ACE Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 Roy, I think we first starting hearing you beat the drum with the infrastructure excuse for Soderberg right around the time of the St. Bonaventure loss. Last spring myself and few others were very disappointed in Soderberg's recruiting. At that point, you never brought up this infrastructure argument. In fact, your general tone seemed to be that the recruits were fine and that we had enough talent to make it to the Tourney in the 06-07 season. Well, obviously it didn't turn out that way this past season. Why can't you admit that you were wrong? You only started bringing up the infrastructure thing when the season started going south. Losing to the Bonaventure, Temple, Duquesne had NOTHING to do with infrastructure shortcomings. I think we all would like to see the infrastructure improved and it is, but also the coach has to be held accountable. I don't want a coach who makes excuses and uses that as a crutch. Besides, one of the arguments in support of going to the A10 is that we would have similar infrastructure as a lot of these schools. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slu72 Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 UB's never complained about the infrastructure to the best of my knowledge. The man really has nothing to complain about in my opinion. He keeps putting a mediocre product on the floor. Is getting us excited about nothing in terms of new recruits, ie people that can help us next year or down the road. And no one seems to be holding his feet to the fire. If you were making $400k a year and did a mediocre job, would you dare complain about anything? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 until the midmajority website was discovered, i had no idea we were that far behind the curve. i believe that was presented to the board around xmas or thereabout. http://www.midmajority.com/school.php?s=SLU that got me thinking to the other limited amenities (or lack thereof) slu possesses. while directly, you are correct, it had nothing to do with those three devastating losses, however, how many players over the last 20 years have we lost due to the hollow promises of father biondi wanting to be a top 50 program but not backing that up with the support needed to attain that level of SUSTAINED success? i want long term success not a one year run and then back to under 500 roller coaster we have now rode for 20 years. and imo our coaches have nothing to do with making that happen. if it did, the likes of romar and spoon wouldnt have had the wild success swings they did while slu coaches. starting over will only give slu a breather in pressure. we should be pressuring the athletic dept to improve the infrastructure, not pressuring them to switch coaches. after the needed influxes are made, if the coach is still not a top 50 success, fine, make a move, but we are kidding ourselves to think a coach alone will make us a long term top 50 program. as to my intial belief pre-season we had the horses to run, i admit i said that. but i didnt expect lisch to be torn up like a rag doll all year and ian and obi to be the bust they were. had you told me ian would not even be the 2006 ian and lisch would be injured as he was all year, i would have said we would be lucky to attain 500. add to that, obi's failure, i think it is amazing we finished as we did. i havent heard brad make excuses. in fact he takes the level of blame to a fault imo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moytoy12 Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 Did you need to know the dollar amounts to know the SID sucks? or that the AD's staff is average at best? the marketing of the program is horrible? the facilities are antiquated? etc. Did we really need to know that SLU ranks 90ish in men's bball budgets to know the infrastructure was lacking? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nate Latsch Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 The infrastructure argument is the next excuse in a long line of excuses. You can blame the infrastructure but it doesn't hold much weight when you consider a new on-campus building is under construction. That was one of the big excuses for many years. The success of the program comes down to recruiting. The Portsmouth Invitational event had one SLU player and THREE players in it who could have been Billikens: Jamal Tatum, Blake Ahearn and Brian Cusworth. - Nate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Box and Won Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 Tatum and Ahearn yes, Cusworth, not so sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 nate, romar begged cusworth to come to slu. again you just assume that every st louis player should accept it is his duty to come to slu and would have been a cinch if asked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 as i said, i knew it was not top 50, but i thought the overall athletic dept was more competitive than what it is? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moytoy12 Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 Before you saw the dollar amounts, did you feel that UB was substantially handcuffed by the infrastructure? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brianstl Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 The program has been handcuffed by its infastructure for twenty years. If you have ever entered West Pine in that time period, this would have been clear. These problems are not Brad's only problems. A lot of Brad's problems are a direct result of Brad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 i really never gave it any thought. neither soderberg nor levick or any of their predecessors had ever even eluded to such publically. so why would a fan that isnt an insider (that would define me) have any thoughts of such? i have long hated our marketing and sports information dept's performance, but i never thought about blaming staff shortage before i saw the numbers. however, looking back and considering how good of people those in those positions are, it should have been obvious. after i saw those numbers i started bringing up other programs athletic dept staffs (marquette, siu for example) and saw that the comparisons werent even close. the sheer number of people plus the experience levels were huge differences. it is easy to assume that those differences equate to crisis management rather than proactive planning and execution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moytoy12 Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 I don't disagree, that's why the infrastructure argument has a johnny-come-lately feel to it. If the infrastructure has been the problem for 20 years, then we didn't need to know budget numbers to know it was a problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACE Posted April 10, 2007 Author Share Posted April 10, 2007 If Soderberg was relying on a guy to contribute who hadn't played in two years, then he deserves blame for that. He needed to add a juco in addition to Obi. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 moytoy, so you knew that our overall athletic budget rank was nearly 200 and our overall athletic dept recruiting rank was over 200? i would have guessed we were top 100 across the board. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 and he tried with stemler. stemler played him to the end. would you have preferred he cut stemler loose as soon as indiana appeared on the horizon? that is a tough scenario to play out imo. especially considering stemler as late as his visit to slu was telling slu he was still coming to slu per frank c. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moytoy12 Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 First off, you're hiding the ball behind numbers. The men's bball budget is ranked around 90. That's not great, but that's not nearly 200th either. Also, we don't know how the men's bball recruiting budget ranks since we are not privy to that number; we only know the overall recruiting budget. My point is that you are probably one of the most knowledgeable fans regarding SLU bball, yet you didn't see that the infrastructure was a big problem until you had the numbers in front of you? These aren't mutually exclusive, but given the great fan that you are and the broad base of knowlegde re: the program that you have, I have a little trouble swallowing that this argument is something more than a new excuse in support of Brad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brianstl Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 If it was a johnny-come-lately I don't think people would have been concerned about the new arena. I know it has been brought up in my family and in our group of season ticket holders since the Grawer years. I also think when people have high hopes going into a season, they don't like to think about the bad things hidden in the closet. I don't think anybody should give Brad a free ride because of the other problems and I certainly don't. But to act like they don't exist and might have a bigger effect on the program overall than any coach, is foolish. My big hope in all of this is that having to operate a facility and compete with other facilties for events will force a change in the way the athletic department is operated. I think Biondi is already beginning to see this and is starting to let Cheryl make some of the needed changes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cowboy Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 this whole argument is based on numbers where there is no standardized reporting we don't know what slu puts in the categories nor do we know what others put in the categories to me, we have no idea what these numbers mean does the ADept need help? sure is it the reason we don't have enough quality players? i don't think so Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moytoy12 Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 "I don't think anybody should give Brad a free ride because of the other problems and I certainly don't. But to act like they don't exist and might have a bigger effect on the program overall than any coach, is foolish." I agree with both points. I guess the dividing line is whether brad is living up to and perhaps exceeding expectations given the internal problems he faces or if brad is underperforming even in the face of some institutional constraints. I fall on the side of underperformance, but i definitely see that he is handcuffed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inthelou Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 He is so biased toward SLU it's not even funny. He's always going to pump the sunshine rather than give you an unbiased view of what's really going on. I think his enthusiasm and loyalty to us are great but he's a spin doctor when it comes to recruiting. Remember this is the same guy who said on the air that McKinney should come and play for us because he should play for a black coach. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stchuckbilliken Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 Completely disagree. The criteria for success or failure comes down to Wins & Loses. That is the only standard one should use. Grawer was fired when he had a 5 - 23 season. Not when he was winning 27, 21 & 19 games a season. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brianstl Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 What? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACE Posted April 10, 2007 Author Share Posted April 10, 2007 >and he tried with stemler. stemler played him to the end. > >would you have preferred he cut stemler loose as soon as >indiana appeared on the horizon? that is a tough scenario >to play out imo. especially considering stemler as late as >his visit to slu was telling slu he was still coming to slu >per frank c. We had other scholarships available while were pursuing Stemler. We had several needs - rebounding, another guard to replace Drejaj. The point guard play was inconsistent this year. We were undersized at the 4 again. The result is we landed nobody who helped us this past season. Soderberg doesn't deserve a free pass for that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACE Posted April 10, 2007 Author Share Posted April 10, 2007 "McKinney should come and play for us because he should play for a black coach." I'll remember that the next time a Mizloser uses that logic to justify why somebody should play for Anderson. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidnark Posted April 10, 2007 Share Posted April 10, 2007 But the infrastructure problem has NOTHING to do with Brad's poor talent evaluations (e.g., Clarke v. Ahearn, Grimes v. Shaw, etc.) or Brad's inability to make in-game adjustments (e.g., how many games this season did we get torched from outside by relying solely on the pack D?) or Brad's inability to develop a bench this season (where was Bryce for 3 months? why did maguire and knollmeyer ride the pine if they weren't redshirted?). There is also room for improvement on the infrastructure. The problem, however, is that it is going to be done on the dime of the core fans. This will probably mean increased booster club participation and costs and increased season ticket prices. You simply can't have it both ways. If the budget is going to be increased, the fans and alumni are going to have to pay for it. The only other option is to increase student tuition for revenue or to pull from the endowment, neither of which is a good option. This was what Levick promised and delivered at Santa Clara, and this is what she intends to implement at SLU. In short, the current problems with the men's basketball program result from both a coaching problem and an infrastructure problem. Both problems should be addressed. To ignore one or the other is short-sighted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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