@salukiworld brought this up in the Missouri S&T thread. This is something that every Saluki fan should take a look at it. Luke Martin did a great job of getting former coaches Weber, Painter, Lowery and Rodney Watson to sit down and talk about their years at SIU. Seeing the videos from back n the day brought back the goosebumps.
Great story from Bruce Weber. He said he went to watch former Illinois player Deron Williams in the NBA playoffs and afterward he went to dinner with Williams and Kyle Korver. Korver talked about how some of his greatest college memories was when he played in Carbondale. And the funny thing? He wanted one of the infamous I H8 CR8TN t-shirts so Coach Weber called Reis and they were able to send him one of those shirts.
What a great podcast. I enjoyed every minute of it. Four very classy coaches who are also great coaches who care about their players and former players. Thank you Luke Martin for putting this together. Go Dawgs.
This was wonderful: kudos to all involved for making this happen. This interview will serve as one of the best pieces in the historic archives of the golden era of Saluki basketball.
It's clear how much pride each of those guys has in the part they played in Saluki history, even Weber and Painter who went on to coach in national championship games. And also evident how hard these guys worked at their craft, including the recruiting side of things.
Loved some of the little, forgotten details that came up (Lowery talking about how much they hated ISU when he played, Watson and Painter mentioning that they thought they had Blake Ahearn, Painter touting the atmosphere for the 11 p.m. Hawaii game, Weber talking about Kent pushing himself so hard in a drill he threw up, etc.).
It was great, but also a little bittersweet as we've seen since 2007 how hard it is to get back to even a small taste of the success the program had in the early 2000s, and Lowery correctly (but depressingly) pointed out that most or all of those guys who anchored the success would not stay four years in the current pay-for-play college sports climate.
One thing to note. Yes, you can listen to it as audio-only, but it's great to watch the YouTube version to get all of the B-roll of the in-game and locker room stuff from back in the day.
Don’t really care what Lowery had to say. He’s the reason we are no longer a respected mid-major. We may never recover from the tank job he did on our program.
