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Once again, I agree with Nark. I think this is a NCAA caliber team. By looking at our biggest competition in the conference I think everyone will be in agreement that Marquette and Louisville will not be as good as they were last year. Who knows what kind of team Cincy will have because you don't know who will be playing for them. Could our biggest competition be Memphis, Charlotte, and UAB?

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>Once again, I agree with Nark. I think this is a NCAA

>caliber team. By looking at our biggest competition in the

>conference I think everyone will be in agreement that

>Marquette and Louisville will not be as good as they were

>last year. Who knows what kind of team Cincy will have

>because you don't know who will be playing for them. Could

>our biggest competition be Memphis, Charlotte, and UAB?

Pretend you're an outsider looking at the Bills. Wouldn't you say that SLU is in the same boat as Marquette and Louisville, having lost some of the conference's best players and having some question marks?

Let's not take this *homer* stance that while Marquette and Louisville can't possible be as good, SLU has all the bases covered. The Billikens have six newcomers!

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Marquette lost the #5 draft pick, who led them in scoring, was 2nd in assists, led them in steals and led them in blocks. They lose a post player who averaged 15.4 ppg. They are replacing them with a 6'5 185 lb high school player and a juco post player who averaged 7.5 ppg. We lost Marque Perry and Kenny Brown and are replacing them with Reggie Bryant and Tom Frericks, two players who have similar numbers to the guys they are replacing at the same point in their careers.

I think BRoy could replace Braun's 3.4 ppg and 2.1 ppg, if he has any eligibility left.

Think Izik can score a lot more than Diener's 6 ppg now that he gets to play his natural position, is 4 inches taller, can get to the basket and is working his tail off to get better this summer?

I'm not saying we're going to the Sweet 16 but Geez Louise, the cupboard is not bare. I refuse to be satisfied with a 16-14 season. I will NOT accept another loss to SMS, a team that is relying on Blake Ahearn to play point guard next year. I will NOT accept being swept by a depleted Marquette squad. Maybe I'm too demanding.

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Thicks, as you said, "Let's be objective." SLU has lost Marquee Perry, a very good player with a glaring weakness (shooting) and Brown, a very good defender with almost no offense.

Marquette and Louisville lost All-Americans.

Where did I say that we have all the bases covered? I just happen to think that our players coming in this year will be a huge improvement over what has just left, except of course Perry.

Does Marquette have someone equal to wade coming in? I doubt it. Does Louisville have someone equal to Garcia coming in? Again, I doubt it.

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>Where did I say that we have all the bases covered? I just

>happen to think that our players coming in this year will be

>a huge improvement over what has just left, except of course

>Perry.

SLU lost the heart and soul of the team in Marque Perry and Kenny Brown, even if those two aren't as highly touted as the players Louisville and Marquette lost. The 2003-04 Billikens will be relying heavily on six newcomers and two second-year players. Where will the team chemistry come from? A team is not merely the sum of its individual parts. While it doesn't look hard for the six newcomers to match the production of the four players who departed, there is no guarantee, and we won't really know until the team has five or six games or so under its belt.

Look, I will concede that the 2003-04 squad COULD be an improvement over the 2002-03 squad, particularly by the end of the season, BUT we won't know until that time, and the improvement may not be reflected in the team's record.

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I agree that marquee was a great player, and many times did not let last years team give up. However I see Sloan and Drejaj picking up in the heart category for him. I also think the whole of this years team will in toatl make up for marquee's loss. However that will not mean they will be good. How good this team becomes will depend on how well Brad evaluates this team and compensates for their weaknesses, and how well they come together as the season prgresses.

Remember last year was not a stellar start despite having Perry and Brown.

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i totally see where nark is coming from and all of his points are very valid.

however, the biggest single attribute in any sport is heart. it also happens to be the hardest trait to evaluate and predict. justin love and maurice jeffers step up from their junior to their junior season's were spectacular. i dont think anyone at the very end of each of their junior season's were predicting the impact they ended up having the following season. an example of unfulfilled potential is what we actually got out of matt baniak and chris heinrich. i was ready to bet the farm after their freshmen seasons that by the time they were seniors they were going to be big time. imo, neither seemed to improve much over the next 3 seasons, and always seemed to leave us hanging.

there is no doubt that the tools in place could be good. but we dont have any proven heart and soul leaders on the team imo. now IF reggie bryant steps up and IF chris sloan continues to upgrade his game IF fericks is the equal on both ends of the floor as what kenny brown was, IF josh fisher finally puts together a whole season on both ends of the floor, IF anthony drejaj continues to improve, IF IF IF IF IF ...... yes we can be better. in fact we might be a whole lot better.

i had similar expectations the year after hughes left and we were left high and dry. imo that was the most disappointing billiken season since before douglas and gray. sure we lost hughes. but we returned all freshman matt baniak, a developing 7 footer in heinrich, a juco all-american in justin love, well touted ricky cranford, justin tatum was going to get to play, etc. we all know how that season turned out. while we didnt seem to add much last year, we knew what we had coming back. thus it was actually an easy call to say we would be as good as the year before. but to make that call this year without seeing first that fericks is actually as good as kenny brown and not travis tadyshak and that reggie bryant is justin love and not ricky cranford and to see that the youngster from greece is for real and not the next paul nondas, is just crazy. i will wait till december to see it first.

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bigmac said, "I think everyone will be in agreement that Marquette and Louisville will not be as good as they were last year."

i wont agree with that. at least not at this point in time. heck, louisville had 12 guys on their team last year that would have been no worse than our 3rd best player. marquette granted loses wade, but if you were at the shootout last year you saw the maseon kid running the break and pulling down rebounds with his head above the rim. the question is does marquette have leaders like wade and jackson waiting in the wings. or louisville have a go to guy with ice water in his veins like reece gaines. i dont know.

conference usa is going to be loaded next year imo. i am thinking louisville is as good as last year, marquette maybe a little behind last year, cincy way better, depaul way better, charlotte way better, uab way better, and memphis close to last year. i would not doubt that slu has a chance to put a better team on the floor than last season, but so does our competition.

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Why will Cinci be WAY better than last year with they lose both their leading scorer and their leading assist man but SLU only has a chance to better?

Why will Marquette only be a LITTLE down with the loss of a player that led them in scoring, steals, blocks and was second in assists and the loss of another player that averaged 15.4 ppg and 7.5 rpg?

Signing 6'5 185 lb high-schooler Dameon Mason and 7.5 ppg juco scorer Marcus Jackson doesn't nearly make up for those losses.

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garcia comes back as a sophomore. you probably meant to say reece gaines.

louisville has three good recruits coming in next year. two are highly acclaimed juco's and the other is the top rated point guard out of the detroit area i believe.

Nate Daniels, 6'7, juco wing, Nauha Diakite, 6'10, power forward, and Brandon Jenkins, 6'4, PG

besides that coming in they have proven inside retunees, ellis myles, luke whitehead, otis george and kendall dartez. all four of them being guarded by fericks gives me cold shivers.

returning at the guard spots are taquan dean and francisco garcia. at this time, we do not have one guard with the guard scoring proven skills that these two have.

now add pitino to the equation who probably works the press and the refs better than any coach in college basketball, you have all the ingredients for a top 10 team imo.

someone said marquette was depleted? well let's see. they indeed lost all-american duane wade and inside force robert jackson. however they will be replaced by juco power forward, Marcus Jackson, the before mentioned, Dameon Mason, a 6'5" jumping jack all state player from the chicago area, James Matthews, the supposed best power forward out of the Detroit high schools this past year, Brandon Bell, a point guard out of the now famed, flint michigan basketball factory (btw, his brother was the bell that played on the michigan state final four teams)and last, Carlton Christian who is a wing from florida i dont know a thing about.

coming back, they have three returning starters in travis diener, todd townsend and scott merritt. personally, i thought that merritt was a better player than jackson. we saw how good diener was. and you have to believe that novak walks into a starting spot at either power forward or small forward. the sucker can shoot. the point is, marquette is in damn good shape imo.

we dont even have to talk about cincy. their incoming class of recruits is downright scary. they are are as athletically talented as any group cincy has ever had imo. and the cincy losses arent too tough. imo, their only loss worthy of discussion is the inconsistent stokes. in our loss to cincy last year stokes beat us by himself. in our win in cincy he was nowhere to be found. cincy is top 10 next year.

charlotte supposedly has one of those once in a lifetime recruits coming next year in martin iti. but besides iti, they have top juco forward, Dedric Spooner, juco shooting guard, Marcus Bennett, C.J. Pigford, a tall and athletic wing and another juco in Lon Morris. charlotte reloaded damn quick.

memphis was hurt badly when perkins stayed in the draft. i think that calipari really didnt think he would go to the nba and did not recruit over him. without perkins, the remaining recruits for memphis does not even compare to the billikens according to most guru's. however, what you must remember is that memphis probably had the most athletic team and was as big as any team we played last year. most are coming back. however, they admittedly dont appear to have replaced massie and barron and i dont see the replacements on their existing returnees either.

uab, brings in a pair of athletic juco 6'6" twins that play guard and return that lightning quick team except for the one waterbug guard. they will be better. imo, had uab played that tourney game anywhere else but freedom hall, they would have won the tourney last year. that was a very very good team.

last you have depaul. they lose load in the middle, sam hoskins. but they return all the rest of their main players. according to most guru's their recruiting class is a top 40 class and they have some juco's in there as well.

my point about all of this is it looks like the main conference competition did nothing to "wait for the billikens to catch up". it will be tough to finish 4th again.

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Yet another reason why we will be better is that we won't be one-dimensional. Last year our offensive weapons were Perry, Perry, and Perry. This season our options will be Bryant, Sloan, Ohannon, Drejaj, and Fisher. I believe our offensive output will be in the order above.

I hope that Sloan, Drejaj and Fisher will pick up the heart left behind by Perry.

Thicks and Roy...I've been wrong before and it just may happen again. I know that all 3 of us are hoping to toast the Billikens on selection Sunday this March!

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as much as i dont care for the quality of a person that both robert whaley and the extremely athletic white kid that transfered from florida, there is no denying they are big time players. the rest of their recruiting class is every single person reputed to be better than any one of the billiken recruits.

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Thank you for the correction, yes I did mean Reece Gaines. Thank you also for the information on the incoming players for our competition.

The players that Louisville and Marquette lost are going to be very difficult to replace, Pitino and Crean are going to have their hands full trying to do that. They obviously will still be near the top of the conference but I don't see either one winning it. The biggest question for the Bearcats is will Whaley be eligible to play? Can he stay out of trouble?

I stand behind my post, I believe this February you will see Memphis, UAB, Charlotte, and DePaul as our biggest competitors.

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I've said that this years team has a whole lot bigger upside than last years did. I see about the same record though. Perry and Brown are tough to replace. Deiner and Braun are not. If this years team doesn't gel yeah we've got problems. Amazingly I'm willing to give Brad the benefit of the doubt. BTW someone will step up to replace perry in the clutch. Someone always does. It may take a year or two to forge that player into a weapon or it may not. Either way I don't think we lost enough to justify the gloom. Lighten the heck up~!

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If this is a rebuilding year what are we rebuilding from? I am an optimist admittedly but I think SLU will be better next season. Perry had heart but I don't think he was the team leader. I think that Sloan and Fisher meet that category. Just because you are the star player doesn't mean that you are the leader.

Does anyone else think our team will look something like the Majerus team that beat us in the tourney in 00? Sound fundamental basketball, good guard play, tough d and a tall foreign guy.

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The thing that bothered me most about last year's team was the inability to keep road games close the first 2/3 of the season. Butler, Kansas St., Louisville and Houston kicked our a$$ at their places. We've got to play better on the road early in the season for the program to move forward.

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