2023-2024 Roster and Schedule

[NoCoBillsFan]

1 hour ago, Fraz said:

There is a ceiling when Yuri Collins runs your basketball team and it is top 4 in the Atlantic 10 and a semi-final bid in the conference tourney. 
 

Let’s see what Hughes/Medley can do

No, that’s the ceiling when the offense is designed to only rely on Yuri and when we have no defense. In a one to one comparison, it’s not close between Yuri and LHJ.

On a side note, I am also ready to see something different. But that is because I want to see what Ford does with a different roster, not an indictment of Yuri.

[billiken_roy]

28 minutes ago, NoCoBillsFan said:

No, that’s the ceiling when the offense is designed to only rely on Yuri and when we have no defense. In a one to one comparison, it’s not close between Yuri and LHJ.

On a side note, I am also ready to see something different. But that is because I want to see what Ford does with a different roster, not an indictment of Yuri.

hughes was a far better shooter and defender than yuri.   yuri is definitely the far far better passer.  but otherwise i too believe hughes has the potential to be a better billiken than yuri.  however, i do believe that hughes will become more of a combo guard and likely inherit jimerson's position after this coming season as we all hope medley is the real deal (we all have to see him play pg to believe it).   just my opinion.   

[Billiken Rich]

1 hour ago, billiken_roy said:

i am not necessarily blaming yuri, because if ford didnt want it to happen he should have benched yuri.   but your "couldnt get anyone around him that could create their own basket" is a point that cant be proven when yuri would drive around in a circle.  stand at the head of the key dribbling in place for 10 seconds and then drive to the basket and get the impossible shot blocked.  

meanwhile the likes of nesbitt or hargrove or parker were told to stand in the corner and wait for the 3rd or 4th option opportunity.  

again, this is more likely on ford.  and the reason it became an issue his junior year is that it got worse each year.   yuri should have been used as a pure point guard.   not the man that would try to do it all.   i think the first two years he was.  the last two years he attempted to do everthing and imo he wasnt physically capable of doing that.  thus the animosity of the fan base who saw he was trying to be more than he should. 

no doubt yuri was a great passer, but i think he screwed up his legacy by trying to be more than he was able to do.  

Yuri was the best passer I've ever seen.  He's less loved than he should be due to the high jinks after his junior year and due to the lack of any post season.  His not playing in the NIT game was pretty shocking at the time and some still question it even after TheOne put it to rest.  I still think the loss of Perkins and the return of injured Perkins are much more to blame for our lack of post season than anything else.  Losing Thatch this year was also a huge loss.  Our toughness went straight into the crapper when Fred went down.     

[johnbj14]

3 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

hughes was a far better shooter and defender than yuri.   yuri is definitely the far far better passer.  but otherwise i too believe hughes has the potential to be a better billiken than yuri.  however, i do believe that hughes will become more of a combo guard and likely inherit jimerson's position after this coming season as we all hope medley is the real deal (we all have to see him play pg to believe it).   just my opinion.   

Prefacing this with the fact I think LHJ is going to take a huge step forward, I'm not really sure we can say if Larry was a better shooter last season than Yuri. Yuri had a higher FG% overall, but lower 3 point %. Larry was only taking 2 shots per game though, with 1 of them being a 3. Larry usually had the weakest perimeter defender from the opponent as well. I'm excited to see a lot more of Larry this coming season, but also think we won't truly appreciate how good Yuri was until we see what the team looks like without him. 

[ACE]

16 hours ago, Fraz said:

While I disagree, at least initially, that we won’t get as good PG play without Collins, it will be a breath of fresh air to move on from him.  He never won anything in his SLU career 

So I supposed Kevin Lisch never won anything as well, correct? 

BTW, Yuri had more winning than Lisch - two Top 50 finishes. Without two Covid seasons and the Perk injury season is no doubt making at minimum one NCAA Tourney appearance.

[johnbj14]

Just now, ACE said:

So I supposed Kevin Lisch never won anything as well, correct? 

BTW, Yuri had more winning than Lisch - two Top 50 finishes. Without two Covid seasons and the Perk injury season is no doubt making at minimum one NCAA Tourney appearance.

In the disappointment in 2021/2022 of not making the tournament, it feels like it gets overlooked that a primary reason SLU still had a chance to dance was because Yuri took this massive step forward. It sucked because a few close losses were the difference, but I'm not sure those near misses would have been so near without Yuri playing as well as he did. 

[ACE]

1 hour ago, gobillsgo said:

Assuming you’re talking about Yuri…

it’s really a shame that arguably the best PG in our history (or at least undoubtedly top 3) will have his legacy tarnished because they couldn’t get anyone around him that could create their own basket.  A lot of the disdain for Yuri stems from the Yuri “Hero Ball” we would see at the end of games, but honestly, who else was gonna take the ball and get a bucket?  That player hasn’t been on the roster the last two seasons.  Once the opposing coach keyed their defense on Gibby, there wasn’t much Ford could do to get him involved.  So Yuri had to try something, and for some reason some fans will always resent that.   Yuri was not the thing holding us back from greater things. In fact, as we often saw, things were much much worse without him. 

This is an excellent point. Gibby for example was exclusively reliant on Yuri for his offense.  Fans should not be surprised when Gibby's production drops without Yuri.

[BLIKNS]

Would it be interesting if Brian Gregory was brought in as an Assistant 

[johnbj14]

8 minutes ago, BLIKNS said:

Would it be interesting if Brian Gregory was brought in as an Assistant 

Hasn't been an assistant since 2003 and has largely stunk since leaving Dayton. That would be extremely underwhelming. 

[slufan13]

Yuri is an all time great Billiken. It's possible we could be a better team without him I guess. I do think we'll be better defensively. Offensively we will definitely be worse but at least we'll be less predictable. guys are going to have to step up. It's going to be harder for Gibby for sure. Regardless of the reasons, Yuri didn't win anything and that hurts his legacy but he's still an all time great and we're gonna miss him a lot. Hughes and Medley need to see the floor together a lot. 

Obviously none of this matters until we land 2-3 quality big men

[billiken_roy]

35 minutes ago, ACE said:

So I supposed Kevin Lisch never won anything as well, correct? 

BTW, Yuri had more winning than Lisch - two Top 50 finishes. Without two Covid seasons and the Perk injury season is no doubt making at minimum one NCAA Tourney appearance.

how did Kevin Lisch get into this discussion?

[billiken_roy]

11 minutes ago, slufan13 said:

Yuri is an all time great Billiken. It's possible we could be a better team without him I guess. I do think we'll be better defensively. Offensively we will definitely be worse but at least we'll be less predictable. guys are going to have to step up. It's going to be harder for Gibby for sure. Regardless of the reasons, Yuri didn't win anything and that hurts his legacy but he's still an all time great and we're gonna miss him a lot. Hughes and Medley need to see the floor together a lot. 

Obviously none of this matters until we land 2-3 quality big men

as i have pointed out almost every yuri discussion, imo if collins played point guard exclusively while in the game, i think he was marvelous..   what brings down his ranking with me is he would try to do so much more that he wasnt capable of doing and he then was not fullfilling his point guard duty while pretending he was allen iverson.   thus the team suffered. 

but as a passer and a point guard, the only former billiken i even put in the conversation is H Waldman.   I agree yuri was a very good billiken point guard. probably one of the top 2.  

[ACE]

5 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

how did Kevin Lisch get into this discussion?

This was said as a knock on Yuri: "He never won anything in his SLU career"

My point is that one would be able to make that criticism of a LOT of SLU players throughout history. 

 

[billiken_roy]

4 minutes ago, ACE said:

This was said as a knock on Yuri: "He never won anything in his SLU career"

My point is that one would be able to make that criticism of a LOT of SLU players throughout history. 

 

i totally agree with that.   and it likely is a knock on Kevin Lisch that he and liddell were never able to lead us to another level.   thanks for explaining. 

[JMM28]

31 minutes ago, BLIKNS said:

Would it be interesting if Brian Gregory was brought in as an Assistant 

It would be, but his strengths/weakness is pretty duplicative here.

He is basically Travis Ford. Good recruiter. Mediocre coach. Poor game management. 

When he was at Dayton, we used to talk about all the preseason champion banners he was hanging at UD. Sound familiar?

[gobillsgo]

1 hour ago, billiken_roy said:

as i have pointed out almost every yuri discussion, imo if collins played point guard exclusively while in the game, i think he was marvelous..   what brings down his ranking with me is he would try to do so much more that he wasnt capable of doing and he then was not fullfilling his point guard duty while pretending he was allen iverson.   thus the team suffered. 

but as a passer and a point guard, the only former billiken i even put in the conversation is H Waldman.   I agree yuri was a very good billiken point guard. probably one of the top 2.  

Again though, Roy…. Once the other team neutralized Gibson, who else was gonna score?  Last two seasons we didn’t have Goodwin who could put his head down and get to the rim with ease.  I’d argue we didn’t have one player other than Yuri who could get the ball at half court and create a somewhat decent shot for themselves. Perkins used to be that guy pre-injury.  Every team needs at least one or two guys who can grab the ball and get a decent shot up down the stretch… we had zero, so Yuri was forced into that role. 

[Dr Bird]

2 minutes ago, gobillsgo said:

Again though, Roy…. Once the other team neutralized Gibson, who else was gonna score?  Last two seasons we didn’t have Goodwin who could put his head down and get to the rim with ease.  I’d argue we didn’t have one player other than Yuri who could get the ball at half court and create a somewhat decent shot for themselves. Perkins used to be that guy pre-injury.  Every team needs at least one or two guys who can grab the ball and get a decent shot up down the stretch… we had zero, so Yuri was forced into that role. 

"creating your own shot" is the #1 thing Gibby (and TJ) should work on in the off-season.

[slufanskip]

6 hours ago, NoCoBillsFan said:

Yuri is one of six players in NCAA history to average double digit assists in a season. He led the country in assists two years in a row. And I don’t just have an infatuation with assists numbers, Yuri simply put up historic stats. He is a once in a lifetime type of player.

I too have watched 95% or more of Yuri’s games since he’s been at SLU. And over that time, it’s easy to take everything he did on the court for granted because we’ve been seeing it for four years. It’s also very easy to find the negatives in his game because he was the undisputed leader of a very disappointing team and basically given the keys to the offense (which isn’t his fault, Ford shouldn’t have done that). Let’s not forget that Yuri was pretty much universally loved up until the end of his junior year, before he was in the spotlight with high expectations. Better yet, remember how much fans loved him after his freshman year?

Hughes Jr averaged 8.7 minutes a game. I too love his game but when he gets 20 minutes a game, much less 38 and a high usage rate like Yuri, you will see a lot more mistakes. 
It truly blows my mind that anyone can look at Yuri’s all-time great body of work at SLU and say a walk-on that averaged 8 minutes a game is an upgrade. Take the recency bias out of it and really think about it. There’s just no way that should be your conclusion. 

Except for the stupidity that permeates this board. I'm clearly an idiot for continuing to check in every once in a while

[billiken_roy]

21 minutes ago, gobillsgo said:

Again though, Roy…. Once the other team neutralized Gibson, who else was gonna score?  Last two seasons we didn’t have Goodwin who could put his head down and get to the rim with ease.  I’d argue we didn’t have one player other than Yuri who could get the ball at half court and create a somewhat decent shot for themselves. Perkins used to be that guy pre-injury.  Every team needs at least one or two guys who can grab the ball and get a decent shot up down the stretch… we had zero, so Yuri was forced into that role. 

i think this answer points more to ford than yuri but maybe if we ran more and used yuri's good talents to get the ball down the floor and making a good pass to a streaking wing that would have worked better than the stand around wait for the shot clock to get to under 10 seconds.   

maybe the teamates would have been motivated to work harder to get open if the design of the play was for them instead of the above 10 second offense.   i think you are way off mark insinuating that the teamates werent capable and he had to do his iverson impression.

[cgeldmacher]

Yuri is not to blame for our lack of success during his years here.  He is a fantastic talent and put up numbers that are undeniable.  Please stop the revisionist history here.

The culprit is the system that we ran with Yuri at the helm of the offense.  He is not responsible for that system.  Ford and coaches are.  I am not a "fire Ford" guy (right now), but they shoulder the blame for lack of overall success, not a point guard that lead the nation in assists.

In my opinion, a system that would have given us more success would have caused Yuri to get less assists but slightly more points.

[wgstl]

5 minutes ago, cgeldmacher said:

Yuri is not to blame for our lack of success during his years here.  He is a fantastic talent and put up numbers that are undeniable.  Please stop the revisionist history here.

The culprit is the system that we ran with Yuri at the helm of the offense.  He is not responsible for that system.  Ford and coaches are.  I am not a "fire Ford" guy (right now), but they shoulder the blame for lack of overall success, not a point guard that lead the nation in assists.

In my opinion, a system that would have given us more success would have caused Yuri to get less assists but slightly more points.

This post is flagged as a “ ford hater” posted fyi 

[billiken_roy]

6 minutes ago, cgeldmacher said:

In my opinion, a system that would have given us more success would have caused Yuri to get less assists but slightly more points.

what?   the only part of basketball yuri was over the top excellent at was leading fast breaks and passing resulting in  getting assists.   him trying to score, not getting down the floor out in front of the defense (probably because ford set things up that way) was the downfall of most of our losses that were decided down the stretch.   i do not see yuri the scorer vs yuri the passer givng us more success last year.  you will have to explain how the iverson model would have been a bigger success because i dont see it.

[Coach314]

With no consistent low post presence on offense,  who (besides an injured Perkins) was going to create offense with dribble penetration?

[DOC]

1 minute ago, Coach314 said:

With no consistent low post presence on offense,  who (besides an injured Perkins) was going to create offense with dribble penetration?

It was incredibly frustrating that we never put Okoro in the low post. 

[slu72]

1 hour ago, gobillsgo said:

Again though, Roy…. Once the other team neutralized Gibson, who else was gonna score?  Last two seasons we didn’t have Goodwin who could put his head down and get to the rim with ease.  I’d argue we didn’t have one player other than Yuri who could get the ball at half court and create a somewhat decent shot for themselves. Perkins used to be that guy pre-injury.  Every team needs at least one or two guys who can grab the ball and get a decent shot up down the stretch… we had zero, so Yuri was forced into that role. 

I wouldn’t overlook Sincere. Gibby was often the beneficiary of a Yurimania assist, but there are other ways to get him open looks, primarily screens. However, setting screens, whether on ball or off ball, doesn’t seem to be a page in Travis’ playbook. Gibby always draws close coverage and next season will draw even more. Unfortunately he’s a shot maker but not a shot creator. Parker showed flashes of being a Perkins clone. He’s gonna have to be to draw some of the attention off Gibby by creating his shots and making them.