Crewsorlose

The pub is good but the roster is very incomplete. I'm hoping two more big transfers.

I stand corrected. I thought they went from awful to dumpster fire but they were just dumpster fire the whole time. It was Ford's best effort at a long, wing defender but it was a miserable failure.

Love this guy on the roster. Athleticism; length. Can guard 3/4. Can be a smallish 4 in the A-10 who can also protect the rim some. Dalger was supposed to be like this but without the length and athleticism. But still, we saw the team with and without Dalger, and how much difference he made. Kind of like another Thames but a bit more proven.

I don't know man, just reporting a general vibe. The Cobra Kai thing is a joke that someone else told me. I'm not going to get into specifics that would fall under rumors. I hope all of the Vianney kids land at good spots and if that's SLU, I'll root for them. That you think these posts are the weirdest thing you've found on this message board in five years says more about you than anything about the posts.

I've talked to a lot of people, including people at Vianney. I think my post is pretty balanced. I could say much worse but decided not to, precisely to avoid the kind of thing you're accusing me of. I'm not from here. I don't know what kids at De Smet or CBC do or used to do. I don't care about 1997 or 2008. I'm just talking about this year and what a surprising number of people have told me about Vianney.

The reputation that Vianney, coached by Luke Walsh's dad, had was not good. Vianney was kind of like the Cobra Kai of local Catholic schools. I'm not sure how much of that is on Luke Walsh. I just don't think he's an A-10 level player. For some reason he's rated higher than Zyree on 247 Sports and I imagine that comes from people not knowing much about their comparative abilities. My scouting eye is nothing great so take it with a grain of salt.

St. Mary's is small and had zero rim protection. Walsh can excel against that. He's a very good HS player. I kind of disagree about the shot. I think he has a great shot. I just don't see the size or athleticism or the skill to be a good player in the Atlantic 10. Zyree is a bit of a risk because of his size but he just has so much in his bag and has superb court vision. I also disagree with Slaten about what it means that SLU "isn't recruiting Zyree." Scherz has been here for five minutes. He's desperately trying to get his roster for next season. I'm sure he'll scour the local ranks and I'd be surprised if he doesn't go after Zyree.

It starts around 19:00 https://590thefan.com/radio-shows/the-kings-court-with-kevin-slaten/

I saw Tate at a St. Mary's game this year. Now that Ford's gone it's safe to say that players didn't love playing under him. I don't know if Scherz likes Zyree, but odds of him coming to SLU are certainly better than they were under Ford, when it was 0%. I've seen Zyree a lot more than Walsh, but I also saw them match up in the playoffs. Zyree's game is so much more advanced than Walsh's, it's not even a comparison. Zyree does not have height (maybe 5/11") or long arms, but he has that ability to bounce of contact that all of the smaller guards need to score at the rim at the higher levels.

SBV was next to Jimerson. The only one not to give a standing O when JS came to the stage.

I was in Terre Haute yesterday for lunch. Really contemplated tracking him down. But I guess I'll have to wait for the press conference open to the public on Monday at 10am!

For all the people who don't like KenPom or advanced stats, 13 of the top 14 teams in KenPom are in the Sweet 16. Only one team below 23rd, NC State, made it this far.

Hard no on Daffron. There's a reason they didn't make him president there. And he's never been a faculty member.

I started going to more HS games this year and Tate is the only SLU person I've seen in a local HS gym. Curiously, met and chatted with Pat Sly, former SLU Board Chair, before a HS game. Great guy, totally humble for being so successful.

ISU is below 20% chance of making it. Too many bid thieves, especially yesterday. Dayton 100% in the tourney. I doubt the A-10 gets 2 NCAA teams and 4 NIT teams.

The A-10 could be a one bid league for ten years and nothing would change. Two realities are at work here: if you want an auto bid, you need to win your conference tourney. The difficulty of doing so measured by the conference you're in. if you want an at-large bid, you need to be worthy in comparison to other teams searching for that bid. It's not some kind of lottery whereby Power 5 teams have way more balls than everyone else (see Boston College). It's about being one of the 34 best teams out of the roughly 320 who don't win their conference tourney. Teams in good conferences get a ton more chances, but they have to play better competition. Dayton navigated it this year. They didn't win a magic power ball. They did it by beating St. Johns, SMU, Cincinnati, and LSU. SLU had 5 Q1 games and 10 Q 2 games. They went 1-14. Plenty of bites at the apple on our schedule this year.

What's this weird notion that certain leagues get a certain number of bids and that's just that. Five years ago this was a "Three Bid League." For all the bitching about NET, the "mid-major" Mountain West is getting more teams in the Dance than the ACC & the Pac-12. The A-10 is getting two teams in this year. And if Indiana St. hand't lost every Q-1 game they played, they'd be in. If you don't win your conference, you're competing for an at-large bid with every other team in the country. If you want have a chance, play a tough OOC and actually win the games against the teams who will play you. SLU got to play Auburn three years in a row and lost every time. All this talk of "we're in the A-10 so we have a 1/14 chance of a bid every year" is just loser talk. Dayton will get a bid because they deserve it. So will Gonzaga. Teams like Boston College don't feel their odds are better in the ACC. They haven't made the tourney in fifteen years.

Do people here have an opinion of Blake Ahearn? He went to De Smet and is an assistant on the Spurs. Would this be an attractive gig for him? Sorry if it's been covered earlier but scrolling through 40 pages seemed daunting.

Pat Sly is on the board, a former board chair, and very into hoops. I imagine he's a season ticket holder and I've also talked with him about hoops at HS games. Pistol is largely correct about the role that boards play at universities. Unless things start to go extremely sideways, the board is mostly carving out time for 3-4 meetings/year and rubber stamping things. I've been at two universities where the faculty rebelled against the president and in both cases the boards were woefully misinformed about basic matters, and were largely willing to believe any and everything that presidents and other upper administrators would tell them.

I work at SLU and this is misinformed. Lewis as Provost runs the academic side of things. He has no direct role in anything outside of that. Think of him as a VP but with a huge portfolio. Everything else--athletics, DPS, parking, student services, mission & ministry.--that's all Fred P. Biondi was a micro-manager: you had a title but he always thought he knew better and was on your back telling you how to do your job. Fred P is the opposite; he's a delegator. Which is fine if you have really good judgment in hiring your VPs and staff. SLU athletics has had a lot of success (both soccer teams, women's hoops, Champions Center, and MBB until very recently) since Fred P took over and Chris May was not his hire. His life is much easier if he can simply delegate to May, and that's largely what he's done. Fred P was at Dayton, but only as a Dean. He was Pres. at a super small-time place (LaMoyne) and the main thing he needed to do when he got here was to get up to date on the medical school (which was a dumpster fire on top of a toxic waste dump), and smooth things over with Biondi loyalists. He's largely succeeded. He's good on his feet and he has a very good speaking voice. I don't get much intel but my sense is that Fred P doesn't value intelligence as much as he does amiability. Of the VPs and upper admins I've dealt with, very few are what I'd call bright. And that trickles down. If this were Biondi, he'd have 6-8 confidants in athletics who would have been giving him negative intel for years. He'd probably be cold calling random coaches asking if Ford is really that good. He was trigger happy. Fred P is cautious and he'll gladly be talked into May saying Travis deserves another year.

To me one of the most glaring failures was in securing Yuri's replacement. Ford could sell that he developed Yuri from a mid-major prospect into a borderline All-American, all within the context of very competitive teams with deep backcourts. I'll admit, I was excited about Medley coming from a great team and stepping into those shoes. Medley is at best a nice role player who's nowhere close to being Yuri-level in Yuri's freshman year. But if that's your frosh, then at least get a legit post-grad who can take over an older team with real shooting and scoring: Ezewiro, Parker, TJ, Jimerson. But Ford got us... Meadows? Nothing was a secret here. Heck, Yuri almost left after 2022. And this was the best that Ford could do with an absolute bullseye on this position. Yuri did everything for us 2022/23. You see what Jimerson is without him. TJ gets no lobs. To me, the three guys worth keeping are Parker, Ezewiro (assuming he stays eligible) and Thames. Hughes is obviously a nice role player but really struggles in a decision-making role on offense. But I don't know how Ford fills the other 9 scholarships. Does Zhang even want to stay around when his PT is yanked around during a rebuilding year? Do we have someone who can develop bigs in the way that Rob Loe and Cory Remukin were developed?

It's on the coach, right?

Why didn't Ford immediately call a TO with 2.2 seconds left? Truly a massive brain fart. At least they fought.

My perspective on the bigger picture is this: there's now a decent chance May fires Ford. If it was 2% in October, it's at least above 20% now. Theres a < 2% chance Pestello fires May. It's just not who Pestello is and nobody around him is going to point the finger at May for giving Ford that absurd contract. In other news, Zyree Collins '25 absolutely lighting it up this year. Come out and watch him torch SLU High tonight at St. Mary's. Much better chance that he comes to SLU if we have new coach by the summer.

Fair enough. It ended up not being the worst thing, and you're right, it gave us a chance to win the game. There wasn't a 3 on 2 situation. You can see a little more from Earl's twitter feed because he filmed the TJ shot. Jimerson was back behind the 3 point line and ran up to foul him. The ref and Ford both signal 3. I think Gibson saw it. It was a lot of points being scored. At the 0:12, the La Tech guard catches the ball inside his own key and Gibson is behind the 3 point line. In hindsight, no Brad and no Dalger would have made a tough OT, but the odds of scoring full-court with no TO's and 4.5 seconds is < 5%, and the odds of La Tech making a FT in the double bonus is > 80%.