Game #5- SIU-Edwardsville 7pm- no TV

[wh]

Spending Thanksgiving week in Gatlinburg, TN and only followed the radio feed. I don't know who the young guys are who did the play-by-play and color, but they did an admirable job covering for Todd. They also asked Luke some pointed questions in the postgame. Great to see young people developing a new skill set and delivering under pressure.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

[FieldGoodie05]

I'm beginning to think there's a chemistry issue here. I'm not sure who projected less energy: the team, the fans, or the announcer. Very rarely have I seen the ARC so dead. And spare me the VHS was playing talk. That's a reason, not an excuse. Can't believe many other quality mid majors get their attendance cut in half because the local high school is playing, no matter how good they are.

What sticks out to you chemistry wise that may be an issue?

I'm not down on chemistry.  These early OOC games are where team leadership and chemistry develops.  Look at the 2nd half...

Bakari + Freeman
8/13 FG
6/7 FT

In the first half these two players let teammates take chances and shots.  Crunch time shows me

1) Bakari + Freeman have good positive chemistry together (a lot of back pats and supportive gesturing)

2) Golder is our lock down defender with Freeman

3) Lavender is a gamer.  9 rebounds from the PG position

Add in a healthy Sorolla and we solidify the Offense (Smits) and Defense (Sorolla) with the run and gun McMillan and we have chemistry developing in front of us.

My biggest concern was letting Williford and Williams go unchecked for the first 30-minutes.

[M]

Golder should've been on 24 then...that guy was killin.

[VUGrad1314]

Gameday experience stinks.

I'm very sorry to hear this. It seemed like they were making a real attempt to address this based on offseason developments. Hopefully it will get better with time and when the students are back on campus.

[M]

The high school band did an admirable job. But the whole place today was just dead. The bald on top ref did his best to get the crowd going though.

[VUGrad1314]

I'm not going to make excuses for the lackluster crowd though there are several valid\semi-valid ones. Hopefully we can notch a few good wins and start MVC play on the right foot to get folks to come out.

[NativeCheesehead]

What exactly was this marketing company we hired supposed to do? I see no change in the game management side of things. No promotions during time outs but I won't really miss those. Still a bunch of energy breaking Family Express commercials during media timeouts. Not seeing a local advertising push.... just trying to figure out what exactly has changed.

[justducky]

Some random observations

We really struggled against the zone. I wasn't expecting that.

Sackey will probably not hit 20% shooting from 3.

Fazekas has very little inside offense as a 4.

Lavender will always be more effective against man vs zone defenses.

We need our full 11 man roster which will include Jay and Micah because both will be contributors.

Until Jay returns Mileek is stuck in the backup 5 position. I only bring this up because I want to see how he has progressed as a 4.

Wining ugly is better than losing ugly and the turkey is better when you don't have a bitter taste in your mouth. 

[VU2014]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaI6Wc8kS_w&feature=youtu.be

[VU2014]

https://twitter.com/dsackey_4/status/1065473169019023365

[nkvu]

Going to check my pessimism until Jay gets back. Sad to hear that Micah had a setback. I think that we need all the pieces to improve on last season.

We shall see. 

[VU2014]

https://twitter.com/dsackey_4/status/1065473169019023365

Daniel essentially posted a tweet saying the game was embarrassing. It looks like he deleted the tweet quickly.

[nkvu]

Have to say Smits has played better in the the last three games or so than I expected. Maybe hearing people say both Jay and Maleek moved ahead of him on the depth chart lit a fire under him. Hope it carries forward. He seems to have taken advantage of his opportunities for more playing time.

[VU2014]

Have to say Smits has played better in the the last three games or so than I expected. Maybe hearing people say both Jay and Maleek moved ahead of him on the depth chart lit a fire under him. Hope it carries forward. He seems to have taken advantage of his opportunities for more playing time.

Smits has played better. He's always played pretty well on the offensive end but the defense and rebound we need more from him. Rebounding is such a glaring weakness right now and we need guys like him to step up. It's going to be a real problem if Sorolla can't provide a substantial upgrade in that department when he makes his return.

It sounds like Coach held Sorolla back today in a last minute decision. We won the game which is great but man could we have used him today. It paid off in the end because Jay got to rest a few more days on that ankle.

[VUME]

After the Wake Forest game I posted a critical list of observed coaching weaknesses. This was largely disregarded or passively aggressively referenced because individual players themselves performed decently well . I unfortunately only continued to witness these problems in last nights game. Major ones from tonights game.

Recent Valpo coaching tenets:

1) little investment or success n developing players over multiple years.

2) Defense / rebounding remains subpar.

3) little investment or success in free throw shooting

4) team continues to live or die by the 3

5) Continued inability to learn from previous mistakes.

These are systemic weakneses of the new Valpo program that will only be addressed if fans and the team are honest with themselves. Just because the team played moderately well against Wake Forest but still displayed these  serious coaching problems is a nod to the potential talent of our players.


My concern with us Valpo fans is that we seem to be willing to accept core coaching and team culture problems for the sake of small wins or near misses (e.g. Wake Forest). Im also concerned that we refuse to be critical of our coaching staff (well paid, mature adults) but are more keen to be critical of individual players ( students).

[NativeCheesehead]

Ok, I know it's Thanksgiving and we're usually respectful on this board, but that list seems more trollish than anything. I kept expecting to find "Score more points than the other team" on your little list.

Read the board. We all know how stale this offense can be (high ball screen, high ball screen, wait for it.......high ball screen.) And if you can go five posts in a game thread without seeing someone (usually me) complaining about lack of player development or rebounding you're not looking hard enough.

[SanityLost17]

I think it is unlikely we fully appreciate the effects of missing Sorolla/Bradford has had on this team.  It is not like either is a superstar but it is obvious we will be better when McMillan plays more minutes at the 4, Fazekas plays more time at the 3, and Bradford takes up a lot of the Kiser/Sackey minutes.       

[justducky]

I think it is unlikely we fully appreciate the effects of missing Sorolla/Bradford has had on this team.  It is not like either is a superstar but it is obvious we will be better when McMillan plays more minutes at the 4, Fazekas plays more time at the 3, and Bradford takes up a lot of the Kiser/Sackey minutes.       

This boils things down to their essence because everything changes. As much as we love Kiser he will rarely see the floor. Golder will need to penetrate effectively to maintain his minutes. Sackey will still be played but only situationally. Everybody else will get longer stretches of rest on the bench which means every second on the floor must be at 100%. I like it! 

IF Jay has improved as much as Smits and IF McMillan has improved to the same degree with his play as a 4 then look out!

[Brandon]

Spending Thanksgiving week in Gatlinburg, TN and only followed the radio feed. I don't know who the young guys are who did the play-by-play and color, but they did an admirable job covering for Todd. They also asked Luke some pointed questions in the postgame. Great to see young people developing a new skill set and delivering under pressure.

The student broadcasters on WVUR on Wednesday were Ben Ariano and Garrett Willis. Ben is the sports director and can often be heard on both our men's and women's broadcasts. He's done a really nice job putting out a good product even with a small staff where a lot of the work falls on him. Garrett is a freshman who is also on our men's golf team and had a really good fall season. I'm hopeful we continue to attract sports broadcasting students to Valpo as not many student radio stations are the exclusive radio broadcast for Division I basketball, get to interview the associate head coach (or head coach for women's) on air right after games, travel with the women's team, get a ton of play-by-play reps, etc. I did all of our women's basketball games during undergrad and even though I didn't specifically end up doing broadcasting, there's no doubt it helped lead to my current job at Valpo. I'm glad that with Todd & Dave doing ESPN3/+, the opportunity has become available for the students to add men's basketball radio for home games to their on-air opportunities.

[oklahomamick]

I agree VUME!  I have been criticized for criticizing the coaching.

I have not researched the number but does it seem like our average scoring per game has been down the last couple years? 

Lack of ball movement and set plays.

[VU2014]

Was anyone else aware that Bakari was coming back from surgery? I knew he was pretty banged up last season but I didn't know he had offseason surgery.

https://twitter.com/coach_cboswell/status/1065654991493316608?s=21

[FieldGoodie05]

Was anyone else aware that Bakari was coming back from surgery? I knew he was pretty banged up last season but I didn't know he had offseason surgery.

https://twitter.com/coach_cboswell/status/1065654991493316608?s=21

Not Bakari that I know.  Fazekas had shoulder or elbow surgery right?

[bbtds]

I remember someone posting that Bakari was wearing a boot cast on his foot due to ankle surgery during July open gym.

[valpotx]

Smits is much improved on offense, but his proclamation to Vashil about hoping to break his blocks record, now looks as possible as me not saying Buck Futler ever again

[valpo64]

If a team can't shoot well, including free throws, they will  have trouble winning games...period!   So far, we are not shooting well.