Bill Russell

Bingo! The guy is incredibly smug and constantly dismissive of any question from the SBU beat writer. He can't fathom anyone criticizing him for anything. The guy literally scoffs at suggestions that he has struck out on pretty much every Fall recruiting period since 2009. It is infuriating. Oh, and just put a mic in front of him on a national stage and you'll hear about Bona being in the middle of nowhere and how "lucky" we were to get Andrew. It's all a self-promoting ploy. Bona wins? It's all about Mark. Lose a tough one? What do you expect? We're a little ol' private school that isn't in a huge city. He thinks he walks on water in this town and MANY people see through it. I'm damn sick of the guy's act.

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buckswope

Regardless, the game wasn't lost in the last 20 seconds. The game was lost when SLU failed to neutralize Aziz N'Diaye (Rob Loe couldn't guard 6'5 Dantiel Daniels on Saturday, why would Crews think he'd be adequate against the 7-footer N'Diaye?!). Additionally SLU failed to guard Wilcox from range. The guy certainly hit some tough shots, but most of his 3s resulted from defensive breakdowns.

I'd been reluctant to place too much blame on Crews with all of the injury problems (Majerus had plenty of stinkers when he was short handed), but seeing us just get owned game after game by the opposing star players makes me realize in hindsight how good Majerus was at neutralizing the stars and daring the opposing role players beat him.

That's for damn sure.

Kevin Waymire

Buckswope - that video was awesome. I still get a kick out of this Brian Conklin video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOwShNl2Vfw

I know it's a sour subject, because they almost pulled off the upset, but I haven't laughed that hard at a press conference in a long time. I literally lost it. Particularly toward the end of the video.

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"Miller didn't do anything last year to improve on or surpass Gregory's performance..... In fact it looked just like a Gregory team. Nice start, crappy middle (with every excuse in the book), a decent win or two near the end to get everyone's hopes up, then a dissapointing finish - that is Dayton basketball 2002 - 2012."

-KNOBBY

buckswope

Yeah...I can't even watch that

At least Conklin waited until the season was over before his postgame press conference meltdown.

SpiderDave19

Bonnies guys, you lost to a good team in a good game. You won the league last year. You lost an absolute stud but are obviously a competitive team again. Aren't you over-reacting a bit?

Bill Russell

No. We have been dealing with this crap for six years. Keep in mind: if we don't beat X in AC, Andrew's four years would have likely produced two CBIs. There are some good players here, but every one of Schmidt's teams have the exact deficiencies.

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BrownIndians85

SpiderDave, I don't think so. We watch every game this team plays, year in and out. Last year we lost at least 4 games that we shouldn't have, mainly due to lack of discipline, maddening substitution patters, inability to close, basically "coachable" items. At some point we expect our fairly talented teams to look like things have come together. And they did last season towards the end of A-10 play, in particular the tournament. Even there, I believe we nearly blew a 17 point lead to UMass, and ditto for the Xavier game. I can't speak for all Bona fans, but I'd say that some of us believe last season was won despite the staff. The team played good basketball. No one needed to coach that by early March. Nicholson could have player-coached that team to the same result.

Being "close" isn't good enough. It's just not. The is the Atlantic-freaking-10, and close against Canisius and Ohio doesn't cut it. Ever. Not with leads late in the game. The A-10 team is supposed to take down those teams and finish the job. Look at our track record under Schmidt. Give him credit for the improvement because of the players he put on the floor, not because of the coaching. We still don't win road games. We don't win games when we're the underdog. Our A-10 victories tend to be against the teams that finish in the bottom half for the season. We rarely take out an A-10 team with a better record than us, even last season.

I don't know. Other than the quality of basketball player we are putting on the court, I don't see where the in-game story has changed.

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clark1a

Wimpy and cash flow to support that facility. Trying to emulate the big guys. They all do it.

mm4cc

I think you are greatly underrating Ohio. They went to the sweet 16 last year (where they lost to UNC in overtime) and returned EVERYBODY.

antboy

Xavier has tough schedules, but they get more of those BCS-opponent games at home than other teams in the conference, and then fill up on more home games against the smaller-conference teams. Xavier isn't as bad as most BCS schools for sure (which seem to fall between 0 - 3 true road games for the most part), but when I looked at last year and the year before, it looked like just 3 most years. Compare that to Fordham, who plays 8 true road games this year and 6 last year, or La Salle who played 6 this year and 6 last year, or GW who had 6 this year and 5 last year. And many of those road games are against low-profile non-BCS teams, so there's not much benefit to winning and it hurts to lose.

It helps to be able to fill up your arena with lots of fans. Xavier schedules closer to what BCS teams do than other A10 programs. This is not a bad thing if you can do it, just an observation that it makes things easier for your team to have OOC success (both actual and perceived).

BrownIndians85

Sorry I didn't mean to make it sound like I was placing Ohio on par with Canisius. I understand they are a very good team. However they play in the MAC, A-10 schools should be beating MAC schools for the most part. We had them on the ropes and couldn't finish. A common theme during the Schmidt tenure.

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buckswope

Let the record show SLU was originally going to play @Stanford in addition to @Washington on this west coast trip (with Standford coming to SLU next year), but at some point this summer SLU backed out of the deal and replaced it on the schedule with a home game vs Valpo (with SLU traveling to Valpo next year).

This is a one-time scheduling fluke, and something that will be paid back next season. It's not a sustainable formula.

Also, the game vs KU in KC was much more of a road game than a neutral game. Certainly SLU would have fared even worse at Allen Fieldhouse, but the officials protected Jeff Withey like it was KU's home court.

Bona Wolf for Pope

This is the important part. Yesterday morning wasn't going to be too crushed by losing to Ohio, but suddenly we came out playing them close and had the lead a couple different times late. That's when it became a winnable game, and one I was upset about losing.

Schmidt seems to have this block when it comes to guards. He can't really recruit them (except Kloof, who may not have been his doing) and can't coach them. It's part of the reason they are so tentative to shoot (they know they'll get taken out) and they don't develop. Matt Wright is pretty much where we was his freshman year, Kloof's offensive game is almost nonexistent this year, Gathers has disappeared. With the guards out of sync, it destroys the offensive flow. I can count on one hand the games that I've felt comfortable watching in the second half. Even in games we win, we let teams crawl back in and have to hold them off down the stretch. It's very draining.

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paulxu

What you say has a lot of merit. We get the home BCS teams by setting up home/home with them I think. A while ago we may have even done 2 for 1 to get them started; not sure. But this year we get Vandy and Memphis at home because we went on the road to them last year.

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