St. Louis Sports Blog

Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis could be out at the end of the season. But who should replace him?

​As we near the end of another college football season, one of America's favorite subjects rises again: What happens to Notre Dame?

Why is this non-story a story? Yu don't have to look far -- whether in St. Louis or in any other part of the country -- Notre Dame fans, however obnoxious or uppity, are everywhere.

Since Lou Holtz left the Irish after the '96 season, the national relevance of the program has diminished almost as much as Holtz's relevance as an ESPN analyst. Notre Dame has no trouble being relevant to fans or the media because it's, well, Notre Dame. But the program isn't the problem, it's the coach. When Charlie Weis was brought in five years ago, it was because he was an alumni and he had credentials as the offensive coordinator for the Super Bowl-winning dynasty New England Patriots. It seemed like a logical choice, right?

You know how every year, just as the baseball season is about to start, you begin sort of making up your predictions, getting them all straight in your head? No need to lie and say you don't do it; we all do. Some of us write them down, some of us discuss them incessantly with our friends (or, if we happen to have one, a captive Internet audience), and some of us just keep them to ourselves. But we all do it. 

"Not to take anything away from their guys, but they do that for a living... and we're not used to seeing the type of pitchers we saw, and this was the first time our guys used wooden bats." (Emphasis mine) 

Now that's just awesome.

photo by Keegan Hamilton

All along through the tournament run that Mizzou just made, I would constantly hear from people, "Oh, Anderson's gone. Kentucky is going to snatch him up." 

Mizzou's win last night over Memphis combined all the ingredients for a March Madness special.

Holy shit. Did that really happen? 

Just before the Madness began last week, I laid out a lengthy list of reasons why Missouri would fail in the first few rounds of the tournament, pointing out a few of the Tigers' most glaring weaknesses and the dangers of each potential early round match-up.

The Tigers move on, Cornell goes home. And in the end, it looked just like pretty much every other Missouri victory. 

In perhaps the biggest sports media coup in history, the worldwide leader got the leader of the free world to post his March Madness bracket on ESPN.com rather than the site for NCAA tournament sponsor CBS.

Mizzou surprised even its most optimistic fans when it won the Big 12 tournament last week. It was an impressive performance, especially for a team that absolutely stunk in road games all season. Now the Tigers seem to be hitting their stride at just the right time of the year, winning ten of their last twelve en route to their highest tourney seed since 1994.

Never before have I been so happy to be so wrong. 

Keegan Hamilton

As expected, the Billikens got steamrolled Thursday afternoon by Xavier, losing 66-47.

photo by Keegan Hamilton

Over the weekend, both the Missouri Tigers and the Billikens of Saint Louis University closed out their regular seasons in ignominious fashion. The Billikens blew a commanding lead en route to a heartbreaking loss, while the Tigers just came out flat against a Texas A&M squad that was as jazzed as I've ever seen a basketball team. 

The Saint Louis University basketball team tried hard on Saturday against La Salle, they really did. They clawed for every rebound, dove for every loose ball and hustled themselves to exhaustion on defense, erasing any lingering doubts about whether they have bought into Rick Majerus' grind-it-out, wear-em-down style of hoops.

Rick Majerus and Co. lost again Wednesday night, this time falling 70-68 to Duquense. It's their second consecutive defeat after the glimmer of hope against Dayton, a game that feels like it was played ages ago.

After the drubbing the Missouri Tigers received last weekend at the hands of Kansas, there was certainly some doubt when it came to their chances of victory in Wednesday night's home match-up against fourth-ranked Oklahoma.

The Missouri Tigers got the shit kicked out of them by Kansas, 90-65, and the worst part was, maybe Mizzou honestly didn't see it coming. Maybe they should have, but didn't. 

I hate the NBA pretty much unequivocally, and the college game is only marginally better.

While it can certainly be a beautiful game at its best, when the execution is just right, most of the time modern basketball consists of a hulking giant who would be under investigation for massive steroid use in any other sport, dribbling the ball down the court, until he reaches a point about two or three feet outside the three point arc. At that point, he takes one final dribble, then runs about five steps while cradling the ball in his arms, then leaps up into the air, banging into the nearest player while dunking the basketball. Depending on which player is more popular, either the guy doing the dunking or the guy he ran into will likely be called for a foul. If the two players are equally well liked, the foul is determined by a coin flip.

And that, my friends, is my opinion of basketball.

All the same, I have to admit that I'm starting to get a little excited by what the Missouri Tigers are doing this season. After a pretty serious beatdown of Kansas State Wednesdasy night, the Tigers now find themselves with a record of 24-4 overall, and an 11-2 mark in the Big 12.

Just when Rick Majerus' Billikens beat A-10-leading Dayton and lull you into thinking they might be able to win a game on the road against one of the worst teams in their conference, they go and get trounced by St. Bonaventure, losing 72-55 to the Bonnies last night in New York. 

Mardi Gras kept me from joining the sold-out crowd on Saturday at Chaifetz Arena, so when I saw that Saint Louis University's men's basketball team somehow managed to beat Dayton 57-49, my eyes nearly popped out of my mildly hungover head.

SLU defeated Duquense at Chaifetz Arena last night, 78-74 in overtime. Here's a log of the game, updated this morning to include a few pictures and the highlights from coach Rick Majerus' post game comments. 

The Billikens' woes on the road continued last night when they were manhandled by Temple, losing 65-40. 

"We didn't come out and play purposely or with passion," coach Rick Majerus said before heading off to the hospital to join Mitchell. "Case closed. Game over. We just got our butt kicked. They did it to us and we did it to ourselves. That's a toxic combination. It was an old-fashioned butt-kicking and I applaud Temple."

There's been much ado in the land of SLU about the youth of the Billikens. When the season started, there were seven true freshmen on the roster and, thus far, freshman have played about half of the team's minutes. With an average player age of just older than 19 years old, they are the fourth youngest team in the country.

While every college sports fan on the planet was busy nodding off to the most boring BCS National Championship in recent memory, SLU basketball got their asses handed to them by 16th ranked Xavier in their A-10 conference opener, losing 70-44.

So I was in my automobile last night, driving along as I often do, and I heard something really interesting. So interesting, in fact, that I very nearly drove right off the road into some nice person's front yard. Luckily, my reflexes were good enough to save both myself and someone rhododendrons. 

Watching the SLU basketball last night for the first time this season, one thing became very obvious: It's going to be awhile before anyone not named Kevin Lisch or Tommie Liddell leads the team in scoring.

During the first half of last night's match-up against Kent State (which the Bills lost 76-74 on a buzzer beater in overtime) only one other player scored and just two others even attempted field goals.