Old guy

Buffalo is one of the less livable cities in NY State, if nothing else the snowfall level in Buffalo is extremely large, perhaps because of its proximity to Niagara Falls. Not a place to move to from St. Louis.

I just hope the water will turn into wine for us and we will squeak a beat against Auburn.

OK guys the game is over and i listened to what Ford said at the end. All is as it should be, I feel like I have Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World" with his raspsy voice in my ear. This was a very good game for us. We did beat them soundly, but this in no way indicates Tulane was a pushover team, like that 10-0 scoring run at the beginning of the second half showed. Great game for the Bills, played well, against a worthwhile opponent that we soundly beat. Ahhh! All is light, all is bright... The Force was with us today. Now, the players will go take their the final exams. Then, on to deal with Auburn which I think will be very difficult to beat, but not impossible mind you.

OK guys, I am listening to it on the radio, it sounds like one hell of a good game for the Bills. If we can do the same against Auburn and K State, we are going to dominate A10 and go to the dance. For the worriers around us, think of the amount of money you have spent on Imodium so far. A total waste of money. Lay back and relax, the Force is with us! Go Bills!

OK ladies and gents, play time is coming within a few hours. It is time to think positively, WE CAN WIN THIS GAME, is the mantra to be used in our quest for positivity. Go Bills! May the Force be with you today!

Teamrankings just published the Vegas inspired scores for tomorrow's game, as follows: SLU 69.2, Tulane 64.2. SLU is favored to win by 5. They give a confidence level for SLU's predicted win of 2 stars which is not high, meaning that Tulane does have a chance of winning.

I did not expect Thatch to play coming Sunday, too bad about Hankton. With two very useful players out of the fray for a while, I wonder is Ford is considering bringing Hargrove in, at least for some time.

It is nice to know Dayton has had something of a revival. When NCR went electronic and closed the mechanical operations, the city was dealt a close to death blow, or so I heard from old friends. Thank you for the information.

Pistol I did not know the old gym was still in use, I thought by now they would have dismantled it. The campus, by the way grew up enormously after they got the old NCR sites across the main street from campus. I have not visited the place since 1967, too busy and no money at the time, no interest later on. I know they became many times the size they used to be. Some of my old engineering friends went to work at Wright Pat AFB, which was doing a lot of space R+D at the time. I knew kids who volunteered for human research they were doing at the base. One of them responded to an add asking for people who had never had motion sickness, it paid very well. He took the bait. So, they brought him to the base very early in the morning, fed him a huge breakfast, and then strapped him to one of those gigantic centrifuges and spun him until he puked, carefully measuring how long and what speed it took to get him there without passing out, never again... Wright Pat also had, or has, a superb Air Force Museum with many unique airplanes in it. Honestly, I enjoyed Dayton (as it was then), I have no idea what it is like now.

The arena was not across the river always. I remember going to their basketball games at their gym, a cramped little place, in the early 1960's. They were good at the time and in 1968 went to the NCAA tournament and got to the finals against UCLA, playing against the then called Lew Alcindor. Dayton lost, of course, but going that far helped them raise the money and land for their new arena across the river. In the early 1960's Dayton was an industrial hub with heavy emphasis in metal machining. This, of course went the way of the Dodo but once upon a time they had the headquarters and main manufacturing site for NCR (cash registers, which were fully mechanical, not electronic, at that time). Dayton was a hard working blue collar, manufacturing city then. Dayton U was primarily an engineering school with an overall ratio of males to females of over 10 males per female. Small school, Marianist and usually fed by Chaminade High Schools from all over plus the locals. I believe the Marianists had another university somewhere in Texas as well. And as far as sports went the town loved Dayton sports although it would have been quite easy to drive down to Cincinnati or East to Columbus to attend Xavier or Ohio State sports, or go to professional baseball games at Cincinnati. And yes, I went to Dayton for college, 1963 to 1967, did a couple of years of mechanical engineering and then transferred to pre med. I graduated from there 52 years ago, and my love and fandom, which transferred to me from my wife, is for SLU.

Since my last post about teamrankings they changed their mind again and now it is SLU who is favored to win with 1 star confidence level. I would not doubt they might change their minds again and again. What this really means is that we are thought to have 50-50 chance, tied with Tulane, to win this game. As I said before we can win this game.

Thanks to the refs

Relax slu72, we can win it.

The Bills have played a tougher schedule than Tulane has, beaten a higher ranked opponent than Tulane has and being beaten by an even higher ranking opponent than Tulane has. Both teams are 7-1 in ooc. We can win this game. The Vegas spread will not be available until the night before this game, however team rankings currently has Tulane as a predicted winner with a 1 star confidence (up in the air).

Thank you very much for the link HoosierPal. I am speaking for myself but feel the need to say in this board that I will include Coach Tate in my prayers during Chirstmas. I want to let him know that losing weight is the very best thing he can do at this stage in his recovery, and to persevere with the slow recovery process that he is in the process of going through. He must understand that after he is "healed" he will be weak as a kitten and will have trouble with stairs and exercise, but should not push the process and instead let it take the course. I send my best wishes for Coach Tate and his family during this trying period in his life. Amen.

Yes, and now what? Foreign play?

There are other Drs in the forum, most of them do not post much. The one you are referring to above is not one of them.

What do we know about Thatch's illness? Not much so what follow is primarily clinical speculation. We do know that he is fully ambulatory, and that he does not appear to have been "wasted" by his disease. In other words, he does not appear to have lost a lot of weight or appear (stress on the word appear) to have been weakened by the disease. He is not carrying a face mask, and whenever I looked at him during a game I never saw him coughing, or sneezing, or falling asleep while sitting down. He is not playing but does not have any outward signs of disease that are detectable at a distance. Now, and here I go on a limb, please understand this as speculation and nothing else. I would say he could have something that results in an internal issue preventing him from play. My main thought here is splenomegaly which keeps him from playing because of the danger of contact trauma causing a rupture of the spleen that could be quite serious. The most common cause of splenomegaly in a young healthy person is Mononucleosis. Points against him having Mononucleosis are simply that this is a fatigue and incoordination inducing disease. Do not take this as me saying he has NO fatigue or incoordination in a daily basis. However, if he does have fatigue or incoordination it does not appear severe enough to be detectable at a distance by the way he moves and interacts with others. THIS IS PURE CLINICAL SPECULATION, NOT A TRUE DIAGNOSIS. Mono tends to run its course in its own time, I hope it is mild enough to result in a full recovery soon. This is a disease, assuming this is what he has which is a big IF, that can allow play once the spleen is back down to normal size. He needs careful follow up afterwards to check for recurrent splenomegaly (and further time out), and he may or may not be fully recovered and playing at his full capability, even without detectable splenomegaly, because of residual low grade fatigue and incoordination present. AGAIN, THIS IS PURE CLINICAL SPECULATION.

A Bomb, with this "situation" you can be fairly sure their game will suffer for the rest of the season, and perhaps longer.

Jimbo, call me a fool (which I may be) but I think we will win most if not all of the games I call winnable. I will, of course be very happy if we manage to win 50/50 of the difficult games.

I am in full agreement that Dayton has a tougher ooc schedule than we do and has already won two games against tough opposition.VCU on the other hand appears to be fairly even with us, at least in terms of what wins/losses they have had so far, but the same applies to Rhode Island, George Mason, and Richmond. Dayton, SLU, and Rhode Island have two games against tough opposition left before they finish the ooc. VCU, Richmond, and George Mason have only one tough game left in their schedule.The issue is of who gets ahead before the end of the ooc. Whoever wins one of the tough games left in their schedule will move up. Anyone winning 2 of the tough games remaining (if possible within their schedule) will move to the top. Whatever Dayton wins or loses will determine whether they remain on the top. Duquesne has not played the same level of competition and is not expected to play tough games in the rest of their schedule, they are below the rest in my opinion. Whoever gets ahead of the competition overall will not be decided until the conference games start. Please note that we play Rhode Island, George Mason, Richmond, and VCU only once during the conference. We will play the toughest opponent, Dayton, for the conference twice. I think if we manage the injuries we have in the team and get the players back into action, we have a good chance of coming close to what I described as the best case scenario for this year.

Don't worry about that, every game will present some tough challenges of its own. This is a given, of course.

I guess I see my glass as fuller than you see yours, when both have the same amount of liquid inside. This is fine, there is room for a whole range of opinions, as long as no one insists they are right because this is the way it has been ordained. We are talking about dynamic situations, I do not know what that means to you but suspect it is different from what it means to me. It is OK, we are all friendly with one another and we are all rooting for team blue.

I, and for that matter Ford agrees, that every game presents special challenges. Can we win most of the games left for us to play? My answer is an unequivocal yes. I already gave my best case scenario. Do you prefer to be stuck fretting the worst case scenario? Of course injuries and the like can change things. Remember, sports are dynamic, not static (statistics are static), things change to some degree with every game played.

Any one of the 5 future games I mark as difficult to win will be against scary opponents. Some of the games I mark as winnable will also be against teams that can turn around and beat us. Getting there and beating most of them is where the fun lies.