Nice Saturday for the Valley

[talksalot]

Valparaiso 4-2 beat Southern 71-59
Missouri State 5-1  beat South Carolina State 92-74
Evansville 6-0 beat Southeast Missouri State 93-74 in Chattanooga, TN
UIC 5-1  beat George Washington 89-79 in the Nassau Championship
Belmont 4-3 beat Penn at the Palestra 84-79
Drake 5-1 beat Texas Southern 77-71

Bradley ... coming in undefeated, including wins over RPI #15, #59, #60, tonight Vermont, RPI 29, and the braves come away 79-70...

a Perfect 7-0 for the Valley !

MVC Non-Conference D1 record is 40-20, and the meaningless RPI ranking is #7,

only Belmont, Illinois State, Murray State and Northern Iowa have losing records against D1 opponents.

[VULB#62]

All of those wins are impressive, but E'ville being 6-0 and racking up some impressive scores is scary surprising.  In the back of my mind, I was originally thinking that our guys would nudge EU into the MVC basement. Sheesh, maybe not.

[elephtheria47]

IL State/Ryan Pedon getting some attention today in national media.

They were playing Norfolk State at home. Apparently/allegedly a fan in the front row was calling a NSU player the N word. The two coaches had a heated argument at half court and post game. Fan(s) were removed from the game regarding it.

https://twitter.com/NSUCoachJones/status/1733691644271051108

I wasnt there and wont pretend to know everything that happened or was said, but the optics certainly dont look good for Pedon/IL state.

[valpotx]

Lost in that aspect is that Illinois State actually lost to Norfolk State on their home court...

[VULB#62]

Pedon profusely apologized for his reaction afterward to Coach Jones and issued a formal statement thru the ISU athletic department on Twitter (currently known as Stupid).  He said his immediate reaction was without knowledge of what had just transpired seconds before. But his body language at the time projects volumes.

[VULB#62]

Lost in that aspect is that Illinois State actually lost to Norfolk State on their home court...

They've also lost to UIC and Murray.

[elephtheria47]

The incident happened with around 8:11 to go in the game.

Pedon doubled down on his comments at least 25 minutes later in the post game conference.

Thats either a total fail on his part, or the part of SID to update him on the situation prior to speaking to the media.

As mentioned,  Pedon has issued an apology statement on X/Twitter, but certainly that wont come close to his in game reaction/post game comments publicity.