Reasons For Optimism

[billikenfan05]

I and others have been accused of being negative or haters. I believe the negative  or pessimistic outlook has presented a very clear reasoning for this outlook as of 10/18/2023. Meanwhile the positive or optimistic sector of the fanbase have only really chastised the negative sector without presenting a reasoning. The “optimistic” sector has only served as backlash to the haters.

So here it is a thread to present why you are optimistic, content, satisfied with the last decade of Billiken basketball and believe the future will be better than the last 19 years. Feel free to present a case for Ford, May or anyone you want.

 

In the spirit of respect, I can only speak for myself but, I urge everyone on this board with the opposite outlook of the program to wait until Friday at 6pm the end of the open practice to offer rebuttals to the points made in this thread. 

[SluSignGuy]

From a facilities standpoint, we are in extraordinarily better shape than we were 19 years ago.

[Lord Elrond]

14 minutes ago, SluSignGuy said:

From a facilities standpoint, we are in extraordinarily better shape than we were 19 years ago.

Now all they need to do is upgrade the professors offices in the Poly Sci building to luxury suites!

[cgeldmacher]

18 hours ago, billikenfan05 said:

I and others have been accused of being negative or haters. I believe the negative  or pessimistic outlook has presented a very clear reasoning for this outlook as of 10/18/2023. Meanwhile the positive or optimistic sector of the fanbase have only really chastised the negative sector without presenting a reasoning. The “optimistic” sector has only served as backlash to the haters.

So here it is a thread to present why you are optimistic, content, satisfied with the last decade of Billiken basketball and believe the future will be better than the last 19 years. Feel free to present a case for Ford, May or anyone you want.

 

In the spirit of respect, I can only speak for myself but, I urge everyone on this board with the opposite outlook of the program to wait until Friday at 6pm the end of the open practice to offer rebuttals to the points made in this thread. 

I think the issue more complicated than your presenting it.  You seem to be setting up being able to say "See, the optimistic guys can't really state a competent argument" by starting this thread and at the same time create a forum for the so called negative guys to bash the opinions of whatever gets said.  This is evidenced by the fact that in your sort of peace offering of bestowing a thread upon the optimistic crowd, you describe those with optimism as "content, satisfied with the last decade of Billiken basketball."  A Billiken fan can be optimistic and not, yet, wanting changes in leadership.  Someone can be optimistic, but still not be satisfied by what this program has accomplished in the past ten years.  The two sides you are presenting are not mutually exclusive.  Also, based on my experience with this board, it is beyond the capabilities of the "negative guys" to not attack whatever is said in this space.  That being said, I'll take the bait and give you something.

I am optimistic about the things that are within our program's control.  I agree with SLUSignGuy that our basketball facilities are as good as it gets and comparable with most, if not better than some, Big East programs.  They are certainly better than most A-10 schools, West Coast Conference Schools, and Missouri Valley Schools.

I am optimistic about having Chris Harriman on board and getting international recruits.  There are schools that have had a lot of success going this route.

I am optimistic that a coach who typically get us 20-23 wins per season (which, to be clear, is not sufficient for our goals) can make tweaks which lead to bigger and better things (see the Chris Harriman statement above).  I, at the moment, would rather have the possibility of that coach making improvements that make us incrementally better than the unknown of whoever would have to be next, because I don't believe we will get some amazing Power 5 coach that much of this board thinks we would if we had to conduct a search.

I am optimistic about a new group of guys coming together this season and being, possibly, better than a group of guys we had last season despite the new guys having far less expectations.  Sometimes, more talented groups underperform and have injuries, and less talented groups get better results just from capturing the right chemistry.

There are other things that I am not very optimistic about, but I won't go into any of them, because this was, allegedly, set up as the Trust Tree for optimism.  So, I won't go there.  Any bets on whether others will?

[dlarry]

I am on the more pessimistic side of things for this year but….

I think Hughes Jr and Sincere Park make big jumps from last year. I’m excited to see the improvement.
 

Im excited to see how Jimerson does as “the man” on offense.

 

 

[Billikenbooster]

I am by nature an optimistic, positive kind of person. I feel every disappointing season has had issues out of the coaching staff’s control, injuries, covid, situation 1, 2, etc.

SIUE last season really sucked, but that’s sport. Nothing is guaranteed, learn from yr mistakes.

Do I wish they would have done some things differently? Yeah! Shxt yeah. But I’m a fan….short for fanatic. Like Bob Burnes said about the football Cardinals, “They’re an ugly child, but they’re my child!”

I am OOT or I would be there Fri afternoon.

Go Bills!

[slu72]

I was leaning a little bit more to a positive outlook for the upcoming year. My thinking was based on having two international bigs who could surprise us. Now, with their status up in the air, I’m not sure if I’m on the - or + side. I haven’t been impressed by Ford’s coaching cred since he’s been here, but he could recruit with the best of them to balance the scales. But that’s all changed now with NIL. So, I guess you could put me in with the pessimist crowd. 

[wgstl]

21 minutes ago, dlarry said:

I am on the more pessimistic side of things for this year but….

I think Hughes Jr and Sincere Park make big jumps from last year. I’m excited to see the improvement.
 

Im excited to see how Jimerson does as “the man” on offense.

 

 

Parker doesn't even need to make a jump offensively if his numbers remain what they were with more volume. Parker has the chance to be right there with Gibby offensively this year.  Ive said for a while now that SLU has as good of a 1-3 as anyone in the conf If parker maintains in conf stats from last year, and if Dalger somehow improves a lot on defense, our 1-4 is may be the best and or deepest.  

[RUBillsFan]

I'm fairly unenthused about the upcoming season, but here goes:

Harriman and Charles Thomas seemed like good hires and they just haven't had much time / opportunity to show that yet.

We just landed a good HS recruit.

@3star_recruit said the 2025 class in St Louis has "multiple top 250 range" players that SLU has targeted.  Those guys should be right in SLU's wheelhouse and Corey Tate has shown the ability to land them in the past.

Even if the BVF isn't has flush with cash as we would dream, we should still be ahead of / on par with most other A-10 schools in terms of the total package we can offer (NIL, facilities, etc.)

Honestly, the biggest issue I have with Ford is that he's overpaid for the results he has produced and the biggest issue with May is his role in Ford being overpaid and seemingly has a golden parachute on his deal.  Re: Ford: you could probably make a decent argument that the last 6 season of SLU basketball are the most consistently good / quality season the program has had since the 1950s (?) (for some reason I can no longer access the record books on SLUBillikens.com).  We've had good 2 or 3 year stretched, but they've usually been flanked by some awful years.  The issue is that he's the highest paid coach in the A10 and should be winning the league regularly, but he's not.  Re: May, he's had some pretty big successes during his tenures - men's soccer & women's soccer are in great shape right now, women's basketball seems to be the same, Champions Center, etc.  

[Cowboy II]

-yeah, what happened to the content on the website under Additional Links? hopefully a short term bugaboo

[courtside]

48 minutes ago, RUBillsFan said:

I'm fairly unenthused about the upcoming season, but here goes:

Harriman and Charles Thomas seemed like good hires and they just haven't had much time / opportunity to show that yet.

We just landed a good HS recruit.

@3star_recruit said the 2025 class in St Louis has "multiple top 250 range" players that SLU has targeted.  Those guys should be right in SLU's wheelhouse and Corey Tate has shown the ability to land them in the past.

Even if the BVF isn't has flush with cash as we would dream, we should still be ahead of / on par with most other A-10 schools in terms of the total package we can offer (NIL, facilities, etc.)

Honestly, the biggest issue I have with Ford is that he's overpaid for the results he has produced and the biggest issue with May is his role in Ford being overpaid and seemingly has a golden parachute on his deal.  Re: Ford: you could probably make a decent argument that the last 6 season of SLU basketball are the most consistently good / quality season the program has had since the 1950s (?) (for some reason I can no longer access the record books on SLUBillikens.com).  We've had good 2 or 3 year stretched, but they've usually been flanked by some awful years.  The issue is that he's the highest paid coach in the A10 and should be winning the league regularly, but he's not.  Re: May, he's had some pretty big successes during his tenures - men's soccer & women's soccer are in great shape right now, women's basketball seems to be the same, Champions Center, etc.  

It took a couple of tries but soccer has worked out. If you recall, May hired Kat Mertz who abruptly left after just one season as HC. Mertz brought Katie Shields with her to SLU as an assistant for that one season. Then they hired Katie as HC after Kat left. He lucked into that one a bit. But it counts.

Prior to hiring Kalish, May hired Mike McGinty who was SLU’s Men’s Soccer head coach for 8 seasons. 

[VeniceMenace]

SLU finally updated the official roster with photos of all the players…so I’m optimistic because they all look like Schwarzenegger after their Conklin summers:

https://slubillikens.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster

They’ve got a core of 7 veteran players who can ball, counting Thames, so on paper they should at least be .500.

[thunderdan]

Hope always springs eternal when a new season of Billiken hoops comes around.  When "There's always next year," finally turns into "next year," we can't help but be optimistic.  A new season brings a clean slate for every college program.  Everyone in the nation is 0-0.  There's something amazing about that feeling. 

For me, the unknown is one of the reasons to be excited about this season.  What kind of evolution will Jimerson's game show, in his final year?  How will the Yuri-less point guard situation play out? Will this team run more, if TJ is playing the 5-spot? LHJ played above expectations last year.  What can we expect in season 2? I'm excited to see Kellen, a 6'7" super-athletic kid, potentially swiping errant passes on the wing (and frustrating smaller guards).  

 

[majerus mojo]

 

On 10/18/2023 at 6:04 PM, SluSignGuy said:

From a facilities standpoint, we are in extraordinarily better shape than we were 19 years ago.

Elite facilities for the A-10. Fact 

10 hours ago, cgeldmacher said:

I am optimistic about having Chris Harriman on board and getting international recruits.  There are schools that have had a lot of success going this route.

International recruits could be sleepers. Fact 

10 hours ago, dlarry said:

I think Hughes Jr and Sincere Park make big jumps from last year. I’m excited to see the improvement.

Hughes and Parker will be better than last year. Fact 

9 hours ago, RUBillsFan said:

We just landed a good HS recruit.

Top 200 recruit pending the retention of T-Ford. Fact 

[slufan13]

I honestly believe that given our current facilities, if it were 10 years ago, we'd be a consistent top 30 desirable program for recruits. While it counts for less than it used to, it still counts for something. I also think we have some high upside talent on the team. Sure there's more risk but I am always in favor of taking a chance on some guys. Ford tried something different and dipped heavily into the international market. Again, riskier, but it was a great pivot from a guy who has always seemed relatively stuck in his ways. I think this season has a much wider range of outcomes than the last 5 years. I truly could see 10 to 25 wins. Maybe just for once, everything will go right for this program

[Old guy]

OK people, I have a hopefully valid reason for optimism! As you all know, I have not been in the optimistic side of things for quite a long time. So, what happened? I went to see the free practice preview of the team tonight. I am really not absolutely sure as to who was who among the players, there were so many new faces in there. The free practice preview was an over an hour long scrimmage for two teams made from the whole team. Some people did not play a second, like Zhang and Sotirov (I am sure about Zhang not playing, Sotirov #35 for the event I just did not see playing). However, what I saw tonight was a fast hit and run of continual hard play by the teams, that is most of the time they did play this way. Only occasionally did they reverted to the weaving and passing standard for last season. It probably helped that Ford did not control the play of either team, the assistant coaches did the play control. There was a team coached by Tate and Nunez, the other one by Harriman and Thomas (?). Harriman did most of the talking and leading of this second team. I think it may have helped that Ford stayed sitting down in a chair looking like had and advanced bout of constipation, and did not rise to take the lead lead over the teams. Please note that Ford is not capable to stay quiet so he did his share of yelling and he also did transfer players between the two teams. The transfers between the teams were probably planned to allow him to see how well different people played together.

Playing under the lead of the assistant coaches was refreshing and  invigorating. They were really playing as I hoped they would last year. Parker was amazing, and almost unstoppable. Hughes and Hargrove played very aggressively and scored well. Some of the new players Meadows, Dalger, Ezewiro, Medley, Thames, Curcic and Magassa were better than I expected (my expectations were very low so it was nice to see them doing well and playing aggressively). Curcic is a good ball handler but not so good a shooter. Jimerson has not hit his stride yet. van Bussel played but appeared lost, and, surprise, Lamont Evans IV (a walk on) played a few minutes and looked quite up to it.

Please understand that this was a Billikens vs Billikens scrimmage we watched tonight. They know each other and play with each other, things may be different when they play against a different team, and things may well be very different under the Ford's direct direction. However tonight's event increased my optimism about this season by orders of magnitude. I so much wish this would become a reality when we go into real play. Buildings and NILs do not amount go anything in my mind, what I saw tonight, under the assistants direction was a heady dose of optimism for me.

All the best to all, I hope my impression tonight becomes reality.

 

[billikenfan05]

Thank you for your posts everyone and thank you to those who granted my request to only keep it positive/optimistic in this thread. Genuinely wrote this as a sort of CMV. I am looking forward to seeing what this backcourt can do. I think we're actually well off in that regard as I hear more about our returners, Meadows & Dalger. I really hope Travis is actually going to keep his word on tempo and pressing. I wish we knew the eligibility status of the 3 front court players. I would actually be intrigued, especially after the reports from yesterday.

[DOC]

On 10/19/2023 at 1:11 PM, cgeldmacher said:

I think the issue more complicated than your presenting it.  You seem to be setting up being able to say "See, the optimistic guys can't really state a competent argument" by starting this thread and at the same time create a forum for the so called negative guys to bash the opinions of whatever gets said.  This is evidenced by the fact that in your sort of peace offering of bestowing a thread upon the optimistic crowd, you describe those with optimism as "content, satisfied with the last decade of Billiken basketball."  A Billiken fan can be optimistic and not, yet, wanting changes in leadership.  Someone can be optimistic, but still not be satisfied by what this program has accomplished in the past ten years.  The two sides you are presenting are not mutually exclusive.  Also, based on my experience with this board, it is beyond the capabilities of the "negative guys" to not attack whatever is said in this space.  That being said, I'll take the bait and give you something.

I am optimistic about the things that are within our program's control.  I agree with SLUSignGuy that our basketball facilities are as good as it gets and comparable with most, if not better than some, Big East programs.  They are certainly better than most A-10 schools, West Coast Conference Schools, and Missouri Valley Schools.

I am optimistic about having Chris Harriman on board and getting international recruits.  There are schools that have had a lot of success going this route.

I am optimistic that a coach who typically get us 20-23 wins per season (which, to be clear, is not sufficient for our goals) can make tweaks which lead to bigger and better things (see the Chris Harriman statement above).  I, at the moment, would rather have the possibility of that coach making improvements that make us incrementally better than the unknown of whoever would have to be next, because I don't believe we will get some amazing Power 5 coach that much of this board thinks we would if we had to conduct a search.

I am optimistic about a new group of guys coming together this season and being, possibly, better than a group of guys we had last season despite the new guys having far less expectations.  Sometimes, more talented groups underperform and have injuries, and less talented groups get better results just from capturing the right chemistry.

There are other things that I am not very optimistic about, but I won't go into any of them, because this was, allegedly, set up as the Trust Tree for optimism.  So, I won't go there.  Any bets on whether others will?

This is how I feel. Exactly. 

[thetorch]

We have two elite scorers on the wing in Jimerson & Parker.

Parker is only a Jr and should be a POY candidate next season.

Staff has gotten a big wing to commit for next season. Recruiting is all about momentum. Primed to get more HS talent before signing day.

[TheA_Bomb]

Why I think SLU can win at basketball:

Good facilities

Basketball school (no football to waste money on)

Great location for recruiting.  Being within driving distance from Chicago, Indianapolis,  Cincinnati, KC, Memphis, Tulsa is a good place to recruit especially those transfers looking to return closer to home. 

Good level of support. We've been up there in attendance in the past. STL is a great sports city and people will show up for exciting teams. 

Leading scorer is back. LHJ is back and likely to get better.  Hargrove can take a step and bring energy.  Meadows is a good pick up. 

[GOSLU68]

I would like to be optimistic but I did not see a dominant rebounder or guards stealing the ball

[BrettJollyComedyHour]

1 hour ago, TheA_Bomb said:

Chicago, Indianapolis,  Cincinnati, KC, Memphis, Tulsa

If only our conference was aligned this way haha! But then again it takes recruiting competition away since it doesn't. Trying to spin this positively.

[3star_recruit]

This team is built to shoot a high percentage from 3 at high volume.

[RiseOfTheBillikens]

2 dollar nachos and small beers before the game are only a week or two away. 

[TheA_Bomb]

31 minutes ago, 3star_recruit said:

This team is built to shoot a high percentage from 3 at high volume.

If you can do that you can beat anyone. Maybe not consistently but you got a chance