Has All Century Team Been Announced?

[slufan13]

Douglass made it because he's 4th all time in points. My dad followed SLU closely during those years and he doesn't think Douglass deserved it but I'm guessing a lot of fans just looked at the ballot and voted for him because he had a high point total listed next to his name.

Here's the record book which might help explain some of the choices or add fuel to the fire.

http://www.slubillikens.com/fls/27200/MBB/HistoryRecords.pdf?DB_OEM_ID=27200

[hsmith19]

"A school spokesman said voting results determined the number of players on the team, with a clear gap between the top 16 and the other 22 who were on the ballot."

http://www.foxsports.com/midwest/story/billikens-announce-all-century-team-on-program-s-100th-birthday-011415

Still curious as to who the top 5 were. Why not release the full voting results (and the birth certificates of all nominees)?

[slufan13]

"A school spokesman said voting results determined the number of players on the team, with a clear gap between the top 16 and the other 22 who were on the ballot."

http://www.foxsports.com/midwest/story/billikens-announce-all-century-team-on-program-s-100th-birthday-011415

Still curious as to who the top 5 were. Why not release the full voting results (and the birth certificates of all nominees)?

Seems like a bad way to decide the team. What if there hadn't been a big gap somewhere?

[doowop]

Gary Garrison and Johnny Smith were also left off. They were two of John Bennington's best players on one of his good teams.

[kmbilliken]

Douglass didn't surprise me very much, not just because he is well liked personally and shows up to the games, but also because the fans from that era always rave about what a great player he was. They don't seem to look at him as the third best player on that team so much as they mention Bonner, Gray, and Douglas as being this great three-headed beast. A lot of the fans who were around at the time still consider the NIT finals team a big deal, which I suspect also had a lot to do with the grassroots movement for Grawer on here. I never saw him play, so I don't how accurate that perception really is, but looking at the stats I would definitely expect better from the way I've heard people talk.

And actually, Miller wasn't on the '48-'49 team that finished ranked 3rd. He was on the team the year before that won the NIT, before there was an AP ranking. And for all the crap our fan base gets for tilting bluehair, I really doubt there are that many out there who remember a guy like Miller being a supporting player to Easy Ed 67 years ago. My 92-year-old grandpa (a Mizzou alum and fan) is probably one of the few around who does remember him, and he did not vote for him. Miller was not even a starter on that team, so I'm not sure why you'd call him second best over Lehman and Schmidt. Looking at the numbers, I don't really understand his All-Conference selection, and I definitely consider him showing up on the All-Century team a weird result.

I always thought Douglas played his best basketball the second semester of his freshman year. He didn't seem to improve after that and even regressed. I remember Grawer saying they would work with him all season and see improvement, but he would lose it all over the summer and be back where they started. Great athlete and leaper,but never developed into the player he was touted as coming in.

[Duff Man]

My expectations for anything involving 'fan voting' are extremely low. Even without the ballot stuffing or sentimental bias towards the living, it's unrealistic to expect people who have witnessed vastly different samples to agree on who is worthy of an 'all-century' team.

I mean people here - including the effing moderator of the board - were campaigning for Grawer over Hickey. That would be like campaigning for Willie McGee* over Stan Musial.

*I apologize to Willie McGee - who won a championship and an MVP - for the comparison but it's the best parallel I could draw

The reality is that Harry Rogers is getting more recognition here because he was snubbed than if he'd have made the team.

I enjoy the debate, mainly because it sparks a lot of discussion of players who never get discussed and enjoy hearing subjective analysis from people who saw players before my time.

I remember once having to argue Brian Conklin was better than Quitman Dillard - I mean, I don't actively troll the Internet looking for petty arguments to waste time on, but hell if I'm going to live in a world where Brian Conklin's being compared to - much less ranked behind - Quitman Dillard.

[hsmith19]

As a child of the '80s, I have engaged in more absurd Willie McGee debates than I would like to admit. He won two batting titles (barely tying him with the immortal Pete Runnels and Bill Madlock!), so that means we need to retire his number before Triple Crown winners and/or Hall of Famers like Frisch and Medwick, and his humble demeanor and dashing ET looks mean he will always be more of a true Cardinal than pretty boy Jim Edmonds, reserve clause rebel Curt Flood, or strikeout king Ray Lankford.

[thetorch]

Were the old timers who cheered actually old enough to have seen him play?

I have always heard very persuasive arguments that the team the next year (the one with the #3 final ranking) was actually better overall, even though they inexplicably crapped out in the first round of the NIT. The only guys they lost were Miller and DC Wilcutt, who had some kind of eligibility issue after his military service. That '49 team beat Kentucky (the defending and eventual repeat NCAA champion) twice, including once at the Sugar Bowl "Championship." If they had won the NIT THAT year, then there would have been no room to doubt that they were the national champions that year, NCAA tournament be damned. The team from the previous year will always have to share their "championship" with Kentucky, who they didn't play that season.

I assume Ossola/Schmidt/Lehman are all dead. Because they have a better argument for the All-Century Team than Miller, considering they were a part of the best and second best SLU teams ever (however you want to rank them), not just one.

Yes I believe they were. Anyone over 75 could have seen that team play.

The 49 team was more talented.

I believe there is only 1 member of the NIT championship team alive, Miller, thus the huge number of votes for him.

[thetorch]

Torch did you get the Douglass inclusion at all? I think you and I are right around the same age and his team was the one we watched in our most impressionable years. Monroe was a good player, but I just don't get it at all. Gray and Bonner were clearly better and you can make a strong argument that Newberry was more important to the team by Monroe's last season.

I'm 35 so my favorite players as a child were Pee Wee and Monroe easily. Bonner was ok, he missed too many dunks and Roland was boring. Then I turned 8.

Besides Miller he is the most outrageous choice for the team. His scoring and his knack for eye popping plays puts him in the voters minds but he is one of the most overrated Billikens of all time. He was the top dog his freshman year. By the sophomore season Gray had gotten better than him. Gray was hurt a lot in their jr season. Monroe being the top option on the perimeter had a lot to do with us finishing near .500 when we should have been contending for an MCC title. He never really improved as other have said. Similar career arc to Tommie Liddell. You are right by senior year he was 4th best player on the team.

[thetorch]

My expectations for anything involving 'fan voting' are extremely low. Even without the ballot stuffing or sentimental bias towards the living, it's unrealistic to expect people who have witnessed vastly different samples to agree on who is worthy of an 'all-century' team.

I mean people here - including the effing moderator of the board - were campaigning for Grawer over Hickey. That would be like campaigning for Willie McGee* over Stan Musial.

*I apologize to Willie McGee - who won a championship and an MVP - for the comparison but it's the best parallel I could draw

The reality is that Harry Rogers is getting more recognition here because he was snubbed than if he'd have made the team.

I enjoy the debate, mainly because it sparks a lot of discussion of players who never get discussed and enjoy hearing subjective analysis from people who saw players before my time.

I remember once having to argue Brian Conklin was better than Quitman Dillard - I mean, I don't actively troll the Internet looking for petty arguments to waste time on, but hell if I'm going to live in a world where Brian Conklin's being compared to - much less ranked behind - Quitman Dillard.

I don't think that is true of Harry. He's a top 5 Billiken. His omission would be akin to naming a Cardinals all time team and leaving off Lou Brock. He wasn;t the greatest player but he is in the discussion. I just assume Rogers abilities are common knowledge. Apparently they aren't or voters have other motives.

I enjoyed revisiting that old debate. That was right after the season, if anything Conklin is now even better in my eyes. He is a clear cut 3rd on that list with Harris. Dillard wasn't a 4 but even if he was he is rated much lower than Conklin.

BTW as a child of the 80s McGee was easily my favorite player, a true gentleman as well. He deserves all the credit he can get. This Edmonds in the HOF nonsense makes me ill. While Edmonds may be the superior player, he was also an underachiever and a hot dog.

[hsmith19]

I don't think comparing Rogers to Brock is really helping his case here. Talk about overrated athletes...Brock is a borderline Hall of Famer at best, and there is no way in hell he is a top 5 Cardinal in any objective sense. I'd give Brock a spot on my team, sure, but it would be a real stretch to start him over the other corner outfield options (Slaughter, Medwick). You wouldn't want to put Musial at first base, because that would keep Mize and Pujols out of the lineup. MAYBE if you had a DH you could find a spot for Brock in the starting lineup. Brock is in the top 10 position players, MAYBE the top 10 overall, but not top 5.

As for Edmonds, I probably wouldn't vote for him for the HoF either, but he is very close. One of the best arguments for him is just how much better a player he was than guys like Lou Brock. His mugging in the outfield gave him a rep as a much better defender than he actually was, and I get people not liking him for that. But I also wouldn't call him an underachiever in any sense. In spite of some pretty serious injuries, he put together a great career after more or less being given up on in his late 20s. If he had managed to stay even a little healthier, he would be a slam dunk HoFer.

[almaman]

damn I remember guy named Brock was main reason for us winning first pennant in 18 years, one of the few players out of thousands that accumulated 3000 hits and 2nd most stolen bases in a career out of all those ever playing. Maybe a different fella? New category MBBM

[hsmith19]

Yes, Brock was great at compiling counting stats because he was a leadoff man who stayed relatively healthy and played for 19 seasons. The 3,000 hits and the 900 stolen bases (with a much less impressive success rate than people are willing to admit) are precisely the reasons he gets so overrated. He was a subpar fielder and merely a good rather than very good or great hitter.

I agree he does deserve the credit he gets for helping the Cardinals win the '64 pennant, and he was also valuable in three World Series, but those three and a half months in '64 was the only time he was even close to one of the best players in his league. Bob O'Farrell, Jim Bottomley, Chick Hafey, Marty Marion, Mort Cooper, and Harry Brecheen were also instrumental in bringing home pennants, and it is in this class of Cardinal that Brock belongs, not the class with Hornsby, Musial, Gibson, Ozzie, and Pujols.

[Pistol]

I'm 35 so my favorite players as a child were Pee Wee and Monroe easily. Bonner was ok, he missed too many dunks and Roland was boring. Then I turned 8.

Besides Miller he is the most outrageous choice for the team. His scoring and his knack for eye popping plays puts him in the voters minds but he is one of the most overrated Billikens of all time. He was the top dog his freshman year. By the sophomore season Gray had gotten better than him. Gray was hurt a lot in their jr season. Monroe being the top option on the perimeter had a lot to do with us finishing near .500 when we should have been contending for an MCC title. He never really improved as other have said. Similar career arc to Tommie Liddell. You are right by senior year he was 4th best player on the team.

These are pretty vivid memories (and strong opinions here and page 1) for someone so young at the time.

The first team I really remember was the 1993-1994 team that made the Tournament with Spoon, Claggett, Highmark, and Waldman. I have pretty much no recollection of SLU basketball before that, and certainly not enough to form such detailed opinions about. I turned 11 during the 1994 NCAA Tournament, for perspective. I have *very* faint memories of Bonner, but none of the other players on his team, and as a 6-year-old during Bonner's senior year, I'm pretty sure I thought he was the greatest player of all time because he was the only player I knew.

Which is why I don't really have much of an opinion about these "all-time greats" teams. I haven't seen most of the players play at all, I can barely remember some of them, and my perspective on these players was largely based on my age at the time. I thought Highmark and Claggett were the greatest players in the world at the time.

Anyway, I'm just not sure I can put much stock into this or any other all-century team. People shape their memories how they want over time.

[bonwich]

Wait, what? Brock "overrated"? 23rd all-time in hits? 2nd all-time (modern era, and 1st in the NL) in stolen bases? (Not to mention several of the "all-time" great Cardinals you mention played pre-1947, when the overall talent pool was significantly poorer.)

Anyway, all I have to say to that is Right Field Sucks.

[willie]

Wait, what? Brock "overrated"? 23rd all-time in hits? 2nd all-time (modern era, and 1st in the NL) in stolen bases? (Not to mention several of the "all-time" great Cardinals you mention played pre-1947, when the overall talent pool was significantly poorer.)

Anyway, all I have to say to that is Right Field Sucks.

No. Left Field Sucks.

[JMM28]

On list of overrated Cardinals, Ozzie is at the top.

[Iggy]

On list of overrated Cardinals, Ozzie is at the top.

-1

[Clock_Tower]

These are pretty vivid memories (and strong opinions here and page 1) for someone so young at the time.

The first team I really remember was the 1993-1994 team that made the Tournament with Spoon, Claggett, Highmark, and Waldman. I have pretty much no recollection of SLU basketball before that, and certainly not enough to form such detailed opinions about. I turned 11 during the 1994 NCAA Tournament, for perspective. I have *very* faint memories of Bonner, but none of the other players on his team, and as a 6-year-old during Bonner's senior year, I'm pretty sure I thought he was the greatest player of all time because he was the only player I knew.

Which is why I don't really have much of an opinion about these "all-time greats" teams. I haven't seen most of the players play at all, I can barely remember some of them, and my perspective on these players was largely based on my age at the time. I thought Highmark and Claggett were the greatest players in the world at the time.

Anyway, I'm just not sure I can put much stock into this or any other all-century team. People shape their memories how they want over time.

Pistol. I have an additional 11 years on you and my first memories of really following Billiken Basketball (aside from a few games here and there) began with the hiring of Rich Grawer. Grawer treaded water (5-23) his first year. If correct, wasn't Burns on the team for Grawer's first year?

Anyway, it is clear that the program dropped to a lower tier status in order to retain D1 basketball. SLU simply had trouble competing in The Metro with the likes of Louisville, Memphis, etc. Grawer truly did save basketball for SLU and therefore is worthy of some type of recognition by SLU.

Three (3) questions:

1. Why 3 coaches -- and each of them dead -- but nothing for the local savior of Billiken Basketball? If we have 16 players, then why not 4 coaches? Or why not an honorary one?

2. Why 16 players? 10 makes sense. so does 15 or 20. 16 players is odd.

3. Why no honorable mention? Seems more like we should have a first team of either 5 or 10 players and then an honorable mention team of another 5 or 10 players.

[thetorch]

These are pretty vivid memories (and strong opinions here and page 1) for someone so young at the time.

The first team I really remember was the 1993-1994 team that made the Tournament with Spoon, Claggett, Highmark, and Waldman. I have pretty much no recollection of SLU basketball before that, and certainly not enough to form such detailed opinions about. I turned 11 during the 1994 NCAA Tournament, for perspective. I have *very* faint memories of Bonner, but none of the other players on his team, and as a 6-year-old during Bonner's senior year, I'm pretty sure I thought he was the greatest player of all time because he was the only player I knew.

Which is why I don't really have much of an opinion about these "all-time greats" teams. I haven't seen most of the players play at all, I can barely remember some of them, and my perspective on these players was largely based on my age at the time. I thought Highmark and Claggett were the greatest players in the world at the time.

Anyway, I'm just not sure I can put much stock into this or any other all-century team. People shape their memories how they want over time.

I remember games from the 83-84 season. I went to games with my father, season ticket holder from '69 on, my grandfather and great uncle who had scout tickets since the mid 40s and combined coached 70 years of HS ball. No ball tosses, no nachos, billiken games were basketball school. Sadly I probably knew more about basketball when I was 10 than I do now.

[Pistol]

1. They probably set a minimum vote threshhold and maximum awardee threshhold, kind of like the Best Picture category in the Oscars. For example, up to 5 coaches but each need to get at least X number of votes to be included. And only 3 coaches got that. Just a guess.

2. See 1, but using a maximum of 20 players.

3. If my hunch above is correct, honorable mention isn't relevant. This would only be used for First Team, Second Team, etc.

[Pistol]

I remember games from the 83-84 season. I went to games with my father, season ticket holder from '69 on, my grandfather and great uncle who had scout tickets since the mid 40s and combined coached 70 years of HS ball. No ball tosses, no nachos, billiken games were basketball school. Sadly I probably knew more about basketball when I was 10 than I do now.

So you were, what, 4 or 5 years old that season? That's a pretty amazing memory if that's the case. I would never feel up to commenting on how good players were from when I was 4 or 5 unless there's a lot of surviving video and statistical proof to back up my impressions as a preschooler or kindergartener.

[willie]

Pistol. I have an additional 11 years on you and my first memories of really following Billiken Basketball (aside from a few games here and there) began with the hiring of Rich Grawer. Grawer treaded water (5-23) his first year. If correct, wasn't Burns on the team for Grawer's first year?

Anyway, it is clear that the program dropped to a lower tier status in order to retain D1 basketball. SLU simply had trouble competing in The Metro with the likes of Louisville, Memphis, etc. Grawer truly did save basketball for SLU and therefore is worthy of some type of recognition by SLU.

Three (3) questions:

1. Why 3 coaches -- and each of them dead -- but nothing for the local savior of Billiken Basketball? If we have 16 players, then why not 4 coaches? Or why not an honorary one?

2. Why 16 players? 10 makes sense. so does 15 or 20. 16 players is odd.

3. Why no honorable mention? Seems more like we should have a first team of either 5 or 10 players and then an honorable mention team of another 5 or 10 players.

Clock,first of all I voted for Grawer as my coach,but Rich has been honored by the University. He was put in the Billiken Hall of Fame many years ago.Like many others Harry was the one I don't understand. He was in my top five and the top five of several friends who voted. Hard to understand.

[MB73]

Harry Rogers definitely should have been on the team. There are some other debatable spots, but it is absolutely unacceptable that Harry Rogers was snubbed.

I think Grawer should be another coach named for the important role he played in our history, though I understand the argument that he should not be named, it is not as big of a snub as Rogers.

(Who on Earth would say Brock was overrated and cite his fielding (a left fielder in baseball rarely is a top notch defensive asset) hell he played left field very well, had a solid fielding percentage, charged the ball and got a lot of assists that way despite a poor arm? He set the all time record for stolen bases, had > 3000 hits, high BA, hit plenty of home runs for a leadoff man, high on base %, had a high OPS).

[hsmith19]

Wait, what? Brock "overrated"? 23rd all-time in hits? 2nd all-time (modern era, and 1st in the NL) in stolen bases? (Not to mention several of the "all-time" great Cardinals you mention played pre-1947, when the overall talent pool was significantly poorer.)

Anyway, all I have to say to that is Right Field Sucks.

Once again, counting stats. Brock is pretty much the definition of an empty compiler. He was consistently better than league average offensively, but never truly outstanding. He was a good but not great player, who gets remembered because he stole tons of bases for a very long time at a success rate that ranged from decent to mediocre.

Yes, the talent pool Hornsby and Musial played against was weaker, but they were truly dominant, transcendant players compared to the competition they faced. Brock was never in the same stratosphere as them.