Valpo vs Bradley 1/26 6pm at the ARC

[Valpo89]

You missed Kevion's last second three-pointer, which was the highlight of the game for Valpo fans

Oh I saw it. I watched until the bitter end. But I was able to start Ozark with a smile on my face. 

[oklahomamick]

It's 4 minutes of your time.  Please watch. 

[vu72]

Taylor 40 minutes and 1 of 9 from three point land. When was the last time we saw a 40 minute game from a ML player?

The whole rotation thing is a mystery to me and probably to Matt as well. were having shooting problems so a guy like Kobe, who is shooting 43% from the 3 takes zero shots.  Guys are afraid to force the action, just passing the ball around.  Then there are guys like Connor, who was a pretty good shooter, who hasn't seen the floor in weeks.  Why are we giving scholarships to guys who haven't played in...YEARS? (Emil)  It is just a giant cluster...

[valpopal]

The insulting game article in the Journal Star depicts the current Valpo team almost as a joke ("Thanks for coming, Valpo"), like the Washington Generals playing the Globetrotters. Is this how far VU has fallen?


'Everyone was having fun': Series of dunks boosts Bradley basketball to big road win at Valpo



Winning at Valparaiso has not been automatic for Bradley and coach Brian Wardle.


But it proved to be a slam dunk Wednesday as the Braves men's basketball team pounded Valparaiso into submission with a show of force above the rim on the way to a 71-56 Missouri Valley Conference victory at the Athletics Recreation Center in Valparaiso, Ind.


The Braves dunked six times in a span of 4 minutes, 48 seconds at the outset of the second half to maintain a 19-point lead and give Wardle the first two-game win streak of his coaching career at Valpo.


Thanks for coming, Valpo.


"That was like a special moment," said 7-foot-1 BU center Ari Boya, who finished that dunk run with one of his own. "Everyone was having fun and the bench was alive. I wanted to get mine, I was excited to get in there and get one."


https://www.pjstar.com/story/sports/college/basketball/bradley-hoops/2022/01/26/bradley-vs-valpo-basketball-live-updates-scores-highlights/9217442002/

[mj]

It's 4 minutes of your time.  Please watch. 

One of the best games I've ever seen at the ARC. I was sitting in the upper deck, behind the Valpo bench, packed shoulder to shoulder. Time seemed to stand still when Howard Little shot that deep 3. Talk about the good old days...

[usc4valpo]

and now we draw 1200 in a better conference. That's not progress folks.

[oklahomamick]

It wasn't so much the crowd I was trying to show as much as the ball movement and open looks.  Yes, I know it's a highlight video but there is a big difference in style.....


My thing is.......Lottich should have done the exact same thing Bryce did.  Same offense, same plays, same practices.  Did Lottich not learn anything from Bryce?  How lucky is Lottich?  He had an opportunity to learn from one of the best.  Obviously didn't take advantage of it.

[oklahomamick]

This video is more to show the difference in the crowd and crowd participation.  It's 30 seconds, watch, fun times. 

[VUGrad1314]

It's sad seeing the ARC this empty. It's a Wednesday night early on in the semester with hardly any students at the game a nearly empty upper deck. Matt Lottich has made it incredibly easy for fans to be apathetic.

No worries!  We've got VOLLEYBALL!  The last two volleyball games drew more than were at last nights game.  Sad, to be sure.

But volleyball has been good lately. Basketball has not been. That's the difference. Volleyball proves that the attendance will be there when the team succeeds. If we build a strong foundation and start winning games they will come in droves but not before. I know the fanbase should support the team regardless but it's hard to keep shelling out your hard earned money on cold nights just to watch Valpo get whupped by virtually any halfway decent MVC team that comes into the ARC.


Look at our MVC Home results. We have lost two games (Missouri State and Bradley) by at least 15 points and dug our way out of a super deep hole in the SIU game (down 16 late) These teams have NETs of 65 104 and 144 respectively) Our home wins are against Illinois State (NET 187) and Northern Iowa (somehow) NET 122. Unless you're a diehard fan (and most of our fanbase isn't let's be honest) that doesn't exactly inspire you to come out and watch this team.

[NativeCheesehead]

This for me is the low point of the Lottich era. Earlier times had worse records but more hope. Not only do I have little faith in Lottich to turn this around, but I look at the athletics brain trust that hired (and extended) Dorow, and hired both Lottich and Evans and don't see the path out. Both basketball programs were supposed to turn a corner this year. Now back to the drawing board.

[VUGrad1314]

The point is this (I've been holding off on posting this because I thought there was some hope for us to salvage the season but this loss has shaken that confidence) We made a 5-10 year commitment based on what was best for one season and what saved the most money and we are paying for it dearly now. I hope we can make a move to find a better coach and breathe some much needed life into this program soon. The longer we wait the harder it's going to be to turn this around.

[usc4valpo]

Ok, but it's more than the coach to fix things. Is Valpo committed to winning basketball, or do they expect it based on getting a free lunch like they get in the past?

Right now overall engagement sucks.

[oklahomamick]

Agree with USC4Valpo.  But the easiest fix is the coach. 

[wh]

Valpo was a very attractive mid major coaching opportunity when Bryce left and we were still the top team in the HL. It has become painfully obvious that we don't belong in the MVC. We never did. Mark L. and the entire athletic department are in over their heads, most Valpo coaches don't run competitive programs, facilities are woefully inadequate, the university is broke and can't do anything even if it wanted to. We should never have been invited by the MVC. We are their mistake, and they're stuck with us.

[oklahomamick]

The HL kings could have played in the MVC.  And any team Bryce put together could compete in the MVC. 

[VUGrad1314]

We're a competent coach away from being competitive and maybe changing the fortunes of the program for good. The question is will we (can we?) do what we need to do in order to make that happen? Do we have the commitment or the financial wherewithal to proactively turn this thing around? Matt has proven time and again that he's not the man to lead us where we need to go to become the program we can be. We bargained the future of the program in exchange for the last year of the Peters era and that run we all expected never even materialized thanks to his injury. Will we work diligently to find the person who can lead us into our next great era or is this it for us and we should settle in for a return to the pre-Homer AMCU\Mid-Con era albeit in a better more stable league? This upcoming offseason is going to tell us a lot. Part of the wound is self inflicted. We cheaped out on the coaching search when we could have had anyone among the best of the best of up and coming coaches nationally. We decided to take the cheaper "safer" (safer in the sense that it would keep Peters) option instead of looking for the best candidate possible and the rest is history. It is perhaps MLB's greatest mistake but it is correctable if he wants to correct it. We are not the MVC's greatest mistake nor was moving to the MVC a mistake unless the university and MLB collectively decide that they are okay with being mediocre\bad and sponging off the more successful teams in the conference. If they decide to make good on what they told Doug Elgin before they were invited and "laser focusing on basketball" and didn't feed him a bunch of empty words that he wanted to hear just to get the invite then this is fixable. If they are just a bunch of empty suits like Heckler was RE: Athletics then it was indeed a mistake. The ball is in Valpo and the administration's court to decide how we and the MVC should view the decision to invite Valpo. I hope they choose well.

[JD24]

Beating up on the coach is the easy part. Sure. We'll make one move, get the right guy in here and POOF! instance success. Same thing happens in other sports where we can't change the 25 man of 53 man rosters en masse in baseball and NFL but change the coach and things will be better....or not.

Getting beaten up or...rather...blown out but conference non powers on your court isn't merely a coaching issue. It's an issue lying with the players as well. Now....the coach has control over them as well in terms of who he brings in but is it only the coach?

It's a multi faceted problem which begins at the bottom with the players and moves all the way up to whatever board controls all of this  .

[VUGrad1314]

You're right. The issue is everywhere. Financial general attitude toward athletics on the part of the administration and alumni the coach the players. Everyone. But we've heard (and thought we had seen) that Lottich can recruit and our teams have talent. They even show that this might be true sometimes. Either we have a great recruiter who is bad at X's and O's in game or we have a bad recruiter who is bad (or at best mediocre) at X's and O's in game. Either situation warrants a change this far into a coach's tenure. Maybe it won't be instant success with a new coach (it probably won't because it rarely is) but good coaching can cover up for a lot of these other issues because as others have stated facilities might attract recruits but they don't win basketball games. We've won in spite of our shortcomings in facilities and institutionally before albeit against less motivated and committed competition by and large and we can do so again even at this higher level. Our biggest problems (institutional commitment\attitude towards athletics and facilities\finances) are not immediately fixable but our coaching situation is. Even if we can't buy Lottich out we can move on from him when the contract is over and find a better candidate. Could a Diebler or a Tonagel (assuming either one would take the job I'm less confident about Diebler but I believe Tongel would if offered) really be any worse than this? Would they be that much more expensive than Lottich is now? We already know who Lottich is and it's at best mediocre. I believe the next coach can do better. He might not take us to the heights that Bryce took us but he can do better than this. At this point I'd settle for someone who can bring us to the top 4 consistently in the MVC and occasionally winning it rather than outright dominating like we got used to under the Drews. I believe that the top 4 in the MVC might still be good enough to get us an NIT bid even in the post Loyola world. The bottom line is that we have to control what we can control and fix what we can fix and the most immediate fix is at the head coaching position. I firmly believe he is not a great coach hamstrung by a bad situation. He is part of the problem and therefore replacing him should lead to at least a modest improvement unless MLB blows the hire again in which case despite all he has done for the university and I would say he is probably the best AD we've ever had we'd have to consider whether he is the man to lead our department going forward. Of course there's always the risk that it can get worse but you can't stay in a mediocre to bad situation that we all know isn't working under Lottich just because we fear the next guy might be worse. To get better we're going to have to either take a risk with money or with personnel. We probably can't take the risk by making a big investment given the realities we face but the risk is going to have to come from somewhere or we'll be stuck in neutral\continuing to go backwards\whatever the heck this is we are experiencing.

[valpotx]

If our guys don't go into the next Bradley game with a chip on their shoulder, their testosterone levels need to be checked.  Matt should use that article as bulletin board material, as well...

[Just Sayin]

With all of these financial issues going on at Valpo and contract buy-outs for early retirement, there is no way in hell Valpo is going to pay Lottich $350,000+ for what, 2 more years if they let him go? A pipe dream.

What Valpo should do is leave Division 1 basketball and join Division 2 basketball. We can hire Tonagel and save the big bucks. The program is likely to succeed and once again fill the ARC.

Valpo has shown it is unwilling and now unable to do what is necessary to become a mid-major powerhouse. There are likely deeper financial concerns of which most of us are unaware. Who knows, Valpo could be facing existential risks if it doesn't do something radical in a hurry.

But to keep being a pretender and acting like Valpo Div1 basketball is a top priority is laughable. No one believes that. Get the surgery now so you can have a nice sustained recovery. Excise the wound, it's beginning to look and smell like gangrene.

[usc4valpo]

1314 - phew! Good stuff and analysis and I wish my term paper were this thorough.

All joking aside, I generally agree with your comments. We need a change at coach and maybe a refresher in the athletics department. Padilla also needs to walk the walk on this stiuation.

Getting an NIT bid doesn't exactly fire me up. Also, we should agree to never equate success with anything associated with the CIT.

Also, if Tonagel is such a phenomenal candidate, why hasn't he been on any coaching search previously? NAIA and D1 are different environments.

Just Sayin brought up some excellent point about Valpo's necessary commitment in Div. 1. We need to do it right.

The problem I have in the discussion is that we eat cash if Lottich is fired. If $370000 for one year is a roadblock, then we are in the wrong league.

[NativeCheesehead]

I appreciate what you're saying about DI commitment, but be careful on making that suggestion. I'm not nearly as much of an 'insider' as most of this board is, but I've stayed as close to my alma mater as life (and donations) have allowed. There is now, and has always been a small, but vocal group within university leadership that believes we belong in D3, with no athletic scholarships. I know it's popular on this board to blame the current students for the mascot change, but anyone around Vu will tell you the push for that began a long time ago, it just finally achieved the perfect combination of student leadership and presidential transition to happen. For whatever our new Pres says now or in the future, don't doubt for a second that if our flagship athletic program doesn't improve quickly, those voices will grow louder.

[VUGrad1314]

I appreciate what you're saying about DI commitment, but be careful on making that suggestion. I'm not nearly as much of an 'insider' as most of this board is, but I've stayed as close to my alma mater as life (and donations) have allowed. There is now, and has always been a small, but vocal group within university leadership that believes we belong in D3, with no athletic scholarships. I know it's popular on this board to blame the current students for the mascot change, but anyone around Vu will tell you the push for that began a long time ago, it just finally achieved the perfect combination of student leadership and presidential transition to happen. For whatever our new Pres says now or in the future, don't doubt for a second that if our flagship athletic program doesn't improve quickly, those voices will grow louder.

I'm done if we drop out of D1 unless that move is a result of a shift in power dynamics in the NCAA beyond Valpo's control and Valpo's new division still contains recognizable names from the current D1 era. That cant' be helped but if it's a willful decision ala Hartford leaving the America East I'll never go to an event or even consider donating ever again.

[mj]

There is now, and has always been a small, but vocal group within university leadership that believes we belong in D3, with no athletic scholarships.

Who is advocating that? If there are people actively undermining the university's athletic programs then let's name names.

[Valpo89]

Also, if Tonagel is such a phenomenal candidate, why hasn't he been on any coaching search previously? NAIA and D1 are different environments.

Tonagel has told those close to him that the only job he would leave Indiana Wesleyan for is Valpo. He's a family man. He has a lot of kids. He doesn't want to bounce around like other coaches. VU is his alma mater, and it's close to his hometown of LaPorte. It wouldn't be as much of a shock for his family to move from Marion to Valpo.
I'll take winning NAIA national championships over Alec Peters threatening to leave if VU didn't hire his guy, a decision based on one potential good year that didn't happen that everyone is still paying for.