SLU makes the Tigerboard

[cheesycow]

Or he'll switch the conversation from "why josh fisher doesn't dunk" to a discussion about "rickey paulding won't get drafted."

[cheeseman]

Actually, he has more talent at WU then he recruited at SLU. The other big thing he had going for him this year is that his conference was down this year. He at best was inconsistent in his coaching and while he was not the worst he also was not a great X and O.

[Sheltiedave]

Change the subject? The encompassing subject is does Missouri cheat, and how bad are they going to get whacked? There is a veritable circus under this tent, so we are talking about varied facets of the same subject.

If Q ran an honest program, Odom would still be an assistant at Mizzou, Harvey would not have retained a lawyer, and 70% of the posts on Tigerboard and Billikens.com would disappear into the ether. The St. Louis and Columbia papers would not be clamoring for Q to resign. TH would be committed to his dad's alma mater. Mizzou, in my book, would be crowing about last year's Elite Eight finish.

What did the NCAA say in their preliminary report - Q did not maintain proper control of his program at all times? Guys, keep in mind that Illinois got drilled for lack of institutional control, not originally cited, because they vociferously challenged one major violation. You are looking at an identical situation, with a different program cited for a violation(Larry Smith in football,) and getting lined up for contesting a major violation the NCAA is convinced happened. If you don't want to review prior history with the NCAA, get ready to repeat history. Multiple and repeated violations in two programs over multiple years = lack of institutional control.

At this point the NCAA doesn't care how bad Mizzou's volations have been. They are extremely embarrassed. Your turn is next.

[tseugnekillib]

Romar had enough X and O's to beat Arizona three times this past season and to beat #1 Stanford once! He will probably be in the Big Dance again next year!

[aj_arete]

Washington's talent level. He lost one of his top players to Gonzaga. He had another top player foolishly leave for the NBA draft early. His best player is actually a football player. None of those players were highly recruited...why is it so hard to give the man credit.

Washington didn't have size like Romar had with the Billikens, but he did inherit great quickness.

[billiken_roy]

by you, i am not talking about aj. aj has more sense than a lot of you with lorenzo. you all act as though romar was the worst coach in history. my gosh, have you all forgotten ekker? or look at the seasons that fat pat had at depaul while he had nba talent on his roster. now that is/was a bad coach.

romar didnt work out. he was a bigtime recruiter at a program that wasnt ready for that approach. i believe eventually romar would have hit on one or more of those bigtime recruits. and we have seen with hughes and wade the power of a superstar player.

romar finished second on a lot of bigtime talent, but second place recruiting doesnt get you much. in fact you would be better off if they shut the door in your face the first time you came calling so you could then go after the second tier. unfortunately, by the time the likes of travis diener, jamal sampson, chuck hayes, etc had told romar sorry, the remains to choose from werent good.

and that is what amazes me about those of you questioning his coaching. my gosh, he played a couple of seasons with chris sloan as his power forward. he used a walkon, john redden as his point guard for his miracle in memphis run. he got more out of varner and chris braun than coach soderberg did. can any of you say that our teams ever lacked effort? they always played hard defensively and used the clock as much as spoon or coach soderberg did.

i love coach soderberg. i am very glad he is our coach now. but why must we dredge up the romar days for the sake of falsely berating the man. be happy he got us to the ncaa one year and we had competitive teams that didnt mail it in any of the three seasons. that is more than we can say for a few of the great spoon's seasons. in fact, take the claggett, h, highmark two big years out of spoon's slu resume, and the one hughes season and spoon's remaining years are worse than romar's time here. but we always want to give the old awe shucks boy a free pass. i say if you rip on romar, you better rip on lazy spoon as well. but what we really ought to do is let it go.

[Billiken Rich]

a great coach for SLU?

In my opinion, his team's weren't fundamentally sound and he left a ###### storm of poor recruits behind him when he left. Brad gets a pass if IO doesn't hit your g-spot because he had to pull several recruits out of his a$$ when Zo abandoned ship. Zo might have convinved Labron James to come here for a year but given his history with students like Pulley and Edwin that wouldn't have done us much good. Zo didn't cheat here and I think thats the best that can be said of him.

For every Fisher and Sloan there is an Edwin and Pulley. Thank God he's gone.

[tseugnekillib]

your correct, "Romar didn't cheat here" and his record was 51-44 with one NCAA appearance in three years.

[Billiken Rich]

He didn't leave Brad just a little mess with his "great" recruiting? Please.

[Iggy]

Romar recruited Soderberg. That makes him a legend.

[cheeseman]

Lets stick to facts. Comments about Romar's coaching performance were made in the context of his time at SLU. If people want to point to his performance at WU as evidence that he was a great x and o coach at SLU then I do have a problem with that - unrelated. He may be having success at WU and perhaps he learned from his time here at SLU - that is good and I applaud him for it. By the way a 51-44 3 year record is not outstanding - not terrible but not outstanding. Finally, anybody who thinks that he recruited well for SLU is not looking at the facts - coming in second doesn't count, you can only play who is on your team. Also, when Romar left he left a mess - how quickly some of you forget that if Brad had not found some players at the last minute we would have been in deep trouble. Finally, the year Romar won the tourney - because of the broken leg - he did it with Spoon recruited players. His players have never been to the NCAA - at least that I can figure out so if somebody has different information please clarify for me. Even Brad could not coach them to the NCAA - only NITs.

[cheeseman]

I will give you that one - his bringing Brad in was a great stroke of luck for SLU.

[Billiken Rich]

nm

[billiken_roy]

as to romar's "mess", had romar stayed, it is my opinion that seyfert stays, hollins comes, and somehow edwin and pulley play (anyone else think it is amazing that pulley and edwin had no problem academically continuing on at other schools?) the problems created were mainly created because romar took a better opportunity. for anyone to harbor ill feelings towards a man for bettering himself, i think that is very little of them. i am sure all of you finger pointers are all at the very first job you ever had and never left a place of employment to try to better yourself.

as to romar record not being great, you are correct, not great, but not horrible either. a lot less was done with more at other schools though.

why do we have to keep going over this? let the man alone. we should be happy that the billikens in fact did have success while he was here. the saint louis university program did not get into any trouble. and last that coach romar was secure enough in himself to go get a fine man like coach soderberg to serve as his assistant. while we didnt win a national championship while romar was in charge, he did about as well as spoon and better than grawer, ekker, coleman etc. i.e. why just pick on only lorenzo? spread the arrows around if you want to shoot the past.

[Billiken Rich]

Roy, if Pulley and Edwin make the grades here Romar was a cheat. Hollins and Bigsky don't make us a tournament team even if Zo takes the tests for Jason and Randy.

If it makes you feel better in my opinion, Spoon didn't recruit worth a damn. Zo wasn't a terrible coach overall while he was here but the baggage he left behind tarnishes his decent win loss record. I do also think that his teams while they did win some games had lousy fundamentals.

[cheeseman]

Roy, I have never questions Romar taking the WU job - I agree with you anytime you think you can better yourself then by all means do it. I do however disagree that Hollins would have been as SLU if Romar stayed - Romar himself told me that if he had not signed Hollins in the fall we never would have gotten him in the Spring - not what I would call a ringing committment to SLU by Hollins. As far as Seyfert staying because of Romar - you must be getting old to think a young man of 20 is going to pass up being with their girlfriend particularily when you were not getting much playing time. Finally as far as Pulley and Edwin go- Romar staying would not have gotten them academically eligible - he was here and they could not stay focused before so why blame Brad's hiring as to why the two failed in school. I agree - lets stop talking about Romar but all of us have to stop being revisionists - the facts are clear that Romar was not a good overall hire for SLU but he could be a great hire for WU.

[billiken_roy]

edwin and pulley did not disappear from the landscape and got their academic house in order fairly easy. they undoubtedly would have had to sit some at slu, but it is my opinion that they could have been playing again fairly soon. maybe as soon as the semester break no more than the following season. it is my guess (and i have nothing but facial expressions from past billiken club meetings when edwin and pulley's names were mentioned) that coach soderberg just didnt want those guys around as much as academic distress. the fact that within a year edwin was playing at kent state and pulley at missouri sure makes you wonder how bad it really was.

[billiken_roy]

you can believe what you want, i can believe what i want, but again, if romar wasnt good, than neither were spoon or grawer. that is my only problem. romar continually gets the crap beat out of him and good ole lazy boy spoon and over his head grawer get more than free passes. they are immortalized.

i will say that soderberg is the best coach slu has had in the time i have been around the program (1978). so the long of it, we are better off today than ever before.

[cheeseman]

Roy, I agree that Grawer had gone as far as he could and it was time for a different coach. Spoon did raise the bar and he was at times an inconsistent recruiter which probably ultimately lead to his decision to retire from SLU. That being said, he was a great bench coach. I also agree that Brad to this point has shown he has both needed qualities - good coaching and good recruiting. Pulley got eligible again because of Barton JC - it also lead to an investigation about his transcript by MU and him missing a full semester of play so missing a year and half is not a short period of time. Lets also not forget that Pulley ended up leaving the program without ever playing even one full semester. Edwin sat out year and ended up at UWGB - same place that took Morris when he did not qualify for us - what makes you think that Edwin's year off would have been good enough to come back to SLU. You could be right that Brad did not really want to keep the two around but given what happened to Pulley at MU that was a good decision on his part - the jury is still out on Edwin but maybe Brad knew Jason would never qualify for SLU again so he was just wanting to cut his losses.

[Billiken Rich]

Both grawer and spoon had limitations but both raised the level of the program. Zo didn't. Brad will. You hate Spoon. We know. You can say Zo didn't suck because Spoon wasn't great either. Would you accept a D grade from your son because it's better than Randy Pulley's F's. I think not. Romar was a net disaster for SLU.

[billiken_roy]

edwin started at kent state after just a year.

[billiken_roy]

i dont hate spoon. i just think he is overrated. especially considering his tremendously lazy recruiting and horrible away from the camera/microphone people skills. and it just burns me that he gets a free pass and romar gets hammered. romar never ever had seasons that approached the low's of either grawer or spoon. i agree he didnt have the highes of either one.

so many of you think lorenzo did not "raise the bar". i think it is undeniable that when romar was here, slu was mentioned more nationally on recruiting than any time before or after. he actually had us in places that spoon never even dreamed of. and i bet if you asked brad, he would agree that romar actually blazed some trails that has made things easier than it was when spoon left. hell, i bet the vashon security had shoot to kill orders prior to romar coming around. and i can tell you this. if you were any kind of a regular at high school games in the st louis area before and during romar times, you sure saw romar out and about st louis seeing basketball a hell of a lot more than you did with spoon.

[cheeseman]

Roy, thanks for the clarification - you refreshed my memory about Edwin.

[tseugnekillib]

for the record, Romar was 51-44 and one NCAA appearance in his three years at SLU.

[BillikenButch]

Winning record, one NCAA tournament, best moment in last 50 years of SLU basketball, all coming off 2 losing seasons out of last 3 = net disaster. Not in my book.

He may not have moved the program forward, but he certainly did not move it backwards.