johnbj14
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Posts posted by johnbj14
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4th quarter collapses aren’t becoming a thing for Ford teams. They’ve been a thing for 5 years now. He switches to an extremely conservative approach the last 10 minutes and it simply doesn’t work. I get slowing down a bit and only taking good shots, but his offensive sets don’t generate those in large quantities.
billiken_roy likes this -
SLU pays the highest head coaching salary in the conference. Maybe I have unrealistic expectations, but if this job opens up, May should be able to attract more proven, and likely better, options. All this is pretty pointless in the near term though, since I severely doubt Ford will be somewhere else next season.
JMM28 and billiken_roy like this -
8 minutes ago, Box and Won said:
That just means he'll have four years of eligibility when he comes back to SLU. Win for us.
More likely to end up at North Texas than here. Thanks Phil Forte.
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15 minutes ago, billikenfan05 said:
Centene Outdoor rink
Would somehow be less slippery than the Chaifetz court surface
JohnnyJumpUp, Young Charles, Dr. Holly Hills and 1 other like this -
6 minutes ago, JMM28 said:
No goalposts to be moved.
Would you rather be at a top 15 program in the country with a plan for development, an all-american level center, and a coach with a proven history of getting teams to the big dance or a 100-150 program, with a coach on the hot seat, with apparently no other bigs to practice against, and no history of big guy development? Just the facts.
Great post. My only objection is Travis being on the hot seat. He should be feeling the heat, and held to high expectations, but there’s pretty much no indication he actually is. Based on how many international frosh they took on, he’s operating like a guy who knows he has job security.
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We shot 36.4% from the field against a bad defense. Probably a little early for Warriors of the A-10 talk.
2010andBeyond likes this -
34 minutes ago, slu72 said:
This all comes down to Travis. He’s gonna have to coach his arse off this season. I read an article about Pitino. Iona beat a P5 school by about 15. The opposing coach said we could have swapped players and I would have lost by 30. Pitino can coach. Can Travis is the question? After last season I have my doubts. I hope he can, but it’s time to prove it.
Travis has 25 years of a resume to prove he can’t. Not holding my breath for a minute.
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3 hours ago, Compton said:
SLU is perennially among the top teams in the A10 for attendance. Although Dayton definitely has the top spot locked up.
Raw numbers, sure. But we have the second or third largest arena in the league by seats, and are in a major metro area with access to 2 million people. A more fair comparison would be % of seats filled. Last year we averaged 6,694 fans per game, which equates to 63% of what Chaifetz can hold. Sure, we put up good raw attendance numbers, but our fanbase is far from rabid, and Chaifetz feels like a morgue for a lot of games.
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9 minutes ago, BrettJollyComedyHour said:
Lol we're constantly the unluckiest team in the conference.
Some of it over the years is luck, but a degree of it is self-inflicted. Hopeful the international issue is resolved, with many other schools going through the same process right now. Not confident on Brad though.
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10 hours ago, TheChosenOne said:
Absent the contract, did folks actually think Ford was deserving of being fired? I was disappointed with last season and questioned the future of the team, but would not have supported firing Ford without some exciting candidate essentially lined up that would not be around down the line. I don’t know his contract, but think asking folks to buy him out in the spring wouldn’t get much support. Six months from now that might be a different discussion.
Trying not to beat a dead horse, but yes. There were legitimate talks of top 25 last preseason, and they missed the postseason entirely. That alone isn’t enough, but combined with other seasons where expectations were fallen short of, it is a pattern.
As for the exciting candidate you’re hoping for, it’s not a guarantee one will be lined up whenever SLU does pull the plug. Coaching searches at this level will always have a leap of faith element to them. I’d personally take that leap, because for all of the negatives that have been acknowledged on this board about the changing NCAA, I still feel SLU has potential that can be unlocked with a new voice at the head of the program.
Littlebill likes this -
6 minutes ago, HoosierPal said:
I know nothing more than you do, but from written reports, UNC didn't initially disclose all the necessary information on this case in their waiver request. True or not, I don't know, but it is always good to listen/read both sides of the story.
A key thing for these waiver decisions is having things filed early, and filed in a complete fashion. Stories about denials that get reversed in appeals usually involve information being incomplete, like in UNC’s case. Additionally, the NCAA has a deadline for waiver applications by sport. If you file after that deadline, it’s usually an automatic decline.
TheChosenOne and billikenfan05 like this -
6 minutes ago, Lord Elrond said:
The time to change the team we have right now for this season has passed. I see no reason not to hope for the best and root for a victory every time the ball tips off, but little reason to expect a finish any higher than 8th in the A10 and a quick exit in the A10 tournament. I hope to be proven wrong. If my expectations come to pass, I think the pressure for change will be irresistible. But before we go there, let’s play the games and see what happens.
Definitely. To rip off several sports movies, “our team in on the floor.”
I hope like nothing else this team is better than expected. I’m ultimately expecting similar to what you described. My bigger fear is that it comes to pass and there’s no real pressure to change the status quo.
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8 hours ago, 3star_recruit said:
College basketball fandom exists on a spectrum. Some fans support the coach under any circumstances. Some fans won't be happy with anything less than 25 wins a season. Most fans are somewhere in between. They've heard both sides of the argument and don't need to hear them endlessly repeated. But if you're on an extreme end of the spectrum, you can't see that.
If you are disgusted with the product then the obvious move is to not renew your season tickets. It's the only action you control. Hoping for serious changes after this season is just that. Hope.
I don’t think it’s being on the extreme end of the spectrum to ask for more than one tournament appearance in 7 years. Travis Ford has 2.5 million reasons to figure out how to make the dance. Obviously everyone here is rooting for the program to succeed first and foremost, but this attitude that everyone has to sit back and just enjoy whatever the season is doesn’t make an ounce of sense.
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It does give me a bit of relief to know that stuff is happening, particularly the recent event that @shempie is mentioning. That being said, they absolutely should be publicizing this stuff. As others have said, SLU has made a habit of relying on a small group for large donations. That’s great, but that isn’t how you take a step forward. Eventually you need new dollars, and today’s small donors might one day be big ones. Using social media to showcase the wins the BVF are having might incentivize more fans to toss a few bucks here and there.
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2 minutes ago, Bay Area Billiken said:
If no football Gonzaga is invited as the 17th XII member, I think another non-football 18th XII slot will open.
I’d be willing to guess Saint Mary’s or VCU gets called ahead of us if that’s the case.
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11 minutes ago, Bay Area Billiken said:
Was SMU to the ACC also absurd? How about Stanford and Cal to the ACC? While I would say so in all 3 cases, and while PAC-12 supporters are asking if a timeout and do over are possible, those three moves actually have happened.
Those 3 are much bigger brands than our Billikens and have football. SLU is a basketball-only school that has struggled to win consistently in a conference that is much worse than the Big 12. SMU is an interesting case of a booster base willing to shell out absurd money for a seat at the table, but was combined with a forward thinking Athletic Department. Recent years don’t suggest we have that same ambition or willingness to spend.
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1 minute ago, TheA_Bomb said:
This is weird but would they need to add another BB only school? Could SLU make an argument? SLU with B12 exposure/recruiting.... might require a SMU like Alumni promise
Gonzaga is in the conversation because they win a ton, are a national brand, and will draw TV dollars. We have zero of those things at the present moment, and have no argument. SLU to the Big 12 is one of the most absurd things ever put forth on this board.
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Conference talk is great, and yeah we should want the other schools to improve and bring up their standards. But at the end of the day, 99% of the problems with SLU basketball are self-inflicted. The program has to win more, period. Doesn’t matter if it is the A-10, the Valley, Big East, or anything in between. Our current annual 22 wins gets you a handshake and a nice seat on the couch for the tournament.
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5 hours ago, thetorch said:
Show me evidence that dropping down will cause us not to go up again? Examples?!?! until then its just an opinion, and a wrong one.
A10 tv has very few advantages over the MVC. Pay is roughly the same. What has all this "national" exposure done for SLU?
Major Markets is myth #3. If we play a basketball game in a city with 9 million people but attended by 1500 people is that really a major market game? St. Louis is THE major market in the A10. Besides Dayton SLU has the highest attendance, best tv ratings, and most media coverage of any team in our league, year in year out.
What is the difference between playing Fordham or Bradley? Fordham has better restaurants, and its fun to take the team to a broadway show. Other than that Bradley has a better facility and more fans at the game than Fordham will ever have. They usually play better basketball too. I guess you can't put a price on it being a slow news day in New York and the chance the Billikens could get a blurb on page 56 of the Post the next morning.
What good does it do SLU to play teams that while in major markets, have the stature of Fontbonne in those markets (and worse facilities)? None. Quit bringing it up. Fordham, Duquesne, St. Joes, LaSalle, GW etc having any type of presence in their respective huge markets is as mythical as the unicorn.
I’m not sure I agree with a single point made here. If you’re so adamant on this moving down strategy working, show some examples of when it’s worked.
Dropping down to the MVC with this brain trust of May and Ford won’t lead anywhere. Maybe we have an additional bid in Ford’s tenure, but we’re not anywhere closer to being a consistent tournament team.
The markets matter for recruiting. We’re recruiting guys from Philly, NY, Richmond, etc. far more often than Evansville.
St. Louis is not THE major market in the A-10. We’re largely an afterthought to Mizzou. Dayton and VCU both outdraw us and are the big game in town.
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1 hour ago, thetorch said:
Ding Ding Ding
Drop down in conference. Rebuild the program organically, while lapping the field with our superior facilities and budgets. Win multiple titles, gain more local support, attract more monied fans, then try to move up to a conference with more sustainable revenue while continuing our on court success.
We should have done this when we got kicked out of the CUSA, but we thought the A10 would keep a similar profile. It hasn't. SLU has tried to take short cuts to greatness through conference affiliation for decades. Time to end this cycle.
Can’t disagree more. If we drop down, we will never come back up. It sucks being in an east coast league, but the games are in mostly major metro areas and the A-10 has multiple national TV agreements. Drop to the MVC and you literally play in 1 major metro market, and never on national TV. Might as well fold the program if you do that.
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1 minute ago, wgstl said:
This is the thing. Ford or whoever will have to coach at a level yet reached since rickma. As for Ford, I just don’t see how after 8 years he all of a sudden kicks it up a level - which he would have to do to get to where the program can strive off of NIL.
I fully agree, and think we’ve seen the ceiling of what Ford can do here. At the end of the day, he’s a coach that gives programs a high floor, but who will usually not maximize the talent on his rosters. It’s largely why he has only led 2 teams to the NCAA Tournament in the 15 years he’s been at the mid-major level. He was the same coach at OK State, but had a better conference to fall back on.
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31 minutes ago, cgeldmacher said:
Sadly, I think this is looking at the recruiting process through the lens of the former way things were done. If we had made it to the Sweet 16 last year, kids who we want on our team this year are still going to ask "How much NIL money to I get?"
Let's suppose there is a kid that we are recruiting who was also being recruited by Ole Miss. Let's suppose we made it to the Sweet 16 last year, and that Ole Miss went 12-21 last year (their actual record). We offer the kid $20,000 in NIL money and Ole Miss offers him $60,000. Do you really think that kid is going to go to SLU because we had a good year last year over getting 3 times as much money in his pocket? There in lies the problem.
As unfortunate as it is, even having good seasons now may not beat NIL money, which, if I had to make a prediction, we will always be short of compared to large state schools.
SLU finds themselves in a classic chicken or the egg situation. Wins will bring more NIL dollars, but NIL dollars will bring more wins. If SLU made the Sweet 16 last year in your example, there would be more money. You’re right, SLU won’t fully close the gaps compared to state schools. But consistently winning at a level higher than what SLU is now will hopefully lead to more donors on the NIL side.
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2 minutes ago, wgstl said:
That’s the problem
Bingo. More importantly, it isn’t sustainable, because more people will adopt the mentality that this is just how things are. Either the program needs to shock everyone and have a huge year, or the house has to be cleaned.
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3 hours ago, CenHudDude said:
I believe TF at the end of last season promised Hargrove that he would start this year.
You are correct. On a radio interview before Brooklyn, he said TH was asked to come off the bench late in the season because he was going to start this season, and become an all-conference player in the process.
Serious Question
in Billikens.com Main Board
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The greater point is we really shouldn’t be rebuilding in year 8 of a coach’s tenure who is paid this well. Especially when the years that have had high expectations have ended short of them. I don’t think a coaching change would blow things up. Rather, it would jumpstart things.