SLU’s center of attention
After many years of speculation and lip service, Saint Louis University officials have finally taken that big step towards making the school a major factor in college basketball.
On Monday, SLU broke ground on its new $80 million multipurpose arena. Concerts, conferences, trade shows and commencements will be held in the arena. Most important, the SLU men’s and women’s basketball programs will have a home to call their own.
In March of 2008, a new 10,600-seat arena is expected to be opened for business near Compton and Laclede Avenues. If you’re men’s basketball Brad Soderberg or women’s basketball coach Shimmy Gray-Miller, this new building could not go up fast enough..
Monday’s ceremony is a clear and thunderous statement that Saint Louis U. is really, really, committed to having a big-time basketball program.
Saint Louis U. now has a chance to go head to head with the big boys of college basketball. In the dog-eat-dog world of college basketball recruiting, it is important to put your best foot forward to impressionable young players who have many options.
Now, one of those options includes playing home games in a new state-of-the-art on-campus facility where the students can roll out of bed and walk to the game for the first time and create a crazy home-court advantage in a more intimate setting that the cavernous Savvis Center.
The timing could not have been more perfect for SLU basketball fans. The giant shadows of the University of Illinois to the East and the Missouri Tigers to the West will never go away in St. Louis. There are also regional programs such as Southern Illinois and Missouri State, who have helped the St. Louis-based Missouri Valley Conference scale to new heights on the national level.
With all of this going on around them, SLU officials could not afford to sit around at wait any longer for the train to go by. Something had to be done and Monday’s ceremony was just what was needed to jump-start a program that has enjoyed its share of success, but has failed to maintain that success over the long haul.
Soderberg and Gray-Miller have a little more to bring to the recruiting wars than just a promise. There is an abundance of talent in the high school boys’ ranks in the next few recruiting classes and SLU is hot after many of those players. The 2008-09 season in the new arena is the perfect time for many of those young players to begin their careers in Billiken uniforms. In Gray-Miller, the women’s program has one of the nation’s most charismatic young coaches. On Monday, she became even more of a force to be reckoned with.
Father Larry lets loose
Just before the SLU arena groundbreaking on Monday, SLU President Fr. Lawrence Biondi had a few choice words for our town’s good ‘ol boy Kevin Slaten. Biondi was on KFNS 590am, with hosts Bob Ramsey and Brian Burwell, and recalled that Slaten had stated that he’d be dead and gone before SLU would ever have an on-campus arena.
“Well, Kevin, just to let you know, I’d be glad to do the service at your funeral,” Biondi said. He later invited Slaten to personally come to the ribbon cutting. “We have an extra sharp pair of scissors for Kevin,” Biondi said. Score one for Father Larry!
Who’s Mr. Wrongy Wronginsteen now? The EYE can picture the next rant…. “You know SLU tried to recruit my son for basketball, and so did Mizzou, and so did everybody.” Although we’ve heard that line 228 times, we must admit that we haven’t heard it in the last month.
Dates with the NBA
SLU has 15 regular-season home dates at Savvis Center in 2005-06 with several of those being weekend contests. While the Billikens aren’t an unwelcome tenant in a rent-controlled apartment, the landlord should be happy to see them go in 2008.
The landlord is St. Louis Blues and Savvis Center owner Dave Checketts, and the Billikens’ departure will open those dates to a future NBA franchise in St. Louis.
The tussle for dates would be intense if the Blues, Billikens and the NBA all wanted this Saturday or that Friday.
But with Checketts owning respective NBA and NHL franchises that played in the same facility, the winner would be St. Louis.