NoCoBillsFan

We have the same amount of open scholarships as New Mexico St, Jesus it’s worse than I thought

Parker can flat out score at all three levels, he just didn’t get the shot attempts last year. I don’t know enough about the 2s and 3s in the rest of the conference to definitively say where’d they stand in the A10, but I’d pick them against anyone on the offensive end. However, the defense probably holds them back a lot

Let’s break down the current state of the program. It’s about more than Noland and you know it. We are coming off of a season where we being picked in the top 25 prior to the season and were seen as one of the top 2 teams in the A10 before the year started. We ended the year outside the top 100, no postseason, and had some of the worst losses since the Crews era (SEMO at home). As of June 1st, we are still missing an assistant coach and have three open scholarships. Due to the fact that we lost three starters and several impact players, hitting the portal hard was a must. And what have we gotten? A good big that will need a waiver that he might not get, a terrible defender from a terrible team (when the current roster already has no defense), and a completely unknown Euro big (that Ford has had 0 luck on so far). And the current roster isn’t exactly stacked either. Jimerson coming back helps, and I’m super high on Parker, but what else do we have? Our only true point guard is an undersized freshman, all of our bigs are giant question marks, and we really have nobody that can actually guard a wing effectively. And that’s just looking at the surface level! It gets worse when you add context. I’ll make a list: 1. We’ve only made the tournament once in 6 possible seasons (and that only happened because Tramaine Isabell turned into prime Allen Iverson for four games). 2. We have had two de-commitments of much needed impact players and lost two assistant coaches in the last two months. 3. The A10 continues to get worse and while the Big East is likely to expand soon, we’ve completely threw away any chance of us being able to move up. 4. We haven’t made any strides in recruiting for 2024 and beyond. 5. We had a local two-time National assist leader on the roster and he never made the tournament, not exactly sending a good message to any future local recruits. 6. Our “Ace-recruiter” of a coach has a roster without a single top-150 recruit. 7. We have the highest paid coach in the conference and he has never finished higher than 4th in 7 seasons. Sit back and think about it. Are you happy about this? Does this make you hopeful for the future of the program? According to the AD and the FFC, we got our 20 wins so we should just shut up and take the mediocrity. Personally, I actually care about the program and would like to see it be better than this.

The Ford Fan Club has been very quiet as the off-season has gone downhill

That’s odd, the women’s basketball team seemed to play pretty well in some big games in March.

Thatch is the perfect example. And if you think about it, Yuri was that guy his first two seasons. Undersized, couldn’t shoot, but played hard and was a true floor general.

He’s before my time but I don’t think he’d qualify, he averaged 17 and 6. He had the production.

Oh and it also pains me to say it, but OG WAS RIGHT ABOUT PERKINS.

I don’t blame Ford for Javonte personally. He was the key to us being good last year and if he never got hurt, I’m convinced we’d have a tourney bid in 2021. Nobody knew he’d be such a shell of his former self, especially defensively

My only gripe with Yuri was his propensity to try too hard to be “the guy” at the end of games. I would always say “here comes Yuriball” in the last two minutes of every game. But do you really blame him? He was probably the most clutch player on the team his first three years. 2021 at George Mason anyone?? But Yuriball is NOT the reason the team underachieved. The offense was good. We had a bad year because of defense and lack of depth. Letting every team have their season-best shooting night when they played us makes it hard to win. And when you have to put Gibson Jimerson on Tyler Burton because no one else in the starting lineup can guard a parked car? (I’m looking at you, Javonte). You have to out-score everybody. And when you have the same 5 guys play the entire 2nd half with minimal subs, you’re gonna choke leads at the end of games because you’re tired. I had a lot of criticism for Yuri last year. And I still do. But he was not the main problem.

I’d bet money that Parker is on an all-conference team next season, even with Jimerson coming back.

1. Easy Ed named National Player of the Year. 2. SLU was the first team to be ranked number one in the AP poll.

No, that’s the ceiling when the offense is designed to only rely on Yuri and when we have no defense. In a one to one comparison, it’s not close between Yuri and LHJ. On a side note, I am also ready to see something different. But that is because I want to see what Ford does with a different roster, not an indictment of Yuri.

Yuri is one of six players in NCAA history to average double digit assists in a season. He led the country in assists two years in a row. And I don’t just have an infatuation with assists numbers, Yuri simply put up historic stats. He is a once in a lifetime type of player. I too have watched 95% or more of Yuri’s games since he’s been at SLU. And over that time, it’s easy to take everything he did on the court for granted because we’ve been seeing it for four years. It’s also very easy to find the negatives in his game because he was the undisputed leader of a very disappointing team and basically given the keys to the offense (which isn’t his fault, Ford shouldn’t have done that). Let’s not forget that Yuri was pretty much universally loved up until the end of his junior year, before he was in the spotlight with high expectations. Better yet, remember how much fans loved him after his freshman year? Hughes Jr averaged 8.7 minutes a game. I too love his game but when he gets 20 minutes a game, much less 38 and a high usage rate like Yuri, you will see a lot more mistakes. It truly blows my mind that anyone can look at Yuri’s all-time great body of work at SLU and say a walk-on that averaged 8 minutes a game is an upgrade. Take the recency bias out of it and really think about it. There’s just no way that should be your conclusion.