WBB Offseason

[White Pelican]

46 minutes ago, thetorch said:

Can anyone explain why peyton kennedy went from an all timer to meh in a few months? Was her injury way worse? Why was a pre season all conference pick and one of the best scorers in program history yo yoed in the rotation all season?

I read (in the last week or so) that she had two injuries, one of which was a heel injury. If she had a heel injury, I'm guessing it was painful. That would explain the fall-off in her 3 point shot and her inability to stay on the floor. Just my two cents. I don't know any more about it than anyone else. I am very sure the coach and Peyton wish she had been able to play up to her abilities.

[Lord Elrond]

5 hours ago, billikenfan05 said:

Did she win a play in game or a regular game. Rumblings are the culture isn’t as empowering as it’s made out to be. I’m concerned about the younger Tillett being on staff next year. The word toxic comes to mind. 

The 2022 Tournament was the first time the Women’s tournament was expanded to 68 teams.  Longwood was assigned a First Four matchup vs Mount Saint Mary’s, which they won 74-70.  They then played as the 16th seed vs 1st seed NC State, which they lost 96-68.  NC State lost in the Elite 8 to eventual runner-up UConn.

I know nothing about what does on with the culture of the club.

As for Isabell, I would recommend to her that the better option to make her a better coach would be to not be on the staff under her mother.  Go out and find a position under someone else.  If she gets a first coaching job under her mother, the questions of nepotism will always be there. Better to go out and convince someone else to hire you, and show that you can make it on your own.

[OkieBilliken]

Brooklyn Gray just entered the portal.   Tillett is going to have very little left next year and is going to have to win big in the portal.   This is really a bad sign for her.  This is kind of what did Lisa Stone in, if I recall.   Her wins/losses weren't bad, better that the person who replaced her.   It was that she was losing her best players to the portal.     I was completely in Tillett's camp and thought she was bringing in a winning culture, but now I am very concerned.    

[Lord Elrond]

36 minutes ago, OkieBilliken said:

Brooklyn Gray just entered the portal.   Tillett is going to have very little left next year and is going to have to win big in the portal.   This is really a bad sign for her.  This is kind of what did Lisa Stone in, if I recall.   Her wins/losses weren't bad, better that the person who replaced her.   It was that she was losing her best players to the portal.     I was completely in Tillett's camp and thought she was bringing in a winning culture, but now I am very concerned.    

Coach Tillett already had an uphill climb with regard to players this coming season, this makes it that much harder.

[BrettJollyComedyHour]

4 hours ago, OkieBilliken said:

Brooklyn Gray just entered the portal.   Tillett is going to have very little left next year and is going to have to win big in the portal.   This is really a bad sign for her.  This is kind of what did Lisa Stone in, if I recall.   Her wins/losses weren't bad, better that the person who replaced her.   It was that she was losing her best players to the portal.     I was completely in Tillett's camp and thought she was bringing in a winning culture, but now I am very concerned.    

Brooklyn was one of two bright spots in development this season. I'm pessimistic now.

[billikenbill]

If recruiting the portal doesn’t go well this year, ‘25-26 should be the end of the Tillett era. Not sold on her coaching skills and she takes the women’s empowerment and psychological/team building stuff to ridiculous extremes. Just play the game, focus on fundamentals and skill development.

[Lord Elrond]

Just got back from watching Lindenwood WBB take down Tulsa 76-60 in the first round of the WNIT.  It wasn’t as close of a game as the score indicated. The Lions have quite a collection of sophomores who can shoot the ball, and they spread around the shots to all of them. 5 Lindenwood players hit double digit points, with a 6th at 9 pts. Honestly if you gave me both Lindenwood and SLU rosters of players scheduled to come back next year and had me list in order which players I would trust to hit a last second game winning shot, I think the first 4 would be Lindenwood players at least. So it is possible to recruit players who can shoot, which are the type of players the Billikens need badly. I’m not sure how far Lindenwood will go in the WNIT, they look like a collection of guards with very few taller players, which will make things tough for them in the WNIT.  We desperately need some shooters.

[okay]

We have the height, we just need guards and shooters. Peyton being injured was devastating to our season this year

[thetorch]

I thought I saw the freshman guard entered the portal as well.

[BrettJollyComedyHour]

I'm very concerned for this team next year.

[billikenfan05]

10 hours ago, okay said:

We have the height, we just need guards and shooters. Peyton being injured was devastating to our season this year

Do we? Tillett let Marilena and Haidara pick splinters out of their asses while we struggled to rebound. Insanity. Brought in Glanton to let her ride the line until conference season, then averaged 13 minutes a game. More insanity. Bri Johns had her minutes slashed in half despite being a contributor on that NCAA team. What are we doing here? 

[2010andBeyond]

On 3/8/2025 at 11:32 AM, JettFlight5 said:

Would they pull the trigger? They were pretty patient with Travis Ford.

Huh? Ford started at rock bottom, showed significant improvement his second year, and made the tournament his third year. He then followed that with two top 50ish teams. His downfall was ultimately the failure to win the big games with those teams and sustain the recruiting level in the NIL era. 

[OkieBilliken]

So Lisa Stone's last seven years here included two 3rd place finishes, one 4th, two 6ths and one 7th place finish.  All of those are better than RT's last 2 seasons.   I dont think she has to win the conference next year, but I think tangible improvement is necessary.    I know this is probably not an option but is that dude who keeps winning state championships at Incarnate Word a possibility?   I remember him when he was a very young Billiken assistant in the Jill Pizzotti era.     Although now that I think about it, I wouldnt recommend anyone with heart issues work for Chris May,   

[Lord Elrond]

There’s a huge job hitting the portal or recruiting more freshmen facing this team.  With Brooklyn Gray gone, and the status of Tierra Simon, Marcavia Shavers, and Isabell Tillett still to be decided, right now we are down to 5 returning players (Marelina Triantafylli, Shun Anumele, Hannah Wallace, Mia Bergstrom, Rita Nazario) and 3 incoming freshmen in the current class (Zhykera Brown, Alyssa Koerkenmeier, Jasaiyah Wallace), there are only 8 players on the roster next year right now.  If anyone else hits the portal, that’s another one you need to get.  Right now we need 7 more players to fill out the roster over and above the current incoming freshman class. Lose anyone else, that number goes up.  Conversely, convince Simon, Shavers, Tillett to come back, and you can reduce that number.  But it’s still 4 more.

Regardless, a huge amount of work needs to be done. With the total number of incoming players, it’s hard to see this any anything but a complete rebuild. I don’t expect much next year, especially if Coach Tillett does her normal non-conference schedule of loading up as many high ranked teams as possible. If that’s the case, it could be an ugly bloodbath.  I’d say stick to the Summit, Horizon, and OVC for most of the non-conference schedule.

[courtside]

13 minutes ago, Lord Elrond said:

There’s a huge job hitting the portal or recruiting more freshmen facing this team.  With Brooklyn Gray gone, and the status of Tierra Simon, Marcavia Shavers, and Isabell Tillett still to be decided, right now we are down to 5 returning players (Marelina Triantafylli, Shun Anumele, Hannah Wallace, Mia Bergstrom, Rita Nazario) and 3 incoming freshmen in the current class (Zhykera Brown, Alyssa Koerkenmeier, Jasaiyah Wallace), there are only 8 players on the roster next year right now.  If anyone else hits the portal, that’s another one you need to get.  Right now we need 7 more players to fill out the roster over and above the current incoming freshman class. Lose anyone else, that number goes up.  Conversely, convince Simon, Shavers, Tillett to come back, and you can reduce that number.  But it’s still 4 more.

Regardless, a huge amount of work needs to be done. With the total number of incoming players, it’s hard to see this any anything but a complete rebuild. I don’t expect much next year, especially if Coach Tillett does her normal non-conference schedule of loading up as many high ranked teams as possible. If that’s the case, it could be an ugly bloodbath.  I’d say stick to the Summit, Horizon, and OVC for most of the non-conference schedule.

Anumele and Shavers also announced they are transferring. 

(Speaking of the OVC, former Billiken Mia Nicastro had 26, 7, and 6 yesterday in a Western Illinois WNIT win over Lipscomb.)

[Lord Elrond]

21 minutes ago, courtside said:

Anumele and Shavers also announced they are transferring. 

(Speaking of the OVC, former Billiken Mia Nicastro had 26, 7, and 6 yesterday in a Western Illinois WNIT win over Lipscomb.)

Ok, we now need 6 more players over and above the 3 incoming freshmen. The hill just got harder to climb, so start we need to start climbing.

Shavers was a good player off the bench, and certainly had a decent chance to start next season, so hopefully she can find that same situation in the portal, but I’m not sure that’s a guarantee for her, but I wish her the best.

Anumele I’m not going to miss that much. While I saw the talent she had, she still was the person who took the most field goal attempts on the team, while having the worst shooting percentage on the team. She still was displaying that in the last game we played in the A10. Statistically we were a bad shooting team, and she was a big part of that statistic. If she improves on her shot selection she could be a good player, but I didn’t see much evidence of that in her time here.

[BrettJollyComedyHour]

8 minutes ago, Lord Elrond said:

Ok, we now need 6 more players over and above the 3 incoming freshmen. The hill just got harder to climb, so start we need to start climbing.

Shavers was a good player off the bench, and certainly had a decent chance to start next season, so hopefully she can find that same situation in the portal, but I’m not sure that’s a guarantee for her, but I wish her the best.

Anumele I’m not going to miss that much. While I saw the talent she had, she still was the person who took the most field goal attempts on the team, while having the worst shooting percentage on the team. She still was displaying that in the last game we played in the A10. Statistically we were a bad shooting team, and she was a big part of that statistic. If she improves on her shot selection she could be a good player, but I didn’t see much evidence of that in her time here.

Why am I fearful that Lisa Stone was the program's peak for consistency? Tillett got us where we'd never been before, but 3 seasons in, it was the Stone recruits and the best 3 players from Longwood pulling the weight.

[Lord Elrond]

44 minutes ago, BrettJollyComedyHour said:

Why am I fearful that Lisa Stone was the program's peak for consistency? Tillett got us where we'd never been before, but 3 seasons in, it was the Stone recruits and the best 3 players from Longwood pulling the weight.

I would point out that the 3 best players from Longwood were recruited by Tillett once to Longwood, and then a second time to follow her to SLU. What she hadn’t done was recruit enough replacements and kept the bench players happy enough to stay on the team.  If Mia Nicastro and Ashleigh Connor were kept happy enough to stay on the team, and the same with Brooklyn Gray and Marcavia Shavers, this looks to be a whole different and much better team than what we’re facing.  She really needs to figure out how to keep players on the bench happy enough to stay.  Or maybe the new world of Portal+NIL means they leave anyway. 

That’s all water under the bridge at this point.  Regardless of how she got here, she now doesn’t have enough players on roster for next season to play games with a reasonable numbers of subs. Her stay here (and future coaching career) depends on how she fixes the roster issue she’s now facing.

[willie]

1 hour ago, almaman said:

never heard of Crown Candy turned down

 

6 minutes ago, Lord Elrond said:

I would point out that the 3 best players from Longwood were recruited by Tillett once to Longwood, and then a second time to follow her to SLU. What she hadn’t done was recruit enough replacements and kept the bench players happy enough to stay on the team.  If Mia Nicastro and Ashleigh Connor were kept happy enough to stay on the team, and the same with Brooklyn Gray and Marcavia Shavers, this looks to be a whole different and much better team than what we’re facing.  She really needs to figure out how to keep players on the bench happy enough to stay.  Or maybe the new world of Portal+NIL means they leave anyway. 

That’s all water under the bridge at this point.  Regardless of how she got here, she now doesn’t have enough players on roster for next season to play games with a reasonable numbers of subs. Her stay here (and future coaching career) depends on how she fixes the roster issue she’s now facing.

Question . What kind of NIL would an A-10 woman's  player command? Anything? 

[Lord Elrond]

Stu just published an article on the women’s program. Apparently Tierra Simon is staying, but Tillett didn’t say that directly, nor did she say directly that Shavers, Gray, and Anumele were leaving, but in the article Stu was assuming they would leave. There was no mention of amounts of money, but the WBB players do get a slice of NIL money as of December. Tillett said her and her staff intend to hit the portal hard, looking for 4 impact players.  Subscribe to Stu if you haven’t already for more.  I guess it’s now a waiting game.

Edit: forgot to add, Stu mentioned 6 returning players. That would mean: Simon, Tillett, Tryantifylli, Nazario, Bergstrom, Wallace.  If Isabell wants to return that’s fine with me. Simon is the big one, she was 5th in the A10 with 285 total rebounds.

[BrettJollyComedyHour]

9 minutes ago, Lord Elrond said:

Stu just published an article on the women’s program. Apparently Tierra Simon is staying, but Tillett didn’t say that directly, nor did she say directly that Shavers, Gray, and Anumele were leaving, but in the article Stu was assuming they would leave. There was no mention of amounts of money, but the WBB players do get a slice of NIL money as of December. Tillett said her and her staff intend to hit the portal hard, looking for 4 impact players.  Subscribe to Stu if you haven’t already for more.  I guess it’s now a waiting game.

Not that we should care about anything Mizzou does, but they just hired a former Tennessee coach, so our yearly game with them might get harder.

[Lord Elrond]

3 minutes ago, BrettJollyComedyHour said:

Not that we should care about anything Mizzou does, but they just hired a former Tennessee coach, so our yearly game with them might get harder.

I went to Mizzou and watched us get hammered that game. If you want to get that game going fine, but the rest of the non-conference needs to be more reasonable to build confidence, not destroy it.

[BrettJollyComedyHour]

20 minutes ago, Lord Elrond said:

I went to Mizzou and watched us get hammered that game. If you want to get that game going fine, but the rest of the non-conference needs to be more reasonable to build confidence, not destroy it.

We've done well against Mizzou in the past, but they seem dedicated to getting their women's team in the tournament regularly. I'm not sure we can meet that challenge.

[Lord Elrond]

26 minutes ago, BrettJollyComedyHour said:

We've done well against Mizzou in the past, but they seem dedicated to getting their women's team in the tournament regularly. I'm not sure we can meet that challenge.

Time will tell. At least we now have gotten there once.

[White Pelican]

4 hours ago, BrettJollyComedyHour said:

We've done well against Mizzou in the past, but they seem dedicated to getting their women's team in the tournament regularly. I'm not sure we can meet that challenge.

If by well, you mean 2-25 versus Mizzou over about 50 years, then I don't know what to tell you.

If we only count since the first time we won in 2016, then we're 2-6.