cgeldmacher
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Posts posted by cgeldmacher
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I thought that the deadline for SLU, Dayton, or otherwise to give notice to the Atlantic 10 about withdrawing was coming up. My recollection was that giving notice prior to said deadline would save a million or more dollars. Does anyone know when that deadline falls?
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Look, I know there's something to be said for making the players around you better. But when the best compliment you can give a guy is that he played with other good players, that's a warning sign to me. If Strawberry were good enough to play for SLU, he would be committed here. The staff watched him play with the team, brought him in for a visit and clearly needed a point guard. If they STILL passed then i'm going to trust them.
I'm not about saving scholarships. Given roster turnover injuries, I think it's too risky a practice. But I'm certainly NOT for taking players who are not good enough to play at this level. That will only turn out poorly.
I understand the worry about the 2013 class, I really do. We only filled 3/5 scholarships and missed on some promising transfers. But I sincerely believe that the 2013 recruiting has gone fine and the true class we need to worry about is 2014. We have our name in that hat for LOTS of good players and we have 7 open scholarships. That is the class that will make or break the immediate future of SLU bball and Jim Crews.
I think we might agree, even though we made our comments in different ways. I said that I trust the staff if they think that Strawberry can play. You said that if the staff passed on him, you trust them. The problem is that we don't know how they view Strawberry. I think you would agree that if they thought he was a fit, but wanted to explore other options, it doesn't mean that he still may not be a fit. I would agree that if they are passing, I trust them.
It seems to me like Strawberry is the type of player we have recruited in the past, but that we have our sites set a little higher right now. However, if we need a point guard and he is our Plan B, let's not set our standard so high that we're not filling out recruiting classes or leaving holes in our line up. The difference between him and others on our wish list may not be that great. I'm going to leave up to Crews to decide. All teams have their Plan A and Plan B and Plan C. That's how it works. I would hazard a guess that there have been times that teams end up very happy, years later, that their Plan A didn't work out and that they got their Plan B or C guy. I've mentioned this many times, but MM, JJ, and DE weren't highly recruited out of high school and I'm pretty sure we're all happy we have them as seniors for this upcoming season.
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Let's assume for the sake of argument Strawberry isn't quite to the level of an A-10 guard (i.e. he's more like an SIU-E level player), would you take him if he was out only option for a 4th guard?
I have not seen Strawberry play in any form, but I have liked what I have heard. You can't be a point guard on a team full of top recruits without having some skills and the ability to distribute the ball. I also have to give him a sliver of a positive in his column for being the son of a professional athlete. Kids of pro athletes typically have seen the level of commitment that is required to succeed at the highest level. This is why so many fall into the "coachable" category.
If the staff sees something in him, I will trust their evaluation given the two facts mentioned above.
What I can't figure out, though, is his height. I just looked it up and Darryl is 6'5". How is his son only 6'1", if that's accurate (I thought I saw somewhere that he was 6'0" or under). Maybe Darryl's "shorty" at the time was a literal term.
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The ACC is trying to move in on Madison Square Garden or the Barclay's Center for its conference tournament. They will get a lot of resistance if trying to push the new Big East out of MSG, but I imagine the A-10 may get treated like Jared Drew if the ACC decides it wants the Barclay's Center.
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Anyone know anything about this Joe Coleman (SG) who just announced he's transferring from Minnesota?
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Mizzou, because I grew up watching SLU and Mizzou in the 80's. Recently, Butler when they are not playing SLU.
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That's a little misguided. Chicago is an actual major city, and specifically the Depaul area has been very nice for a long time. You can't buy up space in Lincoln Park like you can in a ###### Midtown area of STL. I love St. Louis and I understand the inferiority complex it has with Chicago, but you gotta open your eyes. I would've said the same thing as you a year ago before I moved here, so that's not a personal attack.
Also: Biondi stepped down..come to grips, dude. He made great improvements to SLU and STL, but that's a specific example in a specific city where his vision worked.
One more thing, who has the inferiority complex? You used the phrase "Chicago is an actual major city," when defending it against an imagined attack.
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That's a little misguided. Chicago is an actual major city, and specifically the Depaul area has been very nice for a long time. You can't buy up space in Lincoln Park like you can in a ###### Midtown area of STL. I love St. Louis and I understand the inferiority complex it has with Chicago, but you gotta open your eyes. I would've said the same thing as you a year ago before I moved here, so that's not a personal attack.
Also: Biondi stepped down..come to grips, dude. He made great improvements to SLU and STL, but that's a specific example in a specific city where his vision worked.
My comment was not intended to be a comparison between STL and Chicago. It was intended to be a commentary on the fact that Father Biondi got run off after years brilliant forthought and planning that has resulted in an ugly, dangerous campus being turned into a much larger beautiful campus in neighborhood that is turning around in large part due to his efforts. I'm actually not sure how you interpretted that as a slight on Chicago, which I think is a great town.
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Boston, Cleveland, and probably Detroit....maybe Dallas.
Cleveland??????? They have a first place baseball team that is in the bottom three in attendance. To be a top five sports city you at least have to have fair weather fans that show up when times are good. At least the Rams sell out when they are doing well.
Detroit - also doesn't sell out their football and baseball stadiums when they are doing well.
Dallas - Rangers, Mavericks and Stars don't light up the attendance numbers.
Boston - agreed, should be in top five.
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I don't know where you people are getting your maps and information about Chicago.
Allstate Arena: 16.4 miles from DePaul's student center.
United Center: 4.1 miles from DePaul's student center.
And no, McCormick Place is at the southern edge of the South Loop neighborhood, on the lake. It doesn't really feel like it's "by" anywhere. It's about a mile south of Soldier Field. United Center is not by Soldier Field.
DePaul has a super nice practice gym that seats a couple thousand and that the women use for home games. The men play an exhibition game there each year, usually. There is no room for a Big East-worthy arena near DePaul's campus. They're landlocked way more so than SLU ever was and - more importantly - the surrounding neighborhood is too nice to force people out for gentrification or the University's purposes.
Thank God that Biondi acquired all that land over all those years before he mysteriously and abruptly became inept and a tyrant.
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4, 1, 3, 2
Careful. That's the kind of crap that ends up being a Yahoo article lately.
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Given his list of offers already, I assume our staff wouldn't be offering him if they didn't think we had a chance.
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I see Mike as a high-floor player. Worst case scenario, he is a glue guy at the swingman position and a rotation player for his last two years. Best case, he is a mismatch at the 2/3, can stroke it from downtown and is a 3-4 year rotation player and 1-2 year starter.
He will have a tough time breaking into the rotation this year, as will be the case for all of our frosh. We will have talent from top-to-bottom at every position, and the only place we might need help will be at the 4/5.
Mike is another guy who I am excited to see develop over the next four years.
If Carter was getting minutes last year as a freshman, and we haven't added another guard, yet, why wouldn't MC get minutes next year. I think that if he does well, he could get 15-20 a game. Of course, that all could depend on our other signees, but they probably would be freshmen also.
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Let's flash back to the opening of the Fetz...who did we play? Was it UMSL? Yeah, I think it was. Pretty lame for the opening of a multi-million dollar facility. Wasn't our next home game against Kent State? Then Boston College? Why not have a marquee name like BC open up the arena?
Flash forward now to the 2013-2014 opener. Probably against Quincy (Bay Area Billiken courtside for this one) or SEMO or Harris-Stowe. Do we raise the conference championship, regular season championship and NCAA appearance banners then or do we wait for the A-10 opener against (hypothetically) VCU or LaSalle or any other worthy adversary that isn't a Division II or lower tier Ohio Valley school? Or do we wait for the first big non-conference game?
We want to do this when there's a chance for a sell-out, not the opener against Rockhurst or Chicago State, etc. Let's face it, SLU's opening game isn't like the Cardinals.
I say have three separate banner raising games. The first game of the year against whoever we play to raise the NCAA Tournament banner, the first conference game to raise the A-10 Regular Season Champ banner, and then the best conference opponent on the schedule for the A10 Tournament Champs banner. Get a few of our regular sponsors to pay for give-away replica banners of each for each of those games.
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I also had to look it up. It appears to be located at Lafayette and Compton: http://www.slcacougars.org/default.html - which is odd, because I lived in Shaw and rode my bike by there a lot and never noticed a ton of activity. Certainly not enough to indicate a K-12 school was inhabiting those buildings. "Est. 1952." Something's not right.
Looks like they push the international program; must be how they got Ike: http://www.slcacougars.org/International-Program.html
That's practically on campus.
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Posted Yesterday, 05:27 PM
doubt you would ever see this but, if this reggie kid is good as a freshmen would we ever see DE as a SF more?
thats tough to say. No doubt that Dwane's moves facing the basket are underrated and he has pretty good speed/lateral quickness. But he spent so much time last year perfecting his post moves that it would be a waste to not put them to use, even if reggie is a beast. it would be a scary amount of quickness down low though based on reggies tapes
If he's playing the three, he could still post up, it would just be against a smaller guy. RL plays out around the perimeter anyway. If DE is playing small forward, the other two bigs can clear out and let him take his man one on one. Our offensive discipline is good enough in the motion offense to allow those guys to take their turns one on one.
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drew actually looking a little more muscular than i thought
http://instagram.com/p/X5jez-wsRE/
sorry i don't know how to embed
Hope that turns out to be an iconic picture in Billiken history.
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2 open scholarships for this coming season. Here are the 6 names we have in terms of offers and others we're looking at:
Offers:
-Hakim Santil, PG: 5-11, 170, Roselle Catholic HS, Roselle, NJ. Offers: SLU and Fairfield. Possible offers: Rhode Island, South Carolina, Cincinnati, and SMU.
-Jordan Strawberry, PG: 6-1, 170, Mater Dei HS, Santa Ana, CA. Offers: SLU, UC-Riverside, and at least 2 others.
-Daishon Knight, PG-SG: 6-1, 170, Odessa CC, Odessa, TX. Offers: SLU. Possible offers: Illinois State, Creighton, Colorado State.
-Ibrahim Djambo, C: 6-10, 240, Three Rivers CC, Poplar Bluff, MO. Offers: SLU, Austin Peay, Clemson, Detroit, Illinois State, Kansas State, Loyola-Chicago, Morehead State, SEMO, SIUC, Southern Miss, and Washington State.
Others:
-Randy Onwuasor, PG-SG: 6-3, 190, Inglewood HS. Offers: UC-Irvine, at least two others.
-Achraf Yacoubou, SG: 6-4, 210, Villanova. Interest from SLU and Pitt.
Let me know if I'm missing anyone. Which of these 6 guys would you like to see end up with the 2 scholarships? My thoughts:
-We have 1 more year of Loe and Remekun is gone. We don't know how good Manning is going to be. We've now got Agbeko to be the program's PF of the future. Glaze is still raw and limited, though I love what he brings as a role player. I think I'd like to see Djambo take us up on the offer.
-I'm torn on the second one. We have one more year loaded at guard before this class graduates. Then we have a PG who can shoot in McBroom. Do we need another PG or more of a scorer? Santil is small but clearly talented. Knight has too many red flags for me, though I like his scoring ability and trend line over the past year. Strawberry is a proven winner at one of the biggest HS programs at the country, so why did all the interest in him taper off? Onwuasor physically looks like a great get and is clearly pumped for his visit here. The tape on him looks good but he's another one that has me wondering why more programs aren't interested. Yacoubou has been the highest-rated of all of them, but would sit for a year before having 2 years of eligibility left. Should we be concerned about his inability to find a role on a transitional Villanova squad? Was he overrated in the first place or just not in the right program?
Basically, I'd be excited about landing Djambo +1, and I can't make up my mind on who the 1 should be.
Don't we wish it was this easy, just pick from the list. I think we can all agree on Djambo because of his size and because Rammer will get to say "Djambo Time!"
Of the rest, I tend to shy away from transfers. Seems like they're always going to have baggage. Either they weren't good enough to crack the line-up at their old school, or they were dissatisfied with not "getting theirs." Either way, a transfer is like a secretary that bounces around, you end up saying to yourself "don't companies hold onto their good secretaries."
I don't know enough about the others, but Strawberry intrigues me the most. It sounds as if he's on an all-star squad heavy on blue-chippers, and he does the distributing and team first stuff that may be more valuable than you can find elsewhere. What I'm saying is, all things being equal, I will always opt for the guy that shows evidence of being a team first guy.
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I am glad that this kid committed to us and I am glad JC has shown a successful recruiting get. I will still be watching for what happens this fall in recruiting to declare that we delivered from what could have been a very tough plight. I want JC to be successful but that does not mean I have to be a kool aid drinker. I have found that kool aid can be rather bad tasting on the way back up.
Drinking the Kool-aid when good news comes in or when good things happen is what makes being a fan of a team fun. Enjoy it. Over indulge a little. If you are always worried about our guys or our coaching staff proving their hype or their past success, you will never be able to revel in the now.
We've made two tournaments in a row. We were ranked 16 this year. We're about to sign a coach who looks like he could continue our forward momentum. And, we are signing recruits who we probably wouldn't have gotten in the past. If we take a step back in the next few years, let's lament it then. Not now. Now is happy time.
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Father Biondi was the one recruiting. We'll be getting Yao Ming 2 for 2015.
If he comes back with some 7 foot asian dude, I will grab my riot gear and help suppress any further protests. Sounds like the storyline of a bad Brendan Frazier movie.
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Recruiting classes are judged years later, not when they happen. However, if Crawford is a diamond in the rough that we found before everyone else realized how good he was, and Agbeko is a guy whose diamond in the rough status was being discovered when we got him, we have to begin giving some serious credit to whomever is getting these guys.
If these guys turn out to be as good as we think they could be, and we add two more contributors (not right away contributors, but contributors like the Evans, McCall, Jett, Loe class for this year and next), we could be talking about a very special recruiting class.
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Wooohoooo. Sorry Duke.
I know Duke may not have been completely interested in his recruitment, but how often are we going to get to say that.
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Sorry to take this out on you, but I'm still appalled you said this. Father Biondi's greatest goal is exposure. What better place to get it than in a conference of the best Catholic Schools in the United States? The Atlantic-10 going forward will be lucky to get 2 bids per year to the NCAA Tournament, which is where the most eyeballs are (that is if SLU stays; if not, A-10 is a 1-bid league on par with the Valley). He had the chance to solidify that, and blew it with a silly trip to Asia during the A-10 and NCAA Tournaments.
You assume that a deal was not already in place to add SLU and another school in '14-'15. If such a deal is already in place, then why should he stick around. If not, and his presence here would have helped, then you are 100% correct.
My point is that we don't know what deals are already done and what may or may not be still up in the air, because the situation requires that we don't know. It kills me too not to know, but I understand why May might think its best to keep us message boarders out of the loop. Let's not make judgments based upon facts we don't have.
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On the topic of paying a little extra to attract some young assistant coaches that can recruit, what about former Billiken Jamal Walker. He is at Illinois and seems to be heavily involved in their recruiting efforts.
If Crews wants to stay, but tells May that he wants to let the assistants carry the heavy loads of recruiting, then Crews' pay should reflect that fact that he is only doing part of the job. The savings should go to slightly overpaying some assistants that will pick up the recruiting slack.
Recruiting - 2013
in Billikens.com Main Board
Posted
Here is the transfer list posted by Jeff Goodman at CBSSports that was updated on Tuesday (5-21). Drew has been added, which is a good sign about the list being current.
http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/blog/eye-on-college-basketball/22007798/transfer-list-first-edition