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Valpo basketball survey

After Iowa's loss in the tournament, one of the Iowa beat reporters did a live podcast and said that they are hearing about a road trip to a MVC team. He said he was hearing either Illinois state, drake or Valpo, but said they were fairly confident it was valpo. Could be a top 10 team next year losing only one player form this years team.

This would be too much of a slam dunk. Of course, without Derrick around, we might actually start to see some slam dunks, so we can hope.

Are we going to even have a team next year? What's the minimum roster requirement? John Kiser might have to start at all 5 positions he might be the only one left.

Adding Eron Gordon, Nick Robinson, and Donovan Clay. All three are supposed to be 3 point threats. Add that to a healthy Bradford (if he returns) and healthy Fazekas, we might have solved our three point shooting problem, which I think is really causing our offensive problems. Every game we seemed to have a stretch where we would show promise of driving to the hoop, and the offense would look like it is going to catch on, but then the other team would switch to zone and shut down any of that momentum, and we would have no way to break that zone because we had no (healthy/available) three point shooters. The defense was not an issue at all this year, in fact I would say it was a good defense, but the inability to have any offensive momentum really killed us. Having options from deep next year will be a huge boost in my opinion and could really open up the offense and allow us to control how we want to plain the offensive end.

Smits has gotten a lot better, and next year he should continue to get better. I will be devastated if he transfers. But for Christ sake does he even know that he has a RIGHT HAND. he would've had 35 tonight if he knew how to use his right hand. Missed too many left handed layups on the right hand side that would be easy and ones if he could use his right hand. He's a 7'1 division one center with a father that was an NBA all star and he can't use his right hand.

Golder on crutches and in a boot

Golder has been in the locker room ever since he was down for a while after falling.

Anybody know what's wrong with smits

I remember the AD saying somewhere that there will be a home and home with Vandy starting next year at the ARC. So unless the buy it out, if that is an option, then they will be here next year.

The Valpo Website says it will be on NBC Sportsnet Chicago (Channel 200 comcast)/ESPN+. Does this mean the game will be on NBCSN or not?

I believe Bakari injured his foot in the tournament last year, had problems with it this summer, and that is what's hurting again. I imagine a foot injury could definitly impact his shooting.

We already know Lottich can recruit. This really will be the season where we find out if he can coach. 

Certainly has proved he can recruit. Now that the roster is composed of his recruits, it's time to see if he uses them properly. Hopefully tonight, as an exhibition, was just him trying different things out and seeing where everybody fits in. This exhibition was a lot more productive than last years 48 points blowout in terms of getting feedback and locating weaknesses.

To be a little fair though there was probably a reason the defense let Kiser get more open looks then Fazekas did.

That's fair. But we need to be able to get him open more. He took 11 shots, but most of them were awful shots. No point in having a good shooter if we can't get him open.

[quality]

With this type of talent on a team, we should be scoring more than 57 against a division 2 opponent, or really anybody for that matter. The coaching was not good today. Everybody was playing out of position. I know Fazekas is playing the 4, but he's supposedly our best 3 point shooter and he really only got one quality look from three out of his 5 triples taken. John Kiser on the other hand had more good looks from three. The half court offense is atrocious. No productive movement whatsoever, not getting the actual shooters open on the perimeter. But at the same time not opening lanes for our guards to get to the basket. Mine as well not even run a play. The only way we can score is out in transition and nobody ever seems to try to do that. Sackey did it a few times in the second half and that was really the only glimmer of hope. And even then, any good team is not going to allow us to get out in transition every possession, so we need to have something resembling a half court offense. As elementary as it sounds, somebody needs to be in Derrik's ear every time he doesn't box out or doesn't use his right hand on the right side of the basket. He would be such a good big if he could use his right hand and box out, he certainly has the talent for it. Unfortunately, in his 4th year of college basketball, I don't think he is going to magically grow a right hand or start boxing out. Sure he had 8 rebounds, but half of those, if not more, were him rebounding his own missed layups. I would say the rotation problems are likely due to the fact that this was an exhibition game and they wanted to get everybody in, but this has been a recurring problem the past couple of years. So has the half court offense. Maybe this was just because it was the first game in a Valpo uniform for a good amount of these players, but its hard to believe these rotation and half court issues are going to go away with the new players when they have been around for a couple of years now. As for the attendance, I am not surprised at all by the turnout for this exhibition. BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD will the student section please STAND UP. Our high school student section stands up and chants the entire game except for halftime. You mine as well just put chair backs in VU's student section they are all lounge back and being quiet.  The student section was actually larger than most of last years games, which is surprising since this was an exhibition. I just hope we didn't scare the few there were away with this performance.

It was basically a shootaround. Nothing near a legitimate practice.

https://www.google.com/amp/www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/ct-ptb-spt-boys-basketball-valparaiso-brandon-newman-st-0602-story,amp.html

Here is a link to an article about Newman and prep school. From my understanding there is a better than 50% chance he's leaving VHS but don't hold me to that.

Isn't West Virginia in the Invitational. They were in he sweet 16.

Saw Brock Stull in town the other day.

I believe Sorolla got arrested last season but didn't serve the 2 game suspension until the beginning of this season. 

It didn't help our bigs that they both picked up 2 early fouls. That was a death sentence for them. Then late in the game Koch is getting foul calls on fade away hook shots from the free throw line. That's after he hooked around everybody to get open. I honestly do think we are being hazed by the officials in the first year in a new conference. Hopefully it will pass over by next year but the officials have been undeniably slated against us all conference season. The loss might actually help us in the tourney though. If we can get a win in the first round we'll draw a much more favorable matchup against team we've beaten in Southern Illinois and be able to avoid Loyola. As for the future Ive seen some games that show Sorolla and Smits have a chance, but whenever they pick up early fouls, they always have a terrible game. I am sure that most of our sophomores will take a big step going from sophomores to juniors. We also have a really solid recruiting class it looks like. Next year will certainly be an huge improvement I think, but the year after next could be amazing if we avoid injury and transfers. We'll just have to see though. I think the addition of Daniel Sackey would be great if it allows Evelyn to move to the two. He shoots very well off the ball but still has a nice drive. We have had some spurts this season at the end of games where we have looked great. It all happens when we spread it out and allow the drive and I really want to start seeing more of that cause we always seem to have a lot of success with that.

With the offers he has today, my bet is he would pick Valpo. Unfortunately I think he is going to scoop up some high major offers before his high school career is over. However, I go to Valpo High and I can say that he is sensible enough to choose what is best for his career, not just the biggest school. If he gets an offer from a school like Indiana, but feels he is not going to get a lot of playing time down the road, I would say that he would choose us. I do think that he is going to grow a lot as a player between now and graduation though considering he's only a junior, and he might get an opportunity to have a big role at a big program in which case it would be a surprise if we could steal him. Nevertheless it's his hometown team and I usually see him at the games so you never know.

Valpo offered Brandon Newman today!

Thank you I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes but it kept saying error.

I think we all need to calm down. First year in a new conference, just went through a huge roster change, most of the players are still young, freshmen and sophomores. After that timeout after going down 11-0 last night, they changed the offense up including more drives and passes instead of just stalling around the three point line, and I think that is of great importance and I think it already started to show last night. the big problem last year was how every time down the court we were getting touch fouls and we did't even have a cane to play defense as they were going to the free throw line every possession because of a stupid rebounding foul. I think we will see that diminish as the year moves on and especially into next year. A lot of these players are seeing their first major minutes of college basketball and are only 16 games into their first years as major producers on their teams. Although Smits is not getting any passes from me because he is in third year of college, I still think he will get better at holding onto the ball, as will Sorolla, eventually, but I would like to see that sooner than later although I know it is a process as we saw with Vashil. Next year I don't have any doubt in my mind that we will be a solid team and much better than this year.

Anyone else getting a bit annoyed by this isolation that coach is letting Bakari do?  Have we made any % on those dribble iso's?  I mean what the heck, it sure takes the other 4 players out of the game.

Yes the offense is horrible and Matt better change something quickly because it made us look like a joke on national television against Purdue and cost us a huge game today. Way too many turnovers. My confidence is very little in Matt actually doing something to change it because it has been like this since game one and nothing has improved at all. I know this team has a lot of potential, but I expect to see change and improvement throughout the year, and I am seeing nothing but regression into more and more turnovers every game. This team still excites me and it is going to take some time, but jesus this one hurt a lot and could have easily been prevented. I expect to see some improvement sometime soon or we are going to waste a golden opportunity to improve this extremely talented team.