Majerus post-game press conference

[Guest BillikenReport]

Majerus talked to reporters for almost 18 minutes after the game tonight.

He covered a wide range of topics, but I don't think he mentioned Andre Miller once (well, at least not by name).

[dneuner]

Probably the highlight of my career.

[jimbofive]

Majerus talked to reporters for almost 18 minutes after the game tonight.

He covered a wide range of topics, but I don't think he mentioned Andre Miller once (well, at least not by name).

RM tackles racism like an MF towards the end of that discussion. I like his old school "people's just people" take on things. Told the airport dudes to leave his player alone and check up under his own gut, might be something dangerous up there...

On Jon SMIF's eating habits... "I mean he eats insatiably... I mean I'll be sitting with him at the airport... and I'll give him some of MY DONUTS..." (someone snickers in the background) "...He'll scarf 'em down in a minute!"

Seems to be really perturbed, however, by Willie Reeeeeeed's eating habits... "Willie is a FINICKY, FUSSY eater!"

He's really hung up on how his kids eat and how they study. Doesn't really say much else about them. Cracks me up.

Oh, also says, even if Jeff Reid never plays again (no news good or bad), he'll have the remainder of his scholarship at SLU.

[booyaa87]

RM tackles racism like an MF towards the end of that discussion. I like his old school "people's just people" take on things. Told the airport dudes to leave his player alone and check up under his own gut, might be something dangerous up there...

On Jon SMIF's eating habits... "I mean he eats insatiably... I mean I'll be sitting with him at the airport... and I'll give him some of MY DONUTS..." (someone snickers in the background) "...He'll scarf 'em down in a minute!"

Seems to be really perturbed, however, by Willie Reeeeeeed's eating habits... "Willie is a FINICKY, FUSSY eater!"

He's really hung up on how his kids eat and how they study. Doesn't really say much else about them. Cracks me up.

Oh, also says, even if Jeff Reid never plays again (no news good or bad), he'll have the remainder of his scholarship at SLU.

is there audio of the press conf?

[Guest BillikenReport]

He's really hung up on how his kids eat and how they study. Doesn't really say much else about them. Cracks me up.

Didn't he say he loved Jon Smith ... or was it Jeff Reid ... or Femi John?

I know he said Smith "is a delight."

There was no mention of Paul Eckerle, however. I should have asked him about Paul's status.

Here's my game story: http://saintlouis.scout.com/2/939689.html

[davidnark]

Majerus says: "We have athletic issues and size issues defensively, but we usually play a pretty good game." I recently watched some tape of his best Utah teams, and I haven't seen a prior Majerus lineup as athletic as our new starting five.

[dneuner]

Didn't he say he loved Jon Smith ... or was it Jeff Reid ... or Femi John?

I know he said Smith "is a delight."

There was no mention of Paul Eckerle, however. I should have asked him about Paul's status.

Here's my game story: http://saintlouis.scout.com/2/939689.html

He says he loves Jeff Reid, and that Jon is a delight and he loves coaching him.

[cheeseman]

RM tackles racism like an MF towards the end of that discussion. I like his old school "people's just people" take on things. Told the airport dudes to leave his player alone and check up under his own gut, might be something dangerous up there...

On Jon SMIF's eating habits... "I mean he eats insatiably... I mean I'll be sitting with him at the airport... and I'll give him some of MY DONUTS..." (someone snickers in the background) "...He'll scarf 'em down in a minute!"

Seems to be really perturbed, however, by Willie Reeeeeeed's eating habits... "Willie is a FINICKY, FUSSY eater!"

He's really hung up on how his kids eat and how they study. Doesn't really say much else about them. Cracks me up.

Oh, also says, even if Jeff Reid never plays again (no news good or bad), he'll have the remainder of his scholarship at SLU.

That schollie for JR would not be athletic - would it? I would assume the school would simply carry him as grant student of some kind if he can not play again. This is turning out to be something rather serious.

[Guest BillikenReport]

That schollie for JR would not be athletic - would it? I would assume the school would simply carry him as grant student of some kind if he can not play again. This is turning out to be something rather serious.

If Reid wasn't able to play again for the Billikens because of the injury he suffered, he would likely have a scholarship from the school but it wouldn't count against the basketball team's scholarships.

[slufanskip]

Didn't he say he loved Jon Smith ... or was it Jeff Reid ... or Femi John?

I know he said Smith "is a delight."

There was no mention of Paul Eckerle, however. I should have asked him about Paul's status.

Here's my game story: http://saintlouis.scout.com/2/939689.html

thanks for the story

[bauman]

Majerus talked to reporters for almost 18 minutes after the game tonight.

He covered a wide range of topics, but I don't think he mentioned Andre Miller once (well, at least not by name).

More Baby Steps!

[Archy McNally]

On the 101 postgame show, Majerus did bring up that he is giving the players two days off to make sure they don't miss any class time and to concentrate on studies the next 2 days. He said the road trips in the A10 really hurt the kids in terms of missing class and he wants to make sure everybody stays on track. In fact, he talked more about this than the game: kids are students first and players second, etc.

Now I don't want to bring up the whole MVC thing again but I do want to say this in light of the big "flying charter" debate and MVC vs A10 debate. American Airlines cut a bunch of direct flights this year and now only fly direct to a few places. The schedule of flying direct anywhere is much smaller than it was plus they have to find 20 available seats to go anywhere, if not more. I think his point of traveling in the A10 is a valid one and his main concern is missing classtime for the players. I am not suggesting that we should move to the MVC and would like to avoid talking about the MVC. I just think his viewpoint is a valid one: traveling in the A10 is hard on the players keeping up with their academics and chartering flights is one way to make it easier. I also think that American cutting flights is causing this issue right now.

[DirtyRican]

Now I don't want to bring up the whole MVC thing again but I do want to say this in light of the big "flying charter" debate and MVC vs A10 debate. American Airlines cut a bunch of direct flights this year and now only fly direct to a few places. The schedule of flying direct anywhere is much smaller than it was plus they have to find 20 available seats to go anywhere, if not more. I think his point of traveling in the A10 is a valid one and his main concern is missing classtime for the players. I am not suggesting that we should move to the MVC and would like to avoid talking about the MVC. I just think his viewpoint is a valid one: traveling in the A10 is hard on the players keeping up with their academics and chartering flights is one way to make it easier. I also think that American cutting flights is causing this issue right now.

I do not know the schedule for basketball's road games but I do know how baseball works. It is even tougher when it comes to 3 day conference road series and mid week games. We would miss class most Thurs and Friday then one day during the week in season. It was pretty brutal.

[Pistol]

On the 101 postgame show, Majerus did bring up that he is giving the players two days off to make sure they don't miss any class time and to concentrate on studies the next 2 days. He said the road trips in the A10 really hurt the kids in terms of missing class and he wants to make sure everybody stays on track. In fact, he talked more about this than the game: kids are students first and players second, etc.

Now I don't want to bring up the whole MVC thing again but I do want to say this in light of the big "flying charter" debate and MVC vs A10 debate. American Airlines cut a bunch of direct flights this year and now only fly direct to a few places. The schedule of flying direct anywhere is much smaller than it was plus they have to find 20 available seats to go anywhere, if not more. I think his point of traveling in the A10 is a valid one and his main concern is missing classtime for the players. I am not suggesting that we should move to the MVC and would like to avoid talking about the MVC. I just think his viewpoint is a valid one: traveling in the A10 is hard on the players keeping up with their academics and chartering flights is one way to make it easier. I also think that American cutting flights is causing this issue right now.

I would hate to see us jeopardize the long-term prospects of our program because of American Airlines and fluctuating commercial flight prices. So far, Southwest may have only picked up 9 of the 40-something non-stops that AA is cutting from Lambert this summer, but I would imagine they'll grab some more. It definitely is worth consideration as to how we do things as an athletic program, but you don't switch conferences for that reason. Also, it might be an incentive for the league to make sure the home-and-home matchups are more geographically concentrated, i.e. make sure SLU plays Dayton and Xavier twice no matter what.

I also understand that travel is tough in terms of missing classes, but in terms of individual study time, I don't see it as a big negative, and maybe even a positive. There are a lot more distractions on campus than there are on a bus or plane or in a hotel. The other thing to consider is that the MVC would give us a bunch of long bus rides as opposed to 2-hour flights. I'm not sure it would be a big time savings.

And I'm with you, not worth re-igniting the argument, but travel expenses certainly do merit consideration for the programs and conferences.

[BACKHANDtheRICAN]

I do not know the schedule for basketball's road games but I do know how baseball works. It is even tougher when it comes to 3 day conference road series and mid week games. We would miss class most Thurs and Friday then one day during the week in season. It was pretty brutal.

Rican-

Going 0-3 with 2 strikeouts in the alumni baseball game hardly qualifies you to speak on behalf of the baseball program. He gone.

Want to spot me later?

[cheeseman]

On the 101 postgame show, Majerus did bring up that he is giving the players two days off to make sure they don't miss any class time and to concentrate on studies the next 2 days. He said the road trips in the A10 really hurt the kids in terms of missing class and he wants to make sure everybody stays on track. In fact, he talked more about this than the game: kids are students first and players second, etc.

Now I don't want to bring up the whole MVC thing again but I do want to say this in light of the big "flying charter" debate and MVC vs A10 debate. American Airlines cut a bunch of direct flights this year and now only fly direct to a few places. The schedule of flying direct anywhere is much smaller than it was plus they have to find 20 available seats to go anywhere, if not more. I think his point of traveling in the A10 is a valid one and his main concern is missing classtime for the players. I am not suggesting that we should move to the MVC and would like to avoid talking about the MVC. I just think his viewpoint is a valid one: traveling in the A10 is hard on the players keeping up with their academics and chartering flights is one way to make it easier. I also think that American cutting flights is causing this issue right now.

This is all nonsense - the problem with the kids missing classes is that he wants to be gone two days before each game and fly back the next day - if he wants to be gone two days then it does not matter what conference you play in the same number of classes would still be missed prior to the game and possibly afterwards. Don't forget the women BB team has been dealing with this for awhile and Billikan has already told us that he saw the flight plans for the away games and some are charter and some are commercial flights. The athletic department can put together a plan for solving this charter flight issue if they want to - my guess is this is not only tied to charter flights or not and AA cutting some direct flights - by the way unless you are in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Dallas or LA you have the same problem StL has - might be a little better in the Twin Cities and Denver. Check the number flights coming in and out of San Diego, SF, and other cities of like sizes they are all dealing with the same thing as we are. Ask yourself what does Dayton do? One thing I do know is that Biondi can be very odd about somethings and even hard headed to the point that his position is not even cost effective at times for some situations. My point simply is if he decided that charter flights were out then they would be out regardless of how much sense it made unless May could sit down and show him how his decision was not a good idea. I suggest we do not have the full story on this charter flight issue and we all know that RM is not above fudging excuses - see missed first radio show.

[DirtyRican]

Rican-

Going 0-3 with 2 strikeouts in the alumni baseball game hardly qualifies you to speak on behalf of the baseball program. He gone.

Want to spot me later?

Low blow...just so you know I have a better homerun/ab ratio than Big Mac in the summer of 98.

Forest Park at 5:15

[Bay Area Billiken]

Re scheduling, at least this year the A-10 has SLU making what could have been 3 2-game roadtrips: Duquesne and Charlotte, GW and Richmond, and LaSalle and St. Joe's, albeit with 2 1-game trips, UMass and Dayton. But on that first trip, we read that SLU came back to St. Louis before leaving again for Charlotte.

It would be better from a travel standpoint if the A-10 would let these road games be on Thursdays and Saturdays, as opposed to Wednesday, which for whatever reason is a big A-10 game night. The Pac-10 plays Thursdays and Saturdays/Sundays, usually Saturdays. The WCC has largely returned to this model. Both leagues play 2 road games near to each other (for example, teams play Cal and Stanford on the same trip, UCLA and USC on the same trip, Gonzaga and Portland on the same trip, etc.)

Much of the A-10 consists of an East Coast bus league.

When SLU was in the MCC (now Horizon), that league involved 2 game trips, usually on Saturday and Monday.

Before that, when I was at SLU (Ekker days), we had friends on the team, and know how much travel and missed class time is involved with being a D-1 athlete. And that was when SLU was in the Metro Conference with much nearer opponents like Louisville and Memphis. The longer trips then were to Tulane, Florida State, and Virginia Tech.

And is painfully true how hard it has become to get to St. Louis by air. For us out here, TWA once had 6 non-stops from SFO to STL alone, along with at least 2 from San Jose and Sacramento. All that is left is 1 non-stop American flight from SFO, which is being cut. United is starting 1 non-stop daily this year. We wish Southwest would take over the Bay Area to St. Louis non-stop route, preferably from Oakland, or even from SFO, but that has not yet happened, despite Southwest going to fly non-stop from San Diego to St. Louis. The Bay Area is bigger than San Diego.

[udfan]

This is all nonsense - the problem with the kids missing classes is that he wants to be gone two days before each game and fly back the next day - if he wants to be gone two days then it does not matter what conference you play in the same number of classes would still be missed prior to the game and possibly afterwards. Don't forget the women BB team has been dealing with this for awhile and Billikan has already told us that he saw the flight plans for the away games and some are charter and some are commercial flights. The athletic department can put together a plan for solving this charter flight issue if they want to - my guess is this is not only tied to charter flights or not and AA cutting some direct flights - by the way unless you are in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Dallas or LA you have the same problem StL has - might be a little better in the Twin Cities and Denver. Check the number flights coming in and out of San Diego, SF, and other cities of like sizes they are all dealing with the same thing as we are. Ask yourself what does Dayton do? One thing I do know is that Biondi can be very odd about somethings and even hard headed to the point that his position is not even cost effective at times for some situations. My point simply is if he decided that charter flights were out then they would be out regardless of how much sense it made unless May could sit down and show him how his decision was not a good idea. I suggest we do not have the full story on this charter flight issue and we all know that RM is not above fudging excuses - see missed first radio show.

I know that UD charters a lot of private jets, selling other seats to big boosters. It was a big push of Gregory's because he was concerned about missing excessive classtime and wearing kids out on the commercial flights. And you can't argue too much about our academic success with the men's basketball team and all of the other sports really. We are always near the top of the national performance. Even with the private flights, it's a grind for the athletes, IMO.

If SLU were to charter flights too, it should only be an extra 60 to 90 minutes of flight time in each direction, right? I am pretty sure that we only drive to Xavier.

[Chicago Billiken]

With all the talk about missing class and charter flights maybe the A-10 looks into a novel concept....travel partners.

I know that SLU and Charlotte don't have a natrual travel partner but the rest of the A-10 does:

X/Dayton

Richmond/GW

Rhody/UMass

Temple/St. Joe's

St. Bonnies/Fordham

LaSalle/Duquesne

I know unfortunately that leaves Charlotte paired up with SLU but maybe American can add an extra flight from St. Louis to Charlotte.

And how about this, the A-10 could play games on Thursday/Saturday. This would limit the travel days and time away from school and it would be cheaper for the schools with flying, etc.

It works for the Ivy League and Pac-10 why can't those morons in Newport News thank outside of the box.

Maybe Rick should take an extra day during the trip to Richmond and talk to Bernadette McGlade about this. If he talks enough about Andre Miller, the fact that his players eat too much but can't gain weight and he has the opposite problem and threatens to sit on her; she will probably give him what he wants.

Just an idea.....

Official Billikens.com sponsor of Kevin Shortal

[Bay Area Billiken]

With all the talk about missing class and charter flights maybe the A-10 looks into a novel concept....travel partners.

I know that SLU and Charlotte don't have a natrual travel partner but the rest of the A-10 does:

X/Dayton

Richmond/GW

Rhody/UMass

Temple/St. Joe's

St. Bonnies/Fordham

LaSalle/Duquesne

I know unfortunately that leaves Charlotte paired up with SLU but maybe American can add an extra flight from St. Louis to Charlotte.

And how about this, the A-10 could play games on Thursday/Saturday. This would limit the travel days and time away from school and it would be cheaper for the schools with flying, etc.

It works for the Ivy League and Pac-10 why can't those morons in Newport News thank outside of the box.

Maybe Rick should take an extra day during the trip to Richmond and talk to Bernadette McGlade about this. If he talks enough about Andre Miller, the fact that his players eat too much but can't gain weight and he has the opposite problem and threatens to sit on her; she will probably give him what he wants.

Just an idea.....

Official Billikens.com sponsor of Kevin Shortal

Having travel partners and TH/SAT games works very well in the Pac-10 and WCC. It would help SLU with these scheduling and travel issues.

One suspects that in the bus league part of the A-10, schools didn't want to have 2 road games and 2 potential losses in the same week.

[slu72]

Having travel partners and TH/SAT games works very well in the Pac-10 and WCC. It would help SLU with these scheduling and travel issues.

One suspects that in the bus league part of the A-10, schools didn't want to have 2 road games and 2 potential losses in the same week.

It does seem as though this year's road sched was set up to minimize costs but the Thurs. - Sat. game sched's a whole lot better than the Wed. thing. When you look at the A-10 geography... it would seem commercial flights out of St. L wouldn't be bad for

Pitt and Charlotte, although would have been better to spend a night in Pitt then fly to Charlotte from there. And by the way both are pretty nice airports close to their cities.

GW and Richmond: Direct fly into Wash and bus to Richmond. Coming home from Richmond bus back to DC.

St. Joes and LaSalle: Direct fly into Philly, not a bad airport either, and spend 3-5 days there.

Umass- a charter flight as closest airport is Worcester. Probably not a direct commercial ex St. Louis to Worcester. Boston's about 2-3 hrs from Amherst. If we have to travel to Umass it should have been matched with RI game. Providence is not much further from Amherst then Boston may even be closer.

St. B's- Please join the Patriot League or declare yourself a Canadian school. This must be a charter flight. And going there in the winter you never know what you're going to run into re the weather. Hell, you could be stranded there for five days.

As for school work, am sure w/ laptops, wi-fi, and internet connections something is being done to keep the kids up to date on class work. hell, they could put the class on the net and not miss a beat all that takes is a video hookup. For example, if you're in Philly for 3 days... you play the game. Go to the hotel and attend you classes on the web. I'd be surprised if this wasn't being done for them.

[MusicCityBilliken]

I know that UD charters a lot of private jets, selling other seats to big boosters. It was a big push of Gregory's because he was concerned about missing excessive classtime and wearing kids out on the commercial flights. And you can't argue too much about our academic success with the men's basketball team and all of the other sports really. We are always near the top of the national performance. Even with the private flights, it's a grind for the athletes, IMO.

If SLU were to charter flights too, it should only be an extra 60 to 90 minutes of flight time in each direction, right? I am pretty sure that we only drive to Xavier.

SLU used to do this when they played in CUSA. I recall a booster/player charter down to New Orleans when they played Tulane. They flew out in the morning, boosters had great dinner and time in the French Quarter, attended the game and flew back that night. What I heard and remember they had a great time.