The move that has been suspected for months has finally come to fruition as Adam Knollmeyer, Marcus Relphorde, Dustin Maguire and Anthony Mitchell have all been given their release from SLU to play somewhere else.

The writing was on the wall for these four the entire season that they didn’t fit in with what new coach Rick Majerus was looking for. They couldn’t get playing time this season and there was going to be even less playing time available next season. 

In horse racing,  there’s the concept of horses for courses, that some horses are best suited for certain circumstances, whether it’s dirt or grass or mud. For SLU, those four were not the right horses.

Majerus used the example of Chauncey Billups of the Detroit Pistons.

 ”The analogy I would use is when Chauncey Billups was MVP of the NBA championship series, it was team No. 5. When Wallace went to the Pistons, it was team No. 3. What I explained to the guys is that every coach has a unique style. Bobby Knight plays man to man but not zone. John Cheney plays all zone but not man. Neither presses or traps but Dean Smith does. That’s the way those guys play. This is the style I’m accustomed to coaching and that I’ve utilized. You can only do so many things well. They fit in better situations.

“Obviously, when I got the job, I said I would sit down and look at all the players and assess them. My favorite player of all time is Al Jensen. His is the family I’m closest to. Al’s brother (who played at Utah), I had this talk with him, I said, Andy, you can stay, but you won’t play. It’s not a good situation. But if you transfer, you have a good chance. He went to Weber State and had a great career. That was a win-win. I think this is the situation. … It’s not for a lack of effort.”

Minutes are the issue. Knollmeyer is a 4, and Barry Eberhardt will be getting those minutes next season, along with big guys Brent Thompson and Willie Reed and Brian Conklin, and who knows, maybe Josh Harrelson. It’s hard to see him  getting much time. Dustin Maguire redshirted this season because there weren’t the minutes behind Lisch and Liddell. That will be the case again.

“Tommie and Kevin will play exclusively 2 and 3,” Majerus said. “They average 35 minutes and I play to play Tommie and Kevin 35 minutes next year, so those two spots are locked up for a lot of minutes. That would have encompassed most of the players.

“I walked into their life, they walked into mine. I really like them, I wish them well. They’re good students. Marcus asked me if he could still work with the team. I’m letting him come to individual workouts. I don’t like Anthony, I love Anthony. Anthony and I discussed talking about going to junior college, getting some playing time and perhaps coming back. But he’s not going to play ahead of Tommie and Kevin. He doesn’t have a chance.”

I asked him if this means Paul Eckerle would be staying on athletic scholarship, rather than going back on academic as had been discussed. “I anticipate that happening,” he said.

Next year will be a young team. Assuming everyone signed makes it, there would be seven freshmen. There could be another freshman and maybe a JC transfer. As it stands now, SLU has four returning players for next season: Tommie Liddell, Kevin Lisch, Barry Eberhardt and Paul Eckerle. That would be a young team.

“It will be a young team, for sure,” Majerus said. “We’ll do the best we can. I think it will be exciting to see a young team grow together. Paul and Tommie and Kevin and Barry have some stability. We have good players.”

Curiously, I crossed paths with Anthony Mitchell at Chaifetz on Thursday and asked him about his knee. (He was on crutches.) Then I asked him if he would be back next season and he said, without hesitation, “Yes.”

I thought there was a chance Knollmeyer would be back just for experience sake and because he at times made contributions last season, but all four leaving must mean the staff feels good about getting more players.

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Toledo and Detroit Mercy hired new coaches on Friday, and neither were Brad Soderberg. The big job openings now are at Oklahoma State, Stanford and Providence. (Western Illinois is also still open.) Brad wouldn’t be a candidate for any of those, but he could be a candidate at a place that might lose a coach to one of those places. The Providence job has been open for a month. With Travis Ford having said no, one of the names now being mentioned is GW’s Karl Hobbs.