I know I will be called "negative"...

[SLUDrew]

but why we didn't pressure fullcourt is BEYOND ME, and if you put down the Billiken shades you would see what I am saying. We couldn't hit water if we fell out of a boat, but instead of forcing the issue to get easy buckets, we sit back in the half-court. ALSO, Tommie sits far tool long at crtical times. Even if his shots are not falling his driving and dishing create problems for the opposition.

[Taj79]

... Ijust don't get it. But then when one thinks of this as not being a "team" its not so bad. I think the good thing is that even though this edition is not a team, there is hope at the end of the tunnel. This is a center, and about three or four gaurds. That's not a compelte team to me. Last week we went round and round how DP was finally finding a niche with this team and today he gets 11 minutes and contributes a whole assist.

Shooting percentages were the same, 3 pt % was the same. We outrebounded them. The less turnovered us. Does missing five of nine free throws lose the game? Who knows.

The senior class is bereft of any contributions today. VN goes 1-for7 and AD goes zippo-for-4. Nice. JJ, fourth year junior, doesn't see the light of day. This team could win out or lose out. I still think it wil be somewhere inbetween but a first round bye is a desparate need if we think we can go anywhere in the A0-10 tourney. The only hope this team has of an NCAA bid is to win the tounrey. Frankly, for the NIT, I don't care.

You may as well play IV, TL, KL, LM and DB. At least it would develop more for next year. The rest, outside of BH, is pretty useless.

Again, good teams beat mediocre teams on the road. Richmond and Daytons how me that we are a year or so away.

[kshoe]

I know some of the posters on here will try to rationalize this one the way they did Richmond or St. Joes but its just not OK to lose to below .500 teams, on the road or not. Not if you really want to build a good program.

The blame for this one can be spread pretty evenly in my opinion. How does JJ not even see the court today the way Luke got abused on defense? Although TL had a nice 2nd half he allowed his man way to many wide open threes early in the game. Ian only had 2 boards. Our two seniors were a combined 1 of 11 from the field. 14 turnovers. 4 of 9 from FTs.

It was a nice comeback but it never should have been necessary.

[billiken_roy]

dayton showed no inclination of not being able to handle any pressure imo. i dont see where a press would have been effective other than draining our players.

[billiken_roy]

drejaj and polk were very bad today. drejaj was beat off the dribble a lot and polk was the old polk again. one would have thought polk would have seized upon the last game to have discovered his style, but we saw none of it today.

[Marshall Faulk]

couldn't agree more with kshoe. we have to win this game. too many people seem to accept losses here.

why so many minutes for v. newbourne. I know ian seemed to turn it over alot today but newbourne probably shouldn't get more shots then him. Why did he have the green light to shoot 3's? he took at least two. meyer seemed to sit the 2nd half and jj didn't play. i don't get it. maybe brad likes his new hair dew and thought he should play

[SLUDrew]

Roy, did you see the Xavier game and what happened when we pressured the ball? How would you know what our pressure D would have done? We never frickin' do it.

I am sick of apologists. This was a miserable loss. I am by by no means blaming coach for our mindless turnovers or our missing free throws, but when your team is struggling you change things up to see if you can get them going.

Wear us out? First off these kids can run forever. Second, Coach subs all the GD time. What do you mean wear us out?

I am not trying to attach you Roy. We are all fans and all entitled to our opinions, but why a miserable shooting team doesn't utilize more traps and fullcourt pressure is beyond me. It is so painfully obvious that it needs to be done.

[billiken_roy]

i am not apologizing for anything. did you read my above post? i plainly stated that our inability to adjust to the power forward advantage in the early stages of the second half killed us.

remember in the xu game, polk and lisch owned pug thug finn. he and burrell showed they wouldnt handle pressure. i never saw that indication in this game with no the ball defense. in fact, drejaj was getting beat off the dribble, polk was no where near as effectve pressuring the ball, meyer was in foul trouble, lisch was falling down whenever roberts made a hard move to the basket. face it, dayton's guards were better than ours today and a press imo would have only made things worse imo. we managed to get back in a position to win the game playing solid position defense.

imo other than defending plummer, i cant see where anything better could have come out of the game. we held them to under 50 points. the question is why we couldnt score 50 points.

[courtside]

IMO of course...

SLU is not good enough to consistently win on the road in the A-10 this season. I am not rationalizing, nor am I being critical, but SLU is an average team, not a good team this year.

Maybe people see a flash of something, or see what they want to see, but those are the facts.

Will SLU win a game or two this season perhaps they weren't suppose to win, sure, and lose some they shouldn't sure.

I don't care what conference you are in, only the elite conference teams, and elite teams period win consistently on the road.

Xavier losing at home to LaSalle today didn't exactly help SLU either.

[Bay Area Billiken]

Why we didn't score 50 points?

How many wide open shots did Newborne miss? I know why he was in the game, because we couldn't stop Plummer. Could JJ have done a similar job on Plummer and maybe hit just 2 of Newborne's shots? If those answers are yes, then SLU wins this game.

I still say, if you can't put the ball in the basket, you can't win.

[Bay Area Billiken]

SLU must win that road game at Duquesne. Period. Irrespective of anything else, that is a must win road game that will likely be played before a sparse gathering of only the most die hard of Duquesne souls.

The LaSalle road game looks problematic. LaSalle has a very good player in Steve Smith. I'm not saying SLU cannot win there, but that will be a tough one.

[jjray]

>>why so many minutes for v. newbourne. I know ian seemed to turn it over alot today but newbourne probably shouldn't get more shots then him. Why did he have the green light to shoot 3's? he took at least two. meyer seemed to sit the 2nd half and jj didn't play. i don't get it. maybe brad likes his new hair dew and thought he should play<<

It's gotta be the hair 'cause I don't get why Newborne plays either. He kept jacking up shots and coach didn't yank him???

[jjray]

>Why we didn't score 50 points?

>

>How many wide open shots did Newborne miss? I know why he

>was in the game, because we couldn't stop Plummer. Could JJ

>have done a similar job on Plummer and maybe hit just 2 of

>Newborne's shots? If those answers are yes, then SLU wins

>this game.

>

>I still say, if you can't put the ball in the basket, you

>can't win.

In my opinion, JJ is a signficantly better interior defender and rebounder (on both ends of the floor) than Newborne. Newborne's strength over JJ is supposed to be the ability to hit the open jumper. JJ must have run over and killed Brad's dog.

[Scoop]

I've been a JJ fan all year. I stopped posting for a while because I was beginning to sound redundant. No dis to Luke, but he was getting over powered and had to resort to fouling. Why no JJ? Yes, our D was awesome the last 9 minutes. However, maybe JJ could have knocked down a couple mid-ranged jumpers instead of VN bricking threes. I know VN did hit a jumper in there somewhere but that's not the point. JJ is a big boy with some skills and is getting 0 developmental time for next year. Hell, he played great against some big time schools this year! What a waste.

There must be a major attitude problem. But today, late in the game during a time out, JJ was high 5-in' everyone pumping them up. It doesn't make since. Some ask this on mondays show.

[Bay Area Billiken]

I, for one, would like to know what in the world Coach Soderberg's beef is with JJ? If it is practice, the fact is that some guys are just not good practice players.

When I was back in the Midwest over the Holidays, I was able to see the Chicago State and Iowa games in person. I thought JJ played halfway decent ball. He hit some 15 footers. He rebounded. My thought was perhaps that SLU finally had that illusive power forward, or at least someone that could fill that role. JJ played some good games against some very good teams earlier in the year.

Now I am a Luke Meyer supporter too. But Luke is not a power forward. What could anyone expect Luke to do trying to guard someone like Plummer?

Newborne did some good work on defense against Plummer, but Newborne is a liability on offense, and no matter how much Coach Soderberg preaches defense, it still says here that you have to make baskets to win. How many wide open shots did Newborne miss today?

I was so excited when we swept Xavier. I want SLU to succeed, believe me, and I do want Coach Soderberg to succeed too. I have 2 degrees from SLU. Constructive criticism should not be considered negativity.

[BB Scout]

Coach Soderberg's beef with JJ is nonsense. It can't be all about practice. JJ has been good at times and JJ has been bad at times. But who on the team hasn't? They all TL,KL,AD,LM,DP,DB,IV, have been up and down at some time this season. JJ has to be perfect it seems. That's just so unfair to JJ. I feel like the kid could have helped contain Plummer today. But Soderberg did say LM was his man no matter what. I like Luke but why not try JJ?

Agree constructive criticism should not be considered negativity.

[slu72]

Why VN continues to get minutes is just totally beyond me. He's gone in two months. His career at SLU less than mediocre. When he comes into a game I shake my head. JJ sits? What happened to the "come to Jesus" talk? Did JJ convert to Judaism or flunk theology? This was a no reason loss. We could have been tied w/Charlotte for 2nd.

[billiken_roy]

jjray said,

"In my opinion, JJ is a signficantly better interior defender and rebounder (on both ends of the floor) than Newborne."

you forgot to add the words "when he wants to be" at the end of your sentence. it would have answered your own concern.

[billiken_roy]

scoop said,

"However, maybe JJ could have knocked down a couple mid-ranged jumpers instead of VN bricking threes."

so you believe the answer to billiken offensive problems is justin johnson?

i can guarantee you if that is all coach soderberg has to hitch the wagon on he might as well pack it up for this year.

imo we saw subpar offensive efforts from drejaj and liddell, but mainly from ian. ian was nowhere near as active as he has been the last couple of games. our guards can stand there and wait for hours for ian to get open, but he has to do more than hold his arm out versus most defenders. vs xu he was moving a lot. participating in pick and rolls, flashing across and high. yesterday imo he was more stationary than he has been in a while. and he also seemed to get the ball when he did 15 feet from the basket. not much he is going to do consistently from that distance.

in a game like yesterday, the likes of ian, tommy, drejaj and lisch have to really step up. imo only lisch seemed to actually do that. liddell had a couple of moments, but he has to finish as well. and ian, needed to "just show them" ala fordham. there is no way little is a superior inside player compared to fordham, but you would think it after yesterday.

[Scoop]

Did I say anything remotely close to JJ being the anwser to the billiken offense? No. I made one valid observation about the game offensively with regards to JJ maybe being able to knock down some of the shots that VN couldn't. The rest was just an inquiry about wasting the power forward we have riding the pine. Just read the post.

[Bay Area Billiken]

Based upon what I've seen and read, it seems that JJ is the best true 4 that SLU has. He is not the end all answer on offense, but I think he is a better shooter than Newborne.

It just hurts when SLU gets all these wide open shots and cannot put the ball in the basket.

As some national analysts have noted, the lost art in college basketball is the ability to hit the mid-range jumper (for 2 points).