Messages

Who is this Palm fella? And what happened to Jerome?

Our lack of depth was apparent this afternoon. Give Powell and the staff credit for getting the team ready to fight in this game. Tough loss.

Nice to show some fight in the first half. Need another solid 20 minutes.

The floor keeps getting lower for some of these players. It's possible we've seen their ceiling already, I mean for this season. I was holding out for a late season surge, but now I know those hopes were misplaced.

And yet I still believe that VU has a young core of 5-6 players who, if they can be persuaded to stay, will be among the centerpieces of a strong team within a year or two. Schwieger, Williamson, Edwards, Sepp, Weatherspoon, and Ajiboye have all had their very good moments (and then some). Add Scroggins and Manyang (both of whom, fingers crossed, are lifting weights like crazy), bring in some new talent, and it's possible that we've got at least a .500 basketball team next season.

Assuming our core stays, we're bound to have more talent next season.

Scroggins for Barrett should be an upgrade. McNair for Sciarroni should be an upgrade. Manyang for Palm is a wash at worst (assuming Manyang is healthy to play).

That leaves us at least 2 spots to fill with transfers or freshmen.

I'm hoping the players have bought into Powell's vision and will stick around.

Also need to give other teams credit for scouting us well. They've locked down on Stafford and forced other players to step up.

Please don't tell me the talent is there overall, it's not. Most of these guys are sub ham and eggers. I would presume Powell is on the recruiting trail and going to the deck to improve his hand.

I'm not sure that it's accurate to say that most are sub ham and eggers. It's more question marks than an obvious lack of talent. And the upside of a few of the players on the roster is obvious.

Powell has already said that he's going to try and bring in more experienced transfers.

If you thought things couldn't get worse after Indiana State....

I'll be at the game tomorrow. First time at the ARC in 10 years! Let's go Valpo!

Not going to win many games with poor shooting and poor rebounding.

Brutal

Looks like a good sized crowd at the game today.

Why are we talking about whether one of our best players will leave? I'm going to trust that Roger will build a winning program, regardless who suits up for the Beacons.

Lastly, can we focus on the improvement of the team the remainder of the season. Lets enjoy this, because we have the right coaching staff in place and are getting the most out of our roster limitations/experience. Can we worry about roster shakeups in the offseason, because we don't know what the hell will happen?!. As far as we can all see, the team seems pretty bought in to the coaching staff/culture at the moment.  Just maybe, just maybe...they all want to come back next year. Show up Saturday to Mo State! Full Stop

If the team has bought into Roger Powell as much as we have then I wouldn't be predicting defections. 

Its fun to watch these kids even when they lose. Their improvement from early December has been enormous.

I think it's evident that these guys really like playing together and they've bought into the program. The attitude difference between this years team and last years is...unbelievable. I'm not sure that we had a team last year rather than a collection of individuals who happened to play on the same court.

This stretch of MVC play is really going to tell us where we're at with the program. 1 win is bare minimum. 2 wins is good progress. 3 or more means this program is on the rise and has the chance to be a contender in the next year or two.

That was a fun game to watch. I hope the word gets out that this is an entertaining team and we start to see more fans at the ARC.

Valpo wins!!! Feels good.

Two questions. How would you compare the effort of this team to Lottich's teams the last few years? and has this years team reached it's ceiling already?

This was one of the those games where you realized the opponent was clearly more talented and physical than you. The fact we kept it under double digits is...surprising.

The effort of this team is 1000% better than last year. The Lottich teams were a collection of individuals, now we have a team albeit a not very good one. Powell has said that's he's trying to install a culture at Valpo and it looks like he's been somwhat successful. We'll know if players have bought in at the end of the season and the transfer portal heats up.

From a team perspective I don't see things changing. I think that individual players could really improve and take steps to become the key building blocks of the next great team. But we shall see.

We blew it. Had a great chance to win and we disappeared the last 8 minutes.

There's very little talent on the roster. Whatever the reason anyone wants to apply for this being the case is up to the individual poster but its the basis for the results.

There's 3 or 4 guys on the roster who belong on the roster of a good program and some of them are playing roles they would not play on a good roster. Everyone else can leave.

Guys that need to stay:

Darius
Cooper
Stafford
Sepp
Williamson

Need to improve to stay:
Edwards
Ola
Sherman

Time to go:
Palm
Connor

TBD:
Scroggins
Lual

I'll say that the Bradley game was our worst "effort" game by far and not indicative of how we played this season.

Glad to see that people around the league have recognized the improvement that Darius has made!

It's inevitable that players will leave the program considering the current transfer rules.

But have to avoid a mass exodus. And we need to retain the core (Schweiger, Williamson, Sepp). If Coach Powell is as good as we think he is, then hopefully we avoid the transfer bug (unlike previous coaches)

We're playing with five D1 players today. At best.

Well that was ugly. Lost by 18 this year after losing to them by 30 last year. Progress?

I thought that Coach Powell had a young team ready, for the most part, to break the Samford press. Last year's team would have lost by 40.

We're not gonna win if we shoot 13% from 3. Just missing wide open looks. Ugh.

The growing pains this season are also going to happen on the coaching side. We started to run clock and get out of our offensive rhythm way too early. If we learn from this, then it's a tough but tolerable lesson.

Other than the first and last 5 minutes, I thought this team looked and played well.