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Post by twizman on Jan 16, 2016 21:43:16 GMT -5
Second-best team in the Horizon League. Love this roster.
Discuss.
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Post by wsuraider09 on Jan 17, 2016 8:53:36 GMT -5
Wouldn't get ahead of ourselves. A month ago, most of us were calling for Donlon's head.
Behind Valpo will be Green Bay, Oakland, and us, in any order. I think we've clearly established ourselves away from CSU, UIC, YSU, NKU, even UWM. Detroit is a good team and we'll see about that later this week.
I think we're in the top echelon of the league, but I'm not convinced that we're second best.
We need to keep the intensity up, and stay away from the injury bug.
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Post by Raider3G on Jan 17, 2016 9:43:16 GMT -5
Wouldn't get ahead of ourselves. A month ago, most of us were calling for Donlon's head. Behind Valpo will be Green Bay, Oakland, and us, in any order. I think we've clearly established ourselves away from CSU, UIC, YSU, NKU, even UWM. Detroit is a good team and we'll see about that later this week. I think we're in the top echelon of the league, but I'm not convinced that we're second best. We need to keep the intensity up, and stay away from the injury bug. Agree with that after yesterday's league action. I definitely think this team has improved and gotten "good", and it's been great to see the improvement. I think we will end up as the 2nd or 3rd seed if the team stays healthy, but does that definitely mean 2nd best? Not sure, since there is not a lot of separation as you pointed out. But what I aled by has been the improved 2nd half play the last few games and continued improvement in areas such as assist-to-turnover ratio. All good signs. Another good sign is Benzinger seemingly getting back on track.
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We're good
Jan 17, 2016 12:05:54 GMT -5
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Post by BasketBallJones on Jan 17, 2016 12:05:54 GMT -5
To date the only league win against an opponent with a winning league record is Milwaukee. That certainly was a good win especially since it was on their home court, but the other 3 wins are against teams that are a combined 4-13 in league play. I think the next two games against Detroit and Valpo will tell us all we need to know how we stack up in the HL. Having said that, I'm certainly pleased how this team is performing right now. The defense is there as always with a BD team, but the offense is much improved from the beginning of the season. Karena's post play and production in the paint has been good, and he has stayed out of foul trouble, which is a huge improvement. I think Minnis's play has also helped the offense tremendously. I love his ability to get to the rim and either finish or dish it off to an open shooter or a cutter coming to the bucket. Staying healthy will be big factor. I'm much more optomistic now than during that horrible stretch in the OOC portion of the season.
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Post by gerb on Jan 17, 2016 12:23:45 GMT -5
We've won a few games against mostly terrible competition, so I wouldn't exactly start making any room in the rafters for a banner just yet.
HOWEVER... we've shown the last few games that we're much better than the cellar dwellers and improving. Donlon has made adjustments to pare down the lineup and switch up the style of play. We're still way too thin underneath, but there is more consistency. I was hating on Minnis when we first signed him, but he seems to be the engine driving this thing. I will give both of them credit for the recent run and I'm hopeful for something special this year.
I've been thinking about it for a while and here is the best scenario for the team this year. It will sound a bit crazy at first, but stay with me. First off, if we don't win the HL championship, we shouldn't go to the postseason. Our attendance is too low to justify a pay-to-play CIT or CBI bid on our end. That's a financial decision. It's NCAA or bust.
Here's where I might sound a little crazy, but hear me out: we need Valpo to win out, including against us. The better their RPI, the better their chance of going in as a solid at-large bid with a good seed. Our losses are bad enough that we couldn't get anything above a 15 seed and that may be generous. If Valpo gets in on their own merits, it's more cash for everyone in the league, including them. Statistically, it would behoove them to lose the HL final. It would actually help us if we lost twice to them and won out against everyone else. We'd get the league's 2 seed on a neutral court, win two tourney games, and BAM! Two HL teams are dancing.
I'm not suggesting anyone try to throw a game here or that Donlon and Drew ever would. If it played out this way, though, I'd be pleased as punch. As a fan of MAC football, I watched this happen almost every year in the BCS days. Someone would go undefeated and start knocking at the door of the top 10, then they'd get tripped up by a second tier rival and everyone -including the team that beat them - got a lower tier bowl. Hell, teams actually won themselves out of bowl game by pulling the upset.
I realize how much this sounds against logic and the spirit of competition, but if only a couple of games really count at this point, we might as well do the best we can and hope to win 11 more games instead of 13.
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We're good
Jan 17, 2016 12:26:14 GMT -5
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Post by gerb on Jan 17, 2016 12:26:14 GMT -5
To date the only league win against an opponent with a winning league record is Milwaukee. That certainly was a good win especially since it was on their home court, but the other 3 wins are against teams that are a combined 4-13 in league play. I think the next two games against Detroit and Valpo will tell us all we need to know how we stack up in the HL. Having said that, I'm certainly pleased how this team is performing right now. The defense is there as always with a BD team, but the offense is much improved from the beginning of the season. Karena's post play and production in the paint has been good, and he has stayed out of foul trouble, which is a huge improvement. I think Minnis's play has also helped the offense tremendously. I love his ability to get to the rim and either finish or dish it off to an open shooter or a cutter coming to the bucket. Staying healthy will be big factor. I'm much more optomistic now than during that horrible stretch in the OCC portion of the season. +1
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Post by twizman on Jan 17, 2016 12:54:02 GMT -5
Oakland is a one-man show. They don't play good D. They lost at home to Youngstown State -- the team we just destroyed 81-45.
Green Bay beat us in a close game at their place. I bet we beat them at Nutter. We'll see.
I'm confident saying we're the second-best team in the HL. Biggie Minnis was really the missing piece IMO. Ever since he joined the team 7 games in, we've been a different squad. Also, our key guys all seem to be improving. Karena gets better each time out. Benzinger is finally coming around. Alstork is the best player on the team IMO. Yoho is a scorer who is playing well, but hasn't truly found his stride yet. I think he will close out the season (and his WSU career) very strong. Thomasson is probably the one key guy who hasn't been playing all that well of late, but overall he's been very good this season.
Billy has really pared this down to a 7-man rotation with Thomasson, Benzinger, Hughes, Alstork, Karena, Yoho and Minnis. That's a pretty damn good top-7. Veteran too with four seniors in the group. Justin Mitchell -- who was very good as a freshman last season -- is then the next guy off the bench if needed. Then we have the trio of Ernsthausen/Mortensen/Davis to provide depth at center for the games where Karena gets in foul trouble. (Anyone notice Michael is doing a better job of staying away from fouls recently? He's also greatly improved his FT shooting over last year. That's a guy working on his game hard in the offseason, improving his weaknesses. He's our best center in a very long time and one of the best post scorers in the HL.)
4-1 in the conference thus far, very good roster ... it's time to feel good about this team.
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Post by Raider3G on Jan 17, 2016 13:04:48 GMT -5
I get the points about beating cellar dwellars, but we have beat them the manner in which a good team should. UWM, by contrast, struggled to put away both CSU and NKU, and UWGB struggled mightily to beat UIC. Hats off to them for a win, and we'll see how we do against those teams the second time round, but so far three of the league wins haven't been in doubt or even close to it. Also, we keep talking about YSU beating Oakland, but they also hung 100 on UWGB. If our team stays healthy, they win 11-13 league games.
But even before that, let's just hope the team keeps playing the same way against the Jekyll/Hyde team that is Detroit. Do we get the team that has struggled against CSU and YSU at home and just lost to Oakland at home? Detroit just finished up the same five game homestand we are on, and went 3-2, with one loss a blowout against Valpo.
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Post by Black PantherU on Jan 18, 2016 19:59:46 GMT -5
Oakland is a one-man show. They don't play good D. They lost at home to Youngstown State -- the team we just destroyed 81-45. Do you even watch Oakland? The game they played against Youngstown State was only the second game for YSU after the Penguins lost Bobby Hain for 4-8 weeks. Hain was the conduit for their entire offense, which had to change completely after he was out. They had to move to a much faster pace, which as it turns out is better suited for most of their team. Without Hain, the Penguins are a totally different ball club - which caught both Detroit and Oakland by surprise. Yes, Detroit was caught by surprise - if YSU come even close to Detroit on the boards in their game, they would have won. They did everything else they could to win - shot well, got to the line a lot and didn't turn the ball over a ton. In the Oakland game, they shot 50% from three - which is a lot when you're talking about 32 attempts (that's 16 makes for 48 points!!!) The reason that Milwaukee and Northern Kentucky or you guys pasted them has nothing to do with us being better than Oakland and everything to do with us being better than Youngstown State. We won these games because our coaching staffs had the benefit of game tape that Oakland and Detroit didn't have. We now know what YSU is without Bobby Hain, so the conference is taking it to them. Oakland isn't a bad team. They're a good team that came across a bad team that played a completely different game than they had just two games prior.
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We're good
Jan 19, 2016 23:36:39 GMT -5
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Post by BasketBallJones on Jan 19, 2016 23:36:39 GMT -5
BlackpantherU said: Oakland isn't a bad team. They're a good team that came across a bad team that played a completely different game than they had just two games prior
Oakland just lost at home to NKU. I admit I haven't seen Oakland play yet, but this score is surprising to me, to say the least. Maybe they are just a one man show.
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Post by Raider3G on Jan 19, 2016 23:41:28 GMT -5
Oakland and Detroit will be 8-9 win teams in HL play but still scare me. Oakland, like Detroit, is dangerous in a one and done scenario because they have an player that is explosive and is always close to taking over and winning a game by himself...that is, unless they come out of a timeout and shoot a fade-away three as time is running out....
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Post by hittmanraider on Jan 20, 2016 9:48:42 GMT -5
Having seen Detroit in person, I think they will be a factor. Bass is the real deal. Speaking of Oakland, so is Felder. Those two guys are good enough to win a game any night in our league themselves.
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Post by ohiopirate on Jan 20, 2016 10:23:26 GMT -5
We have historically been really good against teams with one superstar player when we can scheme against them and put a lockdown defender (like Kendall Griffin) on them. I'm not sure we have that superstar defensive player this season - at least not yet.
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Post by keithfromxenia on Jan 20, 2016 11:55:44 GMT -5
a couple of thoughts. first, it is nice to be off to a good start in the league. And while we may not have beaten any really good teams we are still 5-1 I think in league play. truth is other than valpo there are no really good teams in the hl this year so no reason we can't finish top 2-3. i think our top 6 or 7 rotation is solid and can compete with almost any hl team. our Achilles heel, no surprise, is interior depth. We have no one behind Michael and jt who is ready to compete at a championship level right now. I kind of thought Daniel the Dane would be a little more div i ready than he has shown because of his age and experience. maybe later. big game friday. is the game on espn??
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Post by hittmanraider on Jan 20, 2016 15:52:20 GMT -5
No TV, ESPN3.
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