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Coach Ford on the Radio, 2020


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24 minutes ago, slu72 said:

He coached under the great one, so he can't be all bad. Although, he didn't do much with Utah after Rick left. Maybe there is something to B'roy's contention that Rick wasn't interested in developing a coaching tree. That he just wanted to be the last great coach when he left a program. He sure as hell let us down with calling for Crews to take his place during his illness. The worst decision he made at SLU. 

The idea of a coaching tree is the exception rather than the rule.  Most veteran coaches can't point to a list of assistants who developed into successful head coaches.

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Roy.  Can u state exactly what was said without giving up your source?  There is a difference between running RM’s team temporarily until RM returns vs Jim Crews should be RM’s long term successor. 
 

That choice was/is squarely on AD May.  Crews did an adequate job of finishing the year in RM’s absence/death but was a lousy choice to be our next head coach.  

Again, not a single player on that team, liked Crews or pulled for Crews. We won in spite of Crews.  And nothing in Crews’ coaching body of work warranted that either.  I could have run that team as well as Crews did - maybe better - and I don’t deserve to be a D1 head coach - much less head coach at SLU. 
 

Crews should have been appointed interim head coach and an announcement then made that a nationwide search would take place after the season.  A younger coach to lead us forward. Instead, AD May let things stand - and then when the team won and Crews was given credit, May took the easy out - and we suffered bc of AD May.  And while we were pathetic, Archie Miller was rebuilding Dayton.  If the Big East were to take 1 school today - it is Dayton. 

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4 minutes ago, Clock_Tower said:

Roy.  Can u state exactly what was said without giving up your source?  There is a difference between running RM’s team temporarily until RM returns vs Jim Crews should be RM’s long term successor. 
 

That choice was/is squarely on AD May.  Crews did an adequate job of finishing the year in RM’s absence/death but was a lousy choice to be our next head coach.  

Again, not a single player on that team, liked Crews or pulled for Crews. We won in spite of Crews.  And nothing in Crews’ coaching body of work warranted that either.  I could have run that team as well as Crews did - maybe better - and I don’t deserve to be a D1 head coach - much less head coach at SLU. 
 

Crews should have been appointed interim head coach and an announcement then made that a nationwide search would take place after the season.  A younger coach to lead us forward. Instead, AD May let things stand - and then when the team won and Crews was given credit, May took the easy out - and we suffered bc of AD May.  And while we were pathetic, Archie Miller was rebuilding Dayton.  If the Big East were to take 1 school today - it is Dayton. 

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. 

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39 minutes ago, NH said:

It’s a fair point, but don’t you think Majerus would have had say for who took over as interim while he was sick? He definitely did when Porter was the interim coach for a couple of games. I have to imagine if he had wanted Whitesell to be the interim that’s what would have happened. 

Not really.  May or Biondi could have called the shots.  Once RM went to LA for the hospital he was gone and everyone at SLU knew he was not coming back.  I could see Biondi thinking Crews experience would be better but of course he knew nothing about basketball other than he was the shot caller - a stable genius when it came to athletics.

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31 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

 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.     

Dude that is some crazy conspiracy theorizing......

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36 minutes ago, Clock_Tower said:

Roy.  Can u state exactly what was said without giving up your source?  There is a difference between running RM’s team temporarily until RM returns vs Jim Crews should be RM’s long term successor. 
 

That choice was/is squarely on AD May.  Crews did an adequate job of finishing the year in RM’s absence/death but was a lousy choice to be our next head coach.  

Again, not a single player on that team, liked Crews or pulled for Crews. We won in spite of Crews.  And nothing in Crews’ coaching body of work warranted that either.  I could have run that team as well as Crews did - maybe better - and I don’t deserve to be a D1 head coach - much less head coach at SLU. 
 

Crews should have been appointed interim head coach and an announcement then made that a nationwide search would take place after the season.  A younger coach to lead us forward. Instead, AD May let things stand - and then when the team won and Crews was given credit, May took the easy out - and we suffered bc of AD May.  And while we were pathetic, Archie Miller was rebuilding Dayton.  If the Big East were to take 1 school today - it is Dayton. 

This is the best hypothetical about what should have happened that year. Good points, Clock. Although I would argue this announcement should have come a couple of weeks or a month after Rick's passing. Some might argue  the team would have been upset by not knowing who their coach was going to be, but they didn't know that during the whole season anyways. Crews never lost the interim tag until after the dance. Also, those kids coached themselves. The hole May and Biondi dug for themselves was complicated when Crews won the COY award. Recall, many in the national media supported Crews being named HC since he was the national COY. How do you fire the COY? He did a marvelous job under the circumstances they were saying without knowing the team was really playing on Rickma's auto pilot. 

Crews never would have been considered a candidate if Rick had announced he was retiring or leaving after the 11-12 season. After failing at Evansville and Army, who in their right mind would offer him a job? His coaching career was over. So, May should have set the stage early in the game. Unfortunately, he waited until season's end and got conned by that undeserved award. The rest is history. Bad history. 

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2 minutes ago, Billiken Rich said:

Dude that is some crazy conspiracy theorizing......

Quick without looking who succeeded rickma at utah?

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1 minute ago, slu72 said:

Fair enough. 

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.   

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Roy. 
First of all nothing happened at SLU without Fr Biondi’s approval and I doubt he felt any obligation to any death bed wishes of RM in that he failed to abide by his agreements with RM when RM was alive and well. 
 

Second, there is a difference between an interim coach and a head coach. Maybe Crews really was better at running the team for RM in lieu of Whitesell until RM got back. I am still hearing no evidence that RM wanted Crews as his full time replacement 

Third, RM died on December 1st. If RM thought he would be back, then why are we to assume RM wanted Crews as his full time replacement?  Crews over anyone else in the world?

Fourth, a nationwide search could and should have been started publicly on December 2nd  


 

 

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4 minutes ago, Littlebill said:

Literally one of our assistants did

Giacoletti (sp?)

how mny conference championships did he have after he took over?

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Just now, Clock_Tower said:

Roy. 
First of all nothing happened at SLU without Fr Biondi’s approval and I doubt he felt any obligation to any death bed wishes of RM in that he failed to abide by his agreements with RM when RM was alive and well. 
 

Second, there is a difference between an interim coach and a head coach. Maybe Crews really was better at running the team for RM in lieu of Whitesell until RM got back. I am still hearing no evidence that RM wanted Crews as his full time replacement 

Third, RM died on December 1st. If RM thought he would be back, then why are we to assume RM wanted Crews as his full time replacement?  Crews over anyone else in the world?

Fourth, a nationwide search could and should have been started publicly on December 2nd  


 

 

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. 

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Just now, 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. 

Totally. I also think Crews being named national coach of the year his interim year was a bad thing too. Hard to not hire the coach of the year. He probably should have only been given a contract through those 4s senior year and then mutually parted ways with after. 

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1 hour ago, slu72 said:

Just as an aside to this topic because I don't think it warrants it's own thread, but I found the tweet from Miles Reynolds interesting. Something like, Coach Ford's done a great job with this year's Billikens. I wish he was coach when I was there. I haven't followed Miles career, but didn't he end up as starting PG at Oklahoma? Makes me wonder why he didn't stick it out here if he felt this way about Travis. I guess Crews just soured him so much on SLU that he felt it was best to start over someplace new. Also, didn't he at first transfer to Pacific, and then to Oklahoma? I always thought he was one of Crews better gets. He did have some nice games for us as I recall from those dark dark days of Crews and lose. 

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

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5 minutes ago, billikenfan05 said:

Totally. I also think Crews being named national coach of the year his interim year was a bad thing too. Hard to not hire the coach of the year. He probably should have only been given a contract through those 4s senior year and then mutually parted ways with after. 

Agreed, but if that's the case, we're starting over from scratch anyways. Whoever comes in would take a couple years to get their recruits in and what not. Essentially the same exact thing that happened here with Ford, except we could've started the process 2 years earlier...which would've been really nice.

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14 minutes ago, Littlebill said:

Literally one of our assistants did

Giacoletti (sp?)

Kerry Rupp, finished out the season and got Utah in the NCAA Tourney, but he was not retained. Utah tried to get Trent Johnson from Nevada, but failed, so Ray was their fallback.

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8 minutes ago, glazedandconfused said:

Agreed, but if that's the case, we're starting over from scratch anyways. Whoever comes in would take a couple years to get their recruits in and what not. Essentially the same exact thing that happened here with Ford, except we could've started the process 2 years earlier...which would've been really nice.

And Ford was also taking over a program that had finished last in the league for two straight years

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If the price to pay for having the three best years in SLU history was to follow it with two crappy years, I will take it. So give me those five years. I get the sense that roy would prefer Sodie's five years of mediocrity (80-74 overall record with no NCAA appearances).

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