MBB: St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[pantherpride06]

You know Greg, the bottom line is the SLIAC cannot be like the CCIW.   Plain and simple.  That is what you are saying.  Your QOWI rating and all this crap.  We get one team into the tournament.  That is who wins the SLIAC Tournament.  You can even go 18-0 in SLIAC play and lose in the SLIAC tournament and not make it to the NCAA's.  So, we play for confrence play.  Get a couple wins in the pre-confrence schedule against whomever it may be and go with it.  We aren't fightning for atlarge bids every year where we have to worry about the NCAA Selection committee seeing whether Maryville (Mo) who went 19-6 played STL Pharmacy or Moody Bible.  SLIAC gets one school. 

Until the SLIAC has just a amazing about of talent that decides to flow into our schools, that's they way it will be.  Until the SLIAC schools can find money to upgrade facilities and work on our gymnasiums, we will get one bid.  We don't have the Shirk Center like IWU.  We don't have great playing facilities like you guys do.

North Park's Gym:


North Park's Locker Room Lounge:


Carthage Gym:


Greenville Gym:


And as I look through, we may be the only SLIAC school with a photo of our gym and it's horrid.  We have awful bleachers, our locker rooms are a ton better since we put 30,000 in to our locker rooms our of each program's fundraising, we only have 4 locker rooms.  So, visiting teams must use the Soccer & Volleyball locker rooms.  A locker room lounge???  Leather couches?  We have coaches offices where there are three coaches in one office.

Stop with the schedling comparasion and the SLIAC/CCIW comparison.  If NPU, IWU, Augie, Millikin, and the rest of the CCIW schools want to sponsor a SLIAC school and give them about 25,000 for one year, maybe we can upgrade some of our facilities and then maybe we can work some scheduling things out.   It's just so fustrating when someone from a larger school tries to tell us that we need to stop scheduling these teams and schedule CCIW or bigger time schools.

Our JV teams are taking ass beatings about 6-7 times a season to make a little money and play a little ball.  Our JV girls got rolled by like 70 last night.  Our Men have played SWIC and Lincoln Land and got beat 30, 40, 50, 60 points.  Just to help fund the program.  No leather couches, no TV's.  We have to get our equipment from the Media Resources department.  And return it.  Our workers at the scorers table are volunteers bc we can't pay them.   We put the officials in a small office to shower and change.

Quit comparing man.  Quit saying we should do this and do that.

[pantherpride06]

Let me also say that I am speaking on my own behalf and nothing that I say represents the views of Greenville College or Greenville College Athletics as a whole.  I am also not representing other SLIAC schools, just pointing our some of the obvious comparasions to the two leagues.

[Daryl L Lloyd]

Panther:  I feel you frustration, but I think the conversation has deviated from its original message.  No ,the SLIAC is not up to the level of the CCIW, but the point is they will never get anywhere near that if changes are not made.  No one is saying to schedule games where you get blown out by 40.  Rather schedule competitive games instead of games where you blow the other team out by 40.  I remember years back when Webster played schools like STLCOP and Concordia seminary (yes I realize it wasnt that long ago), but it seems as though Webster has stepped up and realized if they wish to continue to grow and make strides as far as SLIAC mens basketball is concerned these games do not need to be on the schedule.  I am thankful Webster does not schedule these games any more, and from what I gather so are the players (past and present).

As far as CCIW/SLIAC comments. Why should the comparisons stop? Seems to me that is a quitters mentality, if we do not question what can be done to improve these programs and help them become more competitive than what is the point of the program existing in the first place?  Im with Greg and Bunchtime on this one, these cupcake teams need to come off the schedule.

[Beaver_SID]

Again Id like to apologize to FU,
I saw the name Concordia and immediatly thought of Concordia-Chicago in which Bc and GC played in the North/South Classic.

[Mac Attack]

Fontbonne 89  Concordia Seminary 66

[Mike Owl]

The goal of any SLIAC team is to get to the NCAA tournament.  The talent level is just not there to take a team deep or even to win a single game once they get there. There is nothing wrong with that, it will just take time to develop that type of program.  Webster was on the right track until Lance Randall left.  Webster is still at the top of the league but they are definatley not headed down the road of national contender.  MacMurry, with the recruiting potential that Coach Hettinga brings to the table is the next likley candidit.  I will predict that in the next two years Mac will have the talent to compete against anyone in any league.  Hettinga has done it before.  He is an exceptional recruiter and it won't be long until that becomes very apparent to the rest of the SLIAC. 

[y_jack_lok]

Mike Owl, help out a relative newcomer. Where did Lance Randall go, and why? What makes him better than his two successors?

[Mike Owl]

Lance Randall left Webster to coach a professional team overseas.  He left, like so many Division III coaches, in pursuit of moving up the coaching ladder.  He then came back to the States as Director of basketball operations for SLU.  Last year Lance's father died and he left SLU in the middle of the season to take over his fathers high school team.  I believe that they won a state championship last year and Lance is still coaching there today.  Lance's father was a legend in Wisconsin high school sports where he ran a highley sucessful program for decades.

To directly answer you question, Lance had the "IT" factor. He had the ability to recruit above the name on the uniform or the league in which it played. If you remember his first team had players from all over the country.  The talent in his second year was ever stronger, and I believe that if he would have stayed Webster eventually could have competed with anyone in the country.   Coach Cano was also from the Beloit school of coaching and he did a great job.  Cano is an excellent coach (obviously he took them to the tournament), however, the ability to convince a kid to come to a small school in a small conference where he is overqualified for the level the league plays at is a special talent.  Lance Randall has it. Steve Hettinga has it. 

[fcnews]

WC will be without the services of Andrew Buxton for an undisclosed period of time. This is due to a broken foot. This is a big loss for the Blue Jays and we'll see how it effects them tonite.

In all honesty folks. I've been around since this league was formed and have only seen one team that could of made a run in the NCAA Tourney.
That was 93-94 Fontbonne College team that went 26-3. They won the conference then swept through the post season tourney avg. over 100 pts. a game and a margin of victory of over 20.

They had three DIII News All- Americans on that team. 94 POY Stacey Ross, 95 POY Roy Woods and Jason Mallott. This was the year prior to the SLIAC getting an AQ.

There have been some awfully good teams since, but none that could win in the post season. And, this is not one of our strongest years either.

[y_jack_lok]

Mike Owl, thanks for that interesting bit of history. If coaches have the "IT" factor, it seems unlikely that the SLIAC will keep them for very long. If Hettinga has it, why is he in the SLIAC? Didn't he coach at a school in Wisconsin where Brad Soderberg's brother now coaches? And wasn't Hettinga out of coaching for a year or two? What was he doing in the interim?

[Mac Attack]

I'm pretty sure Coach Hettinga left Olivert to coach a pro team in the Grand Rapids area for one year. He then spent the following year as an athletic director and assistant coach at a large high school in Michigan - and then came to MacMurray. I might be wrong, but I don't think he was ever "out of coaching." All I can say is MacMurray College is extremely fortunate to have Coach Hettinga. From what I understand, he's an excellent practice coach, works well with all of the players both on and off the court, is a terrific bench coach, and wants to see all of his players graduate. I also think he will be an excellent recruiter. MacMurray still has a hill to climb, but we will win some games this year we shouldn't, primarily because of our coach. We are very, very lucky to have him.

[BunchTime]

Owl, I agree that both Randall and Kanoshiro were both good coaches and largely responsible for turning the tide at Webster.  But you speak as if the program is no longer in good direction.  Randall's record in 3 years at Webster was 43-35 with one SLIAC champion team.  Bunch's record at Webster in 4 years is 57-46 with one SLIAC champion-- which are nearly identical winning percentages.  Furthur, Bunch has coached against tougher competition as the "cupcake" games have been eliminated from the schedule which lends furthur credence to his record at Webster.  Now, I know that Randall inherited a 2 win team, so his 14 win first season earns high praise.  However, Coach Bunch took over a team Webster in August and with about 7 players who logged minutes that year and still achieved a 3rd place finish in the SLIAC- which also deserves praise.  Even with a some veteran returners, the job is nonetheless difficult to implement a new coaching system and even more difficult to Thus, the 2 coaches do not have a wide disparity in achievements that you seem to allude to.

And, one can only speculate about him competing on a national level.  You speak of the "it" factor but in 3 years of Randall obtaining his own recruits, similar to Bunch, his records are strikingly similar.  So then, does Bunch have the "it" factor as well?  And I am glad you speak so well of Macs new coach, because this is exactly what this conference needs -- continual growth! 

[BunchTime]

error in the bottom of my first pargraph as it should read:

...the job is nonetheless difficult to implement a new coaching system and even more difficult for kids to buy into it.  Thus...

[BunchTime]

Panther, Greg or I never said that the SLIAC is or should be the CCIW, but I contend that we should strive to earn a reputation similar to the CCIW.  Is it tough, yes...but impossible, no!  I also understand your frustration that the facilities are light years apart, by and large; however, what ultimately lands recruits is winning and winning against decent competition.  This is a long process and will not happen overnight, but we HAVE to eliminate the charity games against bible schools.  I mean Fontbonne played the seminary who had a guy who was 60 years old.  This is comical and should not be allowed either by the Commish's standards or an agreement among all coaches not to schedule such games.  I hear great things about the Commish, but perhaps he can be more proactive in implementing standards in terms of scheduling and expectations from the respective SLIAC schools.  The Missouri Valley Commisioner comes to mind...in that he raised raised expectations and demanded schools go out and play some "real" non-coference competition!

[fcnews]

I seriously doubt if Commish is going to anything to anybody about scheduling. He had his share of cupcakes in his day. It has only been a couple years since Concordia was a mainstay on the Gorlock schedule and then they added LCC. It's only been the past couple of years that WU has really filled out it's schedule.  Fontbonne had to fill a game late and Concordia needed a game.

Let's get of the scheduling issue and talk about conference play. I do think it starts tommorrow nite.

CMSU 77 Westminister 40 CMSU moves to 6-0