Old guy

We got French because after much thinking, HE decided to come here. He was not hurried by hoopla, he wanted SLU.

OK, so now let's analyze this coming game. I assume all of us will be expecting to lose this game, the question will be how bad a loss. The second question will be can we possibly win this? From my point of view, I think that dreaming of winning this is the most we will get as far as winning goes. However, if we manage to give them a good fight and to lose by less than is predicted we will be doing well. This is an outcome that I would be happy to get from this game, a loss by 10 points or less.

With Tilmon it appears to be all about who gets what, designation, and for that to happen Tilmon needs the guards to pass thr ball to him. Nothing about this relates to who he is, with or without the guards passing to him. All along, Goodwin may be the real thing, without anyone else contributing anonymously to his success. I would choose Goodwin over Tilmon,.regardless of who does what.

We can express this as a mathematical choice. Which is more important to win: 1) A more talented team with 13 players coached by Crews. or 2) A less talented team with 9 players coached by Ford I think Ford >>> Crews is more than enough to make up for the talent loss, I would choose #2.

We will soon see how we do about much better teams starting with the game against BYU, coming soon to your TV. We will have our hands full trying to keep the coming loss against BYU at a reasonable level. I will count it as a success if we manage to lose by less than 15 points.

They are also playing the Game of Thrones music, this is new this year.

Nice summary Taj, enjoyed it.

Agree, hope we get to play Valpo.

BYU is very good, we should not be disappointed with a loss against them, as long as we do not lose by over 20 pts. If we keep the scores within a fairly tight range with BYU we will be doing just fine.

Thank you Bauman.

Well Wiz, given the fact that 3 out of the next 4 games are against BYU, Kansas St., and Wichita St., all schools in the top 100 rankings and neither one of which we can possibly win, it is tough to see what we can do. Of course we may play a lot better than is expected which might help. I looked at the schedule and within the next 5 games we have Samford and Chicago St., neither one of which is highly ranked. Now looking at A10, it appears that the two other closest bottom dwellers, Fordham and George Mason, could be overtaken by us this season. I am not looking for anything earthshaking right now, it is too early, but I think it would be nice to be able to get out of the rock bottom of the A10 as a doable goal to aim for.

RiseandGrind do you know if Thatch came to the game with a whole bunch of other kids from his team? I was seated a number of rows above a row of big kids that looked like basketball players.

Just home from the game. The arena was about 25-30% full, more kids in the student section this time, not full. Enthusiasm was so so at times good at times. As the Wiz mentioned we were pretty well matched, which is not a good thing to be in this case. We did beat them, so the directional arrow is pointing up for us. We came close to losing the game towards the end of the first half when Gillmann fouled someone shooting from beyond the arc. They got very energized and we ended the half 11 pts down. No idea what Ford told them but they came out and had a 10-0 run that probably salvaged the game. As many people have said we have a number of players that are contributing and are good, Welmer, Agbeko, Roby, Bishop is improving a lot and is scoring a lot more, Johnson is still a bit confused but is catching on and doing nice things. Moore I think will be fine as well. Crawford can run and can defend but he cannot shoot, even simple layups do not go in when he shoots them. It is true that he can shoot free throws, but not much else. Hines can be used to give Bishop a break here and there. Gillmann and Neufeld are not doing much. Neufeld actually caught at least one rebound and had the ball taken out of his hands. I know they will continue playing this year, because Agbeko and Welmer have to go to the bench at times (Johnson is capable to go in for them), but whenever these two are out the play level deteriorates. I was looking at Crawford shoot FTs, he does a nice arc but when shooting he ends standing tip toed. I think this one of those things that is can strain his plantar fascia significantly. I hope he lasts the season but as it stands now, he is a non scoring player that can defend. One thing that I found interesting was that the vegas implied score, this afternoon before the game, had us winning by 5 points, and we won by 5 points. One observation early on in the game a group of 8 or 10 kids all very tall and very muscled came in and sat together in a row not far from where I was. I do wonder if this was a local high school basketball team coming to see the game together.

Agree, I think Hasahn will be a great plus for the Bills.

Verbal Commits finally listed Hasahn French as having signed with SLU (LOI).

Just to remind everybody, we already have a great team in terms of talent for next year, with or without Tilmon. It would be nice to have him for sure, but we will be fine without him.

Kind of random is it not? But this is the way it is. People oftentimes think in binary terms, it is on or it is off, + or -, etc... That is fine for computers who operate in a digital world with abrupt transitions (discrete math), but we are analog in design and in between either extreme we recognize and live through many intermediate states. In other words out transitions (as people) are smooth and linear although the line can point out in different directions oftentimes. A basketball team is not dissimilar, we all know there are issues with our team this year, we do not know how many of them will be significant and how many of them will be overcome. Better to start with small steps hoping the arrow points up, in Wiz's terms, and then finding out how far we can reach... or the opposite and find out how far we can sink. There is no need to despair, not yet.

Well, if you are a numbers man Team rankings has SLU at 254 and E. Illinois at 234. We are below them but still favored to win. It is sad but true, when you are at the bottom you have to take anything that comes your way. I may have been way too optimistic with a prediction for 15 wins, but I will stick with it. Things may not happen the way we want them, but there is always next year.

As per team rankings the vegas implied scores for tomorrow night are: SLU 75. E. Illinois 69.5.

As per Team Rankings we are rated #254 as of today.

You think? I believe the electoral models used this year were weighting in factors like local organization sizes and state organization strength, numbers of volunteers in the campaign, numbers of ads aired, and amount of money spent in the campaign. In all of these categories Hillary vastly exceeded Trump. I do not think an electoral model based upon factors like these that had worked in prior elections could have worked and effectively predicted the outcome of this election. This election was different and I am not sure it is clear yet what the crucial factors that tipped the election are known. This is not a political statement, it is more of a math and modelling statement, the models used widely just did not work this year.

Agree, particularly if he can graduate this summer or this spring with his extra credits. Wash U is DII and has many grad degrees available. Something somewhere is likely to fit him. Do not know about scholarships at DII level though and believe a DI scholarship might be hard to get given his performance so far.

Doctor B you could drive an 18 wheeler semi through the gap in your expectations.

Ah, my typical condescending bunk. Nicely phrased Taj, you could be a poet if you set your mind to it. The whole convoluted issue involved here is the vast discrepancy between what the Dr. / Surgeon has seen and know about the injury, what they choose to tell the patient, what the patient hears the Dr. saying, and what the patient thinks he/she has been told or wishes to believe he/she has been told. Any correlation with reality is generally lost during this transfer of information. Drs., in today's medical care, are limited in the amount of time they can spend with patients and literally cannot explain issues in any depth to patients, and many do not want to do so either. For example my daughter, a pediatric endocrinologist, has a limit of 15 minutes to the amount of time she can spend in teaching a family with a new discovered diabetic patient (a child) how to take care of the diabetes. If you think this is an adequate amount of time to achieve this purpose congratulations are due, you must be very happy, because everything is the way it should be. There are major or minor differences between a story and reality, do you want to argue this point? Please understand that something communicated by a patient, any patient, to a journalist, any journalist, regarding his actual condition may have a very limited correlation with reality. Patients hear what they want to hear, and they tell journalists what they want to tell them. No room for reality in this transaction. Prior statistics reflect among other things the physical capability of a player at the time. You are back to ground 0 after major injuries or multiple small injuries. Of course this has nothing to do with the player's talent, this is still there, but it has a whole lot to do with what they can do in the court.

Taj, I am happy to see that you have accepted the nature of injury and the fact that Crawford's prior years stats in terms of ppgs has nothing to do with what he is likely to be capable of doing this year. That said, and regardless of Stu's ideas on the matter, it all depends on the level of repair that was achieved this summer, and whether or not the level of repair/recovery will be enough to sustain him for the whole season. I have expressed my doubts on this regard many times, but there is always the chance that we will be surprised. Injury and body function NEVER respond as anticipated going forward after repair. In some cases the actual results of the repair are better, in some cases they are worse. We have to see what this particular player/patient can do or cannot do with the level of repair/recovery achieved over the last summer. The concept of the injury being centimeters below the "quits" level is incorrect in just about every way except as a metaphorical description. Until we know for sure we should hope the best for him. We should cheer for him, for the courage he shows playing with his injuries, for his knowledge that these can be reactivated and made much worse by playing, and for his fears (which he has to accept to play like he does) that he may wind up with permanent life long limitations due to his efforts this season. Crawford is a really committed Billiken and fully deserves our admiration and gratitude regardless of what he can or cannot do this year. That said, there is a chance that his injuries' repair and recovery have been successful enough to allow him to play the whole season, perhaps at a sigificantly lower level than we have seen before, without reactivation or increase in injury residual/permanent limitations. We will see.