have no idea who I am friends with. I believe I have used Brian Bertucci's name several times as the source of my information because I would assume that someone in the position of Director of Basketball Operations would be privy to that information.

I do not know Brian Bertucci. The only thing I know about him is that his name appears on the Internet site as the Director of Basketball Operations. I am not sure how someone posting on an Internet site could put someone's job in jeopardy, I am assuming that if Brad or Cheryl read the site and were upset to see his name tied to certain information that they would probably ask him and take his word over that of someone using his name in their profile. I could have just as easily listed my name as Brad Soderberg or Cheryl Levick. I know for a fact that your comment on Lisch was incorrect. I must just get extremely lucky with the stuff I make up then. Brad has lost this team and if you have any kind of connection to the players on the team you would know that.

Its a problem that can be solved, but do we have reason to believe that it can with Brad Soderberg?

I would not say I root against this team, but a part of me realizes that the best thing for this program is for Brad Soderberg to go and I think loosing games may be the only thing that gets that done. Listen to the callers on 590 and you will hear that people are fed up with Brad and starting to realize he needs to go.

Yeah right now we do need one maybe two JUCO transfers but that is because we have not been able to recruit anyone the past two years beyond Tommie and Kevin. We have to recruit JUCO players out of necessity and thats all because we have not gotten it done.

Brad Soderberg is a deer in the headlights.

Well said CAG.

I am still waiting for you to give me the program that is successful based on the contributions of JUCO transfers. Lance Stemmler is far from the leader of Indiana anyway. Their lead player is DJ White who I know for a fact came to IU via high school. You claimed that JUCO Recruiting is where it is at and that is a flat out lie.

Indiana as far as I know is not a top 25 team, likely a team receiving votes. However, they may have two kids on their roster who are JUCO transfers who contribute.

Your post insinuated that Brad Soderberg is the only coach in Division I basketball with any kind of moral base and that is completely wrong and ignorant. I am curious if you have asked his players what they think of him as a man?

We need JUCOs because Soderberg cannot recruit quality players out of high school. We are forced to recruit JUCO kids because of necessity and our consistent recruiting failures. I never said we were UNC, but what quality team gets significant contributions from JUCO transfers? The only solution at this point is to move on.

What do you know about Brad's morals and values? The vast majority of the coaches of top 25 teams are overall quality individuals. This team is playing like it does not care and that shows you that Brad Soderberg has lost his team.

"After thinking long and hard about what is the issue with this site it finally hit me. I do not believe that more than a few posters have ever played basketball at any level beyond grade school or a pick up game. Yet they all chime in with supposed expertise about the players, the coaches, the game plan, etc, etc. When everyone was saying that Luke was not a D1 player and then when he played well they said well he is not a D1 starter it should have come to me. The fact is that he is a terrific all around player." That is one of the dumbest things I have ever read on this board. I played basketball throughout high school, but basketball and sports in general are not brain surgery and it does not take a genious or a former pro athlete to intelligently disect and discuss sports. It is obvious when kids are not pouring it out for their coach and that was obvious today.