Ford- Less with More (and the last great four year Billikens)

[Soderball]

16 minutes ago, Billiken Rich said:

I did not think this was controversial.  The bill was pulled because it was going to go down in flames in the City and County.   Your insinuations are offensive.

Then take the political bs elsewhere. It's inappropriate and you can't help but do it.

[billikenbill]

3 hours ago, Soderball said:

And a pre empt to your rebuttal:

You brought up politics on a "mid major" college basketball message board. You know exactly what I'm insinuating, and the fact you can't help but launch a political assault on the City says it all.

The ignore function still works. Consider it.

[billiken_roy]

5 hours ago, wgstl said:

Roy, this can’t be the reason you don’t want to do better 

where did i say i dont want to do better?   i have been ford's biggest detractor concerning his game time coaching and player development.   long before this board got riled up about him.  

i just do not want to start over and i have absolutely no confidence that Saint Louis University will hire the likes of spoon or rickma to take over the team.   this means a start over and typically that is a five year minimum step back that typically means nothing or a rise to a level we are at now.   

i have written it here a trillion times.   guarantee me we get the likes of beard, or we convince the likes of jay wright to take over the team (just examples of sure thing coaches, not necessarily endorsing such) i'm all in.  but if we are going to hire the next great asst to head coach (typically a fail) or some mediocre mid major or low major lateral move, i'd just as soon keep ford.   at least he brings the players that make us competitive.   

the bigger question is why it is allowed to continue?   why hasnt slu made him change his ways.   we see glimpses of change, and then after a couple of great games, it is right back to the same old thing.   why does ford allow certain players to play the way they do which is detrimental to the bottom line?   i see no effort from slu to make ford make changes.  

[billiken_roy]

5 hours ago, johnbj14 said:

To steal a phrase from finance 101, “prior performance is not indicative of future returns”

 

SLU’s hiring history doesn’t mean the next one will be bad. 

2 out of 8 going back to the 70's is a pretty good trend. 

[johnbj14]

2 hours ago, billiken_roy said:

2 out of 8 going back to the 70's is a pretty good trend. 

Again, that shouldn’t impact the decision to move on or not. The program has goals of consistently winning A-10 titles and being in the dance. That has not materialized under Travis. Chris May and whatever search firm the department may utilize are the only factors on if the hire will be good or not. May is 1/2 on MBB hires. Removing the interim tag from Crews was a mistake. Travis was a good hire for what the program needed at the time, despite not taking the next step forward once he got going. But judging whether or not to make a change based on moves that were under prior decision makers is how you doom SLU to a future of accepting the status quo. 

[BrettJollyComedyHour]

5 minutes ago, johnbj14 said:

The program has goals of consistently winning A-10 titles and being in the dance.

 

5 minutes ago, johnbj14 said:

Chris May

This is the goal and aspiration he had for the women's program, why not the same accountability for the Men's program if Travis can only deliver 1 out of 7 seasons? That's irregular to me. He let Lisa Stone go and she had 3/4 consecutive postseason appearances in her 10 year tenure and WBB has a bigger achievement gap than MBB does. 

[slufan13]

We aren't ranked in the top 100 and there's a legit chance we won't win 20 games and some posters are afraid of the possibility we'd have to rebuild with a new coach.

I could understand the idea of giving Ford another year with an established NIL fund even though I personally wouldn't do it. But the idea of keeping Ford because we don't want to start over is just astonishing. We aren't close to being good now.

The interesting thing about this off-season is that Ford could rightly ask for a contract extension. It's not quite as big of a deal in the transfer portal era but Ford can still say it's hard to recruit anyone when he only has 2 years on his contract because players will want to know he'll be there for the long run. You could argue that you are setting Ford up for a lame duck season by keeping him around. 

The A10 is so bad that it's still possible to win it all in Brooklyn so I'm not giving up on that. This team hasn't given reason to have hope but the state of the A10 should give hope to all 15 teams

[billiken_roy]

It should Influence Chris May.   If we aren't truly going to go out and get a guaranteed top head coach, then the trend over the last 40+ years of bringing in another limited on floor success coach is nothing but an effort in gaslighting the fan base.

Fire ford, and bring up and coming asst from power 5 conf who comes in with the give me 5 years to build song and dance.   We all smile and nod our heads then suffer through 2-3 years of rebuilding then the next year is supposed to be the year we improve but don't get to even 20 years.   But wait, the entire lineup minus one secondary player will be back wait till next year.   The next year a hotshot local freshman as n comes in, we all believe we are even better with all the returning experience and the future NBA freshman.   

By Xmas we've had 5 or 6 near miss tough losses.   We end up 6th in the conference and fans are now grumbling.   Many exclaim, "wait till next year" again is a duplicate of the year before everyone is fed up, the administration listen, fire the underachiever coach.  

We start over again.   But no fears, this time we hire the coach from xyz University who the AD proclaims just never got the tools that slu can give 

Interview w new coach is inspiring.  He said he only needs 5 years to get us in the elite 8 games.   

5 years later .... .  Repeat again.  

What's the definition of insanity?

[BrettJollyComedyHour]

3 minutes ago, slufan13 said:

The interesting thing about this off-season is that Ford could rightly ask for a contract extension. It's not quite as big of a deal in the transfer portal era but Ford can still say it's hard to recruit anyone when he only has 2 years on his contract because players will want to know he'll be there for the long run. You could argue that you are setting Ford up for a lame duck season by keeping him around. 

An extension at this point is unjustified. 2 years is plenty of time to recruit; that would be a lame excuse.

[slufan13]

Just now, billiken_roy said:

 

What's the definition of insanity?

Any program that keeps Travis Ford as their head coach after 25+ years of mediocre results would be the definition of insanity 

[slufan13]

3 minutes ago, BrettJollyComedyHour said:

An extension at this point is unjustified. 2 years is plenty of time to recruit; that would be a lame excuse.

It would be a lame excuse but every coach in America has made this excuse for 50 years 

[BrettJollyComedyHour]

Just now, slufan13 said:

It would be a lame excuse but every coach in America has made this excuse for 50 years 

I think it's a lame excuse. Recruit or don't, develop your current roster or don't.

[billiken_roy]

4 minutes ago, slufan13 said:

 We aren't close to being good now.

 

Oh we are good.  We have at least 6 games we pretty much dominated for 3/4 of the game.   That's what's so infuriating.   Ford is so blinded by Collins he refuses to close out the game with the team that played the first 3/4 of the game.

Ford got us the players.   But he refuses to change his mindset.

Is that a reason to switch coaches?   Hell yes assuming we truly get a known step up I have no confidence we will bring in a new coach with the skill and mindset to take what we have and go up from there.   It will be another start over.

4 minutes ago, slufan13 said:

 

 

[slufan13]

2 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

 

Oh we are good.  We have at least 6 games we pretty much dominated for 3/4 of the game.   That's what's so infuriating.   Ford is so blinded by Collins he refuses to close out the game with the team that played the first 3/4 of the game.

Ford got us the players.   But he refuses to change his mindset.

Is that a reason to switch coaches?   Hell yes assuming we truly get a known step up I have no confidence we will bring in a new coach with the skill and mindset to take what we have and go up from there.   It will be another start over.

 

We are ranked anywhere from 90-120 in various rankings. I don't see how that translates to us being good.

Fords fascination with Collins has cost us games for sure. But we gave up 17 3's last night. I can't agree that we dominated 75% of the game when we gave up that many 3s

[slu72]

9 hours ago, dlarry said:

I’m ok with losing because sometimes that happens and sometimes you run into a hot team.

I’m not OK with losing the same way over and over again. 

Blowing big leads

 No defense 

Abandoning  a game plan that is working 

Losing guys on the bench 

If this team had any balls they’d be a top 25 team. Instead adversity strikes during a game and they panic.

 

Team has no balls! The ship takes on water and they man the lifeboats rather than the pumps. 

[NextYearBill]

as soon as Yuri started driving to the rim, i knew the game was over 

[CenHudDude]

11 hours ago, gobillsgo said:

Truly unbelievable that Travis Ford has had four years each of Jordan Goodwin, Hasahn French, Yuri Collins, and Gibson Jimerson, and is not going to have a single NCAA (or even NIT) tournament victory to show for it.   One NCAA appearance on the backs of two transfers- Bess and Isabel.

We probably won’t see many more truly great four-year Billikens in the era of college free agency and NIL.  Would love to be wrong, but I just don’t see it. Gibby and Yuri are definitely gone, who could blame them?  And their last game will be in front of a half empty building, now that Ford has sucked the life out of this program. 

What’s the point of this thread, you ask?  I guess just pure amazement at the absolute lack of results out of some of the most talented rosters this program has ever seen. 

The Dayton game will be a half empty building?

[Box and Won]

Given the current NIL situation, Bag Men have gone the way of the dodo.  So Skip and I have pivoted to form our own coaching search firm. 

With help from the board, we've already identified:

- Richmond's interim HC (whatever his name is) and

- Otis

as potential replacements.  Give us a little more time, and I'm sure we can come up with a long list of candidates. 

[gobillsgo]

27 minutes ago, CenHudDude said:

The Dayton game will be a half empty building?

It should be with the product this team is putting on the floor. But no, I’m sure they’ll announce 9000, even though actual will be closer to 6500-7000. We’ve had like two sellouts in 10 years, so I think it’s fair to underestimate the attendance in order to make a point.  And our last “sellout” probably had 8500 butts in seats. 

[Schasz]

3 hours ago, billiken_roy said:

where did i say i dont want to do better?   i have been ford's biggest detractor concerning his game time coaching and player development.   long before this board got riled up about him.  

i just do not want to start over and i have absolutely no confidence that Saint Louis University will hire the likes of spoon or rickma to take over the team.   this means a start over and typically that is a five year minimum step back that typically means nothing or a rise to a level we are at now.   

i have written it here a trillion times.   guarantee me we get the likes of beard, or we convince the likes of jay wright to take over the team (just examples of sure thing coaches, not necessarily endorsing such) i'm all in.  but if we are going to hire the next great asst to head coach (typically a fail) or some mediocre mid major or low major lateral move, i'd just as soon keep ford.   at least he brings the players that make us competitive.   

the bigger question is why it is allowed to continue?   why hasnt slu made him change his ways.   we see glimpses of change, and then after a couple of great games, it is right back to the same old thing.   why does ford allow certain players to play the way they do which is detrimental to the bottom line?   i see no effort from slu to make ford make changes.  

BR...Leopards cannot change their spots...past time for a SLU HC change as Ford is who he is a very poor game day and motivating HC!!!

[Schasz]

4 minutes ago, gobillsgo said:

It should be with the product this team is putting on the floor. But no, I’m sure they’ll announce 9000, even though actual will be closer to 6500-7000. We’ve had like two sellouts in 10 years, so I think it’s fair to underestimate the attendance in order to make a point.  And our last “sellout” probably had 8500 butts in seats. 

It will only get worse if they bring this dunce back for another season...attendance and interest in the Billikens Basketball will continue to tumble. It's too bad with the jewel of Chaifetz with waning attendance.

[gobillsgo]

At the end of the day, Ford was hired because the belief was the talent he would recruit would outweigh his coaching deficiencies.  We got the talent, and it did not overcome his coaching inability.  In retrospect, Majerus should’ve shown us that coaching and player development beats recruiting stars every day of the week.  It was worth a shot, especially considering where we were post-Crews (a man who could neither recruit nor coach). It failed. It’s time to accept that and move on. You don’t stay with a bum of a significant other just because you’re afraid of who you’ll get next. 

[jonny karate]

My problem is I am no longer pissed at a loss. I am disappointed.

 

 

[dlarry]

54 minutes ago, Box and Won said:

Given the current NIL situation, Bag Men have gone the way of the dodo.  So Skip and I have pivoted to form our own coaching search firm. 

With help from the board, we've already identified:

- Richmond's interim HC (whatever his name is) and

- Otis

as potential replacements.  Give us a little more time, and I'm sure we can come up with a long list of candidates. 

The interim HC at Richmond has a nice beard. +1

Otis really has that dog in him. +1

Travis Ford does not have a nice beard-1.

Does he have that dog in him? TBD but not looking good.

[Lord Elrond]

The interim HC at Richmond does have a nice beard…