Marquette had a back-up plan

[kshoe]

you lose one PF so you take his teammate.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=420637

And please don't give me any of that crap about how we'd be better off saving this scholarship as we ALWAYS have 1 or two extra scholarships. Even if this kid had come here and sat on the bench for two years there would have been no harm.

[Scoop]

Saw this kid play when I was watching LS. He had one of the sickest dunks I have ever seen that game. He could play too. Very, very skinny.

[cheeseman]

I am torn over this Plan B issue. I am not a supporter of just offering a schollie to a warm body just to fill it. However, a good coach/administrator must have a back up plan in place for big issues. So, a Plan B idea is not a bad concept but only if the Plan B is truly a viable option/course. For those who say, some act like all Brad has to do pick up the phone and call a list of potential recruits to fill the open schollies, I say no, those people are not saying that but what they are saying is what is his viable Plan B? Oversimplification of both sides of this issue is counterproductive in the discussion. Those who think a Plan B is not realistic because this is SLU are ignoring the fact that eventually we have to have more than 9-10 kids on scholarship to even practice much less field a team prepared to deal with injuries and foul trouble from game to game. The past two recruiting years, Brad has signed 2-3 players each time TL,KL and OI, and DM and AK. To keep this pace up would mean in 2 more years we would only have 9-10 players on scholarship. Now, I am not suggesting that he won't sign more than 4-5 players in the next two years but that he must. OI fell into his lap but as I said earlier, how he gets the player is not material just that he got him. Maybe somebody else will fall into his lap this summer who knows but he has to do more than sign 2 - 2.5 players each year. I am sure he knows this but like the past 2 years I am sure he knew this also but still the net results. Brad has this summer and next fall to bolster this team's roster for next year and the one after. If he falters he is in trouble if he succeeds then good for him, SLU, and us.

[Billikenbooster]

this information has already been posted here previously...read the article....6-8 185. Really.

Heard today that UB's comments in the PD were taken out of context on not having a back up plan. The back up plan is that there is no one out there that coach wants, cause he is will go to war with the players he now has (including IV, thank you). No more Sekeue Barentines et al. Let's concentrate on getting the folks we have better, and recruiting for the NEXT year.

mhg

[Taj79]

"taken out of context" ... yup, I was waiting for that one. There are usually two ways to go about trying to regain what you lost once the press gets made. The first is usually to try and explain the silly statement with some other silly statement which usually leads to the foot-in-mouth revelations that two wrongs don't make a right despite what you learn in grade school about adding two negatives. The second one is "I was taken out of context...." becasue in essence, you are not denying saying it but putting a spin on it that, unless the fool reporter has you on tape, is hard to prove anyway. So there is no blame to go around this way. The reproter retors "nope, that's what I heard," the victim comes back again with "context" and we have a he-said/she-said stand off that focuses the attention away from the original point. Which is Brad Soderberg had no other options on the line.

The theory is that for every negative statement made, it requires three positive statements just to regain the surface and break even. "I was taken out of context" is not a positive statement. The lack of understanding at West Pine is amazing, it truly is.

[cheeseman]

Bbooster -is not what you just said the points I was trying to make. I realize that reporters print comments out of context but you have to be smart enough to leave them with the sound bite you want printed. I use to represent a major organization locally and I was trained that before I spoke with the press that I should know exactly what I want them to go away with. I would prepare a couple of key short statements/concepts that I wanted to hammer home and make sure they heard it more than once. If Brad needs more PR training then CL needs to get it for him. I never said that MU's Plan B was viable. All I said was a good administrator has to have a Plan B that is viable. What Brad could have said is - " We believe our current team is strong enough to compete for the NCAA tourney next year. Therefore we identified who we really wanted out of this year's crop of recruits and went after them. Now our focus is on the upcoming fall recruiting period and we feel very good about our chances". He says this two or three times during the interview even TT will get these words down correctly. By the way thanks for sharing the other info you did about Brad's intentions.

[Billikenbooster]

I have no problem with your point. Brad may not be the best at saying what he wants put in the paper...he is sometimes brutally honest. What he said is what he believed. By saying it the way that he did, it comes out as we are unprepared.

mhg

[kshoe]

isn't really Brad's statement but rather the fact that according to that article both Marquette and Indiana thought this other SF/PF was good enough for their team. Did SLU think this? Were we also recruiting the kid? If not, why not? Is it poor talent evaluation again? He may very well not be good enough to play major minutes at Marquette or SLU but with 2 schollys to give I think it is a mistake if we decided not to offer. It would only be a 2 year error.

We certainly had plenty of opportunities to evaluate his talent as we all know they saw Stemler play 7 times...

[bobiken]

This is exactly the type of player the SLU should take a chance on. They need all the altheletes they can get. If he was good enough for Marquette then he definately could help us.

The problem is Brad is too structured in his coaching approach and does not /will not give the freedom necessary for the athletes to succeed. JJ is a prime example of a player that Brad can not develop. The team was so bad in 04-05 that JJ should have been given 20+ minutes a game to develop. My guess is we will see the best of JJ in the last five games of his senior year.

Througout the sesaon there are several teams that we just can not match up with because we do not have the athletes to play with them. We need two-three athletes 6'6"+ that can match the athletic ability of some of our opponents. They do not need to be all-stars or scorers but need to be able to match up with the other teams better athletes for 10 - 15 minute stretches during a game.

His coaching philosphy has been to muck it up against the better athletic teams (Temple, Memphis ...) and try to win by playing an ugly low scoring games. If it doesn't work it is a blow up i.e. 2006 conference tournament.

I think the fans of SLU have let Brad set the bar too low on the recruiting expectations. How many of the current 11 scholarship players were recruited during the normal fall signing period? Polk, Liddell, Lisch, Meyer and McGuire -- 45%

I am tired of watching SLU just compete and not win. All you have to do is look at SIUC for their recent run of success with three different coaches.

[billiken_roy]

i liked blackledge a lot. he is a tremendous athlete. better ATHLETE by far than stemler. however he is very skinny and isnt a shooter. he is a stretch and would have been at slu as well. but i agree he isnt a bad consolation prize. i am surprised though that crean took him because of his build.

[billiken_roy]

for perspective of just how skinny blackledge is, larry hughes is 6'5" and 185 lbs. blackledge is 3 inches taller and the same weight.

[tseugnekillib]

I saw Blackledge play 8 or 9 times in high school as he was part of some very good Carbondale High School teams that played in the Belleville East tournament, and at Belleville Althoff. I also saw him play about 25 times during his two years at SWIC.

First of all, congrats to the kid for getting his academic house in order allowing him to be accepted by Marquette.

Blackledge was fun to watch. He had some flashes of excellence and some flashes of some really silly stuff! He is pencil thin, in the 6-8 or 6-9 range. Played mostly in the post area, but floated out to the perimeter as all 6-9 guys like to do. His long arms and hops make him a pretty decent shot-blocker. I'm guessing he would have play a whole lot more at Duquesne than Marquette, but the big stage is certainly attractive to most kids.

Rather than SLU signing Blackledge, I would rather give those minutes to JJ, BH, and to our two freshmen, Obi and Knollmeyer....

and then I would give that scholarship to a 6-10 transfer center, who would have three years of eligiblity after his transfer redshirt year.

[tseugnekillib]

imo, the Indiana coach was blowing smoke up the SWIC's coaching staff's butt. Sampson endorses a player that he was never going to sign. It doesn't cost Sampson and it helps the SWIC program. I believe Blackledge's other offers were from Duquesne, Arkanasa State and Bowling Green.

Sampson never recruited Stemler or Blackledge when he was at Oklahoma.

For me, there are better ways to spent the last two scholarships. My preference would be a freshman transfer and/or a juco freshman, both with three years of eligibility.

imo, anyone who serious questions using your seven evaluations to a study player with Stemler's background, skills, and weaknesses is not being very thoughtful or is a tad clueless in this particular instance.

[kshoe]

Backwards Billikenguest, everything you say makes sense when looked at in just one instance. Yes, there may have been good reasons to take our time evluating LS. Yes, we may still yet use these scholarships for the magical impact transfer players that have a desire/connection to SLU.

But every year we hear the same sories. We need to evaluate Matt Shaw for a while before we offer him a scholarship. We evaluated Blake and didn't think him good enough. We need to evaluate Lance 7 times. How many times before a pattern is developed that we aren't good at evaluating basketball talent? All three of those guys are good basketball players if not the perfect basketball "athlete."

We like to hold an extra scholarship or two for potential transfers or for next years recruiting class. Yet, except for Reggie we have never had an impact transfer. Since we have never used all our scholarships in any fall signing period it doesn't make sense to say we are holding the scholarships for next year.

About two months ago you told everybody to wait till the Spring signing period before making any conclusions on this years class. The signing period has pretty much come and gone...is it ok for us to make some conclusions?

[MU Viking]

Do you think you could either provide here (or over at marquettehoops.com) your take on a few things on Blackledge? He certainly won't be asked to play a huge role at Marquette, but do you think he could defend athletic 3/4's in the BIG EAST (ie: Jeff Green from Georgetown)? That is one area of weakness on our roster... an athletic defender at the combo forward. Obviously, he can block shots, and we were weak at that too. But I was just curious what you think he can do defensively and on the boards.

If he can do that effectively, he may actually work out better for us than Lance Stemler. Stemler certainly seems to be the more polished player, but he really doesn't seem to be all that different from a current player we have, Dan Fitzgerald, except maybe with more post moves.

I was disappointed when we didn't get Stemler, but now that we have Blackledge, I'm curious to see how this works out. Certainly, his potential is intriguing.

And BTW, we have a first rate strength and conditioning coach at MU, Scott Holsopple. Some amazing transformations have occurred in short order with him at the helm, so if Blackledge gets his work done at SWIC and can get to MU to start working on strength (which is no guarantee with JUCOs), I bet he'll be up to 200 pounds by November.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[billikenmetz]

You are so lucky to play in the Big East. It's all thanks to Wade. You should make him the Associate AD when his playing days are over...just like Archie at Ohio State...guy has more pull than Andy Geiger in Columbus just because he's Archie. Wade would have the magic wand just to do anything he wants because you know you wouldn't be where you are if it wasn't for him. Good thing you're behind us in the national rankings academically...haha! victory is ours!

wow...Marquette isn't even in the top 100! and Flordia State (with all those GREAT scholars on the football team) is!!! wow...amazing. Fr. Wild must be doing a hell of a job.

[MU Viking]

"You are so lucky to play in the Big East."

Yep, it's pretty cool.

"It's all thanks to Wade."

Really? Maybe you should ask Wade about that. He'll thank his coaches for pushing him to become as good as he is. And you might want to include Robert Jackson, Travis Diener, Steve Novak, and Scott Merritt in on that discussion.

"Wade would have the magic wand just to do anything he wants because you know you wouldn't be where you are if it wasn't for him."

Would Syracuse have won the national title that year without Carmelo? How about UConn without Emeka? How about Florida without Noah?

"Good thing you're behind us in the national rankings academically...haha! victory is ours!"

Those rankings look at a lot of things, including endowment (SLU's is A LOT bigger), and how much does endowment really affect the actual educational experience? That is one area Marquette is working hard at to improve. The 7-year goal is to increase it from $300M to $1B. We'll see where the rankings are at when we reach that goal. Both SLU and MU are fine universities.

"wow...Marquette isn't even in the top 100!"

If you are talking about US News, yes we are.

[courtside]

Ignore billikenmetz.....you'd be hard pressed to find any positive comments about him on this board. None.

[kshoe]

he is a total clown.

[billikenmetz]

Yeah, a clown...good one. Let me know when the circus is in town so I can rejoin my family. The cleverness on this board is at an all-time high.

[tseugnekillib]

Because of his height, I'm not sure Blackledge has the lateral foot speed to consistently stay low and defend a talented and athletic 3player, but his wide arm-span would help in this effort. At his present weight, defending a Big East heavy-weight power forward might also be a problem. While I can see the strong power forward backing Blackledge down low to the basket, the offensive player would still have to shoot over Blackledge's hands, which he gets quite high.

While Stemler is good offensive player, he is for the most part a defensive liability. Lance has the tools to play decent-to-good defense, but he just didn't seem overly interested in that part of the game. Maybe some D1 coaching can change his attitude.

Blackledge will get you a few points from mostly around the rim, via some tips and put-backs. Lawrence isn't shy about shooting from 15'+. Probably an average shooter, but definitely a big time dunker.

Since Marquette and SLU now play in different conferences, I don't know Marquette's roster at all. I don't know how critical adding another big forward is to Marquette. Blackledge is taking a bigger risk than Marquette. Lawrence must be a decent kid, as SWIC doesn't bring in any problem jucos.

For Blackledge to put on significant weight it will take not only your talented strength coach, but some goodies from BALCO as well!

[davidlee]

He is razor thin. He looks like a 6'7" Kenya marathon runner. Jumps well - nice touch. I have not seen him as much as tseugnekillib but I have always liked him. I am just not sure how he will fit at MU. Hope it works for you though.