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Rhode Island Pregame Thread


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I thought i would start a pregame thread

So where is rhode island in the conference standings?

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"I was on fire, I was hotter than a pistol" Jason McElwaine

If theres no SLU basketball in heaven I'm not going!!!!!!

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They've played a decent schedule - BC, Providence, Utah, DePaul, KU - lost to all of them except Utah in OT.

They've beaten UMass at home and lost to them on the road. Their only other conference losses were to us and GW in Rhody.

They're fresh of a W against the Gas Grills in Pittsburgh where they scored 111 points!

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Jimmy Baron is their big shooter.

They have a guy named Seawright who has had some good games against us - he picked up a lot of boards in the last game.

They also have a guy named Parfait, but the only thing I remember about him is that his name is Parfait.

This should be a tough one. We were lucky to leave Kingston with a win last year.

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CSTV online might decide to pick the game up by tonight or tomorrow morning or they might not

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"I was on fire, I was hotter than a pistol" Jason McElwaine

If theres no SLU basketball in heaven I'm not going!!!!!!

Official Billikens.com Sponsor of Chris Sloan and Billiken Volleyball

and Official Billiken.com Online Video Guy

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Ahhh yes parfait i had a lot of fun with that name when they played us here

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"I was on fire, I was hotter than a pistol" Jason McElwaine

If theres no SLU basketball in heaven I'm not going!!!!!!

Official Billikens.com Sponsor of Chris Sloan and Billiken Volleyball

and Official Billiken.com Online Video Guy

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Remember the late 90's team of Cuttino Mobley and Tyson Wheeler? The team that played here in St. Louis and made it to the Elite 8 in 1998 as an 8 seed? I was at those games and was pretty impressed by both games. The Stanford - Rhode Island game was a great game and I believe Stanford won by 2 and then lost in the Final Four to the eventual champs, Kentucky. The Stanford team had Mark Madsen and the young Collins twins on them.

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Rhode Island fans would rather forget the Stanford game. URI actually led by 6 with under a minute left. A win would have put Rhody in the Final Four. It however all fell apart very quickly. It still was the farthest URI has ever gone in the NCAA tournament. The highlight of the NCAA run by the Rams that year was win over a #1 seeded Kansas team led by Paul Pierce and Raef Lafrenz.

Mobley and Wheeler both got drafted in the 2nd round in 1998. Wheeler did not last too long with Denver. Mobley did well in Houston before ending up with the LA Clippers. I just saw him score 20 points last week in a win over the Celtics.

That was great time for URI basketball. The Rams had four straight 20 win seasons with post seasons invites. There were three straight NCAA trips highlighted by the Elite-8 in 1998. URI was the A-10 champion in 1999 during NBA Lottery pick and LA Lakers star Lamar Odom's one year in Kingston.

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>nice..... has anyone been to Kingston, RI? Don't know too

>much about the city and wonder whether it is a worthwhile

>road trip.

Kingston is not a city. It is a village dating back to around 1800 and was a stopping point for coach travel from Boston to NYC. The village is in the coastal town of South Kingstown (pop approx 29,000). The town is not very industrialized as it has mostly been a summer resort and farming community. It is more recently becoming a suburb of Providence which is about 25 miles away. The town faces the Atlantic Ocean to the south. The main Boston-NYC-Washington Amtrak line skirts the rural campus and there is an Amtrak station one mile from campus. Route 95, the main north-south interstate from ME to FL, has an exit at route 138 just a few miles down the road from the campus. Green Airport (PVD), which is used by most major carriers, is less than 20 miles from campus.

If you come to Kingston, it is only to see a game. There is not much right there other than the campus. Most visitors would take in the nearby coastal areas such as Narragansett and Newport or downtown Providence. Other nearby items of note are the two Indian casinos (Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun) in CT some 30 minutes from campus.

While the Atlantic part of the A-10 may have no meaning for SLU fans, it is very much a part of life in and around URI. The Atlantic is just miles to the south and Narragansett Bay miles to the east. Block Island is just off the coast and there is also a large fishing port nearby. Surfing is very popular at the beaches and believe it or not continues throughout the winter (with wetsuits). With a storm coming tomorrow bringing big waves, there will likely be many surfers down at the Narragansett Town Beach and at the lighthouse at Point Judith taking advantage of the swells.

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>Does URI play Providence every year?

Rhode Island plays both interstate rivals Providence College and Brown University once every season. Both series with these schools dates back over 80 years and in excess of 100 game shave been played aaginst each. The game with Big East member PC rotates sites. The game with Brown of the Ivy league used to rotate sites but more recently is only played at URI since the Ryan Center opened five years ago.

Providence College and its AD Dave Gavitt founded the Big East conference. The league's offices are still headquartered in Providence.

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>thanks RF1 for that well drawn out description of Kingston

>and its surrounding areas. So would you say the attraction

>to the University for athletes would be the campus itself

>and its facilities?

The area surrounding the campus is very nice. It is countryish and not far from the coast. The URI campus itself is not the most beautiful campus environment. State universites are not well funded in the northeast and looked down upon. There is no uniform style to the campus and many buildings have an institutional look and feel to them.

The on campus Ryan Center is a nice basketball facility. It seats just under 8,000 and opened just five years ago. It has most of the bells and whistles that new arenas have. It is all chairback seating completely surrounding the court. There is the main floor level, balcony level, and luxury suite level. There are video scorebaords, plenty of amenities (concessions and restrooms) and a souvenir shop. There are TV's in the carpetted concourses and radio connections in the restrooms (can hear game broadcast when you need to take care of business).

The main reasons that basketball athletes would come to URI are for the coach, facility, and league (if other options are lesser leagues). Minority athletes may also like the fact that the student body is large and relatively diverse (by New England standards). We have had some success in the last two decades (Sweet-16 in 1988 and Elite-8 in 1998) so that may help.

We have had some pretty good coaches in our history. Longtime coach Frank Keaney invented the fastbreak in Kingston and revolutionized the game back in the 30's and 40's. Coach Jack Kraft came to URI in the 70's after leading Villanova to the Final-4. Tom Penders left Fordham for URI and led the Rams to the Sweet-16 in 1988 before leaving for Texas. Al Skinner took URI to the NCAA a few times and parlayed that into the Boston College job. Jim Harrick then came to Rhody taking the team to the Elite-8 in 1998 after having been out of the game for a bit after winning the national championship at UCLA. Even current coach Jim Baron (former SBU coach) was offered the Virginia Tech job after just two years in Kingston. Several people associated with the program have later gone on to become head coaches in the NBA (3-Malone/Rothstein/Fratello) or head coaches at other colleges (Penders/Skinner/Harrick/Christian/Bozeman/Farmer/O'Shea).

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That's a pretty good coaching alumni in my personal opinion. Sounds like the University has done well for themselves. Not being an East coast guy, I really don't know much about the A 10 teams. Thanks for the info..

On a side note, URI's coaching fraternity seems well more successful and recognized than SLU's. Just my opinion, though.

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The area around Kingston is nice and definitely a vacation area in the summer and fall. The towns are small but has good food and drink in the 3 times I have been to the area. I love Al Skinner (the other day he gave what could be my new all-time favorite quote for its refreshing honesty--when asked lobbed the typical leading question about the effect of attendence for an upcoming big game he said "I don't care how many people are there, we have to play well and win.").

Anyway, in a surprise development I will likely be going to the game. Previous obligations have been canceled due to the weather so I decided I could take the train down from Boston (the weather is bad enough around here that I should not drive). Should be fun.

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>That's a pretty good coaching alumni in my personal opinion.

> Sounds like the University has done well for themselves.

>Not being an East coast guy, I really don't know much about

>the A 10 teams. Thanks for the info..

>

>On a side note, URI's coaching fraternity seems well more

>successful and recognized than SLU's. Just my opinion,

>though.

I read your board regularly and understand that many SLU fans do not know much of the A-10 and its teams due to geography and your newness to the conference. That's why I thought I would give you a little info on Rhody.

URI has had its share of successes. The problem is that it has also had its unsuccessful periods. There has not been any long term consistency for decades. Last year URI went 15-15 for a .500 record. It broke a string of 11 straight 20 win or 20 loss seasons. As unbelievable as it may sound, Rhode Island had six 20 or more wins seasons and five 20 or more losses seasons. It was either feast or famine with several quick rises and falls.

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This game is huge for us tonight. With LaSalle coming in on Saturday we could very well be in the drivers seat in the A10 to getting a top 4 seed.

We all know that we need to win the A10 Toruney to go dancing and it is going to be a lot easier for us to win 3 games in 3 days then 4 in 4 days.

It seems to me that if Soderberg focuses on defense in practice the team plays better defense that he should focus on defense from here on out.

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