slu72 fan

TDELL, your son is a terrific hoopster. But more importantly, I heard him speak at the last Billiken Club meeting and he was articulate, poised and polite. He's going to be a real success, irregardless of basketball. Congratulations!!!

Donate money, join the Billiken Club and participate. Help student athletes with internships. Get others to become regular attendees at games. The problem with the athletic department is that it doesn't have enough money. They are stuck with stupid accounting techniques that charge them for tuition, even though it doesn't cost a penny to add a student in a classroom. They receive no credit for the millions of dollars of free advertising the university receives as a result of the athletic teams. Heck in some part, we picked a conference based on the new exposure the University could get in east coast major markets. People complain about our lack of marketing, tv, etc. All are legitimate concerns, but folks there are only 6 people in the athletic department dealing with these and countless other issues. CL is a smart, energetic person. Give her the resources and I'm confident she will raise the level of all SLU sports.

I agree with many of the comments about our recent lack of success. Now that everyone is in conference play it is very obvious that it is really difficult to win on the road. Take a look at the ESPN scrolling scores and see how many games are won by the home team. My guess would be well over 75%. Add to that, the loss or diminished production from Kevin's injuries and it's not too hard to see why we're having problems.

Correct, Bennett, I'm an idiot.

No show, KFNS dropped all of the coaches shows to air the Cardinal Winter Dinner.

At a Billiken Club meeting, Brad indicated that Bryant will not be a scholarship player on the team next year.

I wonder if Derek Thomas is in any trouble at WIU. I HAVE ZERO INFORMATION, but the team has won only 2 games, has a 334 RPI and his record as their head coach is awful. Reading the WIU website, makes Thomas sound like one great recruiter, but his on the court results have been down right awful. The team has regressed from 8 wins his first year to where they are today. Wonder what Harrellson would do if Thomas is not at WIU?

Excepting football, Title IX doesn't let you put all of your eggs into one revenue sport.

No offense, but I attended TU and the comparison to SLU, which I graduated from, are somewhat misleading. Tulsa has been a very good mid-major since the mid 60's. Their facilities are far superior to SLU's. While they have played off campus many years, they are the main game in Tulsa. While their football team is not BCS caliber, they have an outstanding football facility and all the weight lifting, support systems that large football programs maintain. SLU doesn't compare at this level.

While I agree with you, the season's not lost yet, it was dealt a serious blow last night. Changing coaches, even if you upgrade the salary package, is not nearly enough. The pay for the assistants needs to be increased by an even larger percentage. I believe a large part of our recruiting issues relate to the assistants. Does anyone think they would land jobs on really successful staffs? I sure don't. The recruiting budget needs to be dramatically increased. Support from the boosters needs to increase. I know from discussions with current members of the Department they recognize all of these issues, but don't have the ability to do anything about it. It's a Biondi issue. The predicament we're in now, is the impact a change of coaches would have on recruiting the '08 class. It seems awfully risky to me to make a change and risk a chance at upgrading our local recruiting. There certainly is a position that supports a change in coaches, but we would have to be very fortunate and have a real change in the support of the program to make it work. Some will say that the commitment has already been shown by the administration with the building of the new facility, but I would differ. First, the university has not commited any general funds to the project. Second, the new facility will allow us to CATCH UP to a number of programs we recruit against. We will not have an advantage over programs like MU, U of I, SIU or MSU. Fellows, we're just catching up!!

They came to St. Louis because Roy Williams promises each player that he recruits at least one game close to his hometown. Williams did that at KU with Ryan Robertson. He said that's why he came here on KFNS, in an interview with Rammer and Cusamano. He certainly could have gone to SIU, but do you think their 70-3 home record bothered him a little more than coming to Scottrade? UNC will never play an OVC team on the road. That's absurd! My guess is we won't see UNC again, unless they recruit a St. Louis area player or we give them 2 for 1.

They come to places like SLU, because they have little fear of losing. See if Arizona rushes back here. The better you get, the harder it is to schedule, unless your conference has a good RPI. That's why the Valley had trouble scheduling home and home.

Fortunately, it worked for the 12 guys in the locker room. It did lead to one of the more memorable comebacks in recent history.

Brad made it very clear he has studied the method for improving your RPI and he will continue to schedule in a way that helps our chances for getting into the tournament. The better we get, the harder it will become to have home and home with BCS type programs. Our conferences RPI does not help them, so your back in a tough spot where a good opponent sees only risk in scheduling a team like us. Kind of where the Valley has been.

How about the hip check on KL when he went in for the lay-up which would have nearly iced the game in the last minute. He ended up several feet out of bounds after the "clean block". And by the way, how did all 3 of them miss the time IV airballed a free throw and they didn't call it. No offense to anyone, but that meets the definition of incompentence. Unfortunately, they were like most crews, no consistency, called junk on the perimeter and allowed a mugging inside.

This group of players are much tougher and seasoned than last year. They have a strong desire to succeed and that has carried them in games we would have lost last year. Heck, we've been trailing at halftime of most of the last 8 games, and have found a way to come back and win 6 of them. That would not have happened last year.

So who did you see?

I read and heard a number of recruits would be in attendance. Any sightings?

It opens when the gates do, one hour before the game. The gates will open for Friday's game at 5:00.

Houston also got beat by Arizona by over 20. Houston absolutely played with no heart. No defense, run down and shoot a three or toss up a terrible runner. I think they shot about 15% from the 3.

The NC gametime was changed at least a month ago to accomodate ESPNU.

Road wins, oh, so sweet! I don't know if we'll go dancing, but this team will die trying.

IV has no room to do anything. Our spacing has not been good and everyone double or triple teams him everytime he gets the ball. In my opinion, this is a direct result of LM and DP being unable to consistently score. As UB said, to be really good, someone has to play the 4 other than LM. AK and JJ have to be the answer. If they aren't, the team's in deep doodoo. I'm not in favor of reducing IV's playing time. Everyone centers there gameplan on stopping him. If he's not in there, it will be much tougher for TL and KL.

It was Kevin until he got hurt, but now I'd have to go with Tommie. Luke is a fine role player, but if he can't hit the wide open 10 footer he is a huge liability on one end of the court. Additionally, he has problems keeping his man off the glass. Granted he's always giving up inches and athleticism. As Brad said earlier, if Luke's the 4, we're in trouble!

I left after the St Chas West game, and I wish UB's son was playing for us now. Kramer, while undersized, is quick, strong, a solid ball handler with either hand, fearless and a great shooter. Really, reminded me a bunch of KL, but with better range on his jumper. What a great high school player!! Anyone who can, should invest the time and watch him.