Crim: Former QU men’s basketball coach lands job with D-I program

Around the horn …

Former Quincy University men’s basketball coach Ryan Hellenthal has landed a new job as director of basketball development and basketball administration at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, the school announced last week.

At SIUE, he is reunited with Cougars coach Brian Barone. Both were assistants on the coaching staff at Garden City (Kan.) Community College during the 2002-03 season.

A good guy who could never build any sustaining momentum in his hometown, Hellenthal was let go by QU with four games remaining in the regular season last February. He compiled a 50-80 overall record with a 27-66 mark in Great Lakes Valley Conference play in nearly five seasons.

SIUE finished 11-21 a year ago, the most wins in Barone’s three seasons as head coach. The Cougars, once a longtime rival of QU, now play in the NCAA Division I Ohio Valley Conference, and the move up has been a struggle. They have not posted a winning record since the 2007-08 season.

Southern Indiana and Lindenwood University are making the jump from Division II and have joined the 10-team league, which has lost founding members Eastern Kentucky and Jacksonville State, along with Austin Peay, Belmont and Murray State since 2021 as schools continue to play musical chairs.

Elsewhere, Stan Kroenke, the owner St. Louis fans love to hate, must cut a check for $571 million for his share of a $790 million settlement reached with St. Louis city and county and the Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority by the Rams owner and NFL over his moving the team to Los Angeles in 2016.

Kroenke is probably not too popular with the other 31 NFL owners, either, since they must kick in around $7 million apiece after initially believing they had no legal liability when they approved the move.

After losing three straight winnable games as an underdog, Missouri held on for a nerve-wracking 17-14 victory over Vanderbilt as a favorite. There wasn’t much to celebrate other than the defense and two TDs by Luther Burden. The Tigers were limited to three points over the final 42 minutes, gained fewer than 80 yards of offense in the second half, turned the ball over three times and missed a chip-shot field goal late against a team that now has dropped 25 straight SEC games.

The Athletic last week rolled out college football bowl projections and somehow had Missouri facing longtime arch-rival Kansas in the Liberty Bowl. Intriguing, no doubt, if somewhat iffy. The Jayhawks must notch one more win to become bowl-eligible, the Tigers three.

Surprising Illinois, by the way, was projected to play Arkansas in the Music City Bowl, which also would have an interesting sub-plot. Arkansas fired current Illini coach Bret Bielema in 2017 after five seasons.

Losing three consecutive games for the first time since 1998, including a 49-0 spanking by rival Texas, made some Oklahoma fans apoplectic. Just don’t expect first-year coach Brent Venables to get the boot anytime soon. His six-year, $43.5 million contract is fully guaranteed, meaning his buyout after this season would be around $36 million.

That’s a lot of money, but apparently not an obstacle for Auburn boosters. The school fired Gus Malzahn in 2020 and paid him $21.45 million to go away, and is expected to can his replacement, Bryan Harsin, by the end of this season and shell out another $15.3 million for the privilege of hiring a new coach. 

With Syracuse falling short against Clemson, Mississippi getting whacked by LSU and UCLA losing to Oregon, only six unbeaten teams remain in college football. With Tennessee playing Georgia Nov. 5 and Michigan and Ohio State facing off Nov. 26, that number will dwindle.

In August, there were those who thought the Quincy High School football team was likely a year away from a breakthrough season, especially with a sophomore quarterback. Bradyn Little and the Blue Devils proved those skeptics wrong by winning seven of nine games, punctuated by an improbable comeback from four scores down against Rock Island in the regular-season finale.

Adding a sixth playoff team in each league, eliminating the one-game play-in contest and playing best-of-three and best-of-five-game series in the first two rounds added excitement to baseball’s postseason. The Phillies and Padres proved getting hot late means more than being the best teams during the 162-game regular season.

Some Cubs fans may disagree, but it would be nice to see 73-year-old Dusty Baker finally win a World Series. No manager in baseball history has won as many games as Baker, who also had a 19-year playing career, without a title.

Cardinals bench coach Skip Schumaker reportedly has interviewed for the Miami managerial opening, and the MLB Network has labeled him as one of the “top candidates” to replace Don Mattingly.

The Big 10 received little love in the Associated Press top 25 preseason men’s college basketball poll. Only three teams made the list — Indiana at 13, Michigan at 22 and Illinois at 23. Meanwhile, the SEC, long considered an inferior hoops league, landed five teams — Kentucky (4), Arkansas (10), Tennessee (11), Auburn (15) and Alabama (20).

Chicago plays at New England tonight on Monday Night Football, not exactly the marquee NFL game of the week. Interesting betting notes: The Bears have lost 13 games in a row as a road underdog by 7.5 points or more dating to Thanksgiving 2015, including two games already this season. And the Patriots are 42-3 at home against first- or second-year quarterbacks since 2003.