St Louis

ST. LOUIS - In a stunning turnaround, Southern Illinois went scoreless in the final four minutes of the game, allowing Saint Louis to turn an eight-point deficit into a five-point victory, 56-51, Saturday at the Scottrade Center.

The Salukis (4-4) seemed to have the game under control when Matt Shaw hit a 3-pointer with 4:17 left in the contest to put Southern ahead, 51-43. Little did SIU know it would not score again, missing its last five shots and turning the ball over four times.

One thing is clear from this list.. the talent level in the A-10 is far superior to any other non-BCS league. So much so that I expanded the ranking from the Top 10 to Top 20 just because there were so many guys to consider. 15 to 20 in the A-10 would arguably be top 5 or 6 in the CAA or MVC right now.

1. Brian Roberts, G, Dayton - Flyers best player is the league's most efficient scorer
2. Ahmad Nivins, F, Saint Joseph's - One of the A-10's only powerful inside forces
3. Bryant Dunston, F, Fordham - Numbers dipped last year, but Rams win total continued to rise

Saint Louis Billikens

ST. LOUIS – Saint Louis head men’s basketball coach Rick Majerus today announced that Porter Moser will join the Billiken men’s basketball staff as an assistant coach. The former Creighton guard was the head coach at Illinois State from 2003-04 to 2006-07 after a three-year stint as the head coach at Arkansas-Little Rock.

ST. LOUIS – Saint Louis University head men’s basketball coach Rick Majerus today announced that 6-foot-7 power forward Barry Eberhardt (Inkster, Mich./Coffeyville CC) has signed a National Letter of Intent to attend the University and play basketball for the Billikens. He will have two years of eligibility beginning with the 2007-08 academic year.

ST. LOUIS – Saint Louis University President Lawrence Biondi, S.J., announced today that Rick Majerus will be the new Billikens head men’s basketball coach. Prior to working as a college basketball analyst for ESPN for the last three years, Majerus amassed a 422-147 career head coaching record and took his teams to the postseason 15 times.

The University will hold an on-campus news conference at 10 a.m. Monday, April 30, to formally announce Majerus’ appointment. The news conference will be held in Busch Student Center, 20 N. Grand Blvd.

ST. LOUIS – Saint Louis University head men’s basketball coach Brad Soderberg today announced that 6-foot-4 small forward Anthony Mitchell (East St. Louis, Ill. / East St. Louis) has signed a National Letter of Intent to attend the University and play basketball for the Billikens. He will have four years of eligibility beginning with the 2007-08 academic year.

Thoughts, thoughts, and more thoughts: UNC owned Clemson from the opening tip. Thankfully Clemson can block shots, otherwise the Heels would have won by 40. Even decent basketball fans have probably never heard of anybody on Clemson. The same can be said for Air Force, but every other team has a name player or a guy whose gotten some pub during the season (like Aj Graves on Butler.) This isn't necessarily a bad thing though. Good stories about how hard UNC's practice was after losing to Va Tech. That practice was probably better than just about any game you'll ever see.

Tyler Hansbrough's still putting up good numbers, but I get the sense his draft stock is dropping just about every week. Every time he shoots the ball from his waist, you can see a scout cringing.