cgeldmacher

In the past and now, the A-10 is a better situation for SLU than the Valley. I cheer for Valley teams in my never ending desire to cheer for every underdog, unless they're playing SLU, to win in the tournament. However, the only thing that the Valley has going for it with SLU is location. Even with the recent departures, the A-10 will have consistently better top end teams than the Valley. The A-10 gets more top 100 recruits than the Valley every year. The A-10 gets more teams in the tournament (nearly) every year. The A-10 seems to get more media coverage (east coast bias acknowledged). The A-10 can be a final destination for a coach, as opposed to the Valley which only serves as a coach's opportunity to try to land a big paycheck at another school. Finally, for those saying that playing games out east does not help recruiting, I will throw this out: does Reggie Agbeko, who is from Buffalo, even know who we are if we played in the Valley? I'm not saying I know that answer to this, but we have to admit that it is a possibility that it did play a part in his consideration of SLU. Perhaps those awful trips to St. Bonaventure may have actually helped SLU for once. I doubt he ever considered going to Wichita State to play his college career in the Missouri Valley Conference.

Nice info. Thanks.

I love that I have discovered the edit function to correct my oops comments. I realized my mistake right away, but you replied before I could correct it. How about this, does anyone know if Berry and AG went head to head last year and, if so, how it went?

Does anyone know when the high school basketball schedules come out? I would love to see if Oakville plays anyone with other D-1 commits.

What you all are dreading is what all big programs go through. More success means more anxiety when we have to replace players. In years past, having five new guys replace five departing guys was a hopeful proposition. Now, since the five guys that are being replaced have been so successful, we worrying about whether the five new guys can do it. That, gentleman, is a sign of progress, whether we fret about it or not.

If he is that good at math, we probably would have been better off with him taking those 10 credit hours at SLU and getting A+'s. Oh, well. Sounds like he will get good grades regardless.

I was being serious. Which building in that article did you think was so historically or architecturally significant that it absolutely needed to be left standing at the expense of SLU building its campus? The Olympia Apartments? There are twenty buildings that look exactly like it if you drive up and down Lindell. The article didn't show enough of the Vesper Buick Building to get a good idea. Most of the rest were row houses, which, again, you can find hundreds of examples of all around St. Louis which look exactly like the ones in the pictures. The Marina building, by the photo, appeared to house a Wolworth's and had some apartments above it (how could we possibly tear that down?). The Locust Livery Stable was a brick building painted white that was about the most mundane looking building I've ever seen. And, the Pevely building, and let's not forget the delivery truck garage that was pictured as being part of that complex, had largely burned down before SLU bought it and tore it down. So, yes, I stand by my statement. There was not one building pictured in the article that was so unique that it required saving. I'm sorry, but I don't want my city to be filled with empty and decaying "historically significant" buildings that no one wants to use for anything.

BTW, off the wall, crazy thought here, but doesn't Crews have a home in Indianapolis. He was just the national coach of the year runner up, and a team with some decent talent and one that is going to play in the Big East needs a coach. I don't think he would entertain leaving, but . . . . anyone think we have reason for concern?

1000000+ I find it hilarious that the teams that got in instead of us are going to suck in two years. Butler and Creighton, when McDermott is gone, will be huge regrets for the Catholic 7. I'm not convinced, now, that the A-10 can't be better at the top than the new Big East.

I didn't see a building in that article that I would deem "worthy of saving." I may have a different take than some on this topic, but I think that when it comes to preservation, we have to save the really important ones and tear down the rest. St. Louis has far too many abandoned and disgusting looking buildings that can't be torn down, because someone attaches a "historically significant" label to it. A prime example are the delapidated warehouses that are between I55/I44 and the river downtown. They finally tore down the worst one a few months ago, but they were protected for years as some sort of landmark. They're "warehouses" for Christ sake. Metz, I love your posts, but I cannot disagree more on this one. Even if someone is not a Biondi supporter, they have to acknowledge that he did an amazing job of creating a campus out limited space in a (formerly) run down area. That doesn't happen if the school's worried about knocking down a run down old home that looked like every other home on the same block 60 years ago. The Grand Center area has made an amazing comeback since my days at SLU (the 90's) and SLU's campus is safer, much larger, and much more beautiful than those days because Biondi tore down those buildings.

Our offer list seems unusually large. Does anyone know if this is normal procedure? Is this the way it was under RM? Is this how it is done by most schools?

I don't know if anyone mentioned this already, but according to Rivals, Mizzou offered Roby. It's nice to get one that they were after, as well as Arkansas, Wake Forest, Alabama, Auburn, LSU, etc. http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/recruiting/player-Davell-Roby-120691

JJ is already outstanding at taking the ball to the rim with teams not going out of their way to guard his perimeter shot. Imagine if they had to respect his outside shot and guard him more closely on the perimeter.

Three times. How many of those wins over Butler does JPM care about when considering whether he wants to pay in the NBE or the diminished A-10 - Zero.

I disagree that this is an explanation for why SLU has not yet been invited to the BE. I sincerely doubt that the guys working on splitting Fox into two companies are the same guys who are responsible for content on Fox Sports 1. The whole company does not shut down or, to exagerate less, it doesn't stop taking care of its business, just because there is a shake up at the top. If the ten teams currently in the BE want to add two teams, it will happen regardless of what is happening with Fox. If they don't want to add two teams, or if they want to take their time to consider whether they want to do so, there will be nothing that Fox or SLU can do about it.

Larry Hughes?

This is my irrational, before I calm down reaction, but . . . There won't be a team that I will be cheering harder against than Creighton. I hope they decline to DePaul like standards and make the new BE folks sincerely regret their decision. I've said this before, but I think that Creighton's success is smoke and mirrors. They win a lot of game in the MVC, while at the same time they don't even win the league most years, and walk away with a reputation like they are a Gonzaga, Xavier, or Bulter.

That number will go up when McClemore gets into the League and if Otto Porter's home town is considered St. Louis and if B.J. Young ends up on an NBA team.

Does Chaminade have a message board where its supporters obsess over their recruiting just like we do here?

On that note, it was interesting looking at the final rankings from last year. We were 16. The only new BE team ahead of us was Marquette who was 11. Behind us, but still in the top 25 were Georgetown and Creighton (new BE) and VCU and LaSalle (A-10). Each league had three teams finish in the top 25 and all six were from 11 to 25. I'm not arguing that the bottom of the A-10 is as good as the bottom of the new BE, but the top of each sure finished rather evenly last year.

Weren't we supposed to send formal notice to the A-10 in June or July this year to be able to opt out of the A-10 and get hit with less of an exit fee. Does anyone recall that date? I'm quite concerned that we haven't heard anything about this recently.

Pushing the tempo to get easy baskets works if your team has two qualities: athleticism and the intelligence to know when to pull back if it's not there. I think that this team has both in sufficient quantities to try running a little bit more. The purpose of the motion offense is to create the maximum number of opportunities in a possession to get a good look. The motion offense creates opportunities for shots, but doesn't force anything. IMO, teams that run a disciplined motion offense (i.e. the Billikens) would be naturally better at trying to break out off a defensive rebound, because they're more accustomed to turning down bad looks than other teams (they do it multiple times in a possession in the motion offense). The purpose of running off of a missed basket is the same, to create a quality look, which can compliment the motion offense. I think this group is athletic enough and smart enough to add this to their repertoire and would love to see it incorporated more often.

I like Glaze, not because he is going to a reliable ton of minutes guy, but because he probably shames the rest of the players into playing harder. I would guess at practice, the coaches say to some of the guys when they are slacking "This is why Grandy is starting and not you," trying to get more effort out of them. I think that best thing that Grandy could do in the offseason is to shoot free throws until his fingers bleed. If he can get his FT average up to, let's say, 65%, he could be effective as a guy whose hustle draws fouls against valuable players on the other team.

I liked what Taj said. Rather than look at who might be starting, I prefer to look at who can replace or improve on what we had. If we assume our returning guys all improve their games even slightly, which is a reasonable expectation each year in the college game, then we should be better if we can simply replace what we lost. If we improve on what we lost, we could be that much better. Loss #1 - CR - I am confident that RA, or extra minutes from an improved GG or JM, will cover what CR gave us. This replacement has the greatest chance of actually being an improvement to the team. Loss #2 - CE - This is much tougher. I loved CE's game, but when his shot wasn't there, his presence on the court was almost a detriment rather than a positive on the offensive end. On defense, he was an average defender whose ability to put himself in position and flop properly helped us grab a lot of charge calls. The best case scenario is that TL can give us some of what CE gave us. I just wouldn't count on the occasional game where CE would go off from behind the 3. Plus, keep in mind that CE's minutes can be effectively replaced by someone who doesn't have his exact game. This is where RA, GG, & JM can help. Basically, the best case is that two of the four (JM, GG, RA, TL) step up and give us what we need to replace CR & CE, or give us better. Loss #3 - KM - IMO, KM gave us less last year than he had previously. Still, his minutes will be hard to replace. If we can get close to that caliber of play from a combination of AM and MC, along with improvements from MM, JJ, and JB, we'll be back to even from our guard play. All in all, the great thing about the guys we have coming in is that the coaching staff has depth to choose from to find replacement minutes this season. We don't have to rely on one particular guy stepping up. At each position, we have at least two guys to look to come in and play well and we could be better than last year. Thank you coaches.

Question: If MM or JJ has an injury that puts them out for part of the season, who runs the point when the other one is getting a rest, or in foul trouble? I am very happy with this recruiting class. Crews and the coaching staff came through on the primary concern that many of us had. However, the above questions still bothers me. Am I forgetting someone? Can MC handle the ball at point? Are we confident enought in JB to take this responsibility?