Thursday, February 4, 2010

Some really weird happenings in St. Louis, and the SLU stat crew blunders badly and steals a win for the Billikens

First, Saint Louis had no business even being in a close home game vs. St. Bonaventure...they should have been blowing these guys out. But regardless, near the end of the game, a whole bizarre stretch of weird things happened, mostly centered on some horribly bad work by the Saint Louis stat crew and their officials at the desk, and in the end Saint Louis essentially cheats their way to a win over St. Bonaventure.

Here's how it happened........
St. Bonaventure's 2nd best player Jonathan Hall and SLU's 5th best player Christian Salecich got into a shouting match with 6 minutes to go in the game and both were assessed with a technical foul. Of course, everyone older than toddler stage knows full well that this means each player also is assessed a personal foul and each team's foul count advances as well.
BUT -- unbeknownst to BOTH coaches, the stat crew claims they put it into the book as a personal but failed to advance the individual players' foul counts....
so in effect they FAILED to give a personal foul to either player.
The technicals should have been Hall's 3rd personal and Salecich's 2nd personal...
Then in the next two minutes when Hall picked up TWO more personals, the St. Bonaventure coaches removed him from the game - of course thinking that was his 5th foul and Hall was disqualified. BUT - the stat crew erroneously still had Hall for only four fouls, but never bothered to tell anyone...so Hall was removed from the game when he might have been a key contributor had he stayed in.

In the next minute, Salecich also picks up 3 more quick fouls and it then appears that should also be his 5th, but now the stat crew speaks up and informs the coaches and the refs that thay have made a bad mistake and that they actually still have Salecich for only foul personals.

This prompts a long, complicated discussion by the refs, who decide that the error cannot be corrected as to much time and too many plays have elapsed...so Salecich is allowed to stay in the game, ultimately getting his 6th foul a half minute later and finally being disqualified for good.
But...the St. Bonnie coaches are furious...they think they've been cheated...and only after a long delay, a restart and then subsequent re-stoppage at 1:25, then the refs let Hall back in the game since if they weren't going to make the "T" a personal foul for Salecich, then they couldn't do it to Hall!


The St. Louis Post Dispatch writer clearly outlines the rule that says...
"Section 5, Article 1, part d ... the penalty is:
No free throws shall be awarded for a double or offsetting technical foul. Counts toward the team-foul total. Applies toward disqualification and ejection"

Here is the newspaper's account..
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/stories.nsf/slu/story/82D99414B4EF6B20862576C000189B42?OpenDocument

Here's a blogger's take on this but obviously nobody really knows how they screwed this up!
http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/billiken-beat/billiken-beat/2010/02/what-happened-with-the-fouls-at-slu-st-bonaventure/

Hall, who had 13 points and was St. Bonaventure's leading scorer....might have helped enough in the minutes he was unfairly required to sit, and in the end Saint Louis won by just 2 points, as Hall scores his team's final basket...
Final score 67-65 - SLU wins......
Majerus brushed the whole thing off as a relative non-issue, but most of the posters on the Billikens' board know full well their stat crew screwed up royal and cheated the Bonnies out of the game!

Here is the box score and the play-by-play and you can plainly see that the crew did NOT advance either player's perosnal foul count when they got the technical at 6:09 in the 2nd half.
http://www.slubillikens.com/sports/m-baskbl/stats/2009-2010/sbu-slu.html


Rick Majerus also seems to be subtlely campaigning for the open DePaul head coaching spot!!
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=14608


Indiana State's Harry Marshall is injured....
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=14607


Bradley's David Collins is getting a tryout with a European team...
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=14605


Anyone see DePaul's effort last night against Marquette on ESPN?
They looked terrible ...got down by nearly 20 in a hurry and then garbage time ensued...
Many DePaul fans don't want to wait any longer...they want a new coach NOW!!


Anyone remember John Riek...the prep schooler that all the talent evaluators said was the best prospect in the nation...that would go directly to the NBA...they ranked him #1 nationally?
He's the kid who even answered reporters questions about his age by saying he didn't even know how old he was and didn't even know when his birthdate was...
In the end Riek did put his name into the draft, but NBA evaluators not only told him to go back to high school, they also kinda giggled at any thoughts that this kid was NBA caliber...he was described as a horrible long term project!
Then he verballed a couple different places and finally ended up at Mississippi State.
Well now he's eligible...and here are his current stats..
He is so weak that he doesn't even get into most games, and he's never played more than a minute in any game that wasn't a blowout and getting just garbage time.
But, in the 7 games he's played, he's managed just 8 shots, and has 12 points, but given he's a 7-footer, here's the amazing part...
he has only 2 games where he's grabbed more than a single rebound.

When you place this with the story of Beas Hamga and the story of Aziz N-Diaye and many other 7-foot miport players, all of whom were rated as 5-Star kids but overzealous talent evaluators....all of whom seem to drool endlessly over the next import 7-footer....I guess it means we need to be a little bit more cautious about believing what those guys say...
they are also the ones who said Bawa Muniru would be an impact 7-footer at Indiana, and yet he barely sees the floor more than a minute per game.


And although Illinois is still hanging onto a 2nd place tie in the Big Ten....
Bill Cole played 26 minutes last night in Illinois' win over Iowa, but he had only 1 basket, 1 free throw, 1 rebound, and 1 assist.

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