johnbj14

Vice just went to Creighton, which would be the highest offer any of the 4 players you named had this off-season. Offers aren’t an exact measure of success, but I think we lost a potentially really good big man, and the best of that group.

Maybe benchmark was not the best word. 25 wins should be the goal. 22/23 wins keeps the program in this weird zone it’s in right now: possibly NIT team, but definitely not NCAA Tournament caliber.

The problem is this core has not sniffed the tournament and lost its best players outside of Jimerson. There aren’t plentiful contributors out there like 4 weeks ago. Just because SLU has open spots, doesn’t mean there’s good players out there to fill them. Oh, and they need people to actually be interested in coming here.

Too lazy to blue font, but this is definitely because fans are too negative on Twitter and the board.

The Billikens need to win more games, period. Good A-10, bad A-10, the current level of success for SLU isn’t enough. The team the last two seasons has not had enough to truly be an at-large candidate. 25 regular season wins has to be the benchmark. If we’re still missing the tournament and hitting that mark? Then it’s time to focus on the conference.

Personally think we should be focused on internal improvement of SLU, and not worried about the conference as a whole. Even with a stronger A-10, the last two years wouldn’t have led to bids. Internal performance, and department expectations, are a way bigger concern right now.

Yeah the fan support thing is huge. Chaifetz holds 10K fans. In 2013-2014, the high water mark for attendance since Chaifetz opened, we averaged 8,400 fans a night. Last year we averaged about 1,800 less than that. This is not really a 1 to 1 relation, but the 6 win difference between those two groups absolutely shines through in attendance. It will be interesting to see if attendance drops off this year with less hype, but I do have a sneaking suspicion the department would be quicker to make moves if the crowds drastically shrink.

Marquette plays in an NBA arena and averages 14,633 fans per game. Assuming an average ticket price of 35 bucks a seat, which is probably a bit low, that’s 9.2 million in revenue right there. Considering they get good money from Jordan Brand as one of their signature schools, Big East TV deals, and have a huge donor base, that 23.4 number isn’t surprising in the slightest.

I can get with that logic as long as it’s coming with tournament appearances. Those are really what I want more of at the end of the day. It doesn’t seem like an unreasonable ask. The fact that SLU only has 2 NCAA Tournament appearances in the last 10 seasons is a really disheartening reality.

25 wins needs to be the expectation if we want this program to be a relevant mid-major name outside of the region. Needs to start happening, and soon.

This is where I’m at. Sincere’s game looked a lot better once conference rolled around and he got extended time. If he plays 20 minutes per game this season, he’ll average double digits and have some big games. Heck, it’s not out of the realm of possibility he leads SLU in scoring this year.

Probably not as much as you’d think for Parker and TJ. I’m assuming Gibson got a nice deal.

Disagree with the last statement. No offense to Conk, but HS recruits have no clue who he is. These guys were in pre-school when he was a college player, and he wasn’t a massive national name. Legendary Billiken, but not someone a ton of kids will immediately know.

Whoever comes in has to be able to recruit or scheme X's and O's at a high level. Selfishly hoping it isn't a former player unless they have college coaching experience.

Assistant coach Jim Crews has a terrible ring to it

Updated the original post, as I somehow confused their titles. I think that Coordinator position is the additional role that the NCAA allowed last summer with a change in legislation, but could be wrong. Essentially you can have 4 assistants right now but one has a slightly lesser amount of responsibilities they can take on.

Why would we need a new DOBO @brianstl? The rumor is that Will Bailey is leaving, not Thomas Dziagwa? As for Brian Gregory, there is nothing he'd add to this staff that Ford doesn't already succeed at, so pass.

Hasn't been an assistant since 2003 and has largely stunk since leaving Dayton. That would be extremely underwhelming.

In the disappointment in 2021/2022 of not making the tournament, it feels like it gets overlooked that a primary reason SLU still had a chance to dance was because Yuri took this massive step forward. It sucked because a few close losses were the difference, but I'm not sure those near misses would have been so near without Yuri playing as well as he did.

Prefacing this with the fact I think LHJ is going to take a huge step forward, I'm not really sure we can say if Larry was a better shooter last season than Yuri. Yuri had a higher FG% overall, but lower 3 point %. Larry was only taking 2 shots per game though, with 1 of them being a 3. Larry usually had the weakest perimeter defender from the opponent as well. I'm excited to see a lot more of Larry this coming season, but also think we won't truly appreciate how good Yuri was until we see what the team looks like without him.

I think two things can be true. 1. Travis has historically been a good recruiter. 2. It’s not clear how well that translates to this era, where NIL can allow other programs to level the playing field. I have serious concerns based on how this off-season is playing out so far that next year’s roster will be an above average one. There are quite a few holes and not a ton of momentum (that’s public) on the recruiting trail.

If there’s actually a lot of interest, I’d be beyond disappointed with Cuonzo.

He didn’t de-commit because people don’t like the coach. Even the strongest voices aren’t tweeting at recruits “the coach sucks don’t play for him.” He spelled it out in his graphic when he explicitly thanked Phil Forte why he’s leaving. Brock is close with Forte, and he’s no longer here. Apologies that doesn’t fit your narrative, but it’s the truth.

I can’t believe the revisionist history with Marten right now. He was rock solid on offense and defense, only tailing off after a bad ankle injury that he dealt with the back half of his senior season. Give me a big man rotation of 3 Linssens and I’d be thrilled.

We don’t travel. On court success is one thing, but travel packages are the name of the game for good MTEs.