Coach Soderberg Season Grade

[moytoy12]

You don't think the AD would change with Levick and say a Romar or Mike Anderson (just examples)?

I also respect Sodie's integrity and believe he deserves some credit for it. But that's kinda like me abiding by the rules of professional responsibility, i'm required to be ethical. It's a prereq.

[Tonka]

I give Brad a C.

Now, I also would give Brad a C for last year. So, that means in my eyes we are not improving which is not a good thing.

[jimbofive]

Those are my sentiments. Until we backslide with a bad recruiting class coming in the next year, I'm still on the wagon. How anyone could argue against that logic is beyond me. If we just had a better season (W-L) than last year, and our recruits coming in have the potential to be improvements over the players we are losing, that means we are getting better. Our full recruiting effort remains to be seen, but I am confident we will recruit 4 future starters this spring signing period.

[satrap]

I give him a B minus. He did a good job overall, with IV playing like someone from the Greek island of Lesbos instead of Sparta.

[moytoy12]

Isn't it Sodie's job to motivate IV to play like someone from Sparta? If IV isn't going to play like that, isn't it Sodie's job to see what BH and AK could give us (earlier in the season in BH's case)?

[satrap]

Yes, moytoy. BUT (the inevitable but), you could come up with an "isn't it Brad's job to...." to any argument or fact I could raise.

[slu72]

There's no buts for a guy being paid $400,000+. Everything to do with the program is his responsibility. It's why it's so frustrating when he says, "I don't know how..." "We're at wits end trying to figure it out"....Winners find solutions. Losers aren't solutions.

[moytoy12]

"you could come up with an "isn't it Brad's job to...." to any argument or fact I could raise."

LOL. I hear ya. I think the time for nitpicking Sodie is over (we've all been over the arguments a 1,000 times and i think you even pointed that out in another thread). We know what we have in him. To most people, Sodie has provided them a body of work to be judged...one way or another.

[smitty]

I give Sodie an overall grade of "D+". I think the coaching part of the grade is a "C" - record was less than anticipated but he had to deal with Kevin's injury and a serious lack of depth. I give the recruiting grade an "F". Despite valid concerns about the administration, West Pine Gym and other recruiting disadvantages, for him to have 2 of 4 freshman this year already gone and 2 that hardly played combined with what seemingly will be a very underwhelming 07 class is unacceptable.

Bottom line - I would fire him IF and only IF you can get a big name coach or up and comer similar to Shimmy in here. If the administration is unwilling to make that commitment or if that type of coach is not out there, then I stay the course with Brad and give him 1 more year.

[Band Legend]

I'll go with a C. Unfortunately, this was the year when we really needed an A coaching job to get us over the top. This year was a bitter disappointment for everyone who bleeds Billiken blue and had us pegged for the big dance. I just have a hard time working up much vitriole for Brad. I know Leo Durocher said nice guys finish last but I'm not quite ready to give up on him yet. If we can't grade him out above a C next year I think he'll be gone.

[moytoy12]

"Bottom line - I would fire him IF and only IF you can get a big name coach or up and comer similar to Shimmy in here. If the administration is unwilling to make that commitment or if that type of coach is not out there, then I stay the course with Brad and give him 1 more year."

I absolutley agree with this statement. I highly doubt we get a big name coach, but if we could get a shimmy...we do it. i hope that CL has performed her due diligence over the course of the last year if this is step they are considering.

[kevinfootes]

"last time I checked we didn't play Marquette, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Memphis twice this season. Those are eight+ games in which we would have had it handed to us this year."

You think that 11-19 Cincy would have "handed it to us" this year? This is one year I would have loved to play that team.

Who is the better coach that SLU will bring in? You think Majerus will come here? I'm not a huge Brad fan, but I don't see SLU being such an attractive job. Remember the finalists when Brad was hired? It wasn't exactly John Wooden and Roy Williams.

[GOSLU68]

we could have had Weber the year before Illinois took him; Stallings

out of Collinsville HS, Illinois would have been a great hire before

Vandy took him from Illinois State-but we would have been a stepping stone until Illinois got him-that happened to us with Bennington years

ago. That's hind sight but Spoon had twice the deal Brad gets because of some supporters that sweetened the pot. Brad is a cheap coach for

a program spending $80 million so it can get Saturday nights and March

dates without asking the hockey people or being behind the Ice Capades, etc. We are going to have to have some new majors when we get

in the entertainment business. we should have the money to make Brad

a bigger than life deal in St. Louis.

I still like Brad because he has a very believable honesty and a lot of kids can get with that and SLU has to reach that kind of kid that wants a decent education and understands the city school or even Jesuit philosophy-not too many high schoolers have been exposed to that-it is a very small market. I'd take Duke walk-ons. The new arena

is going to help alot. We can not have another year like this-this is as bad as the bad Grawer final year. We need 4 talented players to compete in the A-10 we could not do it with 3 players who were two underclassmen with A- grades and a senior who was a B- for lots of different reasons but I would take IV for a fifth year over what we have now.

[cheeseman]

It is hard to give Brad a final grade since so much of his situation is dependent on his recruiting this spring and fall. As for his coaching - any grade in the C range is fair. It was the players who said no NCAA bid would be a failing year not Brad. As far as this year's record goes - he only improved it because he played 4 more games than the last year. Who knows, if they had played 4 more games last year he might have been 16-17. SIUC has continued what Weber did because they continued to hire their asst. coaches - if they had to step out and hire somebody new outside their program they would not be where they are. The real question is - are any of our assts worth hiring?

[Billikan]

Did I miss something? I thought we played well and beat ST. Joes on the road. What are you talking about that you had to "endure" a win?

[kevinfootes]

68 types:

"We can not have another year like this-this is as bad as the bad Grawer final year."

The last Grawer year was 5-23. Are you trying to say the 20-13 is equal to 5-23? Please help me here.

Also, you really think Weber would have left Carbondale for SLU?

[GOSLU68]

Weber was in the cue when SLU was doing their "National search". After what was paid to Spoon and Romar SLU and living in ST. Louis would have been a real raise for Weber. Not that we are Illinois, that program and the Big Ten are two steps above SLU. But Illinos was later, not the same year. I was very suspicicious that the SLU administration knew Romar was leaving when Soderberg was brought in as an assistant-that was one hell of a strange and strong hire when he already had Cameron Dollar; what I meant by as bad as the Grawer last year is the total frustration of not putting any run on or getting any momemtum; every time we won we won a game we should have won but not by much; every time we lost it seemed to take the wind out of us. Beating UMass and X were probably the only highlights of the year and they came too late to offset the horrible showings against the dregs of our league. No I still have respect for Soderberg after this season and I was totally turned off by Grawer's handling of Monroe Douglas, Robinson, Clagett not just his 5-23 record; I was too harsh to equate the two years but I was really disappointed-with Romar and Spoon you could understand them not working out as Spoon was "tired" if not retired and Romar was not a good fit for recruiting in the midwest. I still expect Soderberg to get better-it is not like the Joey Meyer deal at DePaul where they finally had to say it wasn't happening; I just expected more now. I expect Sodeerberg to find a way to play 8-9

players instead of trying them and burying them at the end of the bench for 10 games; how do you start Coffey? How do you start JJ, DB, BH, etc and then not see them for weeks? For a team short of depth I would have thought we would have given AK and DM a lot more exposure.

I don't think Soderberg got outcoached as badly in league as the year

before but I think he has to risk playing more of his role players and

maybe that means start someone other than Luke and bring Luke and DP in to spark the team; start BH but don't expect him to rebound without

a wide body next to him.

[GOSLU68]

in my reply of why I compared this year to Grawer's disintegration I

apologize for not including Kevin Footes whose talent was rarley used

or understood by Grawer who preferred grinding it out and running the ball on the ground and here he had a transfer from UMKC that was 6'9 and would rebound or steal the ball dribble to the other end and score and Grawer would pull him from the game for taking over and not running the plays

[JMM28]

>My bottom line, I would give Brad a D+/C-, which should not

>be good enough to keep his job.

A D+/C- average at SLU will land you on academic probation. Figuring in a C- or D+ for the past 2 years, he would have been kicked out by now.

[kevinfootes]

Footes pretty much played while wearing the Grawer handcuffs. He did have some talent and would have been better off in a more up-tempo system...like Monroe Douglass.