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From the A-10 message board...


davidnark

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http://basketballboards.net/forum/showthre...15&pagenumber=2

"I spoke with La Salle's AD on Saturday. He confirmed that St Louis and Charlotte will join the A-10. DePaul and Marquette along with Cincinnati and Louisville will go to the Big East. Both Charlotte and St Louis will go to the West division with La Salle going to the East. There will be an 18 game league schedule, eyeryone twice in your own division and 6 of the 7 teams in the other division. They had discussed a 19 game league schedule, but no one liked that idea. The league is not interested in having 16 teams. C-USA will essentially be a football conference assuming it stays intact. Memphis is not being invited to the Big East. Assuming no last minute glich develops, what I outlined above will occur."

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I don't like that idea. I'd much rather have a 16-game schedule. Also, while I don't necessarily advocate expelling members, the Atlantic 10 has more dead weight at the bottom of the league than Conference USA has and I wouldn't mind if a couple of the bottom feeders "discover" that they would fit better in other eastern leagues with more comparable resources and committment.

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I think we need to be careful about how we judge a conference we know very little about. Most of them are excited about Charlotte and consider us a "throw-in". Instead of figuring out what they need to do we need to educate the east coast fans on how good of a conference member they are getting in SLU. Right now they are relying on the Charlotte/Xavier/Dayton points of view....Charlotte and Dayton don't like our "ugly" style because they have lost recently to us. Also, we draw more for a "buy game" than many of their arenas can hold.

Stay on the high road and we can let Sodie's boys do the talking for us.

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doug announced to everyone that nothing has been decided conference wise. they have no clue where things are going to end up but feel that they are in the best position should the dominos begin to fall.

he would not comment on who what or where.

he did tell me off to the side later that the money to get in the big east is substantially better revenue between the big east tv package on espn and the units that the big east typically earns for the ncaa tourney that they split up. (the way i understand units is every team that participates gets credit for the number of games played and the tourney pot is divided accordingly by conference and then each conference divides their share however they agree to split that) thus, while he wouldnt committ on my question, by looking at his face, i got the impression the billikens would do the same thing that marquette is doing.

on to better things....we cant do anything about the damn conference crap anyway.

coach soderberg quickly went thru the players. the first player he mentions is josh fisher. he believes josh will have a big year and looks to him to really break through. he has gotten stronger and worked very hard on his shot.

second he mentioned that anthony drejaj has really worked on his strength as well.

he mentioned straight out, how will we replace marque? well when he got around to bryant, he told us tonite that reggie is a scorer. reggie will probably be looked to be the go to guy when the clock is running down. think about how many possessions marque took a shot with under 10 seconds to go on the shot clock? take those away and we would be in trouble. well coach brad indicated that reggie might be that guy to bale us out.

he then talked about izik. all he talked about with regards to izik is izik will play the wing. he believes he will be a matchup that will really present a problem for the opposition considering izik's 6'9" height and his unusual ball skills for a big man.

he then got to sloan. he said he is so happy that chris is back. he said chris might be developing into one of the best shooter's on the team. plus he has so much heart and desire.

he mentioned fericks next. he said he will be an improvement over kenny offensively from all angles. but not sure how he will do defensively. he mentioned he is at least 265 lbs and works very hard.

he then talked about clarke. he said darren has a chance to really become a good player for slu. he is looking forward to his development.

he spent more time talking about ian than anyone else. imo, he is really jacked about ian's potential. he said he reminds him a lot of vlade divac. an extremely good passer, and very aware of the court and what is going on. said he wears a size 18 shoe and is still growing. believes he is 6'11" now and probably weighs around 260. he thinks he has just huge potential and said he didnt know who the best billiken post player ever was, but would think ian might become that! (joe wiley raised his hand when he asked that question) he did say though that ian is still growing into his body and isnt ready to be a big contributor right away. but he highlighted some of his stats from the recent world games. he said coach beane got a call from an old teamate he had that also played in greece to get the jump on ian. basically we won the ian sweepstakes because his father is a big time banker in greece and badly wanted ian to go to a first class business school. a couple of conversations with slu business profs sealed the deal. what a great story!

he obviously could not comment much on current recruiting, but he said he expects at least one more verbal before the november signing date and probably the 4th scholarship will wait till spring.

he was asked about the new cusa schedule, he said the good part is that we only have to play cincy, louisville and memphis once. but the bad part is that we only get to play cincy, louisville and memphis once. i.e. our record might be better, but not our rpi. he believes we will finish in the upper half of the conference at least.

doug did not have any new news on the arena front.

all i have to report. first practice is october 18 and will probably NOT be a midnight practice. see ya all there.

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