Messages

There will be good halftime entertainment for this game as well, the Chicago Sky Squad: http://youtu.be/-PDaQKWSwgE

Finally some halftime entertainment that can put the ball in the hoop.  Those little kids last Saturday could handle the ball, but they just didn't have the ability to finish. I would project them to be a pass first PG with questionable defense and invisible scoring.

5-3 I like all the home games and at Detroit

Congratulations to Alec for being named Horizon League Player of the Week by College Sports Madness: http://www.collegesportsmadness.com/article/8166 It's amazing how obvious the right selection is to an organization not driven by a political agenda of "steering" the choice to specific HL players and programs to serve the "greater good."

Right now they have Milwaukee on the 14 line.  That'd be pretty good for them and a decent sign if one of the HL's top schools win it.

Let's get Keith 20 minutes with the 4 other starters and then rest them the rest of the game.

Man Valpo is going against The Rock?  Well let's hope it's all Pain and no Gain for them.  Maybe we'll be six times faster and more furious.  We should be looking for retaliation against these Joes.  We'll be primed for some transformations. It'll be a race to witch mountain...

Ok I'm done, that last one was meaningless.

So what is going on with Lexus?  Obviously he didn't appear to be hurt.... Also, was Moussa hurt at the end?  I saw Bryce giving him an earful and never got back on the court.

According to the postgame Bryce wasn't sure if Lexus was even going to be able to play.

My take on LMU

They've got 3 stars that we need to watch.  Outside of that we should win.

UDM  13-3  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA No. Maybe 3-13

We all know how great the ARC's facilities are.  The locker rooms could be quite frigid.

Really 2014.....Bader is the focus of every defense we play. You make me laugh. If he played for Valpo you would have him as the POY already. This summer he was one of 20 players invited by the NBA to the Kevin Durrant skills camp for the 20 top wings in the country. Didn't see any other Horizon League players there. Probably should have been at least 5 Horizon league guys there before Bader but maybe they turned down the invite.  Here's what he does for the team. You have to take your best defender and face guard him and not help off him at any time leaving the rest of the players to play 4 on 4. If you don't he will put 45 on you so quick you will say how could that kid do that. Oh well, doesn't really matter what you or I think. The games that matter start on January 2nd.

I'm really looking forward to January 4th and not because I'm getting married that day.

Aaron has always been a good shooter.

Thanks for the laugh.

Last season he shot 37.13% from the field and 34.54% from three last season. Hell if you take out his horrific three point shooting he still shoots 39.52% from two last season.

This season he is shooting 36.21% from the field and 33.80% from three.  HE'S SHOOTING WORSE THAN A BAD LAST SEASON... This guy has always been one of the worst shooters in the league. 61.20% of his shots this season are from three.  Please let Aaron shoot 15 threes against us this season. PLEASE!

Well this is a "big" game.  It's MidMajorMadness's Game of the Week.

Valpo wins it by over 10.

I just want the ARC to be loud throughout what should be a very close game.

This game is a great use of Alec.  I say he goes for 20 and 12.

We win 80-74 with it going back and forth until the very end.

I know its not possible, but if valpo had a tv deal I think that would help ticket sales.

It's actually not impossible.  Every home HL game is streamed on HLN.  Could Lakeshore show the games and use the feed as the HLN? Sure.  Could them make pretty decent money off ad revenue? Probably. Will this ever happen? Probably not.

3 Things I want to see:

1. #NoDrivesBobby and #Some3sBobby.  If he's at the top of the key and tries to drive the ball I'm going to lose my mind, especially against a taller team.

2. How does Peters react to a larger player on him and more focus? He's not going to be a secret weapon anymore after putting up 30 points.

3. Will Dority go after a ball after he dribbles it off his foot?

1. He had at least 3 travel calls on "drives" to the hoop.

Take a gander at the box score.  1 TO.  Sorry, but I trust their counting over yours.

I specifically recall 2 travel calls on him, both in the first half.

1. Bobby catches the ball from Yeo with his back to the basket around the elbow. He turns takes two steps and tries to sell he was fouled and throws the ball up. Travel called since he took two steps and lifted his pivot foot.

2. Bobby gets the ball at the top of key.  Takes 2 steps to get to the free throw line and starts to dribble.  The announcers specifically call this one out saying he's trying to drive the lane like a guard and point out he's 6'10".

We committed 10 too many turnovers.  That's all the analysis of this game you need to do. 

Bobby is a trainwreck. 
1. He had at least 3 travel calls on "drives" to the hoop.  He shouldn't be trying to handle the ball up there. The announcers actually made a joke about it, saying "He isn't a guard, but he's trying to do guard things".
2. His 3ptm and percentage mask quite a bit. He's 5-13 from two. That's TERRIBLE for a supposed big. He's been bigger than every player that's defended him this year, and as we've seen from Vashil and Moussa, Bobby is the only one with back to the basket moves.  He should be inside doing the dirty work Kevin did last year. I thought pre-season that we'd be stronger inside with an improved Bobby but he's regressed to the early season of last year and #No3sBobby that we all hated.

#Some3sBobby needs to be put away for a while and we need February '13 Bobby. You know when he had 7 points and 5 boards per game, and when he shot 60% from the field and only took 4 threes and had 4 TOs in 8 games. Or when he took 4 threes in his THIRTY THREE shots for the month (By comparison he's got 8 threes in 21 shots).  Bobby isn't Rowdy, he should stop trying to play like him, focus on being a bigger version of KVW.

Hopefully this road trip will be a positive learning experience for the team. I think it's safe to say that Illinios, Ohio, and Evansville will be the three most hostile environments the team will face this season.

Yeah, Resch (UWGB) and Illinois will be the toughest places we play, imho. I don't think Evansville will be difficult since we should quiet the crowd early.

I'm imagining Detroit will be tougher than Ohio.  Ohio was dead during the second half, until we finally took the lead. It may be one of the top 10 places we play in terms of crowd noise, but that's all the higher I'd rate it. I'm guessing our conference games could prove to be more hostile locales (sans UIC)

Wright losing to DePaul is a real loss

http://www.illinoisloyalty.com/Forums/showpost.php?p=826956&postcount=106

Turns out Gueye has significantly more experience than Fernandez, so I was wrong about that in my preview. Shows how thorough I am doesn't it? (In all seriousness, I try to be pretty thorough, I don't know how I missed his years at Alabama).

Guy with 7 posts on their forum is thorough and missed the PREVIOUS team Gueye was on... It's not like he went Alabama>>JUCO>>Valpo buddy...

Moreover, who on this board thinks that this year's team will be better than last year's?
http://www.illinoisloyalty.com/Forums/showpost.php?p=824526&postcount=67

I would say we're more balanced this year, but definitely not better.  A game between the two teams would be fun though.
'12-13 Valpo 72
'13-14 Valpo 64

Here is a different thought (depending on his defensive ability)....   Start Lexus instead of Alec.    I think we are weaker at the point anyway. And when Keith is eligible Alec will lose his starting spot.   Easier to take it from Lexus than Alec.

I highly doubt that Alec will be leaving the starting lineup at any point this season.  Even though Coleman has played well, he will probably be the guy dropped down when Carter becomes eligible.  Several people have stated on here that Alec was promised starts, which is one of the reasons he came here, and he hasn't done much negative to drop him down.

I was going to wait a little while to consider this but I think this should be it's own thread: "Who should start when Carter becomes eligible".  IMHO I think we should start Carter, Coleman and Peters and have Williams-Dority-Yeo as the second unit coming off the bench. 

   
• Carter will obviously play the majority of the time at point, but giving him 12-15 minutes off a night with Williams spelling him would be good for Lexus's development. 
• I think if you split Coleman and Dority's time 50-50 you'd be better off.  Coleman gives you more athleticism and better defense, while Dority might give you more scoring (I'm still not sold on that point, as I believe Coleman can give you 10-12 a night). I don't think their styles really work together on the court.
• Peters and Yeo can play together when you want to go smaller with Peters at the 4 for Bobby (or even Bobby at the 5 if Vashil or Moussa get in foul trouble). But for the most part I can see Peters getting the most minutes at the 3 with Yeo spelling him.

Back to Illinois.  They are very vulnerable to second chance points.  I don't know who Egwu is going to guard, but both Bobby and Moussa need to have a big game and be look to crash the offensive board.  If we can get inside scoring and offensive rebounds, I think we will stand a good shot of winning.  Defensively we need to be ready to provide helpside defense.  Illinois runs a lot of motion offense, especially against man defense.  When J-State went into their zone, Illinois tried to run some motion, but for the most part the stood still and passed the ball around the perimeter and looked to get it to Egwu. Maybe we should switch up defenses on them frequently to try to confuse them. We also need to get a body on Egwu.  He can shoot it from 15 feet or so, but he's much more comfortable with his back to the basket.

Yeah, that one

Test drove it for about 20 seconds after I installed it and I was impressed.  If it is better than the CBS YourDay app, for example, I will be well pleased.  Might be because it's just radio streams without all the extra crap.  I know this: it's already tons better than the WAKE Radio App I tried last year a couple of times.  And it's already better than the WJOB app I tried this year. I'm going to listen to the woman's game tonight to give it a longer test run.

Holy crap that WAKE app was awful. It was 10 minutes behind, it would buffer after every commercial break and it was a ginormous app for only one radio station.  TuneIn Radio works pretty well for all station that aren't a part of the CBS network or the IHeartRadio network.  With those 3 apps you should be able to listen to any radio station in the country.

Would anyone else mind seeing Coleman take a "point forward" role so Dority can be more of a shooting guard? I think in that first unit Coleman has the best ball handling skills and if Dority brings the ball up every time I could see Illinois pressing to force TOs.

Anyone know if this game is going to be tv? I was hoping it might be on the Big Ten Network.

I'm fairly certain the B1G Network streams stuff online for free, don't quote me though.

http://btn.com/shows/ If you go to Wednesday, they show that the game will be on BTN. That's good news for us!

I think it says that it will be on the internet (BTN/BTNTOGO)  I think Purdue or Penn State will get the TV nod.

http://bigtennetwork.stats.com/cbk/scoreboard.asp?day=20131113&conf=003

According to this it's on TV and the Go App.  Looks like Purdue and PSU won't even be on the net.

Anyone know if this game is going to be tv? I was hoping it might be on the Big Ten Network.

I'm fairly certain the B1G Network streams stuff online for free, don't quote me though.

http://btn.com/shows/

If you go to Wednesday, they show that the game will be on BTN. That's good news for us!