RiseAndGrind Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 A) I agree with you. The Mardi Gras game has always been fun. He has tried it. He probably just can't hack it. A) It is fun. However, I would enjoy it more, and I know others would to, if it wasn't at 4 p.m. I haven't missed a Mardi Gras game in 4 years. Why start now? C) Are you still at work? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milwaukeebill Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 A) It is fun. However, I would enjoy it more, and I know others would to, if it wasn't at 4 p.m. I haven't missed a Mardi Gras game in 4 years. Why start now? C) Are you still at work? A)As a student i love the 4PM time. Get to soulard early. leave by 3. Get to the game in the right state of mind. outta there by 7 and start the party again. I think its perfect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
For-DaLove Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 A)As a student i love the 4PM time. Get to soulard early. leave by 3. Get to the game in the right state of mind. outta there by 7 and start the party again. I think its perfect.+1. Couldn't have said it any better. It's literally the best day of the year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taj79 Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 If there is anyone on here who thinks this schedule is going to get better over time, guess again. We can improve our 75 to 150 RPI opponets and that is about it. If we improve, the opposite effect will be seen from the BCS schools ---- not only won't they come to St. Louis/Chaifetz, but they will demand either a two-for-one, a solo (Duke) or a neutral court match (Iowa State/Notre Dame) in a city closer (Chicago) to their liking. The only thing that might work in getting schools to ocme in is Rick's being owed favors. If the past few years are any indication, he doesn't have any favors out there because this would have been the year to cash them in and get home-and-homes lined up -- especially with whomever coming in next year. We are pissants in the world of college basketball and its takes a long time to get to the top. You guys living in the instantaneous gratification age are mistaken if you think we can waltz into this select club. The boys in this club don't cotton to expansion much. As for "no one to get excited about," each game has the epitome of who to get excited about. If that is lost on you, you need to seek professional help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taj79 Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 Also, the debate about "Mardi Gras or Bills game" is another no-brainer. If you are conflicted, your pciture will appear in Websters under the definition "fair-weather fan." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheeseman Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 Agreed. I tried to recruit a die hard Mizzou fan to the blue side last year. He was impressed with The Fetz but was boggled by who we were actually playing. The first game was Belmont and the second was Fordham. I wish I could say I didn't agree with him when he said he had never heard of either of them. These were the only games that he could make. Not really any home games that anyone outside of dedicated SLU fans would have the slightest bit of interest in going to see. At least Georgia is a state and people know where they are from. Same can be said of our home conference games--at least RI and UMASS have their location in their names so people around here have a clue as to where they are from. How many people outside of die hard SLU fans in St louis really know anything about Duquesne, La Salle or Fordham? Again the only way any of this will ever change is if they keep winning year after year. They got the ball rolling last year with a spectacular year now they have to follow that up with an even better season this year. Do that several times in a row and people will be clamoring to play us instead of the other way around and who knows maybe tickets will become impossible to get and sell outs will be the norm. Your die hard MU fan friend has nothing to complain about - look at he cupcakes that MU plays at home every year. The key here is that you are suppose to go to the games because you are a fan of the team not because of the team they are playing. I would like to see better home opponents also but I am still buying my season tix and rooting for the team. This problem is not just ours but it is all through college bb. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bsheldon Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 I just ran some numbers based on the end of season RPI from last year and this year's scheulde is almost 50 RPI points higher than last season's. Last year our OOC averaged 183 and this year it averages 136. So, I guess it isn't all that bad after all. If our OOC RPI average last year were 136 our RPI would probably have been 10 points higher than it was. With a win or two in the conference tourney we would definitely have been in the realistic bubble discussion. Of course this year's number could be a bit different at the end of this season based on how good the teams actually are this year. Without the Chicago St game we would have had an average of 118--It really shows how bad playing a dog like that is for you. By blowing them out you lose ground on where you want to be. I personally know that I will be the biggest TN St and Chicago St fans this year. Even just a few more wins and their RPI makes huge jumps. Way down low there is a ton of of room to make huge strides with just one or two decent wins. Chicago St won a whole 6 games last year playing absolutely no one. Heck just the fact that they play us will raise their rpi significantly. If they happen to put 8 W's up they may be a mid 200 type team. Fingers corssed for everyone on out OOC shedule to have monster years. Hopefully, Jacksonville wins the Atlantic Sun (they tied for 1st last year with Belmont our past Atl Sun opponent,) GA haves the year that many are expecting, Duke does again what duke seems to alwyas do, Misery St turns around from last season's bad year, and the dogs TN St and Chicago St win a few games here and there. With all of this said about the schedule being better than years past, the home schedule still isn't anything to get all excited about. I'll be there no matter who we play though. Go Bills. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 it would be interesting to know of the ooc schedule which opponents are already contracted for next year as well? i assume only portland and southwest missouri state? anyone have any input on that? is iupui a home and away? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cowboy Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 -can we at least play this year's schedule before we complain about the schedule for next season? -it certainly appears we have limited control over the teams we can play, or something else is in the mix, bad deal for not getting the Butler series started last year, but can't do anything about that now -anyone concerned about going to Cancun? i hope we win the thing and return home very safely -i like ending with X at home, i hope that game decides in our favor the #1 seed in ACity -the schedule, as all previous and all yet to come, provides an opportunity to get to the ncaa tourney, win the games and all takes care of itself -plus we have chance to put the Billikens on the top of the page across the country by beating Duke -let's go win a bunch of games and have our name announced on march 13 and have seth davis say "watch out for this team, they could make some noise" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bsheldon Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 Your die hard MU fan friend has nothing to complain about - look at he cupcakes that MU plays at home every year. The key here is that you are suppose to go to the games because you are a fan of the team not because of the team they are playing. I would like to see better home opponents also but I am still buying my season tix and rooting for the team. This problem is not just ours but it is all through college bb. I couldn't agree more. The problem is that every single one of their home gomes is a very familiar opponent. We are rather new to our conference that isn't a geographical fit. Plus the big12 schools are all state schools so it is more than obvious where they are from. Most of our conference games don't have a ton of sizzle to a casual fan. Now that our conference has been getting a lot of good press that may be changing a bit in next couple of seasons, but it will still take a while for the casual fan to get to know who some of the A-10 schools are. Our OOC games really are our chance to get some marquee programs to come to town and excite a casual fan to want to come to a game, but apparently it is much harder to do than we think. The program I remember off the top of my head was AZ when they were #2 in the country several years back. Obviously, the Duke game this year is similar, although a one and done--not a one and one, and in my opinion a step in the right direction. The dedicated fans are coming no matter who we play, but what is obvious is that there are only about 4000 of us. To get The Fetz full, we need to attract 6000 more a game and hopefully convert them from casual to dedicated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b.hayes Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 A) It is fun. However, I would enjoy it more, and I know others would to, if it wasn't at 4 p.m. I haven't missed a Mardi Gras game in 4 years. Why start now? C) Are you still at work? A) I guess that's just too damn bad then. I'll be missing it for the second straight year. Whoops. C) Of course I was still at work. I was still there at 10. Maybe I should lay off the Billikens.com and I could leave at 8. D) Disable emoticons in your post so your 's don't look like smileys, n00b. DUH. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brianstl Posted September 8, 2010 Author Share Posted September 8, 2010 -anyone concerned about going to Cancun? i hope we win the thing and return home very safelyThere is no reason to be concerned about playing in Cancun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pistol Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 There is no reason to be concerned about playing in Cancun. Yeah, the tournament is in Cancun, not Ciudad Juarez. Probably the biggest concern is if our guys spend too much time at Senor Frog's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheChosenOne Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 I guess I just don't see the doom and gloom with the schedule. Strictly by the numbers (RPI), this appears to be a better non-conference schedule. Clearly Duke is better than any opponent from last season. Georgia should be better than last year. Ole Miss (if we play them in Cancun) had an RPI of 54 appears to be comparable to the Notre Dame team we played last year. Missouri State (75), Northeastern (77) Portland (84) and UIPUI (86) all top 100 RPI teams. If we play Southern Miss in Round Two in Cancun (121), they had a comparable RPI to the Iowa State team we played in Chicago last year (125). While I'm sure there is some disappointment that the regional rivalry with SIU won't be played this year, they appear to be in a shambles. Jacksonville (131) and even Austin Peay (159) had better RPIs than SIU last year (166). Chicago State is awful, just like Mississippi Valley State was last year. But we also had two more terrible teams, Kennesaw (281) and SEMO (314)... Tenn State this year is bad, but still not as bad as those two from last year. It will be interesting to see what kind of team Andy Kennedy has this year at Ole Miss. They made a run to the NIT Semifinals last season, but lost key players Terrico White (to the NBA), Murphy Holloway (transferred to South Carolina), and Eniel Polynice (transferred to Seton Hall). It would be nice to get a shot at them and for them to have a nice season, but they have to be considered a question mark with those loses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SluSignGuy Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 There is no reason to be concerned about playing in Cancun. Thou shall not forget about the Virgin Islands tourney. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pistol Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 Thou shall not forget about the Virgin Islands tourney. If he means on the floor, then yes. But he mentioned returning safely, so I took it to mean off the floor. I don't take any games for granted; been a SLU fan for too long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clock_Tower Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 Completely agree...this schedule seems like a bunch of 1 year hole-fillers until next year, when we can hopefully get some decent BCS teams... Something that worries me, is that this schedule gives us virtually NO room for error. We can lose the game @ Duke, the one @ Missouri State, and maybe even the Georgia game...but past that, we have to win out to have a solid shot at an NCAA bid over mid level BCS schools. It almost seems like a mid-major's football schedule where we HAVE to win every game to be considered for a BCS Bowl game... NO. Absolutely no. We cannot lose to Missouri State -- no matter where the game is played - and expect to be a Tourney team. Had we beaten the "undefeated" and "10-0" team of Missouri State, the media and bandwagon people would have jumped on for the CE led run we went on. Missouri State is not, and has not, been a Tourney team for years. Maybe it's been the timing of the games, bad luck (no CE, KM was out last year with the eye injury and BC was hobbled as well) but Missouri State needs to be a win. When we lose to Missouri State and Mizzou won't play us or Missouri State, then we fall to the "3rd place" team in a not very good state. If wwe lose to Missouri State, even if on the road, then we are no further along than we were under Romar and Brad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bauman Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 NO. Absolutely no. We cannot lose to Missouri State -- no matter where the game is played - and expect to be a Tourney team. Had we beaten the "undefeated" and "10-0" team of Missouri State, the media and bandwagon people would have jumped on for the CE led run we went on. Missouri State is not, and has not, been a Tourney team for years. Maybe it's been the timing of the games, bad luck (no CE, KM was out last year with the eye injury and BC was hobbled as well) but Missouri State needs to be a win. When we lose to Missouri State and Mizzou won't play us or Missouri State, then we fall to the "3rd place" team in a not very good state. If wwe lose to Missouri State, even if on the road, then we are no further along than we were under Romar and Brad. Can't agree with you any more. If we lose 3 OOC games with that schedule we don't belong in the NCAAs, unless we roll through our A-10 schedule. Losing to MO St. would be awful. Also, I hope I'm right about how good I expect us to be, but if we are not 100% ready when the season starts, there are a few potential problems on our schedule-@ Portland and IUPUI. Beating Georgia would cut us some slack if we fail to show up for one of our weaker OOC opponents (Portland, IUPUI, or a loss in the Cancun tourney). Hey, let's just run the table of the OOC part of the schedule (except Duke) and keep our losses in Conf to no more than 3 and I think we are clearly in, with a decent seed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizziken Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 NO. Absolutely no. We cannot lose to Missouri State -- no matter where the game is played - and expect to be a Tourney team. Had we beaten the "undefeated" and "10-0" team of Missouri State, the media and bandwagon people would have jumped on for the CE led run we went on. Missouri State is not, and has not, been a Tourney team for years. Maybe it's been the timing of the games, bad luck (no CE, KM was out last year with the eye injury and BC was hobbled as well) but Missouri State needs to be a win. When we lose to Missouri State and Mizzou won't play us or Missouri State, then we fall to the "3rd place" team in a not very good state. If wwe lose to Missouri State, even if on the road, then we are no further along than we were under Romar and Brad. HAHA! I love it, but I merely put Missouri State in there as our 'third' best non-conference game (which is kind of pathetic)...I guess one could argue that @ Portland, vs IUPUI, or a possible Ole Miss Cancun matchup, would be just as significant... The point I was trying to make, is that we could conceivably lose 3 non-conference games...go 10-3 (with losses @ Duke, Georgia, and to XXX (insert 3rd team- MIZZ St, Portland, etc)), then go 12-4/11-5 in conference, and STILL have a shot at the NCAA Tournament...22-7, 21-8 going into the Atlantic 10 Tournament would at least put us squarely on the bubble. I agree, we SHOULDN'T lose to Missouri State, but, IF it happens, we are not automatically out of the running for an NCAA bid...it would be a disgusting loss and would make me sick, but Missouri State's RPI will be between 75-110 (they finished last year with an RPI of 90 and don't lose anybody), which would not be a crippling loss. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufan13 Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 How about we just beat everyone in OOC and just make sure we don't lose by 30 to Duke. It will be tough, but if we want to be a tourney team, we should be beating teams like MO St., Portland, and Georgia. Then get through conference season with 4-5 losses again and there's no way a team with 5-6 total losses from a rising A10 will get left out of the tournament. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACE Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 We HAVE to win all of our nonconference home games. Georgia will be a challenge, but this will be their first road game of the year. We SHOULD win that. So I'll put down Duke as a loss, now it boils down to three key games - Portland, Missouri State and possibly Ole Miss in the finals of that tournament. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pistol Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 I discussed this with a few buddies yesterday. We agreed that Missouri State and Portland are HUGE trap games. We'll be expected to win both, but traveling to Portland for our first road game to play a decent team is nothing to overlook, and Missouri State should be better than last year and that is not an easy place for us to play (we get homered to death, just like in Carbondale). Yes, we should win both of those games. But if we will is another story. This has not been a good team on the road in a long time (or maybe ever). We always lay a couple eggs. Sure, we're better than last year and we absolutely have to win these games to merit any NCAA Tournament consideration. We could feasibly get out of non-conference play with one loss. I consider that best-case scenario (obviously winning at Duke would be best-case scenario, but realistically). We could also come out of non-conference play with 3 or more losses and have to win the conference tournament. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billikenfan05 Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 How about we just beat everyone in OOC and just make sure we don't lose by 30 to Duke. It will be tough, but if we want to be a tourney team, we should be beating teams like MO St., Portland, and Georgia. Then get through conference season with 4-5 losses again and there's no way a team with 5-6 total losses from a rising A10 will get left out of the tournament.Why are people automatically declaring duke a blowout? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 Why are people automatically declaring duke a blowout? because we have to play 5 on 9 (three refs and a crowd) and they are the reigning national champs with most of their players returning. that said, i dont think rickma loses to 30 to anyone at this point in a program development. especially since he wont have had time to go into christmas break marathon practices to try to kill the team yet. those first three games in january are the games to worry about letdowns due to fatigue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufan13 Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 Why are people automatically declaring duke a blowout? I think we could beat Duke. But what do they have...like 80 straight OOC Home wins? its going to be tough, but I know we can do it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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