Slaten's Comments

[Tonka]

Yesterday Slaten said SLU is the worst college basketball team he has "EVER" seen. He said there may have worst teams through the years, but he hasn't seen them. He then went on to diss their lack of talent and talked about how poorly coached they are. I don't get where he comes up with this stuff! We have 2 wins for pete's sake! It's not like we have no wins!!!

[billiken_roy]

short of brad claiming he made a major mistake and asking troy to transfer to slu, i have just accepted that slaten is going to dog slu forever now. the hope is that the knowledgable fan realizes why the antagonism.

[billiken_roy]

here's the competition that this team has for the worst billiken team during my time of following the bills which goes back to the late 70's:

1. all of ekker's teams we can lose the rest of our games and it wont compare to ekker's trash.

2. grawer in 91-92 (5-23), 82-83 (5-23), 83-84 (12-16), 84-85 (13-15) both grawer's first and last year will probably save brad. i believe this team will surpass at the very least both of those teams. and keep in mind, grawer's last season was claggett and highmark's first. i.e. the tide can change quickly.

3. spoon in 96-97 (11-18), 92-93 (12-17), 98-99 (15-16) imo, spoon's 98-99 season was the most disappointing. the year after hughes and the entire remaining team is back plus justin love arrived.

4. romar in 2001-2002 15-16

[Bay Area Billiken]

Evidently Kevin Slaten has an axe to grind and can be dismissed.

But what is really wrong with this SLU team? Because many players returned from a winning team that made the NIT and even beat Iowa in the first round, it can't be a total lack of talent. Negativism seems to breed more negativism. SLU lost some heartbreakers, apparently due mostly to poor shooting, and now the snowball has turned into an avalanche. Losing by 26 points at SIU is simply unacceptable.

Playing the next game against SEMO at home should be a place to start. That should be a win if the Billikens show up and play some ball. On the other hand, SEMO lost at home to SIU by only 4 points, 72-68. But SEMO does not have the height or talent level to contend with the Billikens, if the Billikens come to play. On paper, SIU did not have the height either.

While it would seem prudent to give Justin Johnson more playing time, gutting the whole nucleus of the team would not seem to be the answer, not yet. Has there been any suggestion of Coach Soderberg loosening the reigns on this team? Are the players just too tight? Have they gotten to the point in which they are afraid to make a mistake?

On another note, Vashon's Lorenzo Gordon is leading a resurgence at Illinois State. What is the word there? Did SLU ever try to recruit him?

[Bay Area Billiken]

Coach Soderberg needs to stick to an 8 or 9 man rotation in games, irrespective of mistakes. Playing the whole roster is rarely the answer. Players don't have enough time to get into the flow of the game. I realize that the SIU game turned into a blowout, but I hope playing the whole roster does not become the norm borne from desperation.

I've never favored the make a mistake and exit the game approach. Players become tentative and afraid that if they make a bad play, they get yanked.

[Billikan]

In watching the team I do not think they are "tight" but for some reason I do not see the intensity that we had last year. Part of that can be explained by the fact that Chris Sloan and Josh Fisher had intensity in excess and it rubbed off on the entire team.

However, that cannot be the entire explanation. When you watch someone like Danny Brown play with agression and effort it makes you wonder. He is not yet a great player but he has the "attitude" that you need to be great.

I wonder also if the problem may be that some of the team members seem to let down at times--their concentration and effort is fine for a while and then we see a complete lack of focus. I have no idea whether this is a result of a lack of conditioning or just a individual flaw. In any event, the most important thing is that our most experienced players are the ones that seem to make the worst mistakes and miss shots at the crucial times.

I am sure that Brad is going crazy and I am sure he feels responsible even though he does not make a bad pass or miss an open shot. But as the coach the "buck stops" with him. His Christmas and that of the whole team will be a difficult one. Let's hope they can all get away from the issues for a while and enjoy time with their families. Those family relationships, including good health and safe and productive lives for all are much more important than winning or losing a basketball game. This is not life and death stuff!

[guest]

I don't see how Spoon's 98-99 season is on the list. They beat Kansas and #1 Cinci that year, and if Love doesn't hurt his back in the preseason, they go to the NCAA's again. I think Love probably would have redshirted that year if he had to do it all over again, he was obviously much quicker the next year, injury-free.

Ekker's teams were the worst, but Grawer's 91-92 team was awful and the worst of the teams in recent memory. Of course, that doesn't jibe with most people thinking that Grawer left all these great recruits for Spoon (Clagget and Highmark and nobody else).

[billiken_roy]

i put it on the list because 1. it was a sub 500 team. i put all the sub 500 teams on the list. and 2. it was my personal most disappointing team. no way that team should have been 500 after what they accomplished the year before. and while love was injured some of the season, he was fine some of the season as well. evidenced by a remarkable game i believe vs memphis where he had 30+ points.

as to your comment about grawer's 91-92 team, granted many of the great class either transferred or faded away, but still the two main components of the future great team, highmark and claggett were there. i.e. one could make a comparison to this one with soderberg's most highly acclaimed recruiting class to day with polk, meyer, brown, and newborne. i believe that at the very least polk, meyer and brown have the chance to be the claggett and highmarks of future years.

[Box and Won]

I agree with you on Love's first year, but had he been healthy the entire year, I think our record would have been considerably better. I seem to remember us winning very close games against Illinois, San Francisco and a few others that I'm sure we would have won with a healthy J. Love.

[billiken_roy]

you meant close losses vs illinois and san francisco?

[Box and Won]

Oops, I guess I'm already in holiday mode!

[billiken_roy]

it is a good point. i do remember he didnt play against san fran because i felt so bad for his family not getting to see him play. i thought he did play in champaign though. i remember most from that game was sergio mcclain tore up jamal walker.

the stats from that season show that love missed 7 games. no idea how many of those 7 were won or lost.

[thetorch]

Lorenzo was on Brad's radar but was admittedly a second or third option. We took Newborne instead.

[Bay Area Billiken]

Justin Love didn't play out here that year against USF. SLU was ahead big in the first half of that game but fell apart in the second half. That was a game the Billikens should have won and likely cost them an NIT bid. Oh well, the Billikens of Larry Hughes blew out USF in St. Louis the year before.

[Billiken Law]

On Tuesday that SLU did not join the MVC because they knew they could not win it and would rather be a "bottom dweller in the A10" than be middle of the pack in the MVC. They spent the first hour on SLU/SIU and SLU "blowing it" not going to the MVC. Most callers seemed to agree....

[kshoe]

finished exactly .500 if I recall but basically overscheduled on the belief that Larry would be around. I remember at the end of the season commenting that we were 7-7 against tournament bound teams while Mizzou (an 8 seed that lost to New Mexico) was something like 2-10 vs. tourney bound teams. The difference was Mizzou won every game it was expected to win but we lost a bunch early with no J-Love.

I still remember sitting at the top of Alumni Hall with a 4 point lead and a minute to go only to see Jamal Walker turn the ball over twice in a row and Illinois steal one from us.

It certainly doesn't belong on the list of worst teams in SLU history.

[aj_arete]

and aren't aware that if SLU moved to the MVC that recruiting will GET TOUGHER not easier. I'm sorry, but it would have been a hard sell convincing Liddell to come to SLU so he can battle the Evansvilles and Bradleys of the world.

I realize that this Billiken team hasn't produced this year, but this is just ONE YEAR. In college basketball, your fortunes can change quickly.

[estiger]

My advice would be to ignore what this jackass has to say. He tries to provoke the fans of all teams, particularly SLU and MU, so that the fans of those programs will call in to try and defend their favorite program. He is a cheap-shot artist who makes his point in the most bellicose way. He will shout the person who calls in down, and make disarming smart-aleck reamrks which have nothing to do with the merits of any argument. I have hardly listened to him at all since he came back on the air. I happened to catch a part of his act on Wednesday because I was surfing around the radio trying to catch talk about the braggin' rights game.

The fact that he is taking shots at Soderberg is not surprising. He is a coach who is well-respected and well-liked by the local media and most local sports fans (even Tiger fans). It was a fair bet that SLU would struggle this year, so he started taking cheap-shots at Soderberg early. It was a good gamble, as he now is in a position where he can act like he is smarter than everybody because he was the first to critcize Soderberg. He has done this for years.

He really knows very little about sports. What he is good at is provoking people in to arguments on his turf where he can sound smarter than the people who argue with him. He is in control, since it his radio show. No one defending Soderberg or anyone who Slaten criticizes will ever get enough time on Slaten's show to explain why loud-mouth is wrong. His show with Mike Claiborne is just awful. Do yourself a favor and change the station to 1380. It's what I usually do, although I did not practice what I preach on Wednesday afternoon.

[AlumniFan]

Slaten is to sports like car wrecks are to the evening news. No one likes them, they are horrible, no one wants them to happen, but they attract viewers for the purient interests of human beings.

Slaten apparently spews his venom constantly. He purportedly hates every coach and every school that didn't recruit his son.

Here is the funny thing, I don't even listen to the guy (I'm not even sure what station he is on) but from this board and from a group of friends/co-workers it is not difficult to determine that the guy is a joke and mean spirited to boot.

Given that, why does anyone take him seriously enough to get upset about him? I don't get it...

P.S. How is Slaten any different than Triangle and 2? (At least Slaten understands basketball.)

[billiken_roy]

kshoe, my list was derived from steve's stats page. i took every team with a less than 500 record since 1980. thus that is the reason all of the teams listed are there. i dont know how anyone can defend that team for being part of the list. losing hughes but gaining justin even if he did sit out 7 games, should not have been a less than 500 record. imo it was spoons worst job of coaching and he proved he needed a rest after that season.

[Billiken Law]

Yes, but those casual observers are the type of folks we need to start attracting to games.

I am not sure recruting would be substantially tougher in the MVC than in the A-10. For every Evansville and Bradley (who are having very good seasons thus far) you have a Creighton, WSU and SIU, and for every Xavier, Charlotte and Dayton in the A-10 you have a Lasalle, St. Bona, Duquense and Fordham.

[billiken_roy]

and for every plane ride to philly or washington dc in the a-10, there is an mvc bus ride to carbondale or evansville, or peoria, or bloomington, or cedar rapids, or terre haute etc. i am sure the typical metro urbanite high school basketball star dreams of those bus rides. all at once instead of looking for tommie liddell and kevin lisch we are searching for the next larry bird instead. talk about the needle in the haystack!

btw, as good as the mvc is reportedly doing, as of this morning, the only under 40 rpi's are siu and bradley. witchita state is probably a bubble team. no one else in the mvc would be considered if the committee met today and seeded the tourney.

the a-10 on the other hand has temple, gw and richmond with comfortable rpi's under 40. the difference as you accurately did report are the 4 bottom feeders of the a-10. st bonaventure has undoubtedly, after the jan van breda koff weldinggate, hit rock bottom. they are the worst team in the world possibly.

but the top teams are still doing ok and i still feel the a-10 is a better choice just as you believe the big east is a better choice for depaul and marquette over the horizon.

[Billiken Law]

These kids don't dream of playing in Philly or Pittsburgh or DC, particularly when those schools barely make a blip on the local media radar and play in front of half-empty arenas. New Orleans, Birmingham, Houston, Charlotte and Dallas/Fort Worth are also major media and sports markets but those schools were used by other coaches to dissuade kids from going to CUSA schools because they'd be playing in front of half-empty crowds. A kid would rather know he's going to play in front of rabid crowds and packed houses a majority of the time then worry about where he's going to play. Look at conferences like the Big 10, Big 12. SEC and ACC - few of those schools are located in big cities but they don't have a problem recruiting.

[Box and Won]

Yeah, it's tough to remember how we did in the games in which Love didn't play, but didn't it seem like even when he was able to play, his injuries kept him from showing how good he really was? Maybe it was just the transition from JUCO to DI, but it seemed like at the end of that season, he was just starting to show glimpses of the kind of player he would turn out to be the next season.

[Box and Won]

But that's why I am personally in favor of building a smaller (around 10k seats) arena than the one we have planned - screw the casual observers. I'd rather have a smaller house, full of die-hards, creating a raucous atmosphere than a big arena where anyone (including hordes of fans of the visiting teams) can just walk up and buy a ticket on the day of the game.

I don't want another embarassing repeat of the Dayton game in our new arena, but I'm afraid that it will continue to happen as long as we have several thousand seats too many.