bsheldon

I couldn't make this game. Anyone have a picture of the bobble head they can post? I too may be interested in purchasing one.

Um...you have the Bills at 24. Ok fine. But, Syracuse at 17??? How is that possible? If your computer hadn't noticed, they have beat every team they have played including the team ranked 3rd on your list. It just makes me question your program a bit.

I fully agree. 22-2 is awesome and winning is winning. But that really wasn't the point of the post. The last 4-5 seasons have been a ton of fun with the program growing and growing and winning more and more. I've loved following the last few main recruiting classes as their careers have blossomed. Last year was truly a special season. This season is setting up to hopefully be even more so. Again it is just a thought I've had in my head for a while that I thought might make for a good discussion.

Shocka is going to have to really do something special. Especially coming off the loss. GW is going to be really fired up for that game. It is their opportunity to not only take 2nd place in conference but get some love on the national scene. They are just now getting some pub as a possible bubble team. A win over VCU pretty much would move them off the bubble and into the brackets. VCU knows it will being staring a loss in the face next Saturday at the Fetz. It could be 3 in a row for them. It will be fun to watch.

Man this is fun. Winning is so much better than losing. Why don't they just do this every year? This is a thought that has been rattling around in my head for a bit. Obviously we are ranked higher and have done a better job so far in conference this season, but purely from a talent level, which team had more? Our only new player that gets time this season is McBroom. While he is a really solid player, I don't think too many coaches would choose him over Mitchell. Then there is the loss of Ellis. Which I' m sure you how often a skill set like that comes along. Not to mention CR (all time games played leader BTW) who was a real solid big man defender and shot blocker. Looking at our run of wins this season, especially 2 of the last 3 games, we are 2 shots away from maybe not even being ranked. We were setting at 19 when we were taken to OT at home by GM. They had the last shot in regulation to win it. Had that fallen, there is no way we would be discussing the possibility of being ranked in the top 10. That would have dropped us a bit. Yesterday's win was impressive by JJ no doubt, but we probably shouldn't have been in that position. Sure, if either one of Loe's or McCall's open 3's fall there in the last minute or so, we would have coasted in. A win is a win, especially on the road in conference and in a tough oversized high school gym and I understand that. No doubt our ranking is deserved this season. But is our talent level better than last year?

I've been away for a bit and recently have done some digging and haven't come up with anything. Who did we sign for the upcoming season? Does anyone know anything about our newest additions?

For those who watched the game--I assume most on here. MO was lucky to have been as close as they were. They definitely had several calls going their way in the second half. Some directly leading to points for them. At one point, I was thinking to myself that their coach has to go the the refs and tell them that it was hard enough to play the 5 guys they are supposed to, they don't need any help.

I had the same thought earlier. You know what is going to be. Huge headline "Mi$$oo loses" with a huge picture of a dejected player or two. And in the bottom right corner will be a 2" x 2" story about the Bills winning.

I'm on board. Dumb the punk. bsheldon

Ignore the haters. This was a great day to be a Billiken fan. Finally. Take it in and enjoy. I texted a ton of people. Many of them responded, yeah, good win, but bummer about Mi$$oo. They didn't do it to be nasty and I resisted the temptation to rub salt into the wounds, but I fell great. SLU the only team in the state left alive in the NCAA's. It has been a long time coming.

Thanks for the link. That is fun reading.

Not to do what we always do at such a positive and good time for the program, but.... Am I the only one dying to see how the local media hadles today's games?

This feels good! It was a long time coming. Great for Conklin and Cassity.

Does anyone know if the Sports Zone on Watson is still showing the Bills games? I am looking for a place to watch the game tomorrow night.

Awesome stuff. Win this and we officially become somebody this season. It has been a long time coming. Go Bills.

Excellent point. Staying in a conference that is regularly talked about as one of if not the best non-big six (and often lately better than one or two of those) conferences really helps crediblity. Now the Bills still have to do their part--win games. I would love to see the bills ranked in the top 25. It will be real tough if we don't have an excellent weekend in Anaheim. THe schedule after that isn;t much to write home about. Although, several of the teams in the top 25 each year pre-conference time play a rather light schedule. We haven't earned that level of respect yet.

Does anyone have any information on when the team is going to hold its first official practice? If I remember correctly RM doesn't like to do anything with Midnight Madness, but has an open practice with a question and answer segment afterwards. I think it is called fan appreciation day or something like that. I missed it last year and want to make it this year. Any word on when it is going to be?

SLUavtr: thanks for the detailed responses about the band. I truly enjoy what you guys do and appreciate it a ton, but I was just trying to make some suggestions for areas that might need improvements. I was venting a bit after watching the Dayton the game, if I sounded as if I were dogging the band, I assure you it was not my intention and I apologize. (as has been mentioned the trumpet solo on the anthem totally drowns out everything else.) The reasons for Larry not being in the rafters are valid and I agree. I never said the kid who does the break activities wasn't any good, its just that he looks like cousin it. If that makes me sound like an old fogey, so be it, its my opinion. I guess I could keep it to myself, but again I was venting a bit--no disrespect meant. For the record I'm no where near 40 yet. Also, I like this kid a bit more than the uber-excited, top 40 DJ sounding, kid from the last couple of years. Pistol: hilarious reply to #20. As far as Jett's inability to guard the dribble, I must in all fairness state that Staten is a stud--one of the top guards out of highschool last year, and Jett really doesn't have the inside shot blocking help behind him that he should. I was really hoping Jett and McCall both looked at guarding Staten as a real opportunity, kind of a statement or a chance to prove a point a bit, based on his credentials. Maybe they did approach it like that and he is just that much better. As far as #16, yeah, I did think of that when it happened, but the guys ont he screen played it up pretty well and seemed to have fun with it. As far as staring is for high school--I agree with that to a point. I am not really talking about the starting lineup as much as during the game itself. Anyone who has ever played any team sport can tell you, you develop a comfort level with team mates as you become familiar with how they play. It the basis for the phrase "teams gelling" or "coming together" or "chemistry" or any other phrase that you will hear uttered by sportscasters at any given moment. We don't seem to have even a vague idea of a regular lineup. At any given time it can be almost any possible comibination of many different players. Pick 5 players as your team and stick with them for a bit--what harm can it do? Sure, still sub guys in a bit here and there before the scheduled breaks to give some rest, but give 5 guys a chance to get familiar with one another. Again, just a suggestion and with the way things are going now... I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel on the season. Heck we are tied for 3rd place in the conference right now, only one game back. But it looks like things are about to get even more ugly in the near future. One point I don't think I mentioned was CS's play. what happened between last season and this? His game improved pretty much all season last year and he was a real good defender, took the ball to the hoop semi-regularly and his shot started to come around just a bit. Others on here have called him a liability, while this is harsh it's hard to argue with. He seems to have had the same off-season training regimine that CR did.

1) What happened to the Slunatics? good turn out last night, but no energy at all. No introduction by Guy--he probably just forgot. No big head signs, no paddles, no drums, no balloons, foil, not even any activity during opposing teams free throws in the secon half. what gives? 2) on the Guy subject...well that has been covered. 3) A disturbing pattern I have noticed over the last few seasons: everytime anyone does the tiniest thing wrong they are immediately yanked from the game. Kind of tough to stay aggressive like that. 4) With the above it is very tough to find a level of comfort with steady lineup. I don't know if there was ever a the same 5 guys together for 5 mintues during the game last night. Line-ups simply seems to be willy-nilly. If you mess up at all, sit and let someone else play until they try a pass that doesn't work and then yank them and try someone else. 5) I have no idea what the purpose of our offense is. Many, many times this season we end up with all 5 players outside of the 3 point arc deep into the set and shot clock. This makes us stupid easy to defend. I am not sure what is going on. 6) The guys all seem unispired and confused. It is like they are just going through the motions and are not having fun at all. It is a bit disturbing to watch. There were about 3 times last night where we grabbed just a bit of momentum and everytime laid an egg on the next pocession. Only once or twice did we score on consecutive pocessions all game. 7) Jett can't guard any quality D1 point guard off of the dribble. Staten had his jock several times last night. 8) Loe has absolutely no offensive post game. 9) CE still can't defend down low. 10) what in the world happened to CR? I guess WR really did mean more to this team than I thought was possible. CR came on real strong late last season. He had many real nice games. This year when we needed him much more, it just isn't there. Maybe it is the hair? 11) Has anyone from the band ever been up in sections 208, 209 or 210? The sound is simply awful. The miked sound beats the real sound by about a full second, so what you get is a garbled mess. 12) Speaking of the band, does noone know that bleaching blue is a bad idea. Our colors are royal blue and white, not sky blue and white. Get some new shirts people. 13) Good to see the anthem sung. Last night was a bit slow, but still nice to have it sung instead of just played. 14) What ever happened to the t-shirt launcher gun the billiken used to have? Get a new one or fix the old one. 15) Can the young guy who announces all of the break activities cut his hair or at least get it the heck out of his face during the promos/activities. It is a bit embarassing. 16) Props to the kiss cam guys last night on finding the 3 dayton guys sitting together--hilarious. 17) Does Larry hughes have his jersey hanging in the rafters? If not, why not? 18) Can we get some new/different activites during the breaks? 19) Sorry to say, but last night may have been the highest attendendance game all season. Decent turn out--I don't know for sure but would guess 6-7000 range. The only other big name program left on our home schedule is Xavier and by the time we get to them we will probably be about 10 games under .500 and not that many people will care. 20) Can anything else go wrong for this program? It truly is tough being a billikens fan.

I have been a casual fan since I graduated over a decade ago. That all changed a few years ago with the new coach and especially the new building. My hopes and dreams seemed to be finally coming to fruition--SLU was getting serious about its basketball program and was finally going to be a player. After last year's wonderful season, I had the money set aside to buy season tickets this year. I had my seats picked out and couldn't wait for the start of season. I was literally counting the days as soon as I walked out of the Fetz after the final loss to VCU last season. Then...well you all know what went down. Needless to say I never purchased those season tickets, and it doesn't look good moving forward either. This debacle has been such a huge disaster for the program. I still can't wrap my head around it. Bottom line, they didn't get my money this season and they won't be getting it next year unless our boys are let back in. I am stubborn enough that I am sure I will give the program another shot, but as is being voiced on here, many people are in the same boat as me and are starting to pull away from a program that doesn't seem to care about itself.

A team that SLU beat will be on sportscenter tonight. Jacksonville beat Florida in Florida's house. This will have a big jump in Jacksonville's rpi. Florida had an rpi of 3 before this game. Again, this might not matter in the grand scheme of things with the way things are going, but I can help but think this way. And if we do get our guys back at semester...who knows. Every little bit helps.

MB73--couldn't agree more. I called the Athletic Department to inquire about the bus ride down to last weekend's game. I was asked if I was a season ticket holder and I said no. She immediately asked why. My answer was the whole mess with what went down at the beginning of the season with our 2 best players. She kind of just sighed and said yeah. I want to ask for refunds for the several hundred dollars worth of Billiken gear that I purchased for this season not only for myslef but for other people. I kind of feel bad about having giving the shirts out to friends and family after how this situation was handled. It was as if I endorsed this mickey mouse operation that threw out all the hope for the present and the future of the program. Already gone is my contribution to the Billiken Club and my season ticket ticket money. If things don't go as we hope, that money will never return to the program. I will always be a fan in my heart and mind, but not with my pocketbook. I'll probably still go to a game or two a year, but not 15+ like I have recently. If January 3rd comes with great news, it still won't undo the atrocity that has already been done, but it will be a band-aid. To me, probably a band-aid large enough to stop the bleeding. I want to be a fan of the program bad enough that I am sure I will forgive, but not forget. I will continue to attend home games, watch the away games on crappy live/delayed streams with audio that doesn't match, take my truck off road to get to the tops of hills to get reception to hear the games on the radio, etc. Again, if.

I have been away from the board for a while and this weekend just kind of snuck up on me. I marked it on the callendar months ago. Anyway, is anyone carpooling or following the bus down to the game on Saturday? I want to go and would have loved to have gotten on the bus, but obviously that isn't going to happen.

If you look at it, it (the computer) basically just chalks up losses for road games and wins for home games. The only exceptions are really weak or really strong teams--I think only 3 times total. This is very similar if not identical to other prediction sites based on rpi. They will all adjust as the season goes on and data is collected. The predictions really don't mean much until at least about 6-8 games are played so some OK comparisons and rankings can start to come together a bit. Last year most of these sites had us going under .500 until we mathematically couldn't and even then it still had us losing most of our games down the stretch in conference. I think they had us for something like 12-16 at the beginning of the year. Again, we greatly improved as the season went along and got stronger as we got into conference play. We had the one bad loss at home to MOST (home losses are much worse than road ones) when KM was hurt which kind of skewed our rankings a bit and took a while to recover from. I like to talk about and discuss preseason rankings that are done by people. The computers are too rigid and don't really take into consideration factors like injuries. X on paper looks great once again, but they are missing 2 of their main horses right now so in reality maybe not that great, for now. The computers just look at wins and losses and where those wins and losses took place--that is it. Again, 10-15 games into the season they start to make a bit of sense, but I wouldn't bet with the rpi predictors even then.

pistol This is perfect and I couldn't agree more. It comes down to my never-ending complaint about this athletic program's unwillingness to commit to anything fully. We build an $80 million arena and pay a big-name coach, only to charge him for cell phone bills, limit recruiting trips, keep an embarrassingly bad PA guy for home games, etc, etc, etc. Half-assing things drives fans, coaches, and recruits away. I can kind of see why he is the PA guy--he has a somewhat well known name in ST. Louis and he rarely makes mistakes when he reads the ads--which apparently the only thing he prepares for, but man he did make a ton of errors the other night. As has already been said numerous times--this isn't the first time he did a poor job.