Bernie's column

[slu72]

Good column. Again, let's not lose perspective here, but this is all about a man fighting for his life, and that's the most important consideration.

But life does hand you lemons at times, so what does SLU do? I disagree w/ Bernie's suggestion that Crews should be handled the mantle some time during the season if the Bills appear to be doing well. Crews main objective this year is to get this team to the NCAA's. If he achieves that he deserves the job. Anything short of that, Chris May has to start a job search.

As for recruiting, well, hopefully Crew's is already active on that front. Granted, the interim tag doesn't help, as most kids say it's the coach that's the deciding factor. But it's really no different than a kid being recruited by VCU or Butler, where I'm sure kids are told by rival coaches that there's no guarantee Smart or Stevens is going to be there when they show up in the fall. As for JC's signing Crawford, well, let's just say it's not overly impressive to beat out a bunch of mid majors for his services. Although, I hope I'm proven wrong and the kid turns out to be a Scott Highmark clone.

This will be a big decision for Mays. And if I was him I'd be sucking up big time to Dr. C and others who contributed to bringing in RM. Face it, if JC isn't the man, it's gonna cost us damn near a mil to get a good one. That figure will make Fr. B gag and possibly hurl, but unless the bigs are willing to pony up the bucks, we'll likely be in the market for a retread, eg JC, Whitesell, and end up back on the road to Mediocrity. I think this was Bernie's main message in his column. It's clear he's not a fan of Fr. B, and doesn't trust him to do what's best for the hoops program.

I went to the CoC tournament last night and watched Murray St. beat St. Johns, and Auburn beat CofC. Murray St. was definitely the cream of the crop. They were well coached and disciplined. No surprise they're record is so good. Lavin has athletes but it looks like he just rolls the ball out on the court at practice and says have at it. Auburn and CofC looked awful and not well coached. It was nothing like watching an RM coached team execute his schemes. My point here is, good coaches/teachers are difficult to find these days. Good recruiters not so hard as there's a lot of slick young salesman types out there. We were lucky to have RM here for 5 years, and we're going to need that luck to continue in finding his replacement.

[Tony 4 Billikens]

it's gonna cost us damn near a mil to get a good one. That figure will make Fr. B gag and possibly hurl, but unless the bigs are willing to pony up the bucks, we'll likely be in the market for a retread, eg JC, Whitesell, and end up back on the road to Mediocrity.

True!