MBB: St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[hopefan]

Good luck to BC, EC, WC, and GC in tonight's semis... I'm certain there will be a full house to see the games!!!!!  Obviously accurate attendance haven't been kept over the years, but I'll bet attendance tonight will be the largest, or near the largest ever for the Conference tourney....

and no large writeups of the games, just the logical prediction of a Greenville-Eureka final....but Westmin and Blackburn both capable of pulling the upset....

[hopefan]

Sure, why not... Blackburn with the huge upset... and very deserving... they outplayed Eureka, forced Feehan to give up the ball often, his teammates couldn't do it
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[Greek Tragedy]

Man, Feehan HAS to come back now. He can't go out like that! He just can't.

[Hoosiersfan2323]

Hopefan's All Conference.....   no coach's politics allowed!!!!!!

MOP    Brock Butler   Iowa Wesleyan

Frosh of the Year    Nigel Wilcox  Webster

Coach of the Year   George Barber Greenville


1st Team
Butler IWU
Davidson Prin
Long Mac
Feehan Eureka
Kobe Wands Westmin

2nd Team
Wilcox Webster
Dix Greenville
Ellis Spalding
Bennington Eureka
Davis Mac

3rd Team
Scott BC
M Paulson Prin
Williams Spalding
Goodman Prin
Drey IWU

Honorable Mention
Woodcock Fontbonne
McCan, Fontbonne
Carter Wands Westmin
Thomas Eureka
Bonney Greenville


All Rookie

1st Team
Wilcox Webster
Woodcock Fontbonne
DeLine Fontbonne
Bateman Greenville
Crespo Webster

2nd Team
Coddington Fontbonne
Brandt Westminster
Baker Fontbonne
Montgomery  Spalding
Holt  Spalding

3rd Team
Watts Spalding
Etienne  Webster
Fernandez IWU
Bendingfeld Spalding
Sellers Principia
McCias Webster

Awesome list, hopefan. Really well done and I think all of your picks are justified. My only pushbacks are small - first, I'm surprised not to see Hayes from Blackburn on this list, even as an HM candidate (14.2 PPG, 3.4 RPG in conference), but it also probably won't surprise you based on our back-and-forth last night that I think Kollar should be COY. Blackburn was picked #9 preseason, lost 85% of its scoring from a year ago, and Kollar helped the Beavers post their best record in over a decade and earn the #3 seed in the conference tournament (where BC hasn't been since 2006). No disrespect to Barber, but in my mind, he took a surefire conference tournament team and brought them to the conference tournament. Kollar took a team that everyone believed belonged in the basement of the conference and led them to their best season since who knows when.

Thanks a million times over for your response... discussing things like this is where all the fun is, unfortunately, our board has become a 'SLIAC hoops newspaper' site rather than a discussion board...

Regarding Hayes... you'd be interested to know that using my valuations of every game, every individual...Blackburn had 3 of the next 5 on the list... or, so to say, a second honorable mention team... Hayes, Rusten, King....along with Hollandsworth, Johnson (Webster), and Tankins...looking at Hayes specifically, he had some very good games, where I gave him 3 or 4 points out of a max 5, but he also had 11 of 18 games where he receiver 0 valuation points...compare that to Malcom Scott, who earned valuation points in 14 of 18 games... another factor for BC is that Coach Kollar really used 8,9, even 10 players during the season... a different person stepped up on different nights...

The Coach award was pondered for a while.. but my main reasoning..

Coach Barber lost every key player from last year's team but Johari Dix, and Dix was not really considered a scorer... he had to bring in a tremendous recruiting class, and he did, and recruiting is a part of coaching... then he had to quickly sell and teach all these new faces on the system how to work together, how to put these guys in working groups... he did...  I saw GC get beat badly at Eureka early in the season, I would define them as awful that night.. as far as they came from that night, to being a team that I think was BETTER than last year, was really impressive...

Coach Kollar did a tremendous job in bringing a number of players who weren't very good last year, to being solid players this year... But, they lost 8 conference games, and yes they won the last 2 big ones to get a spot, but if Westmin had taken care of business on Wednesday and Webster on Saturday, BC would have been on the outside looking in....

Hopefan, why would either of us be wrong when we could both be right? Barber & Kollar co-coaches of the year. Congratulations to both of them and all the other all-conference honorees.

[hopefan]

Yes, Very Justifiable decision on Coach of the year... question, will either be back next year???   Hmmmmm...

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Yes, Very Justifiable decision on Coach of the year... question, will either be back next year???   Hmmmmm...

Why would Barber not be back next year?

[hopefan]

WOTS he may be headed to a totally new profession....

[hopefan]

Now I'm hearing he will be able to serve both positions... a hoped for government position, as well as remaining in coaching... super news for Greenville....

[Greek Tragedy]

Now that my boy Feehan and Eureka are out, I'll be cheering for Greenville to make the NCAAs. This is no knock against the fine players, coaches and fans of Blackburn. I'm sure the are a bunch of swell guys. I just want to see who'll be matched up against a System team in the tournament, a rare occurrence, I believe.

I suppose my far fetched dream would be for Stevens Point and Greenville to make the tournament and have them play each other.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Now that my boy Feehan and Eureka are out, I'll be cheering for Greenville to make the NCAAs. This is no knock against the fine players, coaches and fans of Blackburn. I'm sure the are a bunch of swell guys. I just want to see who'll be matched up against a System team in the tournament, a rare occurrence, I believe.

I suppose my far fetched dream would be for Stevens Point and Greenville to make the tournament and have them play each other.

Grinnell's been in once or twice and Rhodes made it last year, I think (or the year before).  It's getting tougher and tougher, though to tell a system team from one that just runs and shoots a lot.

[hopefan]

Now that my boy Feehan and Eureka are out, I'll be cheering for Greenville to make the NCAAs. This is no knock against the fine players, coaches and fans of Blackburn. I'm sure the are a bunch of swell guys. I just want to see who'll be matched up against a System team in the tournament, a rare occurrence, I believe.

I suppose my far fetched dream would be for Stevens Point and Greenville to make the tournament and have them play each other.

Grinnell's been in once or twice and Rhodes made it last year, I think (or the year before). It's getting tougher and tougher, though to tell a system team from one that just runs and shoots a lot.

Believe me, it's not hard to tell with Greenville...   

[Gregory Sager]

I suppose my far fetched dream would be for Stevens Point and Greenville to make the tournament and have them play each other.

Be careful what you wish for, Tom. Playing a System team in a back-to-back-games situation is extremely dicey, particularly if it's the first night (which will likely always be the case in the situation of either Greenville or Grinnell in the D3 tourney). MWC fans will tell you that the team that plays Grinnell in the first round of the MWC tourney tends to fare very poorly the next night. Playing against the System just takes a lot out of your legs, and it's hard to recover in such a short amount of time to play at your best the next day.

Of course, it's a moot point this season, as there's no way in the world UWSP will get to host a pod -- and, of course, Greenville would fill the traditional SLIAC-rep role of being the bottom seed, i.e., the team that faces the pod host on the first night.

[WUPHF]

It is definitely the back-to-back part that has me worried if the committee invites Greenville to St. Louis.  It will definitely test the Washington University reserves should that be the case.

I'll be happy to drive the Greenville bus to Wisconsin next weekend.

[augie77]

Or to Rock Island, perhaps?

[WUPHF]

Or to Rock Island, perhaps?

I'll drive them as far as Moline.