I think it can be agreed that this year’s start has been pretty crazy for men’s basketball. It looks like the competition coming up gets tougher with nonconf. games against Indiana, at Rutgers, and at Wake. Then there’s the whole situation with the A-10 gunning for the new kid in town.
Are we ready yet?
I think the talent we have is pretty good. The loss of Eddie has hurt, but we’re still pretty good. The new faces have played together for 8 games now and we had a week off to prepare for the game tonight against Valpo.
I hope we have an answer to my question by the end of tonight.
Tonight will not be a cake walk but at the same time, this isn’t a very impressive Valpo team. At least not compared to some of their squads in the past. Just not sure we’ll learn a whole lot tonight but a good outing would be nice. I think the bigger indicator will be Monday when we play, arguably, our first (likely) at-large birth team. If we can play well against the Hoosier and grab a win, then I’ll feel pretty good about the rest of the season.
As for tonight, I fully expect us to win and to do so without much of a struggle. Will be a good tune-up for Monday and a good chance to get everyone on the same page.
We should win tonight, I’m not really that concerned how we do it, just that we do it.
Then we have Indiana. They are better, but beatable. We have to bring out A game and have a great crowd. If we win tonight, and take down Indiana…We have an away game at a pretty good Rutgers team at the RAC. If we win these games and are 8-3, we are back in biz for an at large bid. I’m not saying we’ll do it, but I think we have a shot. We’ll have to see just how tough we are.
We make teams look better than they are. Valpo is NOT that great of a team. They are fundamentally sound but they are not exactly crawling with talent. When we play as anemic as we did on both ends, of course they’re gonna look good. We allowed them to back door us, shoot over us and lay it in on us all night long.
Not a big shocker but anyone who thinks that Lutz didn’t get completely outcoached tonight needs to remove their head from his rear. How many times after a whistle or timeout did Valpo run a set play for an easy score??? They moved the ball well, made free throws, set nice screens, ran great sets, moved great without the ball, hustled and flat out were the better team tonight. Hats off to them. I only wish we had a team that played that organized.
DA scoring 30 something is talent, Lee scoring 26 is talent, Withers averaging a double double is talent and that is all something that is not apparent right now.
[QUOTE=HappyCamper49;143754]If Coach Drew had the kind of talent we do, he’d go to the Sweet 16 every year[/QUOTE]
He’d be in the same boat without a PG. I’m down on Lutz a little right now, but I’m sick of people making one thing (Coach) the scapegoat. We have a LOT of problems, one of them is personnel. The closest things we have to a starting PG are wearing #12 (Demon Jr), and #10 (very inexperienced backup). Neither one of those guys are ideal lead guards.
Give us Abdolliah Jalloh (hey I tried to spell it!) from St. Joe’s and we at least split the losses we’ve had this year. We’d at lest be 7-2, maybe even 8-1. And Jalloh is good, but not blue chip. Even a decent lead guard would make a huge difference.