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Coach Ford on the Radio, 2020


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27 minutes ago, glazedandconfused said:

Hindsight. If there's a nationwide search, and some of Jett/Evans/McCall/Loe transfer, that would've been seen as a major failure too. Kneecap the best SLU run of the 21st century right in the middle of it. 

I kinda doubt those guys were ever going to transfer under any normal circumstances.  Why would they leave a school they liked and teammates they liked to go sit a year somewhere else before being able to play?  Remember that this was before the NCAA loosened the transfer waiver requirements.

In fact, they all seem to have stuck around despite not really liking the new coach (Crews) because they like SLU & each other enough to outweigh the negatives of having Crews as your coach.

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25 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

Except rickma is not the average coach.  He is/was recognized as one of the best ever and those are the coaches that do normally produce new coaches.   

Coaching trees are, at their heart, extended families.  I don't think a guy who had no significant other or kids and lived in hotels valued the idea of family.  He was a brilliant, eccentric man.  More Tesla than Edison.

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9 minutes ago, billikenfan05 said:

Yeah. I think bringing in a new guy from a national search to take over a program off 3 straight NCAAs would have been a better deal. 

3 straight NCAA trips but no returning talent. The takeaway here is there was no perfect way to navigate this. Best would've probably been to get rid of Crews after 13-14 season, but it was still going to be rough for awhile. 

The underlying problem was our recruits from the HS classes of '11,'12 and '13 were:

Glaze, Manning, Crawford, Carter, Lancona...the writing was on the wall. We didn't get an impact player after the Jett/Evans/etc class. 

 

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9 minutes ago, RUBillsFan said:

I kinda doubt those guys were ever going to transfer under any normal circumstances.  Why would they leave a school they liked and teammates they liked to go sit a year somewhere else before being able to play?  Remember that this was before the NCAA loosened the transfer waiver requirements.

In fact, they all seem to have stuck around despite not really liking the new coach (Crews) because they like SLU & each other enough to outweigh the negatives of having Crews as your coach.

I agree. However, if it was an outside hire that came in, they would've had to have stuck with something similar to Majerus' system for another year. I wouldn't have wanted to put the quality of that 13-14 season in jeopardy just to start preparing for the future. Don't see a ton of high profile coaches wanting to do that (to the extent that we would even get a ton of interest nationally). 

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8 minutes ago, glazedandconfused said:

3 straight NCAA trips but no returning talent. The takeaway here is there was no perfect way to navigate this. Best would've probably been to get rid of Crews after 13-14 season, but it was still going to be rough for awhile. 

The underlying problem was our recruits from the HS classes of '11,'12 and '13 were:

Glaze, Manning, Crawford, Carter, Lancona...the writing was on the wall. We didn't get an impact player after the Jett/Evans/etc class. 

 

I understand that we had no returning talent but it's easier for a coach to piggy back on the prior years success than a program that has bottomed out 3 years removed from an NCAA tournament. Shelf life for that is very short.

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5 minutes ago, glazedandconfused said:

I agree. However, if it was an outside hire that came in, they would've had to have stuck with something similar to Majerus' system for another year. I wouldn't wanted to have put the quality of that 13-14 season at jeopardy just to start preparing for the future. Don't see a ton of high profile coaches wanting to do that (to the extent that we would even get a ton of interest nationally). 

We got Ford coming off 2 awful years of Crews.  I'm fairly certain we could have gotten a coach at least Ford qualify if we had a ready made NCAA team waiting for whatever coach took the job instead of the rebuilding project Ford took on.  I'll toss in the caveat that I don't remember / care to research which coaches were available that off-season.

I do agree that we can't be certain a new coach would have had the same success as Crews did that 13-14 season.  However, given the awfulness of Crews next couple of years, I'd argue that it is just as likely our 13-14 season would have actually been better with a new/different coach.  There are various examples of new coaches having success with a former coach's recruits (local examples would be Bruce Weber taking Bill Self's Illinois players a #1 seed and national title game or Frank Haith leading Mike Anderson's Mizzou players to a #2 seed before getting upset).

I'm happy now with Ford, so it's all water under the bridge.  I just think that it is totally fair to blame / criticize May for choosing to make Crews full time coach.

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1 hour ago, billiken_roy said:

i was told rickma always believed he would recover and be back.   as to exact quote, that was quite awhile ago.  dont think i can accurately tell you word for word what someone said to me in a casual conversation that many years ago.   for the record i bet i would be in the majority that would have picked whitesal from the get go.   i would have never picked crews.  the sob was way past his time.  rickma was a basketball genius.   he knew what he was doing.   and thus, my belief is he didnt want someone to come in and succeed with his team.   crews was the right choice for rickma to achieve that vision.   what rickma failed to see was that he was going to die.     

i think expecting a saint louis university athletic director to deny a hall of fame coach his wish is very unrealistic.   if you could have told him no and then started a national search you are one cold hearted mf.   i didnt like rickma the person.   i have always recognized he was a basketball genius.   i believe when most people really think about it, they probably are somewhat the same only they recognize the coaching end of the scale WAY more than i do.   my point is, to expect may to overrule rickma is unrealistic.   to not give crews the job after being named national coach of the year is unrealistic.  

what i would take away from the now long ago scenario is that when crews proved to the world he wasnt the guy and failed bigtime once all of rickma's guys were gone and that tells me may did his job as expected.   we would have never gotten a recruiter the ilk of ford when rickma picked crews.   maybe the whole scenario was good karma finally for the billikens. 

I get everything you said and really can not argue with it except this is a cold hearted business and so May should have been that when it came to finding a successor to RM.  Now the exception is I don't believe you treat kids that way unless they are not living up to their obligations.Appreciated your earlier response to my question.

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35 minutes ago, 3star_recruit said:

Coaching trees are, at their heart, extended families.  I don't think a guy who had no significant other or kids and lived in hotels valued the idea of family.  He was a brilliant, eccentric man.  More Tesla than Edison.

He did have a long time female friend plus he was close to his family.  I do understand your explanation about the coaching tree thing.

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2 hours ago, billiken_roy said:

he knew what he was doing.   and thus, my belief is he didnt want someone to come in and succeed with his team.   crews was the right choice for rickma to achieve that vision.   what rickma failed to see was that he was going to die.     

 

Am I reading this right?

You honestly believe Majerus picked a successor in the hope that he would fail so that it would make him look better?

Everything we hear about Majerus is that he treated that team like family and cared about those guys more than most coaches and you think he is going to try and screw them over like that?

I think you might be suffering from a bit of Majerus Derangement syndrome.

Obviously Crews was a bad hire but that is just crazy.

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2 hours ago, Clock_Tower said:

 And while we were pathetic, Archie Miller was rebuilding Dayton.  If the Big East were to take 1 school today - it is Dayton. 

I have had similar thought.  However, conventional wisdom is nearby Xavier is blocking Dayton from the Big East.   Also, the Big East bringing back UConn gets the league to 11 schools.  But the plan is to continue the Big East Round Robin with 11 teams, which is thought to not be possible with a 12th team. 

This being said, Dayton's NET is #5, and Dayton is ranked 6th in the AP Poll.  Further, Dayton routinely plays before sellouts of 13,400.

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Rick and Biondi were not getting along.Rumor   had it that Ricks contract was not going to be renewed. Rick had nothing to do with Crews getting the permanent job. I also think its revisionist history that this board opposed Crews hiring. If anything I remember unease as to what what taking May so long. May had no choice . How do you not hire the Coach of the Year? Crews sucked but don't blame Rick or May. 

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It's time to wake up from the Big East dream. Enjoy the A10. It's a good conference.

I understand why May went with Crews. Majerus had nothing to do with the full-time hire. It would have taken balls to pick someone other than Crews after the season we had. I couldn't have made that decision and obviously May didn't either. I just think he gave Crews one year too long.

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8 minutes ago, slufan13 said:

It's time to wake up from the Big East dream. Enjoy the A10. It's a good conference.

I think it’s OK to dream. But the way to (maybe) get to the Big East and the way to enjoy the A10 are the same: consistently be a top quartile team with annual tourney expectations 

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32 minutes ago, willie said:

Rick and Biondi were not getting along.Rumor   had it that Ricks contract was not going to be renewed. Rick had nothing to do with Crews getting the permanent job. I also think its revisionist history that this board opposed Crews hiring. If anything I remember unease as to what what taking May so long. May had no choice . How do you not hire the Coach of the Year? Crews sucked but don't blame Rick or May. 

No.  Go back and read my posts - and the posts of many others.   I, along with many others, have consistently opposed the hiring of Jim Crews.  

How do you not hire the National Coach of the Year?  Easy - bc you set out the ground rules early.  You hire him for the Interim year only, you announce that the program is looking for young replacement, you have 4 extra months to see what interest exists, you publicly reward Crews with honors, plaque and for his stepping in to "save the program" but you then hire a real coach.   If the AD does his job and actually talks with the players , he finds out what they think -- and no one raved about Jim Crews.   And keep in mind, Conklin, Cassity and Remekun already graduated after the Interim year so your only remaining players was the soon to be Senior class of Loe, Jett, Evans, McCall and KM.  KM already used up his redshirt year with Situation I and those other guys are not transferring their Senior year if we bring in a Travis Ford type of hire.

Is it unfair to expect an AD to know what his coaches can really do and not do?   Or is he just to read the national newspaper and make only what appears to be "safe" choices.    Why did Wisconsin not give the job to Brad Soderberg after Bennett unexpectedly quit?  Wisconsin knew better --- and its a shame SLU did not know better with either Soderberg or Crews.

 

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2 hours ago, glazedandconfused said:

Hindsight. If there's a nationwide search, and some of Jett/Evans/McCall/Loe transfer, that would've been seen as a major failure too. Kneecap the best SLU run of the 21st century right in the middle of it. 

So a nationwide search scares away players?   You know this how?   You know that SLU cannot speak directly with coaches under contract and during the season especially so not much publicly goes on during the season, right?   You know that we had 2 really good runs by Crews with RM's players and that the first year would have happened anyway b/c RM was sick to start the season, he died December 1st and no player could have transferred and played that season, right?

You do know that KM could not have transferred the following year bc he used up his redshirt right?  You do know that SLU could have run by the name of their next head coach to gauge the reactions of the then Senior Class of Jett/Evans/McCall and Loe right?  

And as precedent, when we let Grawer go and hired Spoon, Charlie actually got Highmark and Claggett to stay.   And when Spoon left, Marquee Perry and Josh Fischer chose to stay and play for Romar.   And when Brad was fired, Lisch and Liddell chose to stay and play for RM.   So you still think our really good Senior class all leaves and goes in different directions if we don't hire Crews?  Jim Crews?  They came to SLU for RM - not Jim Crews.   And they stayed at SLU despite Jim Crews.

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14 minutes ago, Clock_Tower said:

So a nationwide search scares away players?   You know this how?   You know that SLU cannot speak directly with coaches under contract and during the season especially so not much publicly goes on during the season, right?   You know that we had 2 really good runs by Crews with RM's players and that the first year would have happened anyway b/c RM was sick to start the season, he died December 1st and no player could have transferred and played that season, right?

You do know that KM could not have transferred the following year bc he used up his redshirt right?  You do know that SLU could have run by the name of their next head coach to gauge the reactions of the then Senior Class of Jett/Evans/McCall and Loe right?  

And as precedent, when we let Grawer go and hired Spoon, Charlie actually got Highmark and Claggett to stay.   And when Spoon left, Marquee Perry and Josh Fischer chose to stay and play for Romar.   And when Brad was fired, Lisch and Liddell chose to stay and play for RM.   So you still think our really good Senior class all leaves and goes in different directions if we don't hire Crews?  Jim Crews?  They came to SLU for RM - not Jim Crews.   And they stayed at SLU despite Jim Crews.

Hindsight. And yes I was responding to you saying that SLU should've announced a Nationwide search the Day after Majerus died. In no way should they have done that. 

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3 hours ago, billikenfan05 said:

I understand that we had no returning talent but it's easier for a coach to piggy back on the prior years success than a program that has bottomed out 3 years removed from an NCAA tournament. Shelf life for that is very short.

This. 3 straight Dances and you come up w/ Jolly, Gilman, Lancona for your front line. Thank God Tatum chose Duke or we might still have Dead! 

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1 hour ago, glazedandconfused said:

Hindsight. And yes I was responding to you saying that SLU should've announced a Nationwide search the Day after Majerus died. In no way should they have done that. 

As I said they should have stated about 2 weeks to a month after his passing that a search was on. That would have been respectable. Rick's boys would not have cared as they were coaching themselves. In fact, it would have been good for some of them to help pick the guy. 

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3 hours ago, willie said:

Rick and Biondi were not getting along.Rumor   had it that Ricks contract was not going to be renewed. Rick had nothing to do with Crews getting the permanent job. I also think its revisionist history that this board opposed Crews hiring. If anything I remember unease as to what what taking May so long. May had no choice . How do you not hire the Coach of the Year? Crews sucked but don't blame Rick or May. 

Speak for yourself - I was against hiring Crews from the get go.

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4 hours ago, Zink said:

FWIW, Roby replied to his tweet with one of these: 🤔🤔🤔

I think Reynolds tweet speaks volumes about Crews as a HC. The guys he brought in didn't like him. We saw the product. Best described as disorganized chaos. Crews sucked in every aspect of being a HC. I still recall the comments someone made about the practice before the Louisville game in the NCAA's. He had them doing gassers after a hard fought OT upset over NCSt. Effing crazy Booby Knight type crap. 

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1 hour ago, Clock_Tower said:

No.  Go back and read my posts - and the posts of many others.   I, along with many others, have consistently opposed the hiring of Jim Crews.  

How do you not hire the National Coach of the Year?  Easy - bc you set out the ground rules early.  You hire him for the Interim year only, you announce that the program is looking for young replacement, you have 4 extra months to see what interest exists, you publicly reward Crews with honors, plaque and for his stepping in to "save the program" but you then hire a real coach.   If the AD does his job and actually talks with the players , he finds out what they think -- and no one raved about Jim Crews.   And keep in mind, Conklin, Cassity and Remekun already graduated after the Interim year so your only remaining players was the soon to be Senior class of Loe, Jett, Evans, McCall and KM.  KM already used up his redshirt year with Situation I and those other guys are not transferring their Senior year if we bring in a Travis Ford type of hire.

Is it unfair to expect an AD to know what his coaches can really do and not do?   Or is he just to read the national newspaper and make only what appears to be "safe" choices.    Why did Wisconsin not give the job to Brad Soderberg after Bennett unexpectedly quit?  Wisconsin knew better --- and its a shame SLU did not know better with either Soderberg or Crews.

 

Your point about Soderberg perfectly proves your point.

In hindsight did we miss out on a coach or did it work out for the best in your opinion?

I really like coach Ford and in hindsight it worked out well with the exception of recruiting and two bad seasons under Crews.

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2 hours ago, Clock_Tower said:

No.  Go back and read my posts - and the posts of many others.   I, along with many others, have consistently opposed the hiring of Jim Crews.  

How do you not hire the National Coach of the Year?  Easy - bc you set out the ground rules early.  You hire him for the Interim year only, you announce that the program is looking for young replacement, you have 4 extra months to see what interest exists, you publicly reward Crews with honors, plaque and for his stepping in to "save the program" but you then hire a real coach.   If the AD does his job and actually talks with the players , he finds out what they think -- and no one raved about Jim Crews.   And keep in mind, Conklin, Cassity and Remekun already graduated after the Interim year so your only remaining players was the soon to be Senior class of Loe, Jett, Evans, McCall and KM.  KM already used up his redshirt year with Situation I and those other guys are not transferring their Senior year if we bring in a Travis Ford type of hire.

Is it unfair to expect an AD to know what his coaches can really do and not do?   Or is he just to read the national newspaper and make only what appears to be "safe" choices.    Why did Wisconsin not give the job to Brad Soderberg after Bennett unexpectedly quit?  Wisconsin knew better --- and its a shame SLU did not know better with either Soderberg or Crews.

 

+ 1. Although, I said at the time May kind of screwed himself and was feeling pressure from the national and local press. A lot of us didn't like the hire but could understand it. 

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