Duff Man
-
Posts
1,030 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
4
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by Duff Man
-
-
The point here being if RM's going to grant him that many minutes he's got to do something with them more than pass up open shots and playing timid.
KC just needs to play smart. Take the open shot. If it's not falling, drive and kick to guys who can make them. That's his game.
He had a lot of dreadful shooting games last year. If he's shooting poorly his minutes have to be cut, period. Whoever takes his minutes will need to match his defensive intensity, cause that's just how RM rolls.
-
Le
Lets revisit this topic in 8 games and see how we feel then.
fixed.
6-2 would be great. 5-3 is acceptable. 4-4 means we're in trouble.
No bad losses.
-
Yeah, but I thought he graduated.
Matt Dickey Voted MBB Preseason Player of the Year
http://www.bigsouths...TCLID=205314343
UNC Asheville senior Matt Dickey (Trussville, Ala.) has been voted the 2011-12 Big South Conference Men's Basketball Preseason Player of the Year by the League's Head Coaches and media panel, it was announced today at the Conference's annual Basketball Tip-Off Media Luncheon at the Renaissance Suites Hotel in Charlotte, N.C.
-
If anyone would like to play editor and pick another shot that should have been featured...
-
Just as a point of reference, SLU beat St. Ambrose by a score of 61-47 two years ago. St. Ambrose actually had the lead in that game with about 7 minutes remaining before the Billikens finally pulled away. SLU ended up winning 23 games that season with a squad that was much younger and had much less depth. And to be honest, there were just as many people sh*tting a brick about that game as there are doing the same for this past one.
The difference between that game and this game (besides Screech's hair), is that in 2009 freshman combined for 103 minutes while in 2011 we had just 9 (all from Manning).
-
My general observation is that aside from Evans and Conklin, everyone is struggling to find his role.
Kwamain is just not as sharp as he needs to be as the leader of the offense. He had a 3 go halfway down then out, missed an uncontested layup (that Evans put back in), and another driving layup that just didn't drop (on one of those 'screw it, I'm scoring on this possession' drives). He was frustrated with himself, his teammates, and the game in general.
Cassity had a dreadful shooting game. He had more missed FGs (9) than Jett and McCall's combined FG attempts (8). I applaud him for taking the open shots, but if the shot isn't dropping he can't be on the floor for 30 minutes.
Loe might be a great shooter in practice, and it's not like we have a great alternative at the 5, but he needs to let the game come to him and work for high percentage shots.
Jett had an alright game. He's playing under control. Needs to shoot more, especially when KM is on the bench.
McCall was like an invisible man for most of the game. Just one 3pt attempt. He needs to find his role as a scorer.
Ellis is playing himself out of the rotation. Glaze would be a better rebounder and Barnett a better shooter. Something's got to give...
Remekun is what he is. A reserve big man who can block shots and make a FG once in a while, but does not possess the basketball IQ to play a major role.
A pretty crappy performance overall, but I'm not going to be alarmed until we actually lose a game. Exhibitions are about evaluating players more than anything else. If Kwamain can shake off the rust, and one of our centers can step up and play quality D, everything else will fall into place.
-
This poll isn't asking what you'd prefer to watch, it's quantifying the perceived value of the respective achievements. If you don't care about baseball (or if you're a troll who doesn't care about Billiken basketball) then you might as well just sit this out and let the adults talk.
In my lifetime...
The Cardinals have made the World Series 6 times (including this year), and have won twice
while
The Billikens have made the NCAA tournament 4 times, twice advancing to the second round.
No way I'm giving up a WS (which only goes to 1 team every year, or nobody in 1994), for something that 64+ teams have achieved every year since the mid-80s. I can see if you're too young to remember the 90s teams why you might feel differently, but it shows lack of confidence that you'd sacrifice a WS champioship for a measly first round tourney exit. Ditto for 2nd round appearances. Been there - done that. There's no reason to think we can't get back to that spot next 2 years.
I think you have to hold out for at least a Sweet 16 birth - which they've never achieved in the modern (no matter how you define it) era. A Sweet 16 allows you to soak in the national spotlight and swell the bandwagon for the better part of a week.
On the flip side, you'd have to effing crazy not to trade a WS title for a spot in the Final 4.
There are few things I wouldn't trade for a Billiken final 4
That's what the real poll should be...where is the line drawn...would you trade a kidney? An arm? Leg? ********? First born?
-
By comparison, many believe that Tony LaRussa's best year coaching the Cardinals was the year that we lost Darryl Kile.
I get what you're saying...but it's unlikely LaRussa could have pulled it off under D1 rules...Chuck Finley would have had to sit out a year before pitching, and it's unlikely Andy Benes would have remained academically eligible after leaving the team.
Paul Westhead/LMU/Gathers would be the better example.
-
Winning 20 games is not going to get us $hit. We won 20 in Soderberg's last year and got nothing, then won 23 and didn't get in the NIT. I want back to back 25+ win seasons.
Here are the actual regular season records against D1 opponents for those seasons.
2007: 18-12 (8-8 against a relatively soft A10)
2010: 19-10
The 2010 team could have easily won
vs Mo State (w/ KM, Cody)
@ BG (w/ Cody)
@ GW (if we hadn't pissed it away)
vs X (if WR had shot better than 2-9 from the stripe)
and been 23-6 (13-3, tied for 2nd in the A10 with X and Richmond)
re: having 3 good players
More important that having 3 good players, is having ZERO bad players on the floor. That's what separates the good teams from the bad. Good teams put 5 players on the floor who know their roles and can efficiently execute on both ends. The 2010 team had KM, WR, and CE - but would piss away possessions when JJ made ill advised passes to CR.
-
Yes, 20 wins does not get us into the NCAA unless of course we win A-10 Tourney.
20 will probably not get us into the NIT, either (if we go to CBI or that other little league tourney, then we can get more than 20, OK, fine, but that is not a solid representation of the season if that happens).
BIG THING IS, you say, after 11 wins last season, we are going to the NCAA's? WOW.
We've done it before, we'll do it again.
(regular season W-L)
1992-93: 11-16
1993-94: 22-4 (NCAA Tournament)
...
1996-97: 10-17
1997-98: 20-9 (NCAA Tournament)
-
After SLU becomes the first team since Bobby Knight's 1976 Indiana team to go undefeated en route to a National Championship, KM will be the 3rd player taken in the 2013 NBA draft.
-
skip to 1:00
yeah, it's an all-star game where nobody is playing D - but at least it gives you some idea of his current* physique
*as of last summer
-
RM was the best one to advise him on his potential future in the NBA. Surprised, he didn't bring in one of his friends like Karl or Nelson to talk to WR and his dad to inject some reality into their thinking.
It wouldn't have made any difference. There was no getting through to them. They suffer from selective hearing and selective memory.
Michael Jordan could personally lecture Willie about how he's got to work harder and polish his game if he wants to make it, but that advice goes out the window the second some blogger casually includes Willie in a mock draft.
Any opinion telling them what they want to hear trumps anyone that dares to tell them the truth. The draft party is just the latest example of this.
-
This thread is dedicated to simple speculation as to what player will step on the floor next year. There is no doubt that his season was disappointing, and there have been several reasons posited to explain this season, such as illnesses, etc. There really may be no reason to explain his season, there is a reason why we have all heard the term "sophomore slump," kids sometimes just get lazy as sophomores. He walked into SLU and put up double digits without any work, so who can blame him for expecting it to continue.
Also, who thinks he will bulk up? He was around 240, and he did not look muscular at all, he could easily walk in at 250 or more next year. However, it seems like Majerus is interested in trying CE as a small forward. Does anyone think that experiment is done? Under Majerus' strength and conditioning approach, could CE really be expected to put on 10-20 lbs of muscle?
While he certainly was disadvantaged without KM breaking down defenses and WR drawing double teams, I think his sophomore slump mostly boiled down to lack of shooting reps in the offseason (due to his myriad of ailments) - and the subsequent lack of confidence after the shaky start.
CE is a finesse 4 whose value derives from his ability to shoot from range. No amount of weightlifting is going to change that. He needs to continue to play hard on D (as he did last year), but if the shot isn't falling, his role on this team is dramatically reduced.
-
at least Willie got some national publicity out of it...
-
Hopefully he shows enough to get a late second round look from a team that needs a big.
fixed.
There's no way he's going in the first round - even in a weak draft - although it's certainly possible that he impresses a GM enough to take a 2nd round chance on his raw athleticism.
There's always a market for athletic power forwards who can play D and rebound, but the established guys also tend to play forever. Willie needs a bit of luck (get drafted, hope someone gets hurt), and also needs to transform (and maybe working out in a professional environment will help) into gritty role player who works his ass off.
-
-
If we were in the market for a coach which one of these young coaches would you hire and why?
I'd go with the coach who is 116-24 including 10-3 in the NCAA tournament over a guy who coached his team to a 4th place finish in the CAA (behind Hofstra) this year.
-
because of the poor way that rickma handles everything about the program except hands on basketball, the likes of this guy (I have no idea who this warmann guy is) and other local media, second tier boosters, casual fans, ancillary slu employees, area mid town businesses, local metro high school coaches and other potential recruit influences, have this perception. and while sure, rick is gearing up for a couple of good seasons on the court, he has done nothing to actually build the program beyond cream his own recruits to give himself that potential couple of year run.
what is likely going to happen, is he gets his two year run, retires and then the program will quickly regress because he didnt do the other things in program building to sustain his success. of course nothing will be his fault. and the poor followup walks into a firestorm.
too many of you are too close to realize that if the outsiders have this kind of a perception, there is a problem. and while short term rickma can indeed, "show this guy". long term i am afraid we are are going to fall hard.
Isn't advancing to the NCAA tournament in and of itself the single greatest factor in 'growing the program'?
Are all the local media hacks really going to hold their anti-Majerus grudges against the next (more media friendly) coach?
-
Perhaps your perception of Dayton's home performance is obscured by the fact that they were shittier than usual this year, and that they've dropped 2 in a row to SLU. They'd actually won 14 of 15 home conference games heading into last year's senior night.Because BG's teams did not do so well at home either. Had they ONLY played bad on the road, then I'd agree. BG's teams, though, had similar conference records at both home and on the road. For instance, this year they were 4 wins and 4 loses at home and they were 3 wins and 4 losses on the road. In 2008, they similarly were 5-3 at home and 3-5 on the road. I'd suggest that their 4 -4 conference home record this year did more to hurt their season than their conference road record.
Gregory's Flyers in the A10 '07-11
2007 H: 6-2 A: 2-6 (2 A10 Bids)
2008 H: 5-3 A: 3-5 (3 A10 Bids)
2009 H: 8-0 A: 3-5 NCAA R32 (3 A10 Bids)
2010 H: 6-2 A: 2-6 (3 A10 Bids)
2011 H: 4-4 A: 3-5 (~2-3 A10 Bids)
5-year totals
H: 29-11 .725
A: 13-27 .325
Those home/away splits are hardly 'similar'.
Grawer's Bills in the MCC '87-91
1987 H: 5-1 A: 2-4 (1 MCC Bid)
1988 H: 4-1 A: 1-4 (1 MCC Bid)
1989 H: 6-0 A: 2-4 (2 MCC Bids)
1990 H: 6-1 A: 3-4 (2 MCC Bids)
1991 H: 6-1 A: 2-5 (1 MCC Bid)
5-year totals
H: 27-4 .871
A: 10-21 .323
Note the conference road winning percentages are nearly identical.
As to the conferences, I take you at your word that the MCC got 2 teams in the Tourney in 1989. Not saying it never happened but instead that would have been the exception rather than the rule.
Would you take the Internet's word for it?
Technically, it never actually went down as you describe it. Here's what actually happened...Grawer-led teams finished second to Xavier and went to the NIT while Xavier went to the Tourney. Not all that uncommon.
1986: SLU finished 2nd to X in MCC, X beat SLU 74-66 in MCC Final, no NIT for SLU
1987: SLU finished 4th in MCC, 3rd place X beat SLU 81-69 in MCC Final, SLU advanced to 2nd round of NIT
1988: SLU finished 3rd in MCC, lost to last place Detroit in MCC Quarterfinal, 1st place X wins MCC Tourney, no NIT for SLU
1989: SLU finished 2nd to Evansville in MCC, 3rd place X beats SLU 79-56 in MCC Semifinal then beat Evansville for the automatic bid, Evansville received an at-large bid having won the regular season and finishing 2nd in the conference tournament, SLU placed 2nd in NIT
1990: SLU finished 3rd in MCC, lost to 6th place Loyola in MCC Quarterfinal, 2nd place Dayton beat 1st place X for the automatic bid, X received an at-large bid having won the regular season and finishing 2nd in the conference tournament, SLU placed 2nd in NIT
1991: SLU finished 3rd in MCC, 1st place X beat SLU 81-65 in MCC Final, no NIT for SLU
In order to make the dance, SLU either needed to win the conference tournament (which they never did - losing to X every time they got close), or they had to win the regular season title (which they never did - because they dropped too many road games to bad teams) then win a game in the MCC tourney against a crappy team (which we couldn't do in '88 or '90 when we actually had good teams).
You're thinking of 1992 (SMS didn't join the MVC until 90-91 and Spoon went to SLU in 92-93). SIUC beat Tubby Smith's Tulsa twice in the regular season, then lost to them by 3 in the MVC semis. Tough break, but if you look at their schedule that year, they played a cream puff schedule - only had 3 games against quality opponents and lost all 3 (getting swept by SMS and losing 99-98 at Evansville), not to mention they were one of the 5 teams to lose to SLU that year. I don't know about unfair, but they were definitely unlucky.I remember some very good Rich Herren SIUC teams that went to the NIT b/c Spoon brought his Bears to town and worked his magic in the Valley Tourney. Very unfair period of time for mid-majors.
If by 3 to 4, you mean 2 to 3.In constrast now with the A10, we have had 3 to 4 teams get into the Tourney each year.
See above. Grawer didn't just lose to X. He lost first round MCC tourney games to BAD teams in 1988 and 1990 when we had Bonner.Gregory has taken his Flyers to the Dance (Brad did not and RM has not yet) but the other years when BG did not make the Tourney, I would suggest it was because of their mediocre conference records (both home and away) and their failures down the stretch (losses to several teams) as opposed to constantly losing to the same team like Grawer did. To me, that's a big difference.
I will concede it's probably not fair to Grawer - who revived a comatose program and actually made players better over their careers - to put him in league with Brian Gregory - who inherited an NCAA caliber team and consistently failed to develop his players into something better.
-
Gregory's failure to develop his players is where the Grawer comparison fails - agreed - and yes, the Billikens have thumped them at home on Senior Night 2 years in a row - which never happened under Grawer - BG has had better recruits, yet none of them have developed into NBA players - no doubt Grawer did better with the hands he was dealt
BG's problems are not that UD cannot win on the road or that they cannot get past a particular program such as Xavier.
How are those not BG's problems?
2007: 2-6 on the road in the A10
lost to X in A-10 quarterfinals
2008: 3-5 on the road in the A10
lost to X in the A10 quarterfinals
2009: 3-5 on the road in the A10
lost to Duq in A10 quarterfinals
received at-large bid toNCAAs as 11-Seed
2010: 2-6 on the road in the A10
lost to X in A10 quarterfinals
won NIT
2011: 3-5 on the road in the A10
-
Matt Dickey and UNC Asheville were the first team to qualify for the dance.
-
The field expanded to 64 in 1985. Grawer's best teams (the Gray/Douglas/Bonner years) were after the field expanded.Grawer missed out on the NCAA tourney because only 48 teams were eligible then - today he would have gone at least twice and maybe one other time.
-
Stop repeating the lie that the MCC was a one-bid league. It was for a while in the 80s (for good reason), but Evansville received an at-large bid the year we had our best team (1988-89). We could have gotten one too if we didn't 1) fail to get a single quality win away from Kiel 2) lose those games at Dayton and Detroit and 3) lose by double digits to X in the MCC tourney semis.As to X, yes, Grawer/SLU could never seem to get past them. Sure, we had a few wins over X but I'd say X probably won 3 out of 4. Unfortunately, the MCC was a one (1) bid conference and we were number 2.
I'm not faulting Grawer for failing to win in the early 80s. I'm faulting him for failing to get to the dance even once during the window of opportunity he had in the late 80s. You don't think those teams should have done better thanStill, I don't think I's say that Grawer failed to get the most out of his talent like Gregory does. Not all Grawer teams had guys like Bonner, Gray, Douglas and Newberry each year. Instead, we had guys like Rahim Al Matiin, Tony Brown, Jim Roder...
1988: 14-13 regular season (5-5 T3rd MCC), lost to Detroit (6-22, 2-8 MCC) 66-63 in MCC 1st round
1989: 22-8 regular season (8-4 2nd MCC), lost to X 79-56 in the MCC semis, NIT runner-up
1990: 17-9 regular season (9-5 3rd MCC), lost to Loyola 67-58 in MCC 1st round, NIT runner-up
I don't really recall the 2 point loss to UD you are referring to
Do you remember us losing to Grambling St at home in 1987?
but a 2 point loss to a 12 win team is not the same as a 20 point blowout to a 12 win team, at home on Senior night, when it also is to a team that you handled rather easily a month earlier.
The comparison doesn't correlate game for game, but in each case you have a coach who is by all accounts 1) a nice guy who 2) advanced the program in the right direction (i.e. boosted attendance), and 3) got a free pass for underachieving from fans who can't see past 1) and 2).
Observations on Tenn State game
in Billikens.com Main Board
Posted
I was most encouraged by the solid play of Eliis and Remekun.
We're so much more suited to take on the big dogs if we get significant contributions from those 2.