What a great weekend ... Blues ... SLU ... Mizzou ... Cardinals' spring training ... Mardi Gras ... enjoy!

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* This quote from Chris Carpenter jumped out at me: "It's a different feel, a different year, but there's a lot of excitement going on," Carpenter told the Post-Dispatch at spring training. Carpenter, the pitching ace and team leader, doesn't talk nonsense. He isn't into dishing empty platitudes. So if Carpenter says there's excitement in camp, I take his word for it.

To me, this is yet another positive sign that the Cardinals will be in sharp shape mentally as they approach the new season. And that's important. It's important because we've seen too many defending champions suffer from a so-called World Series hangover. A team becomes the champion and lets down. There are too many celebrations. Too many free meals and good times. Too many people telling the players that they're wonderful. Complacency sets in. There's a disruption of routine. The alarm clock doesn't go off until it's too late. It happened to the 2007 Cardinals, who failed to make the playoffs after winning it all in 2006. The '07 team was a tragic mess, taken down in part by a partying culture that diminished focus and competitiveness.  

I don't believe the 2012 Cardinals will be anything like that. Not even close. I wrote about this, in part, in last Sunday,'s column. But this is not a normal defending champion. Not after losing Albert Pujols. Not after the retirement of manager Tony La Russa and the unofficial retirement of pitching coach Dave Duncan. This team knows it has a lot of questions, a lot of doubters.  Oh my gosh, how can the Cardinals survive without Pujols, TLR and Duncan? If you were a Cardinals' player, wouldn't you get tired of hearing that?

This team also has a lot of older, nucleus-type players that know they have to stay healthy and perform at a high level if they want to (A) remain in the elite class; and (B) ensure additional paydays in the future. This team also has a share of younger players that are striving to establish themselves in prominent big-league roles. It's a good mix.

My read could be spectacularly wrong, but I view the 2012 Cardinals as a unit that brings more hunger to the new year than many defending champs. That's why so many pitchers and position players have reported early. There's something new about this adventure. The dramatic changes, led by the hiring of new manager Mike Matheny (and several new coaches) has freshened the air. That's not a bad thing for a team coming off a championship season.

Moving On ...

So why does St. Louis U. basketball struggle to fill a beautiful 10,000-seat arena for home games at a time when the Billikens are having a terrific season that most likely will lead to a spot in the NCAA Tournament? And why is the homecourt atmosphere so lacking in sizzle? I put the question out on my 101 ESPN radio show on Thursday, and here were the most popular answers from STL area sports fans, delivered via text message.

In no particular order, and you'll have to pardon our generalizations:  

• The Atlantic 10 doesn't engender excitement. Never has. SLU is a geographical oddity in the A-10.

• Along those lines, there's no natural rivalry in league play.

• SLU has always had an older, quiet crowd. The student fans that show up do a good job. But not enough students show up on a regular basis.

• SLU doesn't know how to market itself. Never has. (I'm not talking about the entire university; just the basketball program.)  

• SLU can't get enough games on local TV, so exposure is limited. It's embarrassing, really. This season SLU has a successful show to display but most games remain in the dark in terms of local television.

• This is a Mizzou town.

• I'm a fan of Coach Majerus and consider him a friend, and he has always been accessible to me personally. But I wouldn't consider SLU to be a media-friendly program.

• Some in fact blame the local media. That's funny. SLU fans shouldn't need to be motivated by media coverage to attend home games. The Billikens haven't been to the NCAA Tournament since 2000. They're 21-5 overall, 9-3 in the A-10. They've won eight of nine games to pull within a half-game first-place Temple. SLU is ranked as high as No. 10 in the nation by some, including the respected Ken Pomeroy. The players do well in the class room, and work just as hard on the court.

And I'm supposed to believe that attendance depends on Bernie Miklasz or Bryan Burwell or local TV-radio guys hyping the Billikens? Please. You flatter us too much by assigning such influence to our efforts. I could write two SLU columns a week and it wouldn't move the needle on attendance. Actually it works the other way around: the team and the fans create the buzz and the media follows. It's predictable.

Enjoy the weekend ... thanks for reading.

— Bernie