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Brandon Morris to play at UWGB


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"Brandon Morris will play at UWGB

By Chris Monter

Date: Aug 26, 2003

6-0 point guard Brandon Morris of Iowa Western (IA) CC will play at Wisconsin Green Bay this fall. Morris signed with St. Louis in the early signing period, but failed to meet the school's eligibility requirements.

St. Louis head coach Brad Soderberg was the head coach at Wisconsin during his senior year, giving the Billikens the edge with Green Bay finishing in second at the time. Brandon Morris attended Kenosha (WI) St. Joseph High.

He led the team to a 25-6 mark and averaged 9.6 points and 6.0 assists per game. He shot 41.8% from the field, 27.9% from three-point range and 79% from the line. Iowa State, Marshall, Eastern Washington and St. Bonaventure also got involved in his recruitment once it was apparent that he would not attend the Conference USA school.

Wisconsin Green Bay finished 10-20 last season and 4-12 in Horizon League play."

what sucks is that apparently brandon had ncaa qualifications he did not meet slu qualifications. unlevel playing field.

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I'm happy that the young man will not have his college basketball hopes dashed because of one juco class. The more I think about it, I wonder if Morris just had second thoughts and took the easy way out. If I learned I could go play basketball at another school that didn't require me to burn 8 weeks of my summer doing course work, I might stop going to class. Not saying that's definitely what happened but it's plausible.

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I am still not blown away by Brandon's offensive statistics or the caliber of other program's recruiting him. It would have been real nice to have a true point guard, but Brandon was not going to light things up offensively for us.

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PE classes. If Brandon took any PE classes they would not tranfer to SLU but would transfer almost anywhere else. If Father Biondi wants to level our playing field he should establish a legitament PE Dept. Surely PE is as honarable as offering law degrees.

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I'm with 3Star on this in being glad Brandon was able to quickly latch on with another D1 program. SLU is probably not the right place for him acedemically so this ends up being the best road for him to walk. Hate to see a guy have his college career messed up because he wanted to play for us but was derailed on account of SLU's stricker requirements for JUCOs.

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If a juco player has to take PE courses such as The Theory Of Basketball 101 or Weight Lifting For Basketball Players 101 (and they do exist)to maintain his juco eligiliblity he doesn't need to be recruited because he probably isn't a legitimate college student.

I realize there are talented players in the juco ranks, but I would prefer us sticking with and developing high school or prep school players for a four or five year career at SLU.

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first david's comment about not being impressed with the stats of brandon morris. all i know is that he is the recruit that we have heard coach soderberg gush the most about. if even just part of what they had said was true, we just missed out on the best point guard the billikens have had since h. i envisioned at the very least charile newberry like performance from brandon. while the stats dont show points, the facts of having point guards the caliber of newberry or h waldman is that it will make everyone about them so much better.

it is really disappointing to find out today that brandon's shortcomings academically were only slu standards. it goes to show how the new juco rule is just going to make it almost impossible to bring in credible athletes via the juco route to slu. again, i think, (and this is totally unbased conjecture on my part) that the problem with this recruiting class is that the coaching staff got in way too deep with juco targets and then were hit with the new juco rule. it was late in the game to switch targets effectively. my guess it that they saw brandon was close to having the necessary credits in a different major to make it to slu so they rolled the dice. unfortunately as 3 star commented, brandon had the knowledge that if slu wasnt going to play along, he had the option of going elsewhere that would accept his credits. so his incentive to pass that one class wasnt all that strong i bet.

i think tseugnekillib is correct. we have to build our future plans with solid 4 year students that really want to attend college. sure that might put us at a disadvantage for now. but what if ncaa president, myles brand, has his way and this big business atmosphere of college sports begins to be harnessed nationally? what if it becomes mandated that schools begin addressing academic shortcomings or risk penalties to their sports programs? the fact is, slu might then be ahead of the game and a disadvantage becomes at least a temporary advantage.

today on frank's show, he had a professor from missouri, (i believe his name was richard hauser?) that is close to the current academic investigation of the tigers athletic department. wow! if he is representitive of the attitude of the typical academic staff, the tiger athletic program will not get any turned heads and breaks from the investigation! imo, this can only be good for all of college athletics.

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3 star, i see your academic point. and to be honest, i think for the most part, our staff will do that. a romar weakness was without a doubt he didnt give the academic potential of a recruit a second thought. i think with morris, i am betting coach brad was in too deep by the time of the academic rule change to switch directions effectively. and he probably had an agreement with morris that he would switch his focus in the classroom to get the needed credits to go to slu. but i also bet as you stated above that morris was seeing everyone else NOT having to work like that and it was easy to think, "what's the point?"

of course with all this said and everything that is happening, we all believe and most agree that our top recruiting target is already academically challenged and stressed tommie liddell. so what's the correct direction? has the staff learned their lesson? is liddell that good that we rightfully say "well but...."? imo, as much as i like tommie liddell the basketball player, and i love tommie liddell the basketball player (i compare him to a rough larry hughes) i am beginning to think we need to cut the cord unless there is some kind of assurance he can make it in the classroom. arent we all a little tired of the academic faceslap's? why continue to put ourselves through that tease? move on to meyer's and shaw's that are classroom guarantees.

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... Brandon chose this route? Someone up above talks about how the kid may have figured out that he didn't want the 8 hours of summer work in Philosophy or Theology or Anthropology. What if he also just said, "hey, I'd rather go home and play." Kid is from Kenosha or somewhere up there ... maybe Green Bay was more appealing. Maybe his "sweetie" enrolled there.

I don't profess to know any more than the next guy (and maybe he'll know more) but pointing all the fingers at SLU is premature as well at this point.

As for broy's point about Myles Brand coming in and doing some sort of something .... I doubt it ... money talks, bullshat walks ..... even if you began to concetrate on the grades issue as long as CBS has the billion dollar carrot onthe stick that is March Madness, and the winner gets more, someone somewhere is going to do whatever it takes to get that.

I think you need to take all the TV money, CBS, ESPN and whatever, throw it into one big pot called the NCAA, and let each and every school that is a member of that pot take an equal representation once its all over. Ain't never going to happen.

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"we all believe and most agree that our top recruiting target is already academically challenged and stressed tommie liddell"

We have been in agreement for some time that Tommie is best local junior but I never believed that he should be our top target because the odds of an East St. Louis athlete qualifying out of high school are extremely low. That's why I've been on the Matt Shaw bandwagon for so long. That's why I'm so pleased that Polk's recovery from injury is going so well. If Tommie qualifies, that's great. But it would be a pleasant surprise rather than an expectation. Draelon Burns, who is reportedly enrolling at the well-regarded prep school Laurinburg Institute, is a better bet to qualify.

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Being from the Kenosha area(Milwaukee) I saw Brandon play in high school. He is a wonderfull player, who is a good floor leader, defender and very tough. He will never be a scorer. I'm aware he struggled through high school and JUCO. Thus him recieving a D on a needed class does not suprise.

His high school has a 2005 point guard who is also under the radar but has definite skills for a coach like Sodeberg. Great handle, defender, floor leader and very quick. Also supposedly a top student. Not sure of last name, Joe something plays for Wisconsin Playground out of Milwaukee

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taj, it is now an ncaa requirement that a juco to transfer to a division one school needs to have his associates degree and have the necessary credits to be able to slide into a major of the school transferring to and be on pace to graduate or something like that. so if a player has an associates degree at the juco with an emphasis in physical education, the odds are, he will not have the hours to switch to a communications degree at slu since most of his hours were devoted to p.e. at the juco. before, i believe that player just needed his associates degree to successfully graduate.

i do not think this rule pertains to juco's that academically qualified out of high school. for example, troy slaten and marcellus somerville were both at swic last year, but they transferred without associates degrees because they already academically qualified out of high school.

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dont be so quick to dismiss myles brandon. granted he has a lot of "money guys" to fight in this battle. but this is the same guy that stood up to booby knight and kicked his cranky butt to the street.

he also got into committee last year ncaa rules proposals that would enact penalites and bonuses for the schools that are preaching academic honor and accomplishment. of course it has all been buried in committees at this point, but the guy obviously has some gumption and a will to do the right thing. i am rooting for him.

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