Transfers - 2023

[BIG BILL FAN]

1 hour ago, billiken_roy said:

Dennis i understand you want to paint a literal picture of success.  21 win seasons are normally considered a success.   but unfortunately the expectations of the fan base was for a lot more wins than that and to still be playing rather than the season being over.   expectations endorsed and fed by the powers to be at Saint Louis University fired up the fan base to a level not seen before for the Billikens.  and now the defenders of the powers to be want to tell us, "pay no attention to what we told the world last fall, that obviously wasnt the case and we really meant a successful season was 20 wins.   since the Billikens actually exceeded that with 21 wins it was very successful."

well i personally dont like being patronized and gaslighted as such.  i would think you as one of us members of the Billikens Fandom would also be at minimum wanting some serious answers and action.   Notice i am not advocating in writing here fire the coach and/or athletic director, but just wanting some answers and a plan going forward.   just hoping and praying it will get better shouldnt fly.   we have been letting the powers to be get by with that for decades.   maybe it is time to be honest and even more so time to take some real action.   

It isnt our place to tell the powers to be what that action or even that honesty would consist of.   These people get a lot of money to run this program and we only supply a lot of the enthusiasm, passion and funds to make it work.  but i sure would appreciate the powers to be telling us why we should continue to be a part of the this what now seems to be more than ever an "Effort in Futility".

what you are missing Roy, is the expectations of the fan were unwarranted based on the actual facts....

Perkins a shell of himself,

Pickett injured much of the season

Thatch, our best defender misses the last half of the season

The biggest mystery was the offense of Okoro, Ford and coaches can definitely take some of the blame for that...

Most of these facts aren't because of coaching they are because of life and circumstances. The life of a mid major is always going to hang on the edge, not sure why this is hard to understand as frustrating as it is...

[billikenbill]

1 hour ago, wgstl said:

#23isthenew20

Back in the day when the NCAA limited teams to 26 games or 25 plus a conference tourney game, 20 wins was a sign of an excellent season. Now with 32 games which includes one conf. tourney game, 25 wins has to be the benchmark for an excellent season. Even Fordham’s 25 wins, while great for them, is a little sketchy due to their exceptionally weak non-con schedule.

[billikenbill]

4 minutes ago, BIG BILL FAN said:

what you are missing Roy, is the expectations of the fan were unwarranted based on the actual facts....

Perkins a shell of himself,

Pickett injured much of the season

Thatch, our best defender misses the last half of the season

The biggest mystery was the offense of Okoro, Ford and coaches can definitely take some of the blame for that...

Most of these facts aren't because of coaching they are because of life and circumstances. The life of a mid major is always going to hang on the edge, not sure why this is hard to understand as frustrating as it is...

Correct. The fanbase and pundits overrated the talent level and continue to do so. My take was we could be very good if everything broke right, and I wanted to believe it would, but not much did.

[SLUDrew]

All teams at all levels in all sports deal with injury/suspensions/ transfers, etc.

Of all the metrics the one that is the least acceptable to me is this; never finishing higher than 4th the A-10. This isn't the ACC, or Big 10. Lately this isn't even the MWC or WCC. This is a mediocre league. It has history, yes, but currently it is a mediocre league. The fact that he hasn't been able to finish higher than 4th in this league after seven season, is all the grounds you need for termination

[Billikenbooster]

1 hour ago, billiken_roy said:

booster, isnt a coaching staff supposed to be able to make these go away after the mistakes/underperformed task we did?

Agreed re staff role. It’s up yo the players to perform. It cant be all on the staff. If it is deemed the scheme, the approach was defective, then there should be a change.

My opinion the hand wringing on the schedule is pointless. 

[billiken_roy]

43 minutes ago, BIG BILL FAN said:

what you are missing Roy, is the expectations of the fan were unwarranted based on the actual facts....

Perkins a shell of himself,

Pickett injured much of the season

Thatch, our best defender misses the last half of the season

The biggest mystery was the offense of Okoro, Ford and coaches can definitely take some of the blame for that...

Most of these facts aren't because of coaching they are because of life and circumstances. The life of a mid major is always going to hang on the edge, not sure why this is hard to understand as frustrating as it is...

we've always got an excuse dont we.  man the billikens are the most snake bitten program in history.

[RamJAMTIME]

2 hours ago, billiken_roy said:

ram are you saying that 11-6 is good?   if our 6 losses were to the denver nuggets, the boston celtics, the philadelphia 76ers, the dallas mavericks, the new york knicks and the memphis grizzlies, i guess the six losses arent that bad.   but the truth is there are some bad losses in those 6 losses.   

Nope, I was agreeing with you about expectations for this team and how much they under performed. If I recall people thought three losses in this stretch would be unlikely or considered a failure,  and the team doubled that. 

[The Wiz]

Seems like this is off topic but in addressing ...making the tourney and the A-10 in general... There are a couple of points to go over.

As for the tourney...a few posters have mentioned a "magic number" of wins (23-25...pick a number) and we would be in. Also if we just blew out teams (again pick a number) we played we would be in. There is some truth  to these statements but it goes beyond that. The NET looks at  number of wins...margin of victory(adjusted NET efficiency-ANE) and quality of wins with a kicker of a home and away component.  Let's look at an example of 2 teams we are familiar with...Fham and Mizzou.  Fham had 25 wins...Mizzou had 24 wins...Fham finished 3rd in conf, 12-6...Miz finished 4th, 11-7...They both had a number of blowout wins (for this discussion ...10+ pts) On the surface , particularly looking at the first 2 points...wins and margins of victory,  Fham seems to be the better team. But as we know...Miz is in ..Fham is out.  It is because of point 3 ...quality of wins...Both teams played some of the weakest schedules in all of D1 (F-).  But when it came time for conference , Miz moved up because there played a number of quality teams and Miz beat some of them and boosted their NET.  Fham didn't have that chance as the A10 is not the SEC.  An interesting sidelight...For a moment, let's suppose the A10 did not have a an auto bid and the NCAA had to review our league for a bid.  That team again would have been VCU. Using the Dance evaluation numbers, I am showing that VCU would have had a 50% chance of being selected. It is a telling stat. No A10 team had above B+ for the final grade.   B+ usually means that you have a 1/3 chance of getting a bid...There were only 2 B+ teams in the A10...VCU and Day.  With some of the other metrics VCU was able to push it up to 50%. 

Which brings us to the next point, the A10.  I have noticed there is a lot of A10 bashing. First , let me point out the A10 is not a "trash" conference. They rank 10th out of the 32 conferences which gives them  an above average  B rating. For context, the A10 has had a rating of B- to A- since SLU has been a member.  This is not the lowest the conference has been, but this is a weaker year.  Part of that is the conference numbers are down and part of it is that some other  leagues have strengthened....notably Mountain West, AAC and West Coast all moving up to B+...A10 is a B and Conf USA has moved up into a tie with A10 also at B.  When talking about individual teams, they need to have at least a B+ to have a chance to make the Dance (33%). Conferences need a good grade too.  A   B+ conf grade will usually get you 2 bids...an A-  or better  gets you multiple bids.(3+)  Is the A10 a 1 bid conference? It is this year but that doesn't mean they are doomed to one bid in the future. A move to B+ would be 2 bids ...a move into the A's would be worth 3.  The A10 over the SLU years has generally averaged B+.  An interesting correlation (although not every year) is as SLU goes so does the A10   ie SLU's grade mirrors the A10...This year we were a B...the A10 was a B.  In the past when we moved into the A's so did the conference.

Bottom line...If we improve so will the league. And of course , you can always move to a different conference...a weaker league that you can dominate and always get a bid (not a good choice)or a better league that always has multiple bids(not that easy to just switch upward). For now the option is for the Bills to get better...which will make the league better...which will get us a  better chance for a bid...which will get us a better chance for an invite to a multiple bid league.

For now...Just win...by a lot ...against good teams.

[Soderball]

13 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

we've always got an excuse dont we.  man the billikens are the most snake bitten program in history.

There's a reason they stopped playing "no excuses" during the player intros.

That was the biggest admission of failure this year imo.

[Soderball]

26 minutes ago, SLUDrew said:

All teams at all levels in all sports deal with injury/suspensions/ transfers, etc.

Of all the metrics the one that is the least acceptable to me is this; never finishing higher than 4th the A-10. This isn't the ACC, or Big 10. Lately this isn't even the MWC or WCC. This is a mediocre league. It has history, yes, but currently it is a mediocre league. The fact that he hasn't been able to finish higher than 4th in this league after seven season, is all the grounds you need for termination

Love this. Tired of the injury excuses. Every team deals with them. SVU had injuries to Malachi Smith and Kobe Elvis and still finished ahead of us despite our expectations.

 

Ford had a full year to know that Perkins was not recovering into the player he was before. He still went ahead with him. That's Ford's fault. He is responsible for recruiting and retaining and replacing talent.

[WVBilliken]

10 minutes ago, Soderball said:

Love this. Tired of the injury excuses. Every team deals with them. SVU had injuries to Malachi Smith and Kobe Elvis and still finished ahead of us despite our expectations.

 

Ford had a full year to know that Perkins was not recovering into the player he was before. He still went ahead with him. That's Ford's fault. He is responsible for recruiting and retaining and replacing talent.

Disagree mightily on Perkins.  ACL injuries take a year or more to heal.  Many athletes come back as good as ever.  Ford owed it to Perkins IMO to hang with him and hope by conference Perkins was close to 100%.  Didn't happen but Ford did the right thing.  Only a low character coach would have ditched Perkins.

[almaman]

8 minutes ago, WVBilliken said:

  Only a low character coach would have ditched Perkins.

and put in Parker season would of been different imo but should that of been done? I have to go with no.

[Lord Elrond]

4 minutes ago, The Wiz said:

Bottom line...If we improve so will the league. And of course , you can always move to a different conference...a weaker league that you can dominate and always get a bid (not a good choice)or a better league that always has multiple bids(not that easy to just switch upward). For now the option is for the Bills to get better...which will make the league better...which will get us a  better chance for a bid...which will get us a better chance for an invite to a multiple bid league.

For now...Just win...by a lot ...against good teams.

A lot of A10 teams didn’t perform up to expectations in addition to SLU. SLU needs to improve, looks like our ability to do so will depend on developing players and the transfer portal. We will see how that works for us.  The other A10 teams also need to improve. The real question is, is the A10 conference now a 1 bid league going forward? Just because the conference went up and down in the past doesn’t mean it will do so in the future, especially now that NIL and an open transfer portal where players didn’t have to sit were both in effect. Last year was the first year that both were in effect at the same time, and results as a conference were not good.  As for the grade for the conference each season, I’ll trust your computer (since it hasn’t tried to push me in the airlock yet), but since SLU joined the A10, it has gone up, but then it went down.  Number of A10 NCAA bids by year since 2006.

2006 - 2

2007 - 2

2008 - 3

2009 - 3

2010 - 3

2011 - 3

2012 - 4

2013 - 5

2014 - 6

2015 - 3

2016 - 3

2017 - 3

2018 - 3

2019 - 2

2020 - COVID Year sucked

2021 - 2

2022 - 2

2023 - 1

Like a ballon slowly leaking helium, we as a league have been slowly sinking since 2014. No increase in number of bids, just  slowly sinking until we hit bottom.  That is the trend I am concerned about, and it will take more than just SLU improving to reverse the trend.

[gobillsgo]

47 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

we've always got an excuse dont we.  man the billikens are the most snake bitten program in history.

Travis “Not my fault” Ford. 

[gobillsgo]

Just now, Lord Elrond said:

A lot of A10 teams didn’t perform up to expectations in addition to SLU. SLU needs to improve, looks like our ability to do so will depend on developing players and the transfer portal. We will see how that works for us.  The other A10 teams also need to improve. The real question is, is the A10 conference now a 1 bid league going forward? Just because the conference went up and down in the past doesn’t mean it will do so in the future, especially now that NIL and an open transfer portal where players didn’t have to sit were both in effect. Last year was the first year that both were in effect at the same time, and results as a conference were not good.  As for the grade for the conference each season, I’ll trust your computer (since it hasn’t tried to push me in the airlock yet), but since SLU joined the A10, it has gone up, but then it went down.  Number of A10 NCAA bids by year since 2006.

2006 - 2

2007 - 2

2008 - 3

2009 - 3

2010 - 3

2011 - 3

2012 - 4

2013 - 5

2014 - 6

2015 - 3

2016 - 3

2017 - 3

2018 - 3

2019 - 2

2020 - COVID Year sucked

2021 - 2

2022 - 2

2023 - 1

Like a ballon slowly leaking helium, we as a league have been slowly sinking since 2014. No increase in number of bids, just  slowly sinking until we hit bottom.  That is the trend I am concerned about, and it will take more than just SLU improving to reverse the trend.

1-2 will be the norm for the A10 from here on out. NET is specifically designed to hurt conferences like the A10.  We will never see 4+ A10 teams again. 
 

At least it is kinda cool that our three best seasons were in the league’s three strongest seasons

[Soderball]

21 minutes ago, WVBilliken said:

Disagree mightily on Perkins.  ACL injuries take a year or more to heal.  Many athletes come back as good as ever.  Ford owed it to Perkins IMO to hang with him and hope by conference Perkins was close to 100%.  Didn't happen but Ford did the right thing.  Only a low character coach would have ditched Perkins.

He watched him play all year.

 

Give me a "low character" coach who wins any day.

 

You can go watch the Gorloks or Uncle Brad or whatever. Sad. Pathetic. $2,400,000 for "feel good" stories.

[BIG BILL FAN]

51 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

we've always got an excuse dont we.  man the billikens are the most snake bitten program in history.

i don't think we should confuse excuses with facts...but if I'm wrong about the facts, please correct me...the point about snake bitten is sadly a part of being a mid major...their margin of error is razor thin...

[Soderball]

24 minutes ago, WVBilliken said:

Disagree mightily on Perkins.  ACL injuries take a year or more to heal.  Many athletes come back as good as ever.  Ford owed it to Perkins IMO to hang with him and hope by conference Perkins was close to 100%.  Didn't happen but Ford did the right thing.  Only a low character coach would have ditched Perkins.

Though I guess it doesn't matter much for people who don't buy season tickets and don't go to games. Lame stuff.

[Soderball]

1 minute ago, BIG BILL FAN said:

i don't think we should confuse excuses with facts...but if I'm wrong about the facts, please correct me...the point about snake bitten is sadly a part of being a mid major...their margin of error is razor thin...

It's an excuse, which is all we've seen for years now. Tired of the excuses. So much money, so little results.

[BIG BILL FAN]

1 hour ago, SLUDrew said:

All teams at all levels in all sports deal with injury/suspensions/ transfers, etc.

Of all the metrics the one that is the least acceptable to me is this; never finishing higher than 4th the A-10. This isn't the ACC, or Big 10. Lately this isn't even the MWC or WCC. This is a mediocre league. It has history, yes, but currently it is a mediocre league. The fact that he hasn't been able to finish higher than 4th in this league after seven season, is all the grounds you need for termination

and when they have injuries and problems they struggle....ask Dayton...again, that's why it's so hard to get in as a mid major they don't have the luxury of going 8-10 in conference play and getting a bid....they have to be almost perfect...

[thatskablamo]

3 minutes ago, gobillsgo said:

1-2 will be the norm for the A10 from here on out. NET is specifically designed to hurt conferences like the A10.  We will never see 4+ A10 teams again. 
 

At least it is kinda cool that our three best seasons were in the league’s three strongest seasons

The league (until the conclusion of the 12-13 season) also included stalwarts Temple, Butler and Xavier… and yet somehow we got 6 teams into the dance the year after they left… wow. That boggles the mind. 

[BIG BILL FAN]

2 minutes ago, Soderball said:

It's an excuse, which is all we've seen for years now. Tired of the excuses. So much money, so little results.

are you saying the injuries aren't real????? 

[Soderball]

Just now, BIG BILL FAN said:

are you saying the injuries aren't real????? 

I'm saying the lack of tournament appearances is real, and that injuries happen.

Watching people apologize for Ford is some of the saddest stuff I've seen since I watched people defend Jim Crews.

Yesterday I went back and looked at some of the post history from those years. All of the coaching naysayers were right then.

 

I've become a Ford hater over the course of this year. Look at my posting history if you care or doubt my sincerity or understanding of basketball.

Ford is a waste of money and he must have some kind of personal dirt on May and Pestello to be playing them like this. God how I wish we had hired Hurley or a Miller brother or anyone other than Travis at this point. We are stuck with him like SPUMAC was once stuck with Quinn Snyder.

[Soderball]

3 minutes ago, BIG BILL FAN said:

are you saying the injuries aren't real????? 

And also for the record I made this account during the Uncle Brad controversy. I vehemently defended the coach. I was totally wrong.

Every time I've defended a coach I've been wrong. Every time I've gone after a coach I've been right. I wanted to fire Crews the second we hired that bozo.

[DOC]

21 minutes ago, Soderball said:

I'm saying the lack of tournament appearances is real, and that injuries happen.

Watching people apologize for Ford is some of the saddest stuff I've seen since I watched people defend Jim Crews.

Yesterday I went back and looked at some of the post history from those years. All of the coaching naysayers were right then.

 

I've become a Ford hater over the course of this year. Look at my posting history if you care or doubt my sincerity or understanding of basketball.

Ford is a waste of money and he must have some kind of personal dirt on May and Pestello to be playing them like this. God how I wish we had hired Hurley or a Miller brother or anyone other than Travis at this point. We are stuck with him like SPUMAC was once stuck with Quinn Snyder.

So Ford keeps his job because he has dirt on May or Pestello? Ok.