TheChosenOne

It would be a monumental upset for Jayson Tatum to pick SLU over those elite programs, but there is at least a chance of it happening. Does anyone know Justin Tatum's opinion of SLU? I know he was essentially booted from SLU, but I imagine he understands it was well deserved and there likely are not many people around from his time there. I think people tended to oversell the relationship between Donovan and Chaminade. David Lee and Brad Beal both made their decisions on their own with little input from those at Chaminade. If Kelvin Lee had any pull Brad would have ended up at KU from all accounts. I am sure Jayson has a relationship with Beal, but Beal doesn't come across as the type of guy that would get overly involved in someone else's college decision.

Not sure Mizzou fans can be overly disappointed. With the coaching change, Mizzou had a couple of months to try to beat out a coaching staff that had built a relationship with the kid over several years. Plus Kim Anderson is an unknown at this point. Kind of similar to Suggs going to Washington to play for Romar. Sure it is tough to lose local kids to a conference school, but it happens. I would think Mizzou will do just fine in recruiting with Tim Fuller and Rob Fulford and with Kim Anderson they should do just fine coaching against Mike Anderson (would love to see JC abuse a Mike Anderson coached team). Whitt does look like a great get for Arkansas. With his length and versatility he should fit nicely into their full court pressure defense and transition offense (not sure Anderson runs any half court offense). I heard with the stuff going on in "Missouri" he just wanted to get out of the state.

One of us should write a preview of the Billikens and see how much better it is than the one written up for us when we finally show up on the list.

I thought this article written by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar does a good job of highlighting some of the real issues: http://time.com/3132635/ferguson-coming-race-war-class-warfare/ Do guys like Al Sharpton help the cause of those they speak for and profit from?

Also, it would be nice if the athletic department website provided some of that content as well. It wouldn't have been that hard to do a quick interview with each player and some of the coaches to let us know what the guys were up to this summer. A feature on each of the newcomers would have been nice. Maybe show some footage from practice and workouts.

O.G. Anunoby from Jefferson City has received offers from Indiana, Georgia, and Vanderbilt this summer. Does anyone now our interest level in him? It looks like he played with Team Thad this summer after playing with the Eagles last summer.

Tweet from Earl Austin Jr: "Just learned through a source that Saint Louis U. has offered 6'8 Soph F Wyatt Yess of Parkway West. Ran with the Gateway 15U this summer." Michael Porter Jr. and Jeremiah Tilmon both played with MOKAN Elite this summer and are looking like top prospects in 2017. ESPN has Porter at #5 and Tilmon at #13 in 2017. http://espn.go.com/college-sports/basketball/recruiting/playerrankings/_/class/2017

I would be.

Montaque Gill-Caesar is a huge get for Mizzou and big time recruit. His signing gives Kim Anderson a top 15 recruiting class and with Tim Fuller and Rob Fulford I don't think they will be hurting for talent. Mizzou and SLU are in very similar positions this upcoming season returning very little production and relying heavily on underclassmen who the fan bases are excited about. Now we just need Kim Anderson and Jim Crews to make magic happen and get the two programs playing every year. A Missouri guy has to understand the huge positive impact of playing that game.

I agree with this and the only thing missing initially you covered in your last sentence. You have to have talent to win at a high level and the past three seasons we have had a lot of talented players. This upcoming team excites me because while we will have growing pains these young kids will be able to play a lot and we could be experiencing the beginning of another nice run similar to 2010 when we relied mostly on underclassmen and juniors Brian Conklin and Kyle Cassity. Having not seen any of the incoming freshmen or enough from the soon to be sophomores, I have no idea what to expect.

I don't know enough to say what our recruiting strategy is or how it should be changed, but based on our recent success and improved facilities I would like to see us land more of our primary targets which we have struggled to do since Crews took over. Looking at our staff, who is sold as a high level recruiter?

How often are we in recruiting battles with the elite programs like UK and KU (Jayson Tatum is the only guy I can think of)? This past year we lost the battles for our primary targets to programs like Xavier and Butler. At some point we have to start winning some of these recruiting battles for our primary targets instead of relying upon underrecruited guys to play above their ability. With three straight tournament appearances and improved facilities, we need to aim higher in my opinion.

Where do the other A-10 schools rank out of curiosity?

I think I heard that X was going through a tough time and finding it difficult to recruit students to X over some of the nearby public schools.

I have not seen the results that make me like Crews' recruiting strategy. We have missed on most of our top targets since he took over.

Does anyone know if we have any interest in 2015 sg Cullen VanLeer from Pacific? I have heard he played really well this summer for Gateway and proved to be one of the top shooters in his class. Next Blake Ahearn?

Based on various quotes and nothing else, I think we will be one of the finalists for Jayson as he seems to be strongly considering the impact of staying home. Fortunately Jayson is a St. Louis kid and plays alongside guys like Tyler Cook and Will Gladson at Chaminade, Tyler Cook, Jordan Barnes, and Xavier Sneed with the Eagles, and with other elite prospects in the various camps he has attended, so he should not be draining too many resources.

Per Ben Weixlmann, 2015 Jimmy Whitt has trimmed his list to Arkansas, Cal, Illinois, Marquette, Oklahoma, SMU, Oklahoma State, Mizzou, and Kansas State. So the ship has officially sailed on that one. I wonder if the coaching staff would consider holding the last scholarship for 2015 and keeping it for the loaded 2016 class or if there is some assumed attrition with the big freshmen class.

Kyle Anderson makes sense based on the combination of size and skill set although he seems to definitely be a 6'9 point guard. We will see if Tatum goes that direction or becomes more of a wing scorer. I am not sure I agree with the Nick Young comparison, he is not the complete player (never averaged more than 2.7 rebounds or 1.5 assists in the NBA) that Tatum appears to be. Looking for comparisons for Kyle Anderson I found Jalen Rose, Lamar Odom, Shaun Livingston, Toni Kukoc, Boris Diaw, and the absolute best case Magic Johnson

I was texting with a friend about this, who is the comparison for Jayson Tatum? LeBron minus the insane athleticism and physicality or Kevin Durant without the lights out shooting ability? I guess in summary, this is a special talent who as my friend said may not have a real nice direct comparison and may be more of a guy that future propspects get compared to.

Nice work A-10!

3-4 years ago a kid from Columbia with St. Louis roots would not have visited SLU? Also, what 2015 players are we in on that are bigger recruits than Jimmy Whitt?

I have heard that SLU is not even in consideration for Jimmy Whitt.

SLU has no chance of signing Jimmy Whitt, move on.

If you are curious why some posters are not posting, just look at the topics that have been discussed over the past three months. There is absolutely nothing besides going around in circles posting about the recruitment of a soon to be junior in high school who will not make a college decision for 15+ months. I think Roy and Pistol stopped posting for other reasons, but if there were meaningful topics to discuss I would imagine they would be back although at some point I would imagine Roy realized having people constantly argue with him on a message board was not a good use of his time and energy.