Welcome To Billiken Nation, Travis Ford!

[Pistol]

39 minutes ago, BrettJollyComedyHour said:

The man is a walking red flag lol. He reminds me of the George Bush parody from 30 Rock. He takes one thing he remembers about you and turns it into your personality if he ever sees you again.

 

4 minutes ago, Box and Won said:

 

Big Tuna was my exact thought, as well. 

[JMM28]

On 3/29/2016 at 9:03 PM, JMM28 said:

Fire Chris May.

On 3/29/2016 at 9:52 PM, JMM28 said:

Man that one conference championship is exciting.

Chris May being totally incompetent and Travis Ford being one helluva interview was a deadly combo.

What a smart guy. Still rings true. Just didn't know how deadly it was then...

[slufan13]

Gonna be rough when Chris May hires Tom Crean 

[willie]

So lets play the game. Assuming we have a new coach for next year and he wants to retain one assistant for continuity. Who do you keep? 

[willie]

Just now, slufan13 said:

Gonna be rough when Chris May hires Tom Crean 

This actually would not shock me. 

[FromDaEastSide]

Just now, willie said:

So lets play the game. Assuming we have a new coach for next year and he wants to retain one assistant for continuity. Who do you keep? 

Harriman

[TheA_Bomb]

1 minute ago, willie said:

So lets play the game. Assuming we have a new coach for next year and he wants to retain one assistant for continuity. Who do you keep? 

Harriman will be the consensus. Makes sense he has less Ford stench on him.  Also if we continue to go international as our Aussie ties deepen. 

But really we don't need to keep anyone.

Tabula rasa

[johnbj14]

40 minutes ago, slufan13 said:

Gonna be rough when Chris May hires Tom Crean 

Would be the exact kind of hire I’d expect out of May. Just get those 20 wins instead of chasing more. 
 

I’d wager he won’t be the person driving the search, after he was the one that really fell in love with Travis as a coach. The decision might be out of his hands entirely. 

[JohnnyJumpUp]

I will quit my current job and lead the Billikens to at least an NIT berth within 3 years, and only ask for a 250k annual base salary for 3 years, with a 100k bonus per NIT berth. With my coaching experience and leadership skills, I know I could put together a winning program. 

[ACE]

1 hour ago, cheeseman said:

So you don't think Goodwin and French's last year when they had a number 1 seed in the NIT and lost in the first round to an 8 a disappointment?

Of course, but that was a NCAA caliber team and that was my point. That season was the biggest disappointment because Ford had indeed built a Top 25 team - The team was living up to expectations as they cracked the Top 25 at the end of the non-conference season, and then the COVID super spreader happened in late Dec - that's on Ford, we've been through that. He proved he could build a Top 25 caliber roster which most SLU coaches throughout history have been unable to do, which is why there was justifiably optimism. 

[NextYearBill]

20 minutes ago, JohnnyJumpUp said:

I will quit my current job and lead the Billikens to at least an NIT berth within 3 years, and only ask for a 250k annual base salary for 3 years, with a 100k bonus per NIT berth. With my coaching experience and leadership skills, I know I could put together a winning program. 

give me the $2.5M you give Trav.... I'd win the A10...... might get sanctioned for a few years, but we'd have one solid run

[VeniceMenace]

17 minutes ago, ACE said:

Of course, but that was a NCAA caliber team and that was my point. That season was the biggest disappointment because Ford had indeed built a Top 25 team - The team was living up to expectations as they cracked the Top 25 at the end of the non-conference season, and then the COVID super spreader happened in late Dec - that's on Ford, we've been through that. He proved he could build a Top 25 caliber roster which most SLU coaches throughout history have been unable to do, which is why there was justifiably optimism. 

Did he in fact build that roster? Or did an assistant at the time do a lot of that work? Harry did all that international recruiting late summer this year, right?

[slufan13]

19 minutes ago, VeniceMenace said:

Did he in fact build that roster? Or did an assistant at the time do a lot of that work? Harry did all that international recruiting late summer this year, right?

Ford built it. Now there's a reasonable question if a few weeks in the top 25 means means he proved he can build a top 25 team or if it was a blip in a blip year. But Ford gets credit for the good too however little good there was 

[JettFlight5]

1 hour ago, ACE said:

Of course, but that was a NCAA caliber team and that was my point. That season was the biggest disappointment because Ford had indeed built a Top 25 team - The team was living up to expectations as they cracked the Top 25 at the end of the non-conference season, and then the COVID super spreader happened in late Dec - that's on Ford, we've been through that. He proved he could build a Top 25 caliber roster which most SLU coaches throughout history have been unable to do, which is why there was justifiably optimism. 

Yes, it was NCAA caliber hence the disappointment. More or less came down to the first game after Covid losing to LaSalle. Even with the "break" that team should have made the NCAA. 

[majerus mojo]

On 3/29/2016 at 9:37 PM, RiseAndGrind said:

To recap:

• SLU unofficially fires Jim Crews 7-10 days before season
• SLU actually fires Jim Crews 3 minutes after season is over
• SLU says it wants a head coach with a high level of success
• SLU hires a "search firm"
• SLU waits 18 days
• SLU hires a coach that is roundly disliked and was just fired from his last job.

Good job. Good effort.

Good recap 

On 3/29/2016 at 10:25 PM, JMM28 said:

 

 

 

Obligatory bump

On 3/29/2016 at 10:48 PM, RiseAndGrind said:

3-15 in conference last year.

This guy buyouts 

On 3/29/2016 at 10:53 PM, okstatefan said:

Oklahoma State fan dropping by, was curious to see how the hire of Travis Ford would be received. I'll be interested to see how he does. I hope he does well for your sake. I think the consensus among our fans is that he is a nice guy, but we were ready for him to move on. I see a lot of comments about him being an ###### or a bad guy, but I'm not sure it's accurate.

He works very hard, a tireless recruiter, and he did have some recruiting success for us. He won on some big time recruits. What he failed to do as far as recruiting goes, is recruit a complete roster. He always had major holes at the 4 and 5 position and he'd have a plethora of thin, 6'5-6'7 "athletes" who would be forced to play in the post, and ride the bench, while we lacked true big men. Most of our fans did not appreciate his style of play. (disclaimer: this may have had something to do with most of us being accustomed to Eddie Sutton grind out, tough defense, high iq, half court ball). In fact, we sometimes questioned if he had a style of play. He promised uptempo basketball, and it seemed he recruited athletes to play this way, but it never really translated on the court. Not only did he fail to recruit true big men, he also failed to develop the few we did have. It did not seem to be an emphasis for him. It seemed his assistant coaches were pretty useless, and he didn't make as many changes as he should have, in my opinion.

I'll also mention Travis had some awful luck with injuries to some of our better players, and also lost a difference maker to a questionable off the court issue. This year for example, we lost our two best players for a good portion of the season, one for the entire season.

I was skeptical when we hired him. He came in and took over after Sean Sutton was fired, and took over a team with some highly rated players who had failed to perform under Sean, and took them to the second round of the NCAA tournament. He came in and multiple players really improved in his first year. I started to become a believer at that point. I was impressed by the turnaround and thought maybe we really had something. Unfortunately it was mostly downhill from there with some occasional brief moments of hope.

I'll note some of his weaknesses from my perspective: NOT LEARNING FROM HIS MISTAKES. Almost every year we had one dominant player, Eaton his senior year, James Anderson, Marcus Smart. He rode some of these guys into the ground, and I think they would tire out by seasons end.

We had a terrible conference road record during Ford's tenure. My impression: he did not emphasize high percentage shots. Time and again it seemed we'd either jack up a shot without running an offense, or we'd waste the shot clock then ended up settling for a low percentage shot. His offense just did not work. It did not go inside out through most of his time with us. It was very rare for us to have a post presence (which again goes back to lack of recruiting them, lack of developing them). Hell one year, our roster was so depleted we had play a walk on a few times at the end of the season, and he actually brought some life to our team rebounding, playing interior d, two things we severely lacked even before injuries. That was a small, but significant event resulting in myself questioning Coach Ford's awareness. We had decent transition D, but part of the reason was because we did not attempt to get offensive rebounds. Low percentage shots, getting dominated on the boards= terrible road record, pretty simple equation. We also had multiple end of game management/decision blunders under Ford: not remembering how many timeouts we had, missed a scoreboard error, poor player decisions.

Here's his final career road record at OSU pulled from our message board:

Combined: 23-62

Non-Conference: 8-7

Ws: Texas A&M CC, Stanford, LaSalle, Tulsa, Missouri St., S. Florida, Memphis, Auburn
Ls: Washington, Tulsa, Gonzaga, Wash St., Alabama, Virginia Tech, South Carolina

Conference: 15-55

Baylor: 1-7
Colorado: 1-1
Iowa State: 1-5
Kansas: 1-6
Kansas State: 1-5
Missouri: 0-2
Nebraska: 1-1
Oklahoma: 0-8
TCU: 2-2
Texas: 2-6
Texas A&M: 0-5
Texas Tech: 3-5
West Virginia: 2-2

I think he has some soul searching to do. Looking back, I felt we had a couple teams who could I thought could legitimately compete. His very first season we developed a guy who could score in the paint, and this gave us a fighting chance for post season success. Beyond that, we were much too reliant on a single perimeter player. I think what you need to be hopeful for is hiring an assistant who knows how to recruit/develop post players, and Ford needs to give big men a chance. You need Ford to do a better job of piecing together a complete roster instead of 1-2 studs, but gaping holes elsewhere. Ford needs to establish an identity. If he's going to recruit a bunch of "athletes", he needs to run a system best suited for them. We did have a pretty strong defense this year with Ford. One thing that was interesting with Ford teams (other than this year), his teams always seemed to fight the hardest when their back was against the wall, when you were ready to give up on them, or thought their season was done. His players always played hard for him.

Anyway, sorry if that was too much rambling...too tired to proofread. I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Incredible. Dart after dart

On 3/29/2016 at 11:06 PM, ARon said:

SLU sent this statement tonight "Saint Louis University has not hired a men's basketball coach. The process is ongoing."

-Rene Knott on twitter

 

On 3/29/2016 at 11:37 PM, BigMouthBilliken said:

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/15095171/travis-ford-new-saint-louis-billikens-head-coach?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

ESPN article says he was hired per St. Louis PD but university denies claims Lol

Of course the AD/PR side was a mess 

On 3/30/2016 at 5:30 AM, slufan13 said:

Ford will bring talent. He will underachieve. Both of those are certain. Let's just see what underachieving will be at this stop

 

On 3/30/2016 at 6:54 AM, slufan13 said:

Ford will bring back SLU to a respectable state after Crews tanked the program. SLU will be one of the most talented teams in the conference in 5 years, yet Ford will underachieve year after year.

 

On 3/30/2016 at 8:05 AM, kwyjibo said:

I want to be optimistic (Ford is a proven recruiter) but I watched first hand at UMass how poorly coached his teams are. SLU benefitted from his incompetence and Soderberg beat him with lesser talent. The issues are obvious to anyone who knows anything about basketball and college basketball in particular. I think a hire like this brings into relief the importance of recruiting in college basketball and how easy it is to fail upward.

The more important thing though is that Ford may recruit well enough to be OK that there was easily identifiable better options available.

Among many who were pretty dang spot-on. 

On 8/17/2016 at 11:45 AM, majerus mojo said:

Joe Dooley.. Lol.

Looks like the media was really down on the hire, which fueled some of the reservations here. (Especially Meyer, geez.) Hard to be thrilled at the time when everyone is just piling on... Ford can prove a lot of folks wrong. 

(He did not)

The capitulating stretch of posts 4-XX months later are hilarious. Probably started right when he landed Goodwin. We were star-struck 

It is kind of impressive how universally panned the hiring was both on the the board and nationally

On 7/5/2018 at 10:48 AM, NH said:

TBD whether Bryce’s recruiting is sustainable. Darius Garland is a hometown kid that has know Bryce since he was little. Simi was down to UNC, Vandy and Arizona before Zona got in trouble and UNC recruited another McAA at his position. Obviously very positive developments, but I’m still a little antsy about whether Bryce can bring in high level players consistently.

Garland was injured and Vandy lost their last 20 games that season (0-18 SEC) before Drew was fired.
 

Was def in the Drew camp at the time (with most?) He went to Vandy about a week after the Ford news 

[cheeseman]

15 hours ago, ACE said:

Of course, but that was a NCAA caliber team and that was my point. That season was the biggest disappointment because Ford had indeed built a Top 25 team - The team was living up to expectations as they cracked the Top 25 at the end of the non-conference season, and then the COVID super spreader happened in late Dec - that's on Ford, we've been through that. He proved he could build a Top 25 caliber roster which most SLU coaches throughout history have been unable to do, which is why there was justifiably optimism. 

Building the team is not his problem it is getting the team to actually perform.  My point was that he had more than just one season of disappointment prior to this one.

[Pistol]

11 hours ago, majerus mojo said:

Good recap 

Obligatory bump

This guy buyouts 

Incredible. Dart after dart

Of course the AD/PR side was a mess 

Among many who were pretty dang spot-on. 

(He did not)

The capitulating stretch of posts 4-XX months later are hilarious. Probably started right when he landed Goodwin. We were star-struck 

It is kind of impressive how universally panned the hiring was both on the the board and nationally

Garland was injured and Vandy lost their last 20 games that season (0-18 SEC) before Drew was fired.

Was def in the Drew camp at the time (with most?) He went to Vandy about a week after the Ford news 

So many red flags for both Ford and May in 2016.

[Fraz]

Time is truly a flat circle

[thatskablamo]

5 hours ago, Fraz said:

Time is truly a flat circle

I keep thinking this thread has such a Christopher Nolan ring to it…like our future selves going back in time trying not to allow the Ford hire to happen.