Was this in Today's paper or Thursdays?

[SluSignGuy]

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/co...12?OpenDocument

If it is in Thursdays. I love the timing...

Steve

[Bay Area Billiken]

Tonight's win over Memphis is the best possible response to Bernie M.'s column.

[Schasz]

Bernie will jump back on the band wagon as soon as we get this turned around with another Big Dance invite in another year or two. He is the epitome of the front running fan.

[TheGoat]

Just another one of Bernie's childish rants. Won't someone please shut him up and give him some candy already!

PS: I work the Billikens home games and have been in the press room plenty. For a guy that hates going to games he sure does love the free sandwiches an aweful lot!

[NYBill]

Pretty difficult to argue with anything Bernie says in that article.

I'm glad he's publicizing it, anything that might help humiliate the school into actually trying to build the program is good.

[billiken_roy]

it would be nice if he told both sides of issues though.

[Billiken Rich]

Is that why the New York press is so obnoxious? I thought it was because they were actually in and from New York. My Mistake......

[ADG]

Let's put this season and Bernie's comments in perspective. First, as usual, Bernie makes blanket statements without a doughnut break for research. The administration had nothing to do with this season. If you lose your starting center and projected top scorer your probably going to have a rough year.

Admission policy is not elitist but the result of having no "appropriate majors" such as P.E, Parks and Recreation or similar quasi academic progrms. If that is what Bernie is suggesting, then he should say so. The other institutions he mentions have those options.

Fund raising for the arena is awaiting completion of funding for the science center. If Bernie feels that is less important, than say so.

The campus has been transformed into a showplace by Fr. Biondi and I would think a boon to recruting. Does Bernie fell this is lack of comm

itment.

The fact that some local talent can't gain admission relates to paragraph 2. Tell us how to fix it Bernie. All in all he is clueless.

[ACE]

Bernie can spin this either way. If in a couple of years the team is still struggling, he can say, "see, nothing over there has changed, I was right." Or if in a couple years, the team is in the Big Dance and the arena is being built, Bernie can say "see, I really prodded the administration to take action and commit to the program, blah, blah, blah"

[Billiphan]

Lets put the personal attacks aside by Bernie and for arguments sake say he is right. The Bill program has not been a top 50 program over the last twenty years and is struggling now. What are the reasons? Bad coaches? Bad players/recruiting? Are we held back by academic restraints that other schools arent? Lack of support from the administration?

Do you agree with anything in his column or do you think he is kicking us while we're down?

[Bay Area Billiken]

Someone from St. Louis should respond to Bernie in Bernie's Press Box. His column is way off target and very skewed.

1. Citing Lorenzo Romar. IMO Romar is a good coach. But at SLU, Romar kept recruiting prime West Coast players and not landing them: Jamaal Sampson (1 year at Cal), Chuck Hayes (Kentucky), Ryan Hollins (signed with SLU but allowed to go to UCLA when Romar left, and now playing limited minutes there). Sure Romar is getting players at Washington, BUT WASHINGTON IS ON THE WEST COAST! Romar signed Vashon's Nick Kern, who would have been that elusive power forward, but you all know that tragic story. Irrespective of the reasons, the cupboard was bare when Romar left SLU.

2. Academics are an issue. No one has said that only Rhodes scholars can play for SLU. But SLU does not have a P.E. major, and that seriously hampers SLU's ability to get some JUCO's into SLU. It is ok for Bernie to cite Gonzaga. But Gonzaga has built a strong program with good continuity of coaches. Gonzaga gets 4 year players out of high school. Gonzaga's success has allowed the Zags to recruit and sign some prime players like Morrison. And although this year the West Coast Conference is up overall, in general over the years the WCC was not nearly as strong of a league as at least the upper echelons of C-USA. The WCC is composed of 8 private schools, 7 of them Catholic schools. There are no programs now in the WCC like Louisville, Cincinnati, or Memphis. The point is that Gonzaga built its program by winning in the weaker WCC and then doing well when it got the chance in the NCAA Tournament. This is not meant to take anything away from the Zags. But the situations at SLU and Gonzaga have not been the same.

This latest firestorm with Bernie seems to have stemmed from Bernie not having or ignoring the facts re Lorenzo Gordon. The SLU supporters were more than justified in calling Bernie on that one.

3. No SLU supporter wants the Billikens to be 8-20 with an RPI of 207. This year has been a big disappointment. But better days have to be around the corner. It does not help the cause to have the main columnist in the city's only paper taking these shots at SLU. When I was at SLU during the Ron Ekker Era, we at least had Bob Burnes in the Globe-Democrat to try to defend our honor in print and on KMOX.

[ADG]

What would you have the administration do that would help? The program has in fact been in the top fifty several times in the last twenty years. What has not been done? It's easy for Bernie to make general comments but what specifically is needed.

[Box and Won]

We need to be more JUCO-friendly - we're losing out on too many quality JUCO transfers who could be contributing to the team.

I don't know if the answer is necessarily instituting a P.E. program, but there has to be some way to get JUCO transfers in. I can't imagine that other similar schools have had the same problems we've had - Morris, Alexander, etc.

[billikendave]

I agree with some of the column. It is true that the faces have changed since 1990 but the results have been mixed. Grawer, Spoon, Romar and now Brad. In the AD, Yow, Woolard and now Levick. Biondi is a big idea guy but I don't think that he shares the same passion for a b-ball program as he does for other programs including campus beautification. I think he sees the new arena as a beautifcation program or what to do to have a major university, rather than a need to improve the b-ball program.

Now, BM does wholly ignore the fact that RB and TF were injured this year making our top two senior ineffective. He ignores the fact that for much of the season we relied on freshman. He ignores that despite the 8-20 record, almost 10 losses were by under 4 points. They are still losses in the W/L column but with freshmen logging major minutes. Two highly touted local prospects are coming in next year.

In an administration where b-ball isn't in a major priority, it takes years to build a program without McDonald's All Americans. It takes junior/senior leadership. SLU b-ball appears to be on a plan to make their first major run in 2006-2007 with IV as a senior Polk, Meyer, Brown as juniors, and Lisch and Liddell as sophomores. SLU will have for the first time in a while a balanced talent over several years.

This is the foundation for the future. It is my opinion that if this teams is 8-20 in 2006-2007 then major changes need to be made. Until then, patience. It takes time to build a program at a school like SLU.

[Bay Area Billiken]

I think this year's trouble is a product of Lorenzo Romar leaving after only 3 years, missing out on recruits for various reasons, nonetheleast of which is that St. Louis University is in the Midwest and not on the West Coast, going after the wrong recruits, allowing those that could have been signed to go elsewhere (like SIU and SMS), and the injuries to Seniors Reggie Bryant and Tom Frericks.

My biggest concern is that the old Billiken Jinx has not made an unwanted reappearance. Negativism breeds more negativism. Next year will hopefully be a better year.

[3star_recruit]

Bernie paints with broad strokes because he's too lazy to do any actual research. Frericks and Reggie never being healthy, the underclassmen struggling to adapt to a new system, Newborne being a tweener and the decision to play Drejaj 25 minutes a game are not the product of a lack of commitment by the administration.

Brad has been pretty enthusiastic about the players he's signed the last two classes. But do the pieces fit? Should we be focusing on players that actually have experience in the system that we want to run? Those are type of questions Bernie should be exploring. That is, if he was really interested in writing about SLU basketball.

[Billiphan]

I keep hearing in this thread and others about SLU not having a PE or similar major. Does this only apply to transfers? Theoretically, a kid coming out of high school could be slotted into any major program couldn't he? And if Brad's goal is too build from within and not use JUCO guys, why does the lack of these "majors" apply? Just curious.

[billikendave]

I think the program needs to stop looking to JUCOs. At best they are a stop gap and usually get only one really good year out of them. SLU really need to get 4 year players to come in. If SLU is relying on JUCOs the program is never going to get where everyone wants it to be.

[OrlandoStewart]

Georgetown and Notre Dame do not have PE/Kinesiology programs and they can still win games and make the NCAAs

[3star_recruit]

"And if Brad's goal is too build from within and not use JUCO guys, why does the lack of these "majors" apply? Just curious."

Because this was a change of tactics that Brad announced this season. We got burned on a couple of juco recruits not qualifying the last couple of years because they didn't have enough transferrable credits.

[billiken_roy]

billiphan said, "Do you agree with anything in his column or do you think he is kicking us while we're down?"

i agree with the fact our current rpi is horrible (normally would be with only 8 wins) and that father biondi declared in the 80's that saint louis university wanted to be an annual top 50 school.

other than that, any point he made has a very reasonable cause or effect that he neglected to rightfully state.

my favorite that many love to use is the gonzaga comparison. now there is no argument that becoming a duplication of gonzaga would be glorious. however let's analyze the paths of the two schools:

both made the committment in the late 80's to become a basketball school. gonzaga up until then was more of a baseball school with only john stockton to show for it. slu was purely an academic school coming off of ekkertime and still living off of the fading memory of easy ed mac.

slu hires rich grawer gonzaga hires morrison. grawer does well lifting the program out of the gutter to an nit level of respectability. morrison begins the slow climb at gonzaga and remains the head coach until the mid 90's.

slu then hires a new a.d., debbie yow who is a spitfire demanding change. she cans grawer and brings in spoon. whole new regime. gonzaga still has morrison as the coach and same a.d. gradually getting better.

spoon rides the roller coaster for a few years and during his term as coach, yow gets the chance to be the a.d. at maryland and is gone. we bring in a former asst a.d. from a pac 10 school, doug woolard. by all 3rd hand accts, grawer is a complete change in direction from yow. almost the entire athletic dept changes over woolard's tenure and eventually, spoon also quits.

meantime, morrison retired after finally reaching the ncaa tourney, and they promote from within, dan monson his head asst coach and also elevate mark few another assistant that has also been there since morrison took over to head asst. the following year monson goes deep in the tourney. and gets the minnesota job.

then the replace monson with few. who continues on with everything the same.

meanwhile after spoon quits, woolard hires romar who has his short run, and quits. woolard then hires soderberg who was on romar's staff, however he changes everything after taking over. two years later, woolard quits and we hire levick.

the point is, to compare us to gonzaga is more than just saying "hey they are similar schools, why cant slu win like gonzaga?" well if we would just let things alone long enough to take hold, maybe that could happen. gonzaga did not win out of the chute either, but they stayed the course, key personell stayed around. when someone did leave they always promoted from within. during that same time frame we have completely changed the athletic department 3 times and the coaching staff 4 times. and the closest we ever came to "hiring from within" was one year assistant coach, brad soderberg replaced romar.

we cant be gonzaga until we have the stability of gonzaga. that doesnt happen overnite.

[billiken_roy]

i disagree. stanford and gonzaga rarely have jucos on their roster. we need to just take the time to do things right and eventually the system will take care of itself.

if saint louis university wants to add programs and majors that happen to be juco friendly, that is great. but dont add programs and majors just so a couple of juco basketball players will be able to transfer to saint louis university.

[darrenpais]

bernie sucks ... dont waste time on his BS

[Schasz]

While I see where you seem to be going with your point...it has already been mentioned that we recently missed out on two JUCO players that committed and who did not get into SLU. I do believe that because of these two situations that Coach Soderberg isn't placing much emphasis on recruiting JUCO players.

[billiken_roy]

billiphan, you are correct. but that is where bernie has put one over on the readership. the outcries about academics stemmed from his statement on gordon. sure if gordon had come to slu out of high school, the program excuse goes out the window. but that would be assuming that gordon could have academically qualified as a freshman. considering the fact that gordon went off to a juco out of high school, i would have to say he probably did not and it didnt matter if it was slu or illinois state, gordon couldnt get in then.

but after serving his two years at a juco, he then had the credits to get into illinois state because they indeed had the major program his juco credits fit while slu did not.

that is my point about bernie throwing around statements without telling the whole story. and to be honest, when he wrote this latest piece of trash, he did indeed know that to be true as many of us have taken the time to explain the difference to him via e-mails and his messageboard. yet he didnt see fit to explain that.