RUBillsFan

I do expect these individual A10 rankings to change wildly from now to February and especially by the end of the season. What worries me, however, is that there isn't as much time left for the A-10 to improve the rankings in aggregate. All A-10 teams have played between 7 and 9 games so far. I'm assuming that means they've got anywhere from 3 to 6 games left on their non-conference schedules. SLU has played 9 and has 4 left. Once non-conference play is over, there is very little A-10 can do to improve the league's ranking as a whole. The only movement would come from how nonconference opponents fare the rest of the season. As A-10 teams beat up on each other during conference play, one team goes up and another goes down, but as a whole it doesn't change. This is very bad for SLU because they are ahead of the pack by a good margin and in the NCAA bubble range so any slips losing or underperforming against lower ranked teams could cause them to miss the tournament. Next 3 games are huge for establishing SLU as a firm NCAA team so that the inevitable stinker or 2 during A10 play won't sink our NCAA at-large hopes.

Perk was using the band thing at halftime of Paul Quinn as well.

Nice crew of former players and staff on hand to honor Coach Majerus Since Adam Knollmeyer wish one of the former players in the photo I’m legally obligated to also post this:

Jett & McCall going to be in the house today!!!

FIFA rankings are in parentheses below. Obviously these rankings are flawed, but it seems clear to me Spain's path is easier. Up for debate if they purposefully engineered it or not. Avoiding Brazil in the quarters is a pretty big boost to their ability to make a deeper run. Japan's(24) most likely path is now Croatia(12), Brazil(1), Argentina(3), then France(4) or England(5) in the final. Spain(7) has Morocco(22), Portugal(9), England(4) or France(5), and then Brazil(1) or Argentina(3) in the final. Germany(11, but under ranked IMO) being eliminated is pretty big as well because they were a title contender that Spain now doesn't have to worry about.

College basketball writer tweeting about the World Cup that fits right into the discussion here. I'm not super knowledgeable about soccer, but the theory here looks sound:

Yuri is up to 11.6 assists per game this year which would be good for 3rd all-time for a single-season.

It'll be really interesting to see what happens with Goodwin's playing time when Delon Wright comes back from injury in a few weeks. In my biased opinion, he's played well enough that he should continue getting regular minutes even ahead of Wright, Monte Morris and Will Barton. However, the Wizards may not want to sign Goodwin to a regular contract until they have to (last day of regular season to be playoff eligible & that's assuming the Wizards make the playoffs). Therefore, they may use Wright's return to give Goodwin more off days (or a stint in the G-League) so they don't exceed the 50 games he is able to play on his 2 way contract. He's already at 14 games (out of 21 team games). He's played in 12 of the last 13 with the only one missed due to injury.

You are giving Mizzou too much credit here with their schedule. KenPom has their current non-conference SOS as 361st in the nation. That's 3rd from the bottom as KenPom lists 363 teams.

You’re seeing something I’m not with Parker & assists. He only has 2 assists all year. 1 came in the game last night. There was one play in particular where Forrester was wide open under the basket and Parker didn’t see him. Even on the coast to coast slam, he had Jimerson open in the corner & called his own number instead. He’s a scorer first & has shown flashes of brilliance in scoring the ball. I like having a guy like that though. Microwave bench scorer. There was a play toward the end of the game where Parker passed to Cisse and started to cut, motioned to Hughes & Thames as though they weren’t doing the right thing of offense so he got the ball back from Cisse himself & just nailed a decent look from 3 with the shot clock ticking down. That’s what I like from Parker. He was the ability to make something from nothing (for himself) on offense if things don’t go right.

Attendance was announced at 5,343. It felt like more than that in the arena, right? Definitely wasn’t packed, but seemed more than 1/2 full.

He used to bury seemingly every one of those jumpers from the elbow off a curl. Hasn't hit them with the same regularity yet this year. Note that Perkins also started slow / inefficient his first season with SLU. Different circumstances, but it shows that he can / has adapted & gotten better during the season before. I'm not really worried about Perk, but it stinks that the biggest games on our non-con schedule are sort of front loaded. On the flip side, our A-10 schedule is heavily back-loaded. Need to get / keep everything healthy & clicking by February.

38% would be the best 3 pt % of his career. 2019-20 - 35.1% 2020-21 - 37.6% 2022-23 so far - 38.5% career - 36.5% As Zac said, he's been fine from 3. 2 pointers are an issue (at least compared to his past level of greatness): 2019-20 - 48.9% 2020-21 - 51.4% 2022-23 so far - 41.4% career - 49.4% So far he doesn't have the same burst / verticality post injury to get past defenders / finish over them. That'll get better as he gets healthier & also adjusts his game. Of note, he's been taking more 3s than ever and less 2s than ever already this year.

I need 1 ticket for tomorrow's showdown with Paul Quinn if anyone as an extra. Thanks!

I thought this was really cool.

Here is the link for tickets if anyone is interested in making the 4 hr drive to Bloomington: https://iuhoosiers.evenue.net/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/SEGetEventList?groupCode=MSNCAA&linkID=indiana&shopperContext=&caller=&appCode=

It pains me that Relph is a trainer in the Dallas area now & has connections to several guys we've recruited. Therefore, he pops up on my twitter feed every now & then. I have to restrain myself from replying with obscenities directed at him. Future recruiting > past hate.

I guess Collins is at best 6th on the list of all time best SLU PGs then behind not only Goodwin, but also David Burns, DC Wilcutt, Barry Orms, and Larry Hughes who was listed as a PG sporadically during his NBA career. Can't wait until a several years after Collins SLU career is over to see whether or not he makes the NBA so we can finally determine how good is SLU career was.

He needs to get to 783 to top Jacob Gilyard for most ever in the A10. Of course it took Gilyard 5 seasons to do it & Yuri is likely to get there & beyond in 4. His 590 is currently tied for 13th in the A10 with Jaylen Adams.

There were a ton of stoppages in the 2nd half with timeouts and FTs. It didn't seem like Yuri was gassed at any point. When he briefly came out of the game in the 2nd half, SLU fouled on a 3 pointer and there was also a time out. He got less than 20 seconds of rest in game time, but it was a several minutes in real time. Did anyone else find it odd how often the Memphis entire team would go to the bench for a quasi time-out after a foul was called that sent a guy to the FT line? SLU did this once in the 1st half and it was weird. Memphis did it basically the entire rest of the game. Our FT shooter would be standing at the line and the ref is holding the ball waiting for the defenders to line up while they're all over by the bench. Not sure why the refs allowed it to continue. Tell them to cut it out and if it continues, you just give the shooter the ball & call them for lane violations if they cross inside the 3pt arc after.

I feel like we've had several players who were 7 footers as recruits, but magically shrunk to anywhere from 6-9 to 6-11 based on SLU official measurements. I'm thinking Brett Thompson, Willie Reed, Rob Loe, and John Manning were all billed as 7-footers at some point. Going back further all the way to this 1950s on CBB reference here are the tallest I see: Chris Heinrich 6-11 Melvin Robinson 7-0 Rich Niemann 7-0 No idea if those are accurate or if anyone is missing. Quite possible that if Zhang is actually listed at 7-1, he would be the tallest player (as listed) in program history.

IMO it is fine for regular fans to heckle student athletes (especially in the age of NIL) as long as it isn't crude / offensive. For sure avoid - race/ethnicity/appearance and talking about the player's family (special consideration if they have a family member who is/was also a student athlete). Examples of what I deem acceptable: Jordair Jett tapping his head after that Dayton player got dunked on then not immediately throwing the ball to Dayton & making them come get it. Vs St Bonaventure yelling things at the players about how Olean sucks, they should stick to riding snow mobiles, etc. I had seats near the court vs VCU when we sucked under Crews. I heckled Treveon Graham by repeatedly yelling "Trayyyyyy-veeeeeeeee-on" whenever he had the ball. (It didn't really work. The game was close, but he torched us.) An opposing fan yelling that Theresa is better at basketball than Kevin Lisch (see special exception to family member rule above). Usually refs deserve heckling and generally I'm good with more intense / less playful stuff directed toward them as long as it isn't totally over the top.

To be clear, I wasn't at all saying that the Wizards would let Goodwin go. Just saying that you can't look at this contract & assume Goodwin will have earned over $2 million between this year & next.

IF SLU can get past Memphis, it would be a fun matchup vs Indiana. 2 most storied college soccer programs. Indiana at #20 actually has the lowest RPI of any of the 16 "seeded" teams and is the only seeded team with a lower RPI than #18 SLU.