12/29, 7PM CST: Milwaukee Game Thread

[valpopal]

As usual, I walked away from last night's game being thoroughly impressed with Ryan's play.  He is amazingly efficient at both ends of the court in terms of making the most of his opportunities.  That said, I think he needs to be featured more on offense.  He is our only player that is a threat to score both inside and outside, he hits 50% of his shots, and yet he only averages 10 shots per game.  That simply is not enough shots for a player of his caliber.  As others have said, we did a good job last night of patiently working the ball inside to take advantage of Kevin's strengths, but it seems that we seldom run a set specifically designed to get Ryan the ball in a position to score.  Just a thought... 

I agree that I would like to see Ryan get more shots in each game, though last night would have been difficult since I know he was playing in great pain throughout the game. Like a few others, I think Ryan is the best all-around player in the league; therefore, he gets more attention from others' defensive plans and that takes away some opportunities to shoot. He also gets knocked around and expends a lot of energy to pull down all those rebounds.

I can't help but wonder how many more and better shots Ryan would get if Brandon Wood were still here to draw some of the defensive attention. In fact, if Brandon were here, Valpo arguably would have the two best players in the Horizon League this year, and a league championship would be much more probable than the 4% prediction cited in another thread. It would be nice if Jay or Will could eventually fill that scoring threat Brandon would have presented.