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Looking at it right now Milwaukee is almost guaranteed to be a 15 seed.

The tournaments that might affect Milwaukee's seeding and could potentially bump them up to a 14 are the MEAC, America East, and Southland conferences.  I doubt there's a major upset in the WAC and Sun Belt, but if there is they could potentially be a 13. Very good odds they are a 15, and no chance at a 16 as there are 4 teams already well below their RPI and 2 more conference championships that will easily end up below them.

Kyle...No Trey Lewis in the top 10? The CSU people say he was the team's MVP and most complete player this year. I think when you consider what he does offensively and defensively, he's the most underrated player in the HL.

It's really tough to pick people from CSU since any given night one of them can go off for 20 points or they could have a 3-20 shooting night. I forget about Lewis quite a bit, and looking at his number this year he's a quiet 13-3-3.  He's certainly underrated in my mind.

I was just looking at the brackets from last year's CIT.  What was a little disconcerting was the fact that Chicago State made the field with a record of 11-21.  How in the heck did that happen?

CSU made it last year because they won their 4 team conference.

I would think Alec is a lock to at least be named to the preseason all conference 2nd team.

Unfortunately they don't do it past 1st team. But I think he is for sure a lock on the top 2 teams at the end of the season.

Have named two teams for as long as I can remember.  http://www.horizonleague.org/blog/green-bay-tabbed-horizon-league-favorite-ysus-perry-voted-preseason-player-of-the-year?page=14&sport_id=2&types%5B%5D=2

Gees, I was at the freaking announcement and still have the press release on my desk at home.  I guess I either missed or completely forgot about the second team.  Then yes, Alec will definitely be on the second team along with Felder. I think Hain, Petros and Lee will round out that second team.

I would think Alec is a lock to at least be named to the preseason all conference 2nd team.

Unfortunately they don't do it past 1st team. But I think he is for sure a lock on the top 2 teams at the end of the season.

Thought it might be fun to look at the top returnees from this year's rosters for next year's "Pre-Season All Conference" picks...and overall strength of the teams in the HL...

(Current Class Years):
Cleveland State:   Forbes (SO), Lewis (SO), Grady (SO), Lee (JR)
Detroit:  Howard, Jr (JR), Williams (FR)
Green Bay:  Sykes (JR), Fouse (SO) Love (SO)
Illinois-Chicago:  Bird (FR) Parker (JR) Brown (JR)
Milwaukee:  Tiby (SO) McWorter (JR)  Arians (SO)
Oakland:  Felder (FR) Petros (JR)
Wright:  Arceneaux (JR) Sledge (JR) Hopkins (JR)
Youngstown:  Amiker (JR)  Hain (SO)
... and us.
Peters, Williams, Adekoya, Yeo, Fernandez, Carter...+E.Victor

Preseason All Conference ...
Peters
Sykes - POY
Felder
Howard,Jr
Arceneaux  (but Petros, Forbes, Hopkins and Tiby will get some votes

Don't forget about Matthew Grant (DET), Greg Mays (GB), and Ryan Weber (YSU)

I would say this is my preseason all conference, I don't think Peters and Felder makes it personally.

Sykes - POY
Howard, Jr
Tiby
Grady
Forbes

We've got some really deep talent in the league coming back next season.  Cleveland State is returning 4 people who averaged over 9+ ppg

Before anyone says it here, that was a dumb move by Carter but the game was over before he got DQ'd

WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING?!

Losing. And we're doing a great job of it

Chair backs all around the arena would help the situation but would cut attendance down quite a bit but needs to be done in he near future.

If they put in chairbacks in both sides of the ARC I would expect them to charge $15 for all chairbacks with an upcharge for the first 5 rows of the old chairback sections (since those would be closer to the action than the first rows of the old bleacher).  I would gladly pay the extra $5 a game for that.

See I think Valpo's Tourney success hinges on their ability to score more than their opponents.  If they can do that they'll win the tourney and get a shiny 15 seed in the NCAAs

HL 1st round vegas odds. 

Oakland -4
UWM -2
Valpo -10.5

I'll put $1 on YSU +4 since I think they win. Not touching that Valpo line...

Oh, and if you put $5 on Scott Drew's Baylor to win it all, you roll $1250 profit. 

43rd in RPI. 7-9 in the toughest conference in the country. 6-9 vs top 50 RPI teams and 1-6 vs top 25 teams? I don't think they're going to make it into the bracket.

You can upload it and then set it so that only people who have the link can see it.  If you post the link in here I'm pretty sure an ESPN copyright lawyer wouldn't catch on to it.

That Detroit-Milwaukee game will be interesting and I think will be the difference between a perfect bracket for me.

Interesting!  I saw that the women's team put out an announcement, but haven't noticed anything from the men.

I didn't realize there was an Angola, Indiana.  I was trying to piece together how a fellow with the name of Chris Clemens arrived by way of southwest Africa.

Indiana, where our cities are named after countries so people think we're from a more exotic locale!

long time reader, first time poster. Vegas has the line as green bay 9.5 favs, I was shocked. Does the big man in the middle for them make that much of a difference?

Seems like a lot of points considering that GB has not covered the spread in any of their last 4 home games and lost to Milwaukee outright in their last home game 12 days ago:

http://statsheet.com/mcb/teams/wisconsin-green-bay/schedule

From the stat sheet on the UWM game it looks like despite playing 31 minutes Brown didn't really show up.  All Sykes.  UWM taking it to GB on the road in their house bodes well for our lads.

Bovada has the line set at UWGB -9.  I put $3 on it because I'm a big time spender

Speaking of UIC.  I was listening to NPR radio this morning and they reported the UIC professors are on a two day strike.  Can anyone from the Chicago area confirm this?

I can't because I don't watch the news, but google can confirm it

[Valparaiso]

That is a tempting bet...

I just checked Bovada and they don't have the line up, but if it's anything near 9 points I'm going for that.  No way we lose by double digits. 

Here's some interesting information from the preview:

Valparaiso:
Team record: 16-11 SU, 13-9 ATS
Current streak: won 2 straight games.

is 4-1 SU in its last 5 games on the road
The total has gone OVER in 4 of last 6 games when playing on the road against Wisc-Green Bay
is 2-4 ATS in its last 6 games when playing on the road against Wisc-Green Bay
is 2-6 SU in its last 8 games when playing on the road against Wisc-Green Bay

When playing on Thursday are 5-5
Before playing Youngstown State are 5-5
After playing Wisc-Milwaukee are 7-3
After a win are 5-5

Wisc-Green Bay:
Team record: 21-5 SU, 12-10 ATS
Current streak: won 2 straight games.

is 13-1 SU in its last 14 games at home
is 16-2 SU in its last 18 games
The total has gone UNDER in 4 of last 5 games at home
is 6-2 SU in its last 8 games when playing at home against Valparaiso

When playing on Thursday are 3-7
Before playing Oakland are 2-1
After playing Cleveland State are 6-4
After a win are 8-2

[WHY DON'T PEOPLE READ BEFORE THEY POST GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH]

WHY DON'T PEOPLE READ BEFORE THEY POST GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Mostly to draw your ire

I kind of want to see them lose out then win a game in the tourney. Just for chaos.

So I decided to look at how bad UIC was and what their RPI would be if they lose out.  RPI Wizard has them finishing with a 324 RPI if they lose out.  Ouch but not nearly as bad as 2005 YSU. This has a 14.42% chance of happening.

Another fun thing I thought I'd look at is if they lose out, what their RPI would be with different conference results. 

Lose out, win conf. championship: (7-25), 278.6 RPI, 0.10% chance of happening
Lose out, lose conf. championship: (6-26), 293.0 RPI, 0.04% chance of happening
Lose out, lose semifinals: (5-26), 308.0 RPI, 0.60% chance of happening
Lose out, win one game: (4-26), 321.0 RPI, 1.80% chance of happening
Lose out, lose their game: (3-26), 328.2 RPI, 11.97% chance of happening

Note the lose out and winning conference championship has the same record as winning 1 game in the regular season and losing in the conference finals, as well as winning 2 games and losing in the semifinals, as well as winning 3 games then winning one game in the tournament as well as winning 4 games and losing their first game. That's why it has a 0.10% chance of happening.

[Stats by Freshmen (During conference play)]

Crazy to think we have a legitimate shot at first place and we start 3 freshmen and play 4 on a regular basis (so I would imagine if Clay stays healthy). Compare that to GB and CSU, who are more veteran team. It would be interesting to see if we play the most freshmen percentage wise compared to other teams in the HL.

Not that hard to look up (for me at least).

Stats by Freshmen (During conference play)

Team	Players	GP	MIN	REB	AST	STL	BLK	PTS
VALPO	5	44	879	127	63	23	8	273
DET	2	22	509	63	29	19	7	156
OAK	2	12	384	41	79	10	1	145
UIC	3	22	301	20	15	8	1	79
UWGB	3	22	272	44	9	12	10	68
YSU	4	29	138	16	14	8	3	34
UWM	1	10	92	6	3	2	0	26
WSU	2	9	44	7	4	5	3	8
CSU	1	5	24	1	2	0	0	1

I want to point out a few things. 
1. Cleveland and Wright have been led by non-freshman, quite obviously. Milwaukee's Cody Wichmann has played ~10 minutes per game, but does very little else.
2. Youngstown's freshman actually play the least amount of minutes per game and only one, Marcus Keene, averages 2+ ppg.
3. Oakland has 2 freshmen who have played, but Jalen Hayes, has only played 1 minutes this season. He obviously did nothing in that 1 minute of play.  That means Felder is out assisting every team's freshmen totals.
4. Detroit's freshmen are basically split even for every statistic this season. It's really odd how similar they are.
5. Obviously we've got the most minutes with 5 freshmen playing and 3 of those playing 20+ MPG.  Oakland actually has the most MPG with 32, and if you took out their 1 min in 1 game, they are up to 34.8. Detroit is second with 23.1 and we're 3rd with 20.0
6. 5 teams have a freshmen who play 10+ MPG: Valpo (3), Detroit (2), UIC (2), Oakland (1) and GB (1).

So can Valpo just win the Newcomer of the Year award? Unfortunately I don't think we've had any one player stand out so that will hurt Lexus's and Alec's chances at the award.  Kahlil Felder is my pick to win it, in a landslide. He's been tearing up the conference season and leads ALL players in assists per game by nearly 2 assists.

Kyle Nelson (I think) tweeted that the referees had a quick whistle and long patience -- both coaches should have had a tech.  Someone on press row tweeted they heard the lead official report that Bobby got T-ed up for getting in an Oakland player's face.  I think he needs to reign in his passion just a smidge.

That was me, glad at least one real person is following Link "The refs have a quick whistle on offensive fouls and a long leash for the coaches. Both should have at least 1 tech "

It was really odd that they were getting Moussa and Bobby on so many offensive fouls (I'll be honest I wasn't watching them that closely on the offensive end) and yet not calling the illegal screens and pushing off Bader did EVERY time down the court. Superstar calls I guess... LaVonte does get away with more hand checking than anyone else I've seen.

Both coaches should have been T'd up after 8 minutes of game play.  Hell Bryce should have gotten 2 at the TV time out. Neither got one... Really surprising... Even Paul Oren agreed

Did anyone have any better feeling than I for what was happening during the... second, I think... video review?

The first was looking at elbows, and was in the middle of a bunch of back and forth between Bobby and a ref, and not long before Bobby's T.  So, that sort of made sense.

The other was.. evidently a review of the clock situation.  But, with a significant amount of time to play (minutes... ~4 minutes?  more?).  And ended up adding just one second.  Had the clocks somehow really obviously malfunctioned in a way that I completely missed?

It felt like a long break in play for very little reason.

The shot clock didn't start and even tho it appeared they only added a second to the game clock and took 1 off the shot clock it was a bigger error than that.  The shot clock didn't start until they blew the whistle and then they ran the shot clock for 5 seconds after the game clock ran.  Kampe didn't seem to want the break to occur and told the refs "Set the clock to 25 seconds, I don't care."   I thought that was quite humorous. 

The announcer thinks Bader is an NBA player. At 6'4", which significant range, I think that is a possibility, as a 3 point specialist.

I heard him say that as well.  I think its a possibility.  However, against bigger and faster athletes I don't think he will be able to create his own 3pt shot.

Even 3-pt. specialists in the NBA have to be able to defend.  I haven't paid much attention to how he does at that end of the court.  Does anyone know?

Outside of Mondy no one on that team really stands out as particularly bad or good.  Mondy is excellent, quite obviously, but their team defense is reletively meh.

I don't like this Gorches guy at all, based on the various articles I have seen referenced.  He doesn't do his research, and as LAA pointed out, he essentially bashed some of our quality role players of years past.  I view him as a hack, quite honestly...

I've never liked Gorches.  He tries to touch every part of P-T Sports and yet he doesn't have a grip on any of them.  Whenever I read one of his high school articles I always feel like this is the first time he's been seen that school play and he's talked to the coaches.