Old guy

My wife and I were at the free practice this afternoon, and I was glad I went. I had not been at the Chaifetz since my hospitalization in November 2023 plus all the tough rehab that followed it. Leaving aging and decay aside, I must say I was happy to see Thames play with no evidence of cramps and able to play well. I did not recognize him while the practice was going but I asked one of the assistants iif he had played. He told me with a big smile that Thames had played the whole time wearing the number 6. I am truly very happy for Thames, they seem to have his problem under control with whatever combination of salt pills and hydration they have decided to use. I will be the first one to agree that real competitive play requires more than the degree of effort required by practice. We will see what happens when the season starts, but I think we are justified to start thinking that Thames may be able to play this season at least as a regular player.

There is play and again, there is play. Playing the hardest teams provides the best level of hard fought experience to the players, but the largest risk of loss. Playing the easiest schedule is the way to accumulate wins but learn relatively little. I prefer our team to reach the conference portion of the games ready to beat them all, rather than as a weaker team after playing only easy to beat teams.

Basketball never meant much to me until I met my wife. She had a BS and two Masters from SLU and had had season tickets since she finished her education. I must say that the love for the sport grew slowly inside me until I got hooked.

@SluSignGuy Very nice clip on Otieno, thank you for posting it.

Quentin Jones #1 and Trey Green #3 were doing well in the clip above. There were others who also did well wearing no number or a number that could not be seen in the clip. I like what I'm seen.

@SluSignGuy If you need to travel for meetings and the like and have freedom to stay where you want, it is good to choose a hotel chain with widespread geographical coverage and WiFi that is easy to use and reasonably speedy. Some hotel chains have WiFi which is very hard to connect to, or does not cover all the rooms. I have stayed in hotels where the front desk person had to get into the Windows settings in order to get a connection. A reasonably speedy and easy to connect to WiFi is something you need to have while traveling. Another thing to keep in mind, Win 11 came up with a cumulative update this past Tuesday that absolutely messed up my wife's desktop. Then they came back next day with a second cumulative update to fix the mess they had made the prior day. Good for the speedy correction from Microsoft but it does not explain why my desktop was working fine after the update on Tuesday, and my wife's was not working well at all.

In my personal opinion, nothing of a financial nature I have seen coming from Chris May indicates that he is effective handling finances. I do not expect a good outcome from May's handling the NIL program at SLU.

The event that caused Trey Green to leave Xavier is nothing extraordinary. Something similar may have been the cause for Larry Hughes II leaving SLU. In either case I would expect that whatever the cause for the departure was, it would not affect the players ability to play basketball. We will never know the actual reasons for their departure and it just does not matter. Every summer before the next basketball season the same inflation of expectations occurs about the following season develops. I hope Thames proves to be a very good player next season but know that we will not find out until the season starts. Same thing for Trey Green.

Yep, and they were also saying similar things about Perkins. Reality must be based upon reality. Perkins was a major disappointment when he came back into play, he could play, but he could never play consistently at the level he was expected to play. The best we can hope for Thames at this time is that he does not disappoint all the expectations that are held by many fans at this time. Let us hope our expectations become reality in Thames' case, not disappointments as happened with Perkins. We will find out when the season starts, not before.

I think it is too early to say anything or expect anything from Thames. When he manages to play significant minutes in actual games with no problems, that is when I will start thinking about him as active contributor to the team.

@courtside Reality is reality, and it usually is not what we hope or dream will happen, reality is what does happen and will reflect how capable we are to afford whatever this new reality is. The lawyers are loose in court suing for any new interpretation of law they can get, they are not going to stop. The way of the lawyers and courts is forward, not what is needed or even what is possible, but what they can get passed in court. SLU and every other school, including large State funded institutions, are in the same leaky boat trying to maintain some semblance of the status quo. The schools will not win this game, they will have to settle for whatever it is they can afford going forward. The process that starts by cutting employees to free money for legally required uses will expand until the landscape of collegiate sports becomes significantly changed, but mostly until it is affordable to the schools.

Think in terms of money. Pittsburgh most likely presented the head of A10 with an offer they could not refuse. By this I mean in terms of money.

If you think about professional sports teams in a different sport category, the NY Yankees fielded the top, or close to it, professional baseball team for many years by paying higher amounts than most other teams. The formula works, the problem for college sports is, and always will be, money. Professional teams do not have the monetary limitations we have.

I hope all works well for Jimerson and he has a happy life and family.

It is sad to see people like Grandy Glaze choosing the kind of life path career that he has chosen. I still remember cheering for him during SLU MBB games.

There are many ways that you can look and try to explain what is going on, but one thing that should be kept in mind is that judges and lawyers have opened the door to at least some degree of control over the decisions made by schools to staff and pay NIL compensation to their players. This is not a good thing, believe me. From my point of view legal issues may provide outsiders with ways to increasingly micromanage college sports teams. Prepare for the new and wonderful era of college sports.

Check this out from the National Library of Medicine, NIH. I am not saying this case report describes Thames' medical condition, but the description of the case appears to fit Thames' medical issues. Cystic fibrosis ia a major medical problem to both diagnose and treat. Salt pills will not cure it but they may let him play regularly. Severe sweating and cramps with exercise can be caused by Cystic Fibrosis. This case documents a case of severe cramps limiting the ability of a young player to play competitive football. The high level of sweat that is often associated with Cystic Fibrosis causes loss of salt (NaCl) from body fluids, in other words hyponatremia. The treatment used in the case described below, a treatment that allowed this patient to play football competitively, was salt tablets before the game start and at half time. Interesting case. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7325396/ This case and its treatment is not wishful thinking or journalistic crap. it was a real and very UNCOMMON case with a treatment tailored to allow this patient to play competitive football.. Please note that the salt tablet treatment only provided the electrolyte balance to allow the patient to play football for limited periods of time. In other words this is not treatment for the disease, it is a treatment tailored to restore electrolyte balance for limited amounts of time and allow the patient to play football. If this treatment works with Thames, the salt dosage will have to be tailored to his individual needs. Cystic Fibrosis is a really bad disorder primarily affecting the pancreas and causing a multitude of hard to connect signs and symptoms. There is no known cure for Cystic Fibrosis. If Cystic Fibrosis turns out to be the underlying disease causing Thames' cramps, he will be likely to have a significantly reduced life span. Thames' problems if he has Cystic Fibrosis are much more serious that just having cramps and wanting to play competitive basketball. This is the way Medicine works. If you have a case that cannot be diagnosed by standard tests, then you look in medical libraries for reported cases that fit the kind of issues the person you are working up has. This reported case appears to fit Thames' issues. This may or may not be the correct diagnosis for Thames but the case described in this report fit what Thames has. Personally, I hope Thames does not have Cystic Fibrosis as the cause for his disease. To the journalists in this board, interviews with the player, the coach, or the family do not reveal anything useful that can be used to aid the process of reaching a valid diagnosis and providing treatment. The fact that all medical tests done have been negative is NOT good, it is the opposite. The treatment found in the case described may not cure the underlying disease, but it may provide symptomatic relief that allows the patient to engage in play. If anyone agrees that this case as described is very similar to Thames' well documented problems, I would ask that you forward the link to this article to Schertz or his staff or to the Athletic Department Medical staff. This article is not a personal opinion it is a real case, well worked out and documented, of a young football player with cramps that appears to be very close to what Thames experiences during play. This case as described is REAL.

The reason that analog is making a comeback is that there are all kinds of methods available to alter digital code. I do not think that anything done using analog technology can be accessed and altered as easily as digital code is. Remember, cyber war techniques are used by all major countries, and some not so major as well.

Your comments about your wife's reaction to the diagnosis of Thames' cramps reflects my thinking about this issue. I believe that Thames has had a lot of tests so far, none of which have provided a medical diagnosis for his condition. In other words they have no knowledge about what the cause and treatment of his cramps really is, and at this time they are limited to trying to figure out if he can be used in play or not. Decision making by AI in medical practice will most likely result in major changes. Most importantly such AI control will make medical practice to become based on predetermined protocols instead of Dr's diagnostic skills. This will decrease the work load on the doctors, at the same time increasing the use of nurse practitioners as primary care givers and decreasing the liability level of MDs in practice. From the point of view of the hospital administrators the replacement of MDs by nurse practitioners will be favored as a way to cut expenses. These are major changes for sure. The real issue will be whether or not this kind of use of protocol based AIs will have favorable results in terms of prolongation of life span, or functional capacity of elderly patients, or the opposite outcome. Passing the ball to an AI may be the way of the future, but it is yet to be determined if the outcome of such AI uses will be positive or negative. Feel free to disagree.

Great post. I have never thought about how to apply AI to the military. Doctrine and tactics are worlds apart. And while I agree AI might be a great help for theater level planning, particularly for logistics and placement of force. I cannot imagine how a distributed multi-service AI could be used effectively at small unit tactical level. Take basketball, as you did in your post, I cannot imagine a HC like Schertz would be using the recommendations of an AI to determine optimal lineups for offense defense. I will be happy to engage in a broader discussion of issues like tese by personal mail.

AI is artificial, but it is not intelligent. I has a greater capacity for good work in certain areas like graphics and visualization. It is not very good with finances. I have no idea how well it does in other sectors like the military.

Please read carefully what Mark Rocchio said, particularly the last paragraph shown in Hoosier Pal's last post. They do not appear to have identified a medical cause for his cramps. They are going to give him a try-out practice test to see if they can figure out if they can use Thames during play. Again, they do not know what is causing his cramps and, unless they can figure out how to use him (Thames) in play he may or may not play during the season. The decision to have him play is in the air at this time. Of course, Thames wants to play.

@VeniceMenace The stuff that generally builds up in the muscles and causes the cramps is lactic acid, and the name of the medical condition is lactic acidosis. In cramps the lactic acidosis is localized to a muscle or muscles, not generalized (generalized lactic acidosis is usually a life end condition), the lactic acid just cannot be removed fast enough from the affected area and manifests as cramps. There are a large number of conditions, some of them genetic, that manifest through localized lactic acidosis and cramps. I am pretty certain that they have no idea what is causing the build up in Thames' case. 05 is correct saying that you cannot predict how long he can play in a given day before the cramps bring him down. I also know that Schertz likewise has no idea about what is causing the cramps. Thames is a good player that will play and continue playing until the cramps bring him down, same old story.

Remember the old saying "out of sight, out of mind." If you stop televising the games the Bills will most certainly fit the "out of sight" category, and will disappear from the public eye.

I you all are aware of the way the NCAA has handled cases like these, why are you surprised when the NCAA chooses Power teams to go to the Dance instead of mid majors with better win/loss records. You KNOW fairness has nothing to do with the NCAA decisions.