Great win. Especially considering Dease was off Pettigrew in foul trouble and Whittaker invisible. Gotta clean up the press break. So glad we had a 10 point cushion. Sader was special and Barnes should make sportscenter for that dunk
Isaiah Barnes was playing pretty well in early December and now appears to be hustling back to form as a much needed bench contributor. Upper class experience is so important for this stretch run.
In the NET Rankings this was a quad 2 win. So, by that metric our best and only quad 2 win of the season.Previously, we have gone 0-2 in quad 1 (@ Kentucky and @ Belmont) and 0-8 in quad 2 games. This road win will likely get us to NET Ranking better than 150, which will be short lived with either loss to vs. Drake or @ Evansville (both quad 4 games). Even with wins against both, it likely will not move the needle much on our final Regular season NET Ranking.
UNI loses! Now we watch the war on 74!
Looks like the braves are handling the red birds after the first half
Don’t look now folks but Valpo is tied for fifth and the first round bye!
Good win.
As Henry Gibson might say "Keep a goin'"
Don’t look now folks but Valpo is tied for fifth and the first round bye!
I didn’t mean to thumbs down your comment, my fat fingers got in the way and it won’t let me change it on my phone. 🤣
What if, and I mean what if, Barnes turns a corner at the right time and is as efficient the rest of the way as he was yesterday? He could become our Arch Madness “X” factor.
Only 2 games separates 2nd through 7th place. let’s win two more and see where we end up. With everyone ahead of us playing each other, it is highly likely that 12-8 will earn us a 1st round bye.
So.....a plausible hope earlier this season, especially in the midst of all of the close losses, was that this team would gel, learn how to win, and go on a run just as Arch Madness was approaching.
When hope becomes reality, it's pretty cool. Obviously the players deserve a ton of credit. And it's Coach Powell who is the galvanizer, I just think he's what VU needed. And now it's looking like VU has the new President it really needed. All for a university that has been so in need of wins, literally and figuratively.
Most wins in the MVC and there are still games left to be played. I hope that once the season concludes some of those guys will want to stay, but that's just a dream at this point
From Hacksaw calculations posted on MVC board we have 5% chance for #3 seed, 13% for 4, 22% for 5, 33% for 6, 21% for 7 and 6% chance for # 8 seed. That is a 40% chance to avoid Thursday and as poorly as this team started the Valley season 0-3 this is great.
I am really happy that this team seems to have learned how to win.
In a sense, the development of the team and Powell's coaching seem akin to Valpo in the 1993 and 1994 seasons (albeit at a higher level now). The sad thing is that we are in a different era and player development will likely aid other teams.
I have zero idea how much money we have available for NIL nor who might stay or go. Having written that, I think Roger has done an extraordinary job molding players into a team. So how about teams who were successful in keeping players? I guess Illinois State and NIU were the most successful, who now stand tied for fifth, with us. The team with basically a whole new team, other than us, is Belmont, now in first place. Go figure, or, be grateful we have a coach and staff able to put a competitive team on the floor.
