Former Billikens Updates

[BrettJollyComedyHour]

12 hours ago, TheChosenOne said:

And Crawford is married to a former women’s hooper, right?

Yep, Mike is married to Erin Nelson from the women's team. Erin and most of her available teammates were present at Maddy Gits' wedding this past weekend to Ford-era basketball ops guy Michael Wilson. Even Coach Stone was in attendance.

Edited July 3, 2024 by BrettJollyComedyHour

[cgeldmacher]

Brian Conklin is listed on the roster of the Ibakari Robots in the Japanese league.  However, his last game with them was on January 27, 2024.  He only scored 4 points in that game in 25 minutes.  Prior to that, he was averaging somewhere in the teens as far as points per game.  Not sure if he was injured in that game, got cut afterwards, or retired, but I don't see where he has played a game since.

As a very interesting side note, the last game that Conklin played on January 27 was against the Hiroshima Dragonflies.  That's Dwayne Evans' team.  Dwayne scored 17 points and had 8 rebounds in that game against Conklin.

[cgeldmacher]

Hassan French - The last info on him is that he played the 2022-23 season in the UK for Newcastle.  His last game for which I can find a record was in April 2023.  He averaged 7.6 ppg and 9.3 rpg in the 2022-23 season

[cgeldmacher]

Javon Bess - Javon just finished the 2023-24 season playing for Wuerzburg in Germany.  He averaged 10.4 ppg and 5.2 rpg.

[cgeldmacher]

Tramaine Isabell - Tramaine appears to have played his last professional basketball for the Artland Dragons in the German league in the 2021-22 season.  He averaged 13.3 ppg and 3.0 apg that season.

[cgeldmacher]

Ash Yacoubou - The last info I can come up with for Ash is that he played the 2021 season in the Dominican Republic for Titanes.  He averged 15.7 ppg that season.

[cgeldmacher]

Francis Okoro - Francis played the 2023-24 season for Nevesis in Lithuania.  He averaged 8.6 ppg and 8.0 rpg.

Another interesting sidenote on this one.  Courtney Ramey was his teammate on Nevesis in 2023-24.  He averaged 10.6 ppg.

Season: 2023-2024 (Lithuania ) Players StatsSORTABLE

#	Name	G	MIN	FGM-A	%	3PM-A	%	FTM-A	%	RO	RD	REB	AST	PF	ST	BS	TO	PTS	RNK
24	Waterman, Zane	32	31.0	122-214	57.0	52-137	38.0	138-178	77.5	1.8	4.8	6.6	1.3	3.3	0.7	0.4	1.9	16.8	13.9
11	Marcinkevicius J.	31	16.0	40-70	57.1	12-38	31.6	24-29	82.8	1.1	1.4	2.5	0.4	1.3	0.1	0.3	0.4	4.5	4.2
44	Keliacius, Robertas	30	16.3	39-69	56.5	15-42	35.7	49-71	69.0	1.4	1.6	3.0	0.6	3.1	0.4	0.3	0.8	5.7	3.5
22	McNeil, Sean	30	27.3	97-165	58.8	55-139	39.6	43-52	82.7	0.5	1.1	1.6	1.4	2.7	0.7	0.1	0.8	13.4	8.3
3	Vaitkus, Ignas	29	27.2	82-127	64.6	20-77	26.0	81-105	77.1	0.7	3.6	4.2	2.0	2.0	0.9	0.1	2.4	10.5	9.0
16	Macijauskas M.	26	5.0	8-17	47.1	0-0	0.0	8-16	50.0	0.5	0.4	0.9	0.1	0.5	0.1	0.3	0.3	0.9	0.8
0	Ramey, Courtney	25	23.8	44-90	48.9	45-118	38.1	41-53	77.4	0.4	1.8	2.2	2.0	2.0	1.0	0.0	1.5	10.6	7.2
1	Jurgens, Carlos	24	21.4	47-103	45.6	18-59	30.5	36-56	64.3	0.3	1.7	2.0	2.8	2.1	0.5	0.1	1.7	7.7	4.4
8	Okoro, Francis	22	26.2	83-137	60.6	0-0	0.0	23-39	59.0	3.0	4.9	8.0	0.4	3.6	0.5	0.4	1.4	8.6	9.7
2	Ebo, Amit	16	26.3	46-97	47.4	34-99	34.3	33-37	89.2	0.4	2.5	2.9	7.6	2.3	0.8	0	3.6	14.2	12.2
4	Basic, Lovre	12	23.8	15-28	53.6	14-60	23.3	6-8	75.0	0.3	1.0	1.3	5.5	2.8	0.7	0.1	3.3	6.5	2.9
97	Okouo, Viny	10	21.3	43-76	56.6	0-1	0.0	10-17	58.8	1.5	4.3	5.8	0.6	3.1	0.4	0.3	2.2	9.6	7.3
17	Alisas, Gediminas	9	12.7	8-10	80.0	0-3	0.0	3-9	33.3	0.4	1.6	2.0	0.2	0.4	0	0	0.3	2.1	2.3
10	Grenda, Dominykas	9	6.4	1-6	16.7	0-5	0.0	5-6	83.3	0.1	0.2	0.3	0.9	0.8	0.6	0	0.8	0.8	0.0
2	Galloway, Brevin	5	17.8	9-25	36.0	9-23	39.1	6-13	46.2	0.4	0.8	1.2	2.0	2.4	1.2	0	1.0	10.2	3.8
10	Bukauskas, Nojus	2	6.5	1-1	100.0	0-1	0.0	3-4	75.0	0.5	1.0	1.5	1.0	1.0	0.5	0.5	0.5	2.5	3.5
7	Razbadauskas M.	1	3.0	0-0	0.0	0-0	0.0	0-0	0.0	1.0	0	1.0	0	1.0	0	0	1.0	0	0.0

Season: 2023-2024 (Lithuania ) Team Summary

[cgeldmacher]

Reggie Agbeko -  Reggie played the 2023-24 season for the Tromso Storm in Norway.  He averaged 17.4 ppg and 11.2 rpg.  Prior to this past season in Norway, he played four season for four different teams in Spain and one season in Denmark.

[cgeldmacher]

DJ Foreman - DJ played the 2023-24 season for Club Deportes Espanol de Talca in Chile.  He averaged 13.4 ppg and 7.6 rpg.

[thetorch]

Dwayne Evans is probably the most celebrated Billikens pro since Kevin Lisch.

In the Japan League he has been an All Star & All league selection every season.  This year he led his team in points, rebounds and assists and they won the championship.  They then went on to place 3rd in the Asian Champions League.  Evans was the 5th best scorer in the competition and was named 2nd team All Asian Champions league.  Evans has now won titles in Italy and Japan and has led his team to the league finals 4 out of the last 6 seasons.  

[thetorch]

On 7/2/2024 at 1:02 PM, cgeldmacher said:

Rob Loe is playing for Tuatara in New Zealand.  He's averaging 20.2 ppg.  Looks like it is his first season in Tuatara.  He had previously been with Melbourne in the Australian League where he was averaging 5.5 ppg.  Looks like he's winding things down against easier competition in his home country.

Some NBL players play in New Zealand in the offseason.  Loe plays in the New Zealand league every year.  After nearly retiring during Covid he has rebuilt his career and is now a solid big man in the NBL.  He shouldn't be retiring anytime soon.

[OkieBilliken]

 

Okay so this is kind of cool.   Braxton Martinez was a Freshman All-American out of St. Peter’s who had a very nice career at SLU, finishing 3rd all-time in hits and in the Top 20 in several offensive categories.   He was undrafted and spent four years playing for River City in the Frontier League.  After Covid, he finally signed an affiliated MiLB contract.   In 2021 he dominated the California League, but he was quite a bit older than league average.  He made it as high as AAA in 2022 but his production fell off pretty significantly.  He retired after being released following 2022.   Just found out he ended up a hitting instructor in the very successful Tampa Bay organization.   It would be nice to see him on a Major League staff sometime in the future.  

[HoosierPal]

Congrats TJ

 

[aj_arete]

On 7/2/2024 at 7:31 PM, TheChosenOne said:

I’m liking this TMZ esque info! I’m no longer on social media (for some reason the algorithms thought I only wanted to see well endowed young women hit golf balls), so I didn’t know that about Thatch, disappointing. Nor did I know that about Gillmann and Crawford. And Crawford is married to a former women’s hooper, right?

According to his LinkedIn profile, Thatch has a a real job with World Wide Technology as Associate Business Development Manager.  His social media page is just something he does for fun.

[cgeldmacher]

2 hours ago, aj_arete said:

According to his LinkedIn profile, Thatch has a a real job with World Wide Technology as Associate Business Development Manager.  His social media page is just something he does for fun.

Yet another Billiken going pro

[Lord Elrond]

Yet another Billiken going pro, Kyla McMakin signed with Saint Thomas Basket Le Havre, in the French LF2 league in Le Havre, France. Their season starts in the fall.

[thetorch]

Anyone know what Perkins is up to?  I would have bet any amount of money 3 years ago that he would be a pro somewhere.

[Taj79]

Perkins signed with the College Park Skyhawks in the NBA G League in October of 2023.  He lasted a little over a week before waived.  Nothing else currently exists on him that I can find.

[ACE]

Perk was never the same after that injury. A really tough break for him because he could have made a decent living for a while playing hoops.

[Old guy]

Sports injuries have two separate sides, the obvious one is the actual physical damage that is repaired and in time achieves or comes close to full recovery. The second side of the injury is the psychological side. People that experience severe physical injury during sports become more cautious and do not achieve the full performance level they had before the injury. They do not follow Commodore Perry's famous saying "full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes." They cannot forget the way they were injured all and play at full capacity, regardless what it cost them. I am afraid Holmes at Dayton may never fully recover like Perkins did.

[papal]

another side to sports injury may be the skill of the surgeon

[almaman]

6 hours ago, Taj79 said:

Perkins signed with the College Park Skyhawks in the NBA G League in October of 2023.  He lasted a little over a week before waived.  Nothing else currently exists on him that I can find.

he deserves NIL reparations.  

[billikenfan05]

1 hour ago, papal said:

another side to sports injury may be the skill of the surgeon

IIRC correctly there were rumors about how his injury was handled. Not necessarily the surgeon, specifically. 

[Old guy]

33 minutes ago, almaman said:

he deserves NIL reparations.  

No one deserves anything, everyone is out to see how much they can get. Lawyers profit from this.

@papal I know you are trying to be cute, don't. Subpar surgeons exist but they tend to go bankrupt when their unhappy customers find medical injury lawyers. Anyone doing surgery regularly does at the very least a standard level job. And when a Dr. tells you "you can do what you do normally" they are CATEGORICALLY NOT saying you are clear to play professional level basketball, they mean you can walk, go up and down stairs and run a bit. 

[73Billiken]

4 hours ago, Old guy said:

Sports injuries have two separate sides, the obvious one is the actual physical damage that is repaired and in time achieves or comes close to full recovery. The second side of the injury is the psychological side. People that experience severe physical injury during sports become more cautious and do not achieve the full performance level they had before the injury. They do not follow Commodore Perry's famous saying "full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes." They cannot forget the way they were injured all and play at full capacity, regardless what it cost them. I am afraid Holmes at Dayton may never fully recover like Perkins did.

Actually it was not Commodore Perry.

Admiral David Farragut issued the order at the Battle of Mobile Bay  "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead".

 

Nevertheless, point well taken.