Perspective - Status of Basketball Program

[Clock_Tower]

As a loyal fan since the announcement of Rick Grawer as head coach at SLU, I have noticed a continual problem at SLU which has plagued not only Grawer, Spoon and Romar but continues to plague Brad as well: lack of depth and quality players. Despite the claims of many on this Board, much of this cannot be laid solely at the feet of our head coach. Without being negative, be honest:

1. SLU's facilities (practice court, weight room, player "lounge", etc) are worse than what most recruits are used to at high school. The new arena in 2008 cannot come soon enough. As mentioned in other threads, this Arena, though, will only eliminate the enormous gap betwen SLU and our competitors for recruits. Not provide us with an advantage. Fault: Biondi and SLU Administration.

2. SLU "TV package" these past few years has been a joke. Local access channel on Charter cable does not provide the program with the much needed exposure. Recruits want to play for schools that get exposure. Recruiting comparisons now have been made by others on this Board between Brad and Anderson/MU. Sorry, there is no comparison. Mizzou is and has been on Fox Sports Midwest and will continue to get exposure when the Big 12 season begins. Charter's local broadcasts and now CSTV is not the same as FSN, ESPN and CBS. Remember when Channel 5 would broadcast some of the games to a large audience. Fault: Woolard and Levick.

3. SLU's "Radio package" on KFNS 590 also is second tier. St. Louis now has 2 major radio stations: 550 and 1120 but we cannot get on either. Only one radio in my home (West County) can pick-up 590. Between the static and need to frequently turn the radio to keep reception, I recall the "old days" - Grawer era - when I listened mostly to static as SLU basketball was intermittently broadcast on AM 1380. Remember when KMOX broadcast the Bills only a few years ago? Fault: Woolard and Levick.

4. SLU's coverage in the local newspaper is woefully inadequate. While many on this Board state that we are the only Div 1 in town, that there is no competition within 100 miles, you would not know such by the amount and quality of press given to the Bills. By comparison, locally, Missouri State gets top billing in Springfield (newspaper, radio and TV) and, other conference foes such as Dayton, likewise get top billing where it is not uncommon for 3 or 4 stories (on page 1) following a big win since there is nothing else going on (NFL, NHL, NBA, etc) in these smaller cities. Fault: Woolard and Levick.

5. SLU's lack of winning tradition -- Easy Ed and Bouska era excepted. Seriously, since the 1950's, SLU has had relatively little success. Many on this Board like to compare SLU to Marquette. Remember, though, that while MU was still basking in their glory (1978), SLU Administration (1980)was discussing cutting scholarships and changing to Division II or III. Fault: Administration but actually plenty of fault to go round.

6. Academics. As you know, SLU's academics are tougher than many competitors. Do other schools have tough academics too? Of course. At the same time, for those who don't recognize this limitation, let me remind you of Craig Upchurch - the type of 4 we need today. Had he been teamed with Bonner, SLU would have been the one going to the NCAA while XU sat home. Others on this Board know more than me, but I believe SLU, at least for a few years, would not take Prop 48 recruits.

Do many other programs suffer from some of these problems? Sure. Do many programs face ALL of these problems? Not nearly as many. Are there exceptions who have overcome them? Sure, but they are more rare than common. When they are overcome, are they overcome solely by changing the head coach? No. Would winning by the head coach improve some of the above? Sure.

But think about it. Romar came to the program with some talent left by Spoon - Love, Baniak, Tatum & Heinrich - and proved he could coach but had difficulty recruiting at SLU. Brad's last three recruiting classes (decent but not what I would have hoped for) are probably better than what Romar actually did here at SLU. Now that he is at Washington, he has definitely done a good job of both coaching and recruiting, is rightfully labeled an excellent recruiter, but certainly did not show it here. If a guy like Romar had trouble recruiting here, maybe we should look at other issues within the program - other than the head coach. Sometimes, the salesman needs a better product to sell.

For that matter, Spoon (IMO SLU's best coach) won many games and went to the NCAAs but could hardly be considered a great recruiter. He won with guard play while his 4's measured only 6'2", 6'4" and/or role players. Only after Larry Hughes committed did Baniak and Heinrich commit. Also, recall that Spoon's recruiting class following that of Larry Hughes was horrible - Virgil Cobbin - recruits had already committed (both fall and spring signings) before Larry surprised everyone by going to the NBA after only season.

Grawer had similar problems and had to promise recruits that they would be a "starter", that they would receive a certain amount of playing time or that they would play a certain position (PG for Winfield) to induce a recruit to select SLU.

Just some thoughts.

PS Longtime "lurker" but first time poster.

[slu72]

That's a good objective review, Clock Tower. No doubt all obstacles/mistakes mentioned make SLU a tough place to recruit to. But, with the exception of most BCS schools and a few well known mid majors, a lot of schools have similar problems and worse. I think the arena's will remove many of your concerns. That said, have we seen enough from UB to warrant his staying and reaping the benefits of a new building? Many of us think not. And many thought this way before the ST. B's fiasco.

[davidnark]

How did Creighton, Gonzaga, Carbondale, Xavier, etc. overcome similar--or worse--circumstances?

[billiken_roy]

clock, you need to quit lurking and start posting more. that is one nice well thought out post. a couple of points i'd like to comment on though

clocktower said,

"6. Academics. As you know, SLU's academics are tougher than many competitors. Do other schools have tough academics too? Of course. At the same time, for those who don't recognize this limitation, let me remind you of Craig Upchurch - the type of 4 we need today. Had he been teamed with Bonner, SLU would have been the one going to the NCAA while XU sat home. Others on this Board know more than me, but I believe SLU, at least for a few years, would not take Prop 48 recruits."

as long as i can remember slu has indeed taken prop 48 players. i believe both cory fraizer and justin tatum fall into that category.

you blame woolard and levick on a lot of the issues. while on the surface that may appear to be the case, i wonder if restrictions from above them have forced their hand on some if not all of those aspects. all i know is that levick is about as driven as they come. i gotta believe if the resources were there she would do all she could to make it happen.

[billiken_roy]

first i would bet all the programs have bigger budgets than slu.

second, remember gonzaga wallowed in the same mediocrity that the slu naysayers preach we condone here for a long time with coach fitzgerald while he gradually brick by brick built the program and system that his longtime assistants dan monson and mark few then took to the next level when they became the coach. they are not the overnight success that many think they are.

xaiver had early success (80's) that they built on and sustained. once a program gets there, it is much easier to maintain recruiting and winning.

creighton stayed the course altman was never threatened with his job. plus they had the luxury of growing before the mvc took off. when altman first came to the mvc it wasnt the 4 bid conference it is now as well.

siu is just about a carbon copy of gonzaga, a lot of years of almost and then weber comes in and tweaks a few things and bam the program takes off. he is replaced by his asst matt painter who is replaced by another weber protege chris lowery. they stayed with the system and never started over.

[slu72]

You could also say the bricks are falling down here. IV leaves, nothing on the horizon, except maybe more HD, OBI, VN like spring time recruits?

[GOPBilliken]

Great comment. The bricks are falling indeed.

[Taj79]

.... and saying that, my apologies first off for a backhanded start for Clock Tower. Let me say that I enjoyed, understood and agree with your post and echo broy's sentiments that you post more often.

If that, then why my "blah,blah,blah" heading? Because you have verbalinzed in one post what has been said here so many times before. I have been around since the Albrecht times, pre-Grawer, and have seen and lived through what you describe above. Your post goes one step further in that it names names (as in radio and TV issues) and places blame (interpreted, at least). We have all rehashed these issues before althought your post is the latest and maybe best in summarizing them all in one place.

Hindsight is 20/20. My question, and the $64,000 question seems to be that if we know all these noted items above, how do they get corrected? Numbers 2-3-4 above might be contract issues but I can guarantee you that in 2 and 3 no one in the broadcasting business is going to commit prime time slots to a minor and mediocre program. Again, jsut win baby. As for #4, we've been over that time and time again. I would offer that Springfield and Dayton don't have the competitive interests fighting for space that we do thereby guaranteeing their place in the paper. Plus they do win a lot more than we do. People love and follow a winner. Which brings us to point 5 and a moot point.

Point 1 is something I think most of us long for and cannot wait to see it happen. I just cringe thinking, however, that all our eggs will be placed in this basket. I go back to the Patriot Center at George Mason University. What a palace. I went there for a concert and could not believe that in suburban DC, this little gem existed. For a program I never heard of (until last year really). And short of last year, what's Mason got to show for it? Again, winning, which I thought we'd get this year to start things off, is the cure to everything.

Point 6 --- acadmecis --- well, we will always have that. But other schools overcome that so we must be able to as well.

Again, nice post, nice combination of lots of things, but no real solutions to overcome said problems. Its seems like we all waiting for that miracle to drop into our laps .... a stellar local class stays home (Gray/Douglas or Claggs/Hmark/Winfield) or someone who walks on water walks through our door (Hughes). Both have happened before but the problem was that no one used the impetus to push on and capitalize. Maybe some believe this is the next step come class of 2008.

I'll pretty much take almost any answer out there. Hardball had some along the recruiting trail, some were outlandish. Maybe desperate times require desperate measures. Anybody got answers as opposed to historical facts.

Again, my apologies Clock Tower. Keep coming back. Another "oldie but goodie" can't but help the board.

[billiken_roy]

the answer is biondi puts his blind trust in cheryl levick and gives her a blank check. make it truly her dream job with absolute authority. if you want to put a time frame, fine. tell her 5 years to get to the mountain top or you and everyone associated with you to the electric chair. but as long as there are too many restraints on the foundation and infrastructure of the program, any success is a long term building project that can only be accomplished with time patience and continued support. not by starting over every 5 years to find the magic coach. as i said yesterday, we likely had the dream coach in romar but our program and impatience didnt allow him to succeed. and wanna bet we find that man again before the program is fixed and the same damn thing would happen?

there are two other factors that can happen of course, first the likes of the next kareem abdul jabbar and oscar robertson accidentally show up on campus. i.e. luck. or two we cheat our asses off. we know number two isnt going to happen and number one usually only happens in bad movies. so i think we are back to the above plan.

[slu72]

unless he had left us with a clone AC and he actually had done something while here, ie recruit good local talent. he's a huge success at UW and he may well have done that here by going after the good locals instead of the Hollywood boys he was chasing, who may have thought about coming but in fact were never coming to St.Louis. Also, he viewed this as a stepping stone job. He was fourth on her list...with Q being the top pick (joke and a half there). SLU matches UW's salary, lot cheaper to raise a family in ST L than it is in Seattle, but he bolts anyways. Why? He's a WC guy, UW plays in a BCS league, academics not that big an issue, bigger budget, bigger venue, bigger whatever. Can't fault him for it, but when he says UW is the only job he would have left for...the CRAP alarm immediately buzzes. Zo' would have gone to frigging Oregon if they had offered.

[billiken_roy]

i dont buy that "he's a west coast guy" or "he is a midwestern guy" crap. a good coach will succeed anywhere if he has the support.

what those that were all over romar should realize is that he didnt have the backroom and total program to succeed. we let him get away and now he is an annual top 15 coach. no way that just happened because he is "west coast".

that happened because at state u he has a budget to do things the right way without having to scotch tape a program together. that should have been us. and until the boosters wake up and place the blame first and foremost on the administration the sooner we can then find out if a coach can be successful at slu if given the tools to make it work.

fix the infrastructure first.

[slu72]

Do you realize GW's HC's office is in a basement right next to a boiler? Wonder how big his budget is? He gets some pretty good kids. Are you saying our budget is not big enough that UB can't make home visits in the ST LOUIS area? That he can't take a recruit and his family out to dinner? That he can't go to summer camps to scout players? Stop making excuses for these guys. Hell, Romar must have got some funds from someone. He sure spent a lot of time trying to woo Hollywood kids to move to the midwest. I'm not saying Romar is a bust, obviously the record at UW shows just the opposite. But it's a whole lot easier to get a Cal kid to come to Seattle than ST L, plus the PAC 10 is on TV out there. If Zo had used his charm immdediately on local kids, he would have been on his way to similar success here at SLU.

[NashvilleBilliken]

What happened to your proclamations that you were gonna let the season play out and give the Brad bashing a rest? That lasted all of 2 days.

And I love how this post makes it sounds like you have a freakin clue regarding Brad's recruiting and his budget. You know as much as I do....absolutely nothing.

[billiken_roy]

and is gw an annual big time player? they hit the jackpot on three players at one time. take any one of those departing three from last year and gw is what? what is gw now? what was gw in previous season? about a mirror of slu.

[courtside]

And SLU hit the jackpot on Hughes, and to higher levels otehr schools have done it too...and maintained that success. Hitting the jackpot even once, counts. People like to say, well take away this player and that player and see how different it is...the facts are those players came. People who say oh SLU without Hughes, ...well he came and played. People on the reverse end say what if he stayed...well he didn't.

The revisionist history doesn't work.

[slu72]

Whose bashing? He's a great guy. Good family man. I hear he does a great car ad for Fusz Lou or whoever. UB's bashed himself, he doesn't need my help. And I'm not crying for him to be fired, Nashville. I've said time and time again let the season play out...see how it goes. Right now I'm thinking it's not gonna go too well. We lost to a 330 team, "arguably the worst team in D1"-Rammer 01/03/07 approx 9:30 est.

[billiken_roy]

courtside, you got no problem from me saying slu hit the jackpot on hughes. it only reaffirms what i have been saying that none of our coaches over the last 15 years have had any sustained success. thanks for backing up my argument.

[courtside]

Let me see if I can say it another way. Let's say hypothetically that BS gets a few more years, doesn't do anything etc..and let's also hypothetically say, Spoon only had that year with Hughes as success...it still puts Spoon's success higher. It still counts.

People like to say if GW hadn't had that class, or if Carmelo Anthony hadn't gone to Syracuse that year etc...no title....but those things DID happen.

I am not debating whether or not SLU has had sustainable success. They haven't. But even success that is not sustainable is better than no success at all. That is the point.

You can't revise history, or change it and say well if this had happened or if that had happened....etc...Everyone wants long term sustainable success, but short term success is also better than no success at all. It's like someoe saying, well, I am not sure Few would have ever have taken Gonzaga to new heights had it not been for Monson getting them there first, and even prior to Monson....but those things happened. You like to talk about Marquette so much, it is like someone saying oh Marquette would not have gotten into the Big East or had sustainable success without Dwyane Wade leading them to a Final Four(which turns out had two other NBA players on the team)...which of course is debatable...but those things happened.

Some people on this board like to say, well if this didn't happen or that...well those things did happen...like if Cardinals didn't have Pujols or Carpenter where would they be.....

Some others also like to say...and you fall into this category, well was the success maintained long term.

I am saying everyone wants to see long term sustained success....however even if a team has success, not sustained long term, can't take away that success. And it is still better than not having success at all.

The point was not debating long term sustained success. It was disagreeing with this negativity towards places that have susccess and don't sustain it. It is better than not having success at all and not to be treated equal as not having success at all.

[slufanskip]

but GW hasn't sustained the success ... it was just more recent than ours was. Give it a couple years ... they are no different.

Official Billikens.com sponsor of H Waldman

Official Sponser of the Stemmler and Ahearn could and would have helped club.

[courtside]

I don't disagree Skip. Some people think having unsustained success is no better than no success at all, and is the same. I don't agree. People can dump on Spoon all they want, and believe me I could do it for an hour, but he did get Hughes and they did win short term with him, and it should be part of the reflection on Spoon and SLU hoops. Sure it would have been MUCH more desirable to continue the momentum with other players etc....and could have saved SLU a decade or more in time to build and sustain something...but it is better than not having had Hughes for one season at all.

Obviously GW hasn't proved to sustain anything compared to other schools.

[slufanskip]

I agree with that 100% ... short term is better than none at all.

I find it funny how so many people go with a perception though ... like GW is a better program than us ... when if they are a t all it is not by much ... or Martelli is this great coach when his overall resume doesn't prove that to be true. It's just that in both cases the small amount of success is more recent so it seems better.

Official Billikens.com sponsor of H Waldman

Official Sponser of the Stemmler and Ahearn could and would have helped club.

[Clock_Tower]

Taj79

Your post reads in part:

... no real solutions to overcome said problems. Its seems like we all waiting for that miracle to drop into our laps .... a stellar local class stays home (Gray/Douglas or Claggs/Hmark/Winfield) or someone who walks on water walks through our door (Hughes). Both have happened before but the problem was that no one used the impetus to push on and capitalize. Maybe some believe this is the next step come class of 2008.

Actually, since the early 1980's, I think it would be fair to list four (4) real bright spots in SLU's basketball program:

1. Gray, Douglas and Bonner years;

2. Claggett, Waldman and Highmark years;

3. the Larry Hughes year plus his impact of helping bring Tatum, Baniak and Heinrich to the team; and now

4. Lisch and Liddell years.

If you agree as to these four (4) "eras", you will note a few common threads with each:

* poor talent and results just prior and immediately after each era

* inabilitiy to get the additional recruits to get SLU to a higher level

Does any of this sound familiar?

Without taking much credit away the coaches who recurited, because for whatever reasons the players chose SLU over all others, playing time over 4 years and being a "star" or "re-builder" of the program may be more responsible for their choice than anything else.

Solutions: steady building of recruits each year and less coaching changes while SLU works on the issues I listed at the top of this thread (academics excluded). Granted, no doubt that much stated in my post has not been posted before.

[MusicCityBilliken]

Question, If Brad got the call from a struggling Big 10 program (i.e. a Michigan, Minnesota, Penn State, etc..) do you think he would stay?

With his present record here, that call would never come.

[Taj79]

... to parphrase "Meatloaf" in a way ... three out of four ain't bad. But much like some of the Brad backers (me included to this point) I don't think you can lump or add the Lisch/Liddell years to this right now. This season and their run is not done. Yes, we did some sneaking up on folks last year to finish third or fourth in the conference but we were 16 and 13 or 16 and 14 overall. That's smack in the middle of mediocrity in my book. That's why this year, with a big man potential NBA pick in the middle, was so crucial. And the loss to the Bonnies I have yet to recover from.

Also, as noted in your post-numerical listing, you can't judge and add #4 into the list because the common area of poor talent and poor results post Lisch and Liddell is still an unknown. So I'll agree with the three and even give a fourth to the Pre-Clock and Pre-Taj era dominated by Harry Rogers. Heck, I've then got to give five which is the pre-historic McCauley era. So five eras over six decades of a program does not bode well in any book.

Maybe you are right in that the only reason kids stay here or come here is to be a star and be a rebuilder. But to do that, one must have a near-death of the program existence to want to recover from. Peaks and valleys abound. I am more for a consistent sucess level, ala Xavier, Creighton, Marquette, etc.

Your solutions may be right on, but to date, there has been no demonstrated evidence of anyone able to steadily build based on recruiting class after recruiting class. Ours is a one-and-done effort that comes once, maybe twice a decade. And it would mean we need more valleys and more near-death experiences to get those kids to come if at all. One could ask why Brad didn't build onehte success that was Lisch and Liddell? He went belly up so far for this year, and next year looks horrid with no LOIs in the lock-up as we speak. Here comes that pattern again.

Giventhe continual state of this program, I really don't understand why we can't get first year players who step off the bus fresh from the sticks and contribute? Seems to me that the man at the top knows what he needs and should recruit accordingly. I mean, why take a kid and place him at the end of your bench on a talent depleted roster? Seems to me, you'd have a variety of options or intentions that brings you some sort of relief each and every year. I don't see that here despite my beliefs that maybe both Knollmeyer and Maguire should play some.

Heck, maybe, just maybe, if you give Obi and Dixon a little more to look forward to then just metal splinters from the metal bench, you motivate them to do better not only on the courts but also in the classroom. Just a thought, nothing solid in that basis whatsoever.

[former_d1]

good post