cgeldmacher

His stats are fantastic, so I wanted to dig deeper. Interestingly, Northern Illinois does not really take buy game money like some other smaller schools. Their best games in non-conference were against DePaul and some Missouri Valley Schools (Bradley, Northern Iowa). In those games, he scored 19, 16, & 13. This was right about at his average, but he really did not play any sort of competition last year.

If there are more of these, please keep posting them in this thread. They're interesting.

If he gets injured next year, the SLU athletic training staff will be pointing the finger at this post.

Fantastic news for Billiken Nation

I would think tournament credits would also help the NIL fund of schools that decide to revenue share.

Purdue, Duke, and Michigan State are not bad at bringing in, developing, and keeping their own players. Not that surprising since they've been doing it for years. Its the other schools that stand out as just being reliant now on big pockets buying their players.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/college-basketball/article/march-madness-is-nil-the-death-of-cinderella-150007039.html Good article about this topic. It dives deeper than just talking about Mid Majors making and succeeding in the tournament. Big discussion about how far fewer players are dropping down from power conference schools to mid majors in the past two years. The article mentions that this year is the 1st time since 1975 that all of the Sweet 16 teams are from power conferences.

Is this a SLU thing, or do other A-10 schools experience this level of departure each year? If it is similar to what other A-10 schools are seeing then it may just be the new reality that we live it. If it is unusual for the A-10, then we probably have a problem.

Cam’ron Fletcher from Xavier (Vashon) is in the portal.

With all these names, I wouldn't know where to start. I hope our staff has a solid system in place for evaluating the portal players. Seems like the teams that do that the best are going to do the best. At this point, correctly navigating the portal and doing it better than other teams who are all also trying to do it better than you seems to be the key to success.

Don't know if it was mentioned, but Malachi Smith from Dayton is in the portal.

That's true, unless he's aware of an already existing deal for VCU, Dayton and/or SLU to go to the Big East. Just wild speculation, no real info.

Whoa! When did JG get so jacked?

True, but Drake did not have anywhere near the athleticism of Mizzou. It's not always about athleticism.

It's not like we lost him to another A-10 team. It is telling that the best landing spot presented to him was SIU-C.

This is classic Billikens.com type discussion where we get 18 posts based upon a wild accusation that has no factual backing made by a guy proven to hold a grudge.

From the ESPN feed for the Lakers/Suns game… 33 Austin Reaves makes driving layup 86 100 3:39 Lakers defensive team rebound 86 98 3:39 Jordan Goodwin blocks Kevin Durant 's 6-foot two point shot 86 98 3:43 Devin Booker defensive rebound 86 98 3:46 Luka Doncic misses 24-foot three point jumper 8

Have you been on campus recently? My daughter is a freshman at SLU, and I am astounded how the kids there have a different experience than I did when I attended. When I was there, you didn't stray anywhere off campus. Now, my daughter and her friends regularly hang out at the Foundry, an entertainment district just south of Forest Park Parkway. There's an Ikea, a brand new Target, a Top Golf, a Putt Shack all near campus.

Everyone says that about Avila, but I guess we shall see. If Drake is paying this kid $150,000, and say Kansas offers him $800,000, I think his closeness with McCollum might be tested. I also think a good coach would tell a kid to take the money in that situation.

SLU has had record enrollment for several years. It has grown each of the past five years. Fall 2024 enrollment was 15,334. That's up from 12,914 ten years ago. The area around SLU is beautiful and one of the bright spots in the City of St. Louis giving people hope that St. Louis in general can see the same turnaround as the neighborhoods around SLU have.

The point is that if you dropped something the same size and roughly the same population as the City of St. Louis into a particular part of Chicago, that area of Chicago's crime rate would be much worse. If you took something the size of the City of Chicago by land size and put it on St. Louis, it would include the City of St. Louis, but also areas like Webster Groves, Ladue, Frontenac, Creve Coeur, etc. and then St. Louis's crime numbers would go way, way down. It it the unique situation that most of our high crime areas are concentrated in one political subdivision that results in St. Louis being at the top of these lists.

Their NIL fund versus ours and those of power conference schools

I'd love to be able to outbid everyone for Bennett Stirtz at Drake, but I have a feeling his price is going to be high.

JGood’s stat line from last night’s game 17 points in 24 minutes off the bench 6-8 from the field. 5-6 from 3. 8 rebounds (tied for 2nd on team) 61% of the Laker’s bench points.

Sounds pretty simple