cgeldmacher

Crews cannot be blamed for failing to close Tatum. You can't close a deal that you never had a shot at. I truly believe that we were going to finish 2nd to whatever team he ended up choosing. It may not have even been a conscious decision on this part that SLU was going to come in second, but it was inevitable. He was going to pacify the locals with talk that he might go to the local school and then pick where truly wanted to go. If you want to argue that Crews can't close, then you have to argue that Calipari and Roy Williams can't close. That being said, Crews will not retain his job past this year unless: 1. The team as it is assembled has a much better year than last year. 2. He salvages something with this recruiting class. 3. He hires an assistant that can be counted out to either (a.) recruit nationally, or (b.) recruit locally. When I say a guy that can recruit nationally, I'm not talking about top 50 recruits. I just mean solid guys that would be rated 51-200. When I say a guy that can recruit locally, I mean someone that knows the local high school coaches and the AAU programs.

Glad that you are filling a void which exists for Billiken coverage. I follow you on Twitter and, right now, you are the best follow among the local media for Billiken related news. To answer your question, interviews would be nice, but streaming open practices is an outstanding idea. Also, any coverage of recruiting is going to peak the interests of this board. I would love to see you talk to Billiken recruiting targets for purposes of sending the information back to us fans and to show the recruit that their recruitment is meaningful enough for local St. Louis media to cover. Also, this board seems to crave inside details about scheduling as well.

I'm really trying not to drink the blue Koolaid, but could this mean that JT has already told Coach K he's going elsewhere? If Duke was in his final 2 or 3 or 4 and Coach K thought he still had a shot, why would he have his entire top level staff watching another player at a different site? I guess the other possibility is that JT has already told Coach K that he is going to Duke and Coach K told him that he was going to concentrate his recruiting efforts elsewhere to get him some more teammates.

Add to that Bartley can shoot the 3. Roby struggles with 3s. Roby is a force on defense. Bartley struggles on defense. Complete, all-around players are few and far between in recruiting or have to be developed. If Roby improves his passing and his shooting from beyond the perimiter, he will be the more all around player and get the majority of the playing time. If Bartley improves his defense and his offense progresses as expected, he will take the time away. The most likely scenario, for me, is that Roby comes back with a better sense of how to protect the ball and distribute it this season. If that happens, I don't even care well he shoots 3s. To me, he comes in with the slight edge.

Just the fact that he retweeted it says to me that he has high interest in being a Billiken. A much less likely possibility is that he wants to be an offer collector and is soliciting offers so that he can brag to all his friends about how many schools are interested (I doubt this is true). If he is as interested as he appears, I hope the staff is making it clear to him, offer or not, that they are interested. That is, of course, assuming that they are. Just because a kid is ranked doesn't mean the staff automatically has to believe that he is a good fit at SLU.

I may be wrong, but I think he went to SLU. Let's not toss a Billiken to the wolves.

He should be more Roger Goodel to Robert Kraft. If this scandal is true, it is most comparable to the Spygate scandal involving the Patriots.

Two changes I would love to see: 1. A rule against calling a time out when a player is in the air and about to land out of bounds. Should be you can't get a timeout unless you have a pivot foot on the court or are lying on the ground in bounds. 2. I hate the blocked shot tie up. A blocked shot is not a tie up. Let the play continue and see what happens. It seems like this is only used when the ref anticipates a foul, blows his whistle, realizes after blowing the whistle that there was no foul but only a clean block, and then falls back on the blocked shot tie up. Get rid of this. When someone blocks a shot and then the ball is loose in the middle of the lane, that's great action. Let's quit blowing a whistle in the middle of that action.

It never hurts to have guys like Drew out there that could potentially be head coaching candidates in the future whenever the need arises.

Barnes is to Jayson Tatum as Justin Tatum was to Larry Hughes. Offering Justin to help Larry feel better about coming here is still paying dividends today. I wonder if Billiken fans were vigorously debating offering Justin back then. Let's stop debating whether Barnes is worthy of a scholarship to our lofty program. He's a D-1 player. He could come here and develop into a very good player. Facts: Jordan Barnes by himself, maybe not worthy of a scholarship offer. Jordan Barnes and FBJT, definitely worthy of two scholarship offers. This is a no brainer. Tell FBJT if he commits, Jordan can come too.

Seems to me that the reason Weber wants K-State to play us in St. Louis is because he has made St. Louis an emphasis for his recruiting. Maybe this is the angle we need to start using to get better teams to come to town. Identify coaches recruiting local talent and work on them signing for a home and home series. I know we'd be selling our soul a bit in giving these coaches the opportunity to improve their recruitment of local talent, but it would help the schedule. Also, if we would beat that team, we could always sell that win in our recruiting.

I think 2-3 All Americans and a supporting cast is what he wants to go back to now that he's not getting 5-6 a year. Problem is, he's getting none this recruiting cycle. It has him scared enough that he is advertising that he will take care of whatever 2-3 he can get.

Attached is an article about how Calipari can't seem to get recruits to come to Kentucky like he used to. http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaab-the-dagger/john-calipari-hints-that-platooning-hurt-kentucky-s-recruiting-163937974.html I find it interesting that he is making a plea to future recruits that he will shrink his rotation, like he claims to have done in the past, to get new guys more playing time. If that is true, then what happens to the guys that he has already told he was going to hand deliver to the NBA that don't end up in his six man rotation. Yet another reason why no top recruit should ever go to Kentucky.

When my son, whose now 12, turned 5, he was really into SLU and the Billiken. We paid for the Billiken to come to his family birthday party. It was a very neat experience. The Billiken showed up at the front door with a helper. My son took him on a tour of the house and showed him his room. They went outside and shot some baskets. When it was time for cake, the Billiken pretended to conduct everyone singing happy birthday. He was there for about 40 minutes. I would highly recommend it to anyone whose kid is fascinated with the Billiken. All you have to do is fill out a form and pay the fee. I would also recommend tipping the Billiken and helper, as they do not get any of the money you pay to SLU.

Absolutely. Let's twist some arms and make this happen. That one article tells me all I need to know (knowledgeable, connected, and, most importantly, INTERESTED IN THE SUBJECT)

I use to not put much stock in the "SLU gets no coverage thing," but Durando wrote an article over the weekend about Soderberg taking an assistant job out east. If that is news worthy, but Grandy transferring, Bishop signing, and Tatum putting us in his top four are not newsworthy, then something is seriously screwed up about the reporting over there at the Post.

Yes. They do to some degree. Bradley Beal and David Lee will not be remembered as great St. Louis basketball products nearly as much as they would if they had gone to SLU. It doesn't change who they are or what kind of basketball player they became, but their "St. Louis" legacy is definitely different than it would have been if they had gone to SLU.

Let's stop focusing on the negatives about SLUFan13's posts and start concentrating on the positives. If all we do is harp on the negatives, we will be sending a bad message to FBJT when he reads this board. If he doesn't feel all warm and fuzzy inside when scanning through SLUFan13's posts, then he may never end up being a MBM on this board. If that happens, then . . . . Wait, I think the turn that took place in this topic somewhere on page 2 has been all confused.

I assume that you are talking about a head coach. That is why I voted for recruiting. A head coach that is good at Xs and Os, but can't recruit can lean on assistant coaches to recruit. A head coach that can recruit, but isn't the best at Xs and Os can also get assistants that take care of game planning and strategy. To me, the bigger drop off occurs when a head coach relies on assistants to recruit compared to relying on assistants for Xs and Os. For a program to be able to truly recruit the talent necessary to succeed, the head coach has to be the guy who can command a living room.

I agree with your premise that Texas is not a top 10 or maybe top 20 job. However, it is a better job than Villanova, Gonzaga, Xavier, Butler, LSU, VCU, and Ioway State. These are programs with recent success that may not continue through a coaching change. Whether we like it or not, Texas is a big dog amongst athletic programs. They can pay their coaches more. They can pay their athletes more. A coach who gets the job at Texas and starts to build some success can count on being financially set for a very long time without worries about whether he will be able to always get kids to come to his school in the same way that the coaches at the schools I mentioned above always have to be. It's just easier at Texas because of the power that school carries. Based upon my opinion, I guess I would say that Texas is right around a top 20 job.

I loved the look back at our comments. If we aren't optimistic at the beginning of a new season, we're not truly fans. We should have someone do a retrospective on our predictions every year. If you can't take a little criticism about missing on an opinion or a prediction, then don't make them. The more I thought about the 144 Prediction, the more I realized that the sad thing about this season was not that we, as Billiken fans, were so far off in our evaluation of the team we love. The truly disheartening part is that outsiders could apparently clearly identify that our team was not good before the season started. I'm trying to wrap my mind around what that says about our decline this season.

Beat the bottom dwellers of the A-10 at home and on the road, win some-lose some against the middle of the pack, and, most importantly, be somewhat competitive in our losses to the top teams. Maybe even steal one against a top level team. That's what I require next year.

We haven't started a "Recruiting - 2018" thread yet, so I'm posting this here. Vianney has a 6'7" freshman named Carte'Are Gordon that just led them to an upset of Justin Tatem's reigning state champion CBC team in district play. This kids isn't finished growing. I have been told that he was a serious contributor for Vianney down the stretch. We often hear kids say that SLU got into their recruiting well after they heard from other schools. Maybe we should get in at the start on this kid. I'm not saying extend him an offer. I'm just saying have someone from the team should contact him and say that SLU is interested and that they'd like to watch his progress over the next two years. Seems to me that just something that simple can stick with a kid. Not sure why being first on the seen is important to some guys, but it seems to be. You always hear recruits talking about schools that were on them from the start.

Not to be an apologist, but how many of those teams distributed playing time the way our team did this year. We may not agree with the "everyone plays" strategy, but this explains why no one has consistent statistics like rebounds.

I think you could recruit from any of the kids in the student section that don't realize that they are suppose to wave the balloons to distract the other team.