Crewsorlose

This team is kinda what I wanted last year's team to be: not very good but fun to watch, like around what the 125th team in the nation should be. That's what I hoped we could be last year. This year I hoped we could be around the 25th best team. I get the injuries but what's even the point of having scholarship players if you don't trust them? Like, how bad do the bigs have to be not to get off the bench at all? I'm pretty sure whoever UCSB played last year was not that much better than Jackson St. and yet a player who can't get off of Schertz's bench played 8 minutes/game for UCSB last year.

I see that too. I just don't know who plays guard next year or handles the ball against pressure. Dotzler, sure. But Johnson and Swope will be gone, and one might want some McCottry insurance. I'm sure at least two players transfer out, and while the obvious answer is a transfer guard, I'd think the idea of developing Zyree as a potential starting guard would have some appeal.

Can someone tell me why Scherz can't look at Zyree Collins and see his next Isaiah Swope? Undersized, not quite the shooter that Swope is (but way better than Yuri) but a better passer. Undersized but just a pure baller. Hasn't signed yet. I don't get it.

I hope he's still recovering. Casey has to be the biggest disappointment of the transfers. a 4* coming from the ACC coming in for a team thin and small in the front court, plus a childhood friend of RA.

I think you're missing the point. Nobody's saying he played great. He had 3 boards and a steal. He turned it over once. Only Thames played more and committed fewer TOs. That's kind of what you want from him, only the shooting was off. He shot 41% his first year, increased his volume fourfold and shot 36% last year. We kind of know who Hughes is. Casey and Dotzler were supposed to be upgrades over the talent at the end of the Ford years and it doesn't seem like they are. That's why I'm not going to crap on Hughes.

If he went 2-4 from three instead of 0-4, you wouldn't think he sucked. Sometimes shooters miss shots. It means they missed shots. You have to accept the variance of a player like Hughes. We're not going to be a good team if only six players play more than 6 minutes. It won't work against A-10 teams.

This was an absolute worst case scenario. I love Schertz but he was outcoached by a very good coach. Santa Clara was ready to disrupt dribble handoffs and we had 4 TOs before the first TV break. Robbie getting hurt destroys the chances of the team being anything as long as he's out. But beyond this, there was panic. Schertz played Jimerson and Swope the entire game. I thought the team was supposed to be deep. Dotzler looked out of it. To me the most disappointing player, both in the warmups and today, is Casey. For a 4* who was a Miami recruit, he doesn't look athletic or skilled. Anya missed an uncontested dunk, got a T, and turned the ball over 5 times. Still, I think he'll help us win games. Why not roll the dice with McCottry? Why not see if Brockhoff can help out on the boards? I get it, it seemed like it would be a one possession game but shooters aren't going to have their legs at the end of the game if you never rest them.

It was inconsequential. They were down 5 with 10 seconds left.

Not playing Amari was probably a mistake. Dotzler was a zero out there. Hughes looked good, he just missed his shots. SLU looked overmatched athletically and the one elite athlete, Thames, was the one who kept them in the game.

Neither team is rebounding well on the defensive end. The difference is turnovers and fouls. Still, I think SLU is one good sequence away from tying this up and if it's close late, we have better players. I didn't know Senduk was SC's coach. He can really coach and SC looks more prepared.

Truly horrible sequence with the missed dunk that would have brought it to 44-43, the tech makes it 45-41, and then they make a deep 3 to end the half. By missing a dunk he gave them three points.

I think something like 13-5 in the A-10 and 25 wins overall has SLU pretty clearly in the NCAAs. Beating either GCU or USF on the road will be essential for the at-large bid. We also need the A-10 to be good and have a couple of top 50 NET teams.

It's hard to say he recruited "one guy to be the man" and then list four people who played on the same team. Still, I agree that Ford was about getting elite talent. The Crews years were so thin and within 18 months we had French and Goodwin, both fringe top 100, Bess, and Gordon, who was top 50 when he signed. We'd be so athletic that we'd simply overwhelm the A-10 with bully ball. Ford is probably still coaching here if Cartare Gordon stayed and stayed healthy. The big 2019 class with Collins and Jimerson, Hargrove and Bell, with Perkins as a one-year Juco, was a great class for filling out the rotation. Nobody that Javonte would be an A-10 1st team level talent and 3 Star is right about Collins' rep. After 2019, nobody who came to SLU out of HS (except Nesbitt) could've been expected to start on an upper-level A-10 team.

The alternative story is that, although foreign visa rejections were high, they were not evenly distributed. SLU supposedly used an Indian company to help them find students. The company found there students almost entirely from a distinct region in India that posed a greater risk than students from other regions. I'm not sure if this alternative story is true; it's just not the same as the one SLU was officially touting. The question is whether all universities were hit equally hard, and if not, why so? The official story is this is just "something that happened to SLU" over which the university had no control. I'm merely suggesting that people should be skeptical of this story.

The 1300 was foreign graduate students in what they call "Global Grad." Think of Europeans coming over for the LLM one-year degrees at US law schools. Dozens of boutique master's programs for 1-2 years max. They got 1300-1400 students the year before and budgeted for 1200. Not everyone believes the visa story.

I was there and watched the entire game closely. One thing in particular stood out: the spacing on the floor gives tons of room for driving lanes. A guy like McCottry who can get to the cup and is big enough to finish can really thrive in this offense. It's not just an offense for shooters and bigs with passing skills. Team had 11 TOs in first half and was 3/13 from 3s. Let's hope it's the worst half of the season.

He's made a nice chunk of $$$ and hopefully enough tape exists that he can play overseas for less but still good money in one of the best leagues. FWIW I think he'd be a great coach and teacher once his playing days are over.

He got almost no run this preseason. Must be so frustrating not to get a chance while nepo-baby plays in front of you.

Conferences like the Mountain West have done well in recent years, and the A-10 in pre-Covid years. The formula just isn't that hard: win OOC games, especially against strong teams in good conferences. The A-10 has bled out from a thousand little cuts of teams like GW getting drubbed by 40 against a team like Maryland, and the Daytons and VCUs need a month or two to get the ship steered right. The only advantage that the P-6 teams have is better programs. Sure, if the A-10 comes returns to what it was with Xavier and Butler, it will get raided again, but let's just hope we're one of the teams getting raided.

I agree. Swope can create his own shot and distribute. I think people are just looking at last year's stats including the post-injury drop off. As for 4th, that terrible. For me a successful season is one where SLU doesn't need to win the conference tourney to make the NCAAs. That means 11 seed or higher & top 40 in most computers.

At the very least we know J-Good is a lot better than Bronnie.

The fatal flaw in The Torch's argument is "keep the freshman that you like." Would that it were so simple. The freshman SLU likes are the same freshman, generally, that the rest of the country likes, and is offering bags of cash to. In this landscape, you essentially re-recruit all 13 scholarship players every spring.

If Schertz leaves we can bring back Ford because he's still under contract, right?

Walsh to SIU. That's a good school for him.

He can legit shoot and that's not a bad list of offers. Lower-level Big 10 and Big East schools like DePaul and Northwestern aren't taking flyers on below top 200 level guys. They'll just recruit him away from SEMO if he shoots 40% from 3 in two years.