RUBillsFan

Yeah. I'd agree with this. Crews final 2 season and Ford 1st season were objectively worse. They all had fewer wins and lower KenPom raings. 2014-15 - 11 wins, 289 KenPom 2015-16 - 11 wins, 226 KenPom 2016-17 - 12 wins, 273 KenPom 2023-24 - 13 wins, 199 KenPom However, this past season was devoid of 2 things those other awful years had going for them. #1 we were still in the afterglow of the best 3 year run in program history (or at least recent history) and #2 we had more hope that better results were coming. 2014-15 we all knew would be a massive step back after Loe, Evans, Jett & McCall graduated. We expected the young team to take some lumps, but could hope they'd improve. 2015-16 was still a young team & by the end we pretty much knew Crews was going to get canned & his replacement would be better. 2016-17 we had new optimism that Ford would bring in talent & win and we had a bunch of promising transfers sitting out (Bess, Henriquez, Foreman) plus our highest rated recruit in decades coming in (Goodwin). This past season was 5 years removed from our most recent NCAA appearance, coming off one of the most disappointing years in recent memory in terms of expectations vs results, and there was substantial doubt about whether or not Ford would be fired / how much hope there could be for better results the following season. It was an awful experience all around. No afterglow, no hope of being competitive from the start and little/no hope that we were building toward anything for the future.

FIFY

This just needs to move to players signing contracts with schools and donors donating money to schools instead of NIL directly to players. I'm not sure how that works with Title IX, but it is likely than / can't be worst than the current system. Schools can sign guys for 1 - 4 year deals. You can have any number of team / player options & opt outs or whatever. A kid can buy out his deal or bigger schools can buy out contracts if they want a guy to transfer.

I haven't "seen the kids play" in person, but have read about antics & heard about them from people who have seen Walsh play. We know Travis Ford had no issues taking guys who had baggage on some level and/or maybe weren't great chemistry guys (Situation 2 guys, Santos, Gordon, Nesbitt, Russell, Parker, Dalger, Ezewiro). The fact that Ford & staff seemed to cool on Walsh and this stuff is out there gives me pause. I'm not necessarily lumping Walsh with those guys. Everyone has their own stuff going on to some degree. I have zero inside info and we're talking about a kid here, so I feel bad even speculating about it. I also wonder with a kid like that how well they'd transition to being "just" a role player in college instead of the star of the team. He is no doubt talented, but is he is the talent worth it?

Best part about this line is that it wasn’t at all under fluky last week of the season circumstances that @thetorch described. The Lakers are desperately trying to better position themselves for the play-in tournament. LeBron and AD each played over 40 minutes and it was all their normal rotation guys playing. Goodwin is shorter than all but 2 of the 9 guys that played for the Lakers and he grabbed 17 rebounds. A good NBA team doesn’t want Goodwin shooting the ball 23 times in a game ever, but if he’s gobbling up rebounds like Rodman and playing great defense I don’t see why he can’t latch on somewhere.

I wonder if that figure is Avila’s overall value and not just has on the court value? Wasn’t it rumored that Daron Holmes made was like $400k or so. Avila isn’t more valuable or at least that much more valuable than Holmes on the court, but he’s way more marketable off it. Avila has legit ability to earn in the actual “name image likeness” sense and not just pay to play. Example: there’s talk of eyewear companies offering him deals and he can get those regardless of where he plays. It’s actually better for his brand & non-pay for play NIL opportunities if he goes somewhere he will get to play a lot, be a star / fit well in a system, win, and be in a large market. Biased opinion: SLU with Schertz checks all those boxes better than anywhere else can. If he chases extra power 5 pay to play money, he risks not fitting / losing playing time and compromising his maybe much higher non-pay to play earnings potential.

It looks like no one else got this, but kudos on the grade A quality Dad joke.

I get where you are coming from, but that + is doing a LOT of work. Avila is much much better than Ellis & honestly the only things similar about their games are that both are bigs who could stretch the floor & aren't super athletic. Ellis was a career 42.7% from 2 and 33.4% from 3. Avila is at 63.4%/37.2% Ellis averaged 6.3 rebs, 1.5 assists, 1.2 steals, and 0.5 blks per 40 mins. Avila's are 8.1 rebs, 4.4 ast, 1.0 stls, 0.8 blks.

I may have dipped into the History & Record Book player listing for an assist.

Here is an article that ranks the nicknames. https://www.sportingnews.com/us/ncaa-basketball/news/robbie-avila-nicknames-cream-abdul-jabbar/df900acb04b9a2fef4662980#:~:text=Cream Abdul-Jabbar,-This one is&text=This will be the nickname,making those T-shirts first%3F I have some quibbles with the article's rankings. I'd put Larry Blurred/Blurrd above Larry Nerd. Nerd feels too derogatory and not cheeky/fun to me. I agree that Cream the best: It matches his position. Avila is a center & Abdul-Jabbar was a center. Cream works on 2 levels both is complexion and his body type. It is not ISU specific like Larry Blurred/Nerd so it can travel with him better to SLU. That all being said, I'd love some SLU specific nicknames. I was going to save this analysis for if/when he officially commits to SLU, but what the heck. I'm excited about it now. Some of these are admittedly terrible. I'm just spitballin. Wheezy Ed Avilliken - H/T to MMP on Twitter JordPair (of goggles) Jett Specs Sinquefield - think we can get Rex to dump in some NIL if we pump this one up? Willie Read - I actually love this one & it makes me even more sad that Willie's SLU tenure was cut short or it would be a phenomenal one The St. Louis Ram(bis) Anthony BonNerd Jake For(eyes)ter DJ For(eyes)man Horace Grant Gehlen - former walk-on Grant Gehlen I think actually went by Gus, so probably no. Horace (Grant) Dixon - anyone remember Ho Dixon? Soderberg really couldn't recruit. Darrin Clarke Kent - he's not from MN and not a huge disappointment, so probably not Buddy Holly Brehmer - Brehmer was the coach after Bennington / before Bob Polk, probably a no on this one Robbie Guillaume - Robert Guillaume (voice of Rafiki) attended SLU & wore glasses

Of course, all there is right now is optimism. I mean we're talking about a range of outcomes that puts us anywhere from maybe 20th to 70th in the nation depending on who we get, player improvement, etc. Last season I was dreaming about a high side of 130ish and we ended up at 199, so the low end of possibilities may have been a little below that.

I'm hyped, but always want to have realistic expectations. We can't take winning the A10 as a given. Indiana State finished 38 in KenPom ranking this past season. They did not make the field as an at-large. Dayton finished 32 in KenPom. Dayton was cleared viewed as the "best" team in the A10, but finished 3rd in the standings.

Highlights:

Just for the aesthetics that made last season kind of a bummer. They rallied from being 6-16 to even it up at 17-17, but dropping the NCAA game made it 17-18 overall. I think a similar stat was shared previous & I'm admittedly cherry picking dates here. From February 22 - end of season during Tillett's 2 years at SLU the team is 16-2 with the only losses being to Tennessee in the NCAAs last year and Rhode Island in the A10 tournament this year.

I stole it from Ben Fred on twitter.

I can't wait for SLU to proudly display this thing on the concourse at Chaifetz along with their other trophies...oh wait. I know today isn't the day to throw shade, but I can't help it. Having the trophy cases hidden away is totally stupid.

Is it too soon for Tillet to give Schertz sh*t for NOT winning the NIT?

Julia Martinez. Nose for the ball.

Based on info at Sports Reference and my doing some math: Most games in a season for the women's team prior to this one was last season (2022-23) when they played 35 games and went 17-18. They also played 34 games in both 2015-16 (26-8 overall) and 2016-17 (25-9 overall). https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/saint-louis/women/ Most games in a season for the men's team is 37 in 1988-89 when Grawer led them to the NIT finals and a 27-10 overall record. They played 36 in both 2009-10 (Majerus CBI finals year 23-13 overall) and 2018-19 (Ford's A10 tourney championship 23-13 overall). https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/saint-louis/men/ Without looking it up I would've guess CBI finals year as the most, but I forgot they lost their 1st game of the A10 tournament that year.

The answer to your question is 25 year. Travis Ford - hired by SLU after being fired at OSU Jim Crews - hired by SLU (as an assistant coach) after a couple years on the shelf after being fired by Army Rick Majerus - hired by SLU after a few years as an ESPN analyst, Majerus resigned from Utah for health reasons. Brad Soderberg - hired by SLU (as an assistant coach) after being fired by Wisconsin / not retained when he was the interim HC after Dick Bennet's abrupt retirement. Lorenzo Romar - hired away from Pepperdine in 1999 Charlie Spoonhour - hired away from Missouri State Romar is the most recent coach that fits your criteria. Telling that every other coach we hired who was fired at their previous coaching stop largely failed as a HC at SLU to varying degrees. Majerus who wasn't fired at Utah is of course in a different category.

Chris May has that (lap)dawg (of big boosters) in him. FIFY I'm assigning all the credit on this to big money boosters like Chaifetz unless there is concrete evidence otherwise.

You can make the same excuse about there being a lot more entertainment options in the St Louis area - Cardinals, Blues, City, Battlehawks to go along with a ton of non-sports stuff that Terre Haute doesn't have. Bottom line - neither program has a ton of success in the recent history. Neither program has a large enough rabid fanbase that will fill their arena to watch a mediocre product. However, SLU has a larger fanbase and more money than ISU. The basketball landscape sucks for them. I'm glad they're on this run & get to enjoy some good basketball. I'm not going to feel bad about (potentially) stealing their coach because if things go well here the same thing is going to happen to us in a few years. That's the way of the college basketball world.

Frank & Slaten have the same dumb ideas that Pistol outlined. Their personalities are not at all the same. Frank tries to come off as a nice guy. Slaten is a blowhard who tries to come off as a tough guy. Their personalities are largely irrelevant to this conversation on their bad ideas for SLU basketball.

I just Googled & apparently APR (academic progress rate) is still a thing. I had no idea because I haven't heard about it in a decade. Maybe they stopped punishing teams for it being too low? There is even a searchable database for a coach's APR (https://web3.ncaa.org/aprsearch/coachAprSearch) Travis Ford 2021-22 955 2020-21 979 I guess they didn't count 2019-20 2018-19 938 2017-18 857 Josh Schertz 2021-22 957 2020-21 978 Finally to show that APR still bullsh*t Penny Hardaway 2021-22 1000

I'll workshop it a bit. I wish I could spend all day writing Tony Murkens & Frank Cusamano fan fiction, but I need to be a little bit productive at work. I wasn't envisioning that Murken's has actually paid yet & the Pappy's employee is still just has a blank look on her face starting at Tony & Frank. However, I was especially proud of the part where they look down to see Cusamano. My uncle (I think) played ball against Cusamano in high school and 30+ years later my grandma would refer to him as "little Frankie Cusamano" which cracked me up. I'm not even sure if Frank is short in real life, but I've got it in my head that he's like Tom Cruise height & camera tricks make him look normal sized.