Duff Man

re: Nesbitt and the cheerleader It didn't happen after Lofton's miss(es). The officials reviewed to see if they should put any fractions of a second back on the clock then the 2 teams went into a handshake line...it was following that when something happened between Nesbitt and an opposing cheerleader You can't - as a SLU basketball player - call a female of the opposing cheerleading team a who-ah. I don't care what she said to you, you can't do that. re: Nesbitt the player Nesbitt is the future, but he just wasn't the impact freshman we were expecting. He hits 3s, he makes good passes, he makes impressive blocks...but he was a role player this year. When they throw the ball out on the wing he doesn't know what to do. He dribbles between his legs and dicks around and maybe makes a move and attempts a fadeaway off the dribble...or turns it over. It just seems like he never really got a feel for how to utilize his skills vs good D1 competition. Given the stakes of the A10 tournament, I'd have wanted Hargrove on the floor in crunch time. Ultimately vs Davison we were outclassed and it didn't matter who was on the floor, so water under the bridge. Maybe make a run in the NIT, but more importantly let's come back next year better than ever. re: the clock issue Actually I did the math backwards...it froze at 3.2...and added .7sec from 1.1 to 1.8 instead of taking off time...we got double effed on that...ball don't lie

Yeah...but the 3rd year guy will pump fake, lose his man, then dunk the ball. The 3rd year guy is the better 5th man in crunch time than the 1st year guy with superior talent. If GJ, FT, YC, and FO are options 1-4...the 5th guy just needs to be someone who can make the most of a good pass.

I'm still bullish on Nesbitt's potential, but I think he's exposed playing 34min in an elimination game against a team we lost to twice in the regular season. Fact: He was 0-8 from the floor and scored zero points in 34min Fact: He fumbled the game winning rebound away and then committed shooting foul with less than 2 seconds on the game clock Fact: He failed to block out the shooter (Lofton) on the 2nd FT and allowed a game winning layup put back that didn't go in Even without the cheerleader he said she said, he totally the pooped bed on the final possession and was 0-8 with zero points in 34 min for the game I'd rather have TJ as my 5th man in crunch time than Nesbitt at this point. I'm not sure why this is a controversial take.

Sup 05. Be that as it may, but he's better than the guy who fumbled away the game winning rebound only to be let off the hook 2021-22 Season Rebounding % - Offensive - Defensive - Total Hargrove 6.8 - 15.2 - 11.1 Nesbitt 6.6 - 12.4 - 9.6 2021-22 A10 conf season Rebounding % - Offensive - Defensive - Total Hargrove 7.0 - 12.9 - 10.1 Nesbitt 6.6 - 10.6 - 8.7

Yeah that's an apples to apples comparison. Maybe you wanna give Nesbitt a pass for the cheerleader thing. Maybe you think his defense won us the game... I think he was a liability who was let off the hook and needs to keep his mouth shut. We can agree to disagree. I still want to see Hargrove on the floor in place of Nesbitt under 5min.

Yeah that may be true but you also were making excuses for Nesbitt with when you said this... "Nobody paid to go or watched the game on tv to see the cheerleader or hear her scream at Nesbitt. If her story is accurate, she obviously sad something to Nesbitt first thus being told to shut up"

If he said anything he was out of line. You guys want to keep making excuses for him go ahead. He was a liability aside from that. He's just not ready for prime time. He basically cost us the game and Lofton raised him and let him off the hook.

Hargrove grabs rebounds. Hargrove finishes with emphatic dunks. I appreciate Nesbitt's raw athleticism but he needs to sit out a few plays.

Just a few weeks ago we were glorifying Jordair for talking trash to an opposing player. Nesbitt was 0-8 from the field and had zero points in 34 minutes and was the one who failed to grab the rebound and then committed the foul. He should not be be taking smack to anyone.

Nesbitt is a liability out there in more ways than 1. He's the last guy who should be talking trash to anyone in any circumstances. Hargrove needs to be on the floor over Nesbitt in crunch time from here on out.

We're legit pissing this game away but it's double aggravating that ESPN+'s feed doesn't let you rewind to show Yuri getting mugged (no call) at the start of this Richmond run. ESPN is trash. The A10 refs are trash. Par for the course. We pay for this feed and we can't get basic rewind functionality.

I put the LSU game above St Joes on the basis of the quality of the opponent and as I said I limited to 1 game per player.. I will say I probably have rewatched that St Joes game more than any other in recent history because my 2 and a half year old son really enjoyed watching "the game with the hawk".

Jett was a combo guard not a pure PG. That season he was playing the MJ guard.

Health is the biggest factor. Yuri's not even halfway to 1,000. He's been on an amazing clip these past few weeks but he's also 1 freak landing/collision away from missing extended time. Even a concussion would seriously damage his prospects of getting to 1,000. Realize he's going to have a target on him and increasingly teams are going to try and punish him when he drives to the basket. He's a warrior for sure, but even the hardest players get hurt sometimes. If/when he gets to 700 next season, then you start looking at Bobby Hurley's record.

This post topic is best Billikens point guard ever. Why would we factor in stats from another team? I didn't ignore Yuri's improvement. Reading comprehension is hard. YOU chose to ignore the part where I said H Waldman gets bonus points for being the addition that got the Bills into the dance for the first time in 37 years. He was not the best player on that team, but the team the year before was 12-17 (1-9 in conference). With H Waldman they became a legit sensation locally and were selling out their hockey area venue. It would be a more fair comp if Yuri had his own Claggett in Javonte Perkins - and we might have to wait another year to see Yuri go dancing - but it might work out that Perkins' absence causes Yuri to raise his game to a level this season that he might not have otherwise. If he does drag this Billikens team into the dance, he'll be the GOAT for sure.

Assuming Perkins comes back next year, the team will be less reliant on Yuri to score. I'm really not worried about the stats. I just want to see Yuri keep getting better. It's going to be tough to ever have another game like last night, but if he can just keep the turnovers down, keep the assists up, make a couple 3s a game and make the defense respect his outside shot, and have the poise in crunch time (even when he's been shouldering the load and fatigue is a factor) to make the winning plays game in game out - he's going to take this team places.

We're seriously comparing the 31 games H played as a bench warmer on arguably the greatest team not to win the NCAA tournament to Yuri's freshman season as if that's apples to apples comparison? Please those of you too young to have seen H please stop discussing him.

It's tough to compare H to Yuri - I just think of them both as on their own tier. Yuri can do more things than H could when it comes to dribble penetration. H was more of a scorer than Yuri over Yuri's entire career thus far, but H also would never have had a game like last night - and H arrived as a seasoned transfer while Yuri is still evolving as a player. Stats don't tell the whole story, but here are there cumulative per game stats... H Waldman 59 games, 30 MPG, 10.8 PPG, 5.0 APG, 2.1 SPG, 2.5 RPG, 2.0 TPG, 3.2/7.2 FG, .443 FG% 2.2/5.3 3P, .420 3P%, 2.2/2.7 FT, .796 FT% Yuri Collins 71 games, 30.9 MPG, 7.1 PPG, 6.6 APG, 1.6 SPG, 3.2 RPG, 3.1 TPG, 2.5/6.1 FG, .405 FG%, 0.5/1.5 3P, .327 3P%, 1.7/2.5 FT, .678 FT% H spent his 2 seasons playing PG for teams where he was the 3rd or 4th leading scorer. His role was consistent. Yuri spent 2 seasons where he was not much of a scorer at all as the team had plenty of other options, but now in his 3rd year he's the 2nd leading scorer and ultimately the guy with the ball in his hands on the final shot. IF Yuri can continue taking and making more 3s, and continue to evolve his all around game over the rest of his career - and most importantly lead the Bills to the NCAA tournament - he'll clearly be above H Waldman in the PG power rankings.

I did ultimately limit to 30 point games. If Has had made over half his FTs he'd have been on the list.

Limiting to 1 game per player, in games the Billikens won, since 1985 Roland Gray @ New Mexico 3/23/1989 (W 66-65) - 34 points, 11 rebounds, 12-22 FG, 5-9 3P, 5-7 FT Anthony Bonner @ Loyola 3/1/1990 (W 102-86 OT) - 45 points, 20 rebounds, 5 assist, 19-30 FG, 7-7 FT Larry Hughes @ Marquette 1/24/1998 (W 71-62) - 40 points, 13-22 FG, 5-9 3P, 9-10 FT Jordair Jett @ Rhode Island 1/7/2014 (W 59-58) - 31 points 10-18 FG, 2-2 3P, 9-13 FT Javonte Perkins vs LSU 11/28/2020 (W 85-81) - 32 points, 10-18 FG, 4-8 3P, 5 assists, 8-8 FT Yuri Collins @ George Mason 2/2/2022 (W 92-90 2OT) - 35 points, 11-24 FG, 3-7 3P, 13 assists, 5 steals, 5 rebounds, 10-10 FT

Mitchell, Jett, and McCall were all combo guards. None of them were as pure of PGs as H or Yuri...but they were all Billiken HOF caliber combo guards. Lisch and Goodwin were scoring guards who would play PG out of necessity given the makeup of the roster. There's no wrong answers, these are all Billiken greats. If you're just talking pure pass first point guard skills, I think it's H and Yuri and then everyone else....

I'd also like anyone with more behind the scenes intel beyond what was printed in the Post-Dispatch to chime in on how things went off the rails that year. The shoe dropped on Upchurch in mid August and I think it just put the entire program in a bad spot headed into the season. Injuries were also a factor. I know Bonner had disciplinary issues with Grawer - and obviously they worked it out but in the meantime they lost games. The thing that kills me is that they made the MCC finals and lost to Xavier in 1986, 1987 and 1991 - but the 3 year run when they should have been peaking w/ Bonner/Douglass/Gray - they twice lost to single digit win teams in the opening round of the conference tournament.

Looking back at Grawer's tenure, they lost to Xavier in the MCC tournament final in 1986 (8 point loss), 1987 (12 point loss), and 1991 (16 point loss). SLU finished 2nd in the regular season MCC standings in 1986 and 1989. So 1986 was the only year when they were the clear cut 2nd best team - but they went 18-12. This was when Douglass and Gray were freshmen and Bonner was a SR at Vashon. In 1986-87 the MCC had 2 teams 8-4 and 2 teams 7-5 including SLU. IF they had just avoided road losses at sub .500 Oral Roberts and Butler, they'd have won the MCC outright (9-3) instead of being tied for 3rd and would have been 22-6 headed into the MCC tournament (where they lost to Xavier in the final) instead of 20-8. The 1988 team was undone by the Upchurch fiasco and they were just a .500 team finishing 3rd in the MCC and lost to Detroit in the 1st round of the MCC tournament. The 1988-89 team (Douglass/Gray SR year, Bonner's JR year) finished 2nd in the MCC in the regular season behind Evansville, but got smoked by Xavier in the MCC semis and 3rd place Xavier went on to win the auto-bid. Xavier (led by Tyrone Hill) ended up a 14-seed and lost to eventual national champion Michigan by 5 in the first round. That 1989 team was Grawer's best chance and ultimately they were undone by road losses to Dayton and Detroit. Also they had single digit road losses at SMS, Colorado, Memphis St and Xavier plus a 3 point loss vs top 10 Iowa on a neutral court - if they had won 2 of those resume builders and avoided the 2 bad conference losses, they'd have tied Evansville (or finished 1st if one of the resume builders was the game at Xavier) and would have been 26-4 heading into the MCC tournament instead of 22-8 and even more importantly they could have potentially avoided Xavier until the final... The 1990 team was undone by injuries/illness and suspensions and fell apart in the opening round of the MCC tournament, losing to Loyola. The MCC got 2 bids in Bonner's JR and SR seasons. Evansville (at large) and Xavier (auto-bid) made the dance in 1989 while Xavier (at-large) and Dayton (auto-bid) made it in 1990. It was tough to make the dance as an at-large but it was possible. Grawer's teams never finished 1st in the conference regular season and only once made the conference tournament final in a year when they finished 2nd in the regular season - and that team was 18-12. There was clearly a scenario where they could have made it in 1987 or 1989 - but they just didn't take care of business on the road against the bottom feeders of the MCC.

No Footes and No Duff and they shot 1-11 from 3. No mention of either in the post article. It's almost like post dispatch mailed it in as much as the team. Digging further, Duff had been out with mono and/or other injuries for a while. Footes was suspended for final games of the season that included Bonner's 45 point game at Loyola, Senior Night vs Marquette, and a 87-83 loss at Evansville to close out the regular season.