huzzah Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 I think Brad is doing a good job considering the timing and conditions surrounding his hire. As you recall Romar left and his two prize recruits did not show up. One was academically not eligible and the other opted for UCLA. In addition Pulley had to go Juco and another player, homesick for the west, transferred to Montana. By the time Brad took the job the recruiting season was over. He had to take what was left. The prospects of getting top line recruits at this late stage was remote. At the time, as I recall, the consensus on the board was that we would entertain some lean years. This is what is happening. However, Coach has made some inroads in the St. Louis area, both sides of the river, and has recruited Vashon. This recruiting locally was what Romar tended to overlook. Judging from the success of Illinois State and SIU, there is some talent here. I think Brad's recruiting looks good and the future success of the Bills has potential. Brad is on solid ground. His job appears much more secure than Snyder's. After Brad's recuits, that is the ones recruited on a timely basis, and not at the last minute, are here into their junior and senior years, we can make a more accurate judgement of the Coaches recruiting and coaching ability. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alameda bob Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 It sounds like you hit the nail on the head. No one wants lean years unless you are talking about your waistline. Have faith and from what I have read the past few years here, SLU will not regress much longer. Merry Christmas everyone!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiken Law Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 Not buying it. We're regressing and Brad has all of his players now. He was recruiting in Romar's last year, he had plenty of time to evaluate talent for his last 2 classes and other than Polk nobody is really contributing and 3 of his recruits have failed to make it into SLU - that's the coach's fault for recruiting risk kids while other local kids are succeeding at other programs. The third year in a coach's tenure is traditionally when a program takes a turn in one direction or another. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 any "billiken" law insight on coach soderberg will undoubtedly be poisoned with his marquette vs wisconsin bias. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiken Law Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 not at all, Roy. You think I'm enjoying going to games with 5000 in the house and watching the Bills lose to low-majors in my final year as a student? I could care less where Sodey coached before he came here, he's a Billiken now. Besides, he coached under Dicke Bennett, an honorable and respected coach and person. Now, if Sodey were a Domer or from DePaul.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 you have shown by your very weaselike actions earlier this year on the marquette board where you ridiculed this board and our members where your true feelings are at. it wouldnt have been so bad, as i for one never expected or felt you owed the billiken fandom and sort of renouncement of your loyalty, but you also did nothing by those actions to show any loyalty to your new home here in billikenland. you also made no effort to apologize to the hardcore fans here, in fact, only an effort to try to show us where we deserved to be made fun of for our feelings towards our beloved billikens and how superior marquette is. myself, as a longtime lurker on the marquette board, i have see the way you have treated wisconsin fans. looking back it was only a matter of time before that would leak here and darts be shot out towards coach soderberg. btw, please spare us the "sodey". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jg99 Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 Roy You are correct about Bill Law or his other name Mojo. He hates anything to due with the Badgers. Brad was a Badger, so he hates him. Brad is one of the top 5 college basketball coaches in the USA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 i wouldnt say yet that soderberg is a top 5 coach! i hope you are right. but right now is a trying time and we will no doubt see how strong he is over the next 12 months or so. anyone can walk in and win with illinoislike players, the real test is to develop a winner on your own. halfway through coach soderberg's 3rd season is not adequate time frame to evaluate anything. especially considering the circumstances he faced up front with kern and hollins not coming and then the grade problems of pulley, edwin, alexander and morris. the fact tommie's arrival was delayed a year. the fact that seyfert and mcclain didnt stay around. the fact that izik and ian had to sit out huge chunks of games. he has faced a lot of bumps in the road most coaches dont have to face and i am willing to give him more time to succeed. all i know is that in every face to face meeting i have come away more impressed than before. he is a strong man who has a vision and a plan and stays the course. a long term thinker. which i like. someone that will probably be here a long time to bring the program to a solid form. now sometimes i too wonder if his on floor methods are working and if maybe there is a better way. i b!tch about players and why they havent progressed faster. but when it comes down to it, and you step back and compare what we have to what we had 20 years ago, we are still far out in front of that guideline. forgive me for stepping over the line occasionally. i just want the billikens to succeed. i just need to be told to calm down occasionally. this board does a great job of keeping us in prospective normally. anyway, it will be a busy weekend in my world, so merry christmas everyone! bring on semo! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
courtside Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 Would somebody please clue me in as to all of these great Vashon recruits over the years. AB sure. Polk is a good one. And I am happy to see Lorenzo Gordon have success after two juco years. But for the most part Vashon's kids are either not good enough to play at the major D 1 level. Once in a while they have one or two kids. But I would love for somebody to list for me all the great successful major D 1 Vashon kids who went elsewhere in the past 20 years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufanskip Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 I agree with you ... which though I hate to say it because I dislike what I see of him as a person ... is a testament to Floyd Irons coaching ability. I think you have to add Jimmy to the list of successful Vashon grads ... he is a solid player on a decent team. He is also a leader and by all accounts a good guy. On UB ... I don't think we have even come close to having an opportunity to fairly evaluate him. In terms of his own players he is basically in his second year ... with two full classes under his belt ... add to that the departure of to many good players and recruits that was out of his control ... he needs more time. With that said ... he needs to evaluate what we are doing in games with the talent we have and be willing to make adjustments ... I don't know if he is working (at practices) on making changes to our game plans or is just sticking to what he has ... I like UB ... and believe he will come out of this a better coach and the Bills will develop into a consistent NCAA tourney team for a long time under his guidance Official Billikens.com sponsor of H. Waldman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiken Law Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 whatever Roy. Believe what you want. When Bennett was coach I shared season tickets for Madison with a buddy of mine - Bennett was a class act. The new coaching regime - not the case, thus my ridicule of them. Since you are a "lurker" of the Marquette boards have you seen my battles with Murffius (jg99 below) defending SLU players like Tom (who he calls a "stumblebum," "pathetic" and "horrible") or his claims that not one SLU player could have started for Marquette last year (I'd say Reggie and Tom could have and Fish and Sloan would have been first off the bench). I'm not saying at all that Sodey is not the answer and cannot be successful, but instead I'm not going to dismiss this season's struggles as something that "should have been expected." We were bringing back a very solid core of players and so far, this season has been a disappointment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
courtside Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 yes...McKinney too. Thanks Skip. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlumniFan Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 nm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tseugnekillib Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 Soderberg had gone 16-14 and 19-13 in his first two year. No doubt, his third year is going to be a rough one. I prefer that he build a program for the long term.....winning with your third and fourth year players, and redshirting a freshman or two every year. I'm sure our coach would love to have an experienced junior or senior point guard (a Brandon Morris or a Lucas Dupree caliber) to share time with DP, but it didn't happen and now the coach and his fans suffer alike. I'm excited about our future and I can't wait for the A-10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basketbill Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 If recruiting begins when players are in their freshman and sophmore years of high school, then in all reality this class of polk, meyer, Liddell/Brown is truly the first year of "his recruits". AD, IO, RB were recruited by Brad true, but would not be part of a normal recruiting cycle....how this years class and next years class matures and plays will determine the future of this program... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kahok Posted December 25, 2004 Share Posted December 25, 2004 I tried to tell everyone we were two recruiting classes away from having a good team and everyone took turns at telling me I was wrong. You cannot have a running team with bigs that cannot get up and down the floor. We have the guards coming in now with the guards we have here, we need the bigs that can run the floor in the following class. If you are going to have a team that gets up and down and plays a quick game you have got to have a complete team that will be able to play that style. Right now our team is split some can run and some can't, cheer up and follow the Bills, we will survive and in two years we can win the conference and go further. Merry Christmas to all Bills Fans. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted December 25, 2004 Share Posted December 25, 2004 you did say that kahok. i do remember that. i just hope the inside players that brad has earmarked for our future begin to progress. however, he does have two scholarships left to help as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheeseman Posted December 26, 2004 Share Posted December 26, 2004 This has been a very cogent discussion - we need more like this to make this board interesting all year long. Many of you have made very good points about the current big people unable to run and that Brad was caught between a rock and hard place in having to take whatever crumbs were left. I agree that the bigs we have have not been good especially this year. Even last year when we won 19 games, we were consistently out rebounded - what has happened this year in retrospect should not be surprising. I also agree that this year's and next's recruiting will be the make or break classes for Brad. Roy is correct, Brad needs to find at least on stud big man with the remaining two scholarships - can he find one in JUCCO - maybe but you have to admit that VN has not been any great find so far - he does not seem to run the floor well nor seems to be able to score or rebound with any consistency. I earlier wondered on the board if he was just not that good or is he having trouble adjusting to the D1 level - don't know. I still think that Brad has to look to the future and start playing the young big men he has - JJ and BH for sure. I am not ready to give up on IV but he has to start showing some improvement in games. If JJ and BH can not improve this year then we are in trouble for next year. Once again, let LM, DC, DB, JJ and BH start playing decent minutes and after 5 or so games we can start to evalutate what we have or not with them - all I want to see is consistent improvement out of them this year and that can not happen playing 2-3 minutes every now and then in a game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billikan Posted December 27, 2004 Share Posted December 27, 2004 I take it you are a law student who has had a fleeting exposure to the BIlls. YOu have seen two good years where the team really over achieved based upon the talent level and this year that had things go wrong from day one with last second shots made by the opposition and bad shooting and mistakes by our most experienced players. If you are a true fan you will understand that things do not go perfectly every year. As an aside, I hope you are an excellent student and you do well but I would suggest that you will not want to be treated like you treat Brad once you start in the practice. It is a tough grind and there will be ups and downs. Good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guest Posted December 27, 2004 Share Posted December 27, 2004 Billiken Law. Why don't you go back on the Marquette board and the school that wants to be like Notre Dame. You guys at Marquette are wannabe DOMERS, one Final Four with Crean and you think he is GOD. SLU will get its turn eventually even if they do not get an on campus arean. Brad will lead us to the promise land. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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