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We've got 6 games, split equally between home and away games. How confident are you in this team after a 7-1 start?

Wed Dec 7   @ Kentucky   
Sat Dec 10 @ Missouri St.
Sat Dec 17 vs. Indiana St.
Thu Dec 22 vs. Santa Clara
Wed Dec 28 vs. Chicago St.
Fri Dec 30 @ Illinois Chicago

Tickets go on sale in an hour.

The opponent will probably come straight from Moraga, California after they play Sunday night.

It'll definitely be Vashil's final game in the ARC.

Winner goes to Madison Square Garden.

[Wright St]

Why not have a place to chat about the 4 games our compatriots are playing Saturday?

KenPom has the breakdown like this: (Bold is your projected winner, listed is score prediction and win probability)
Wright St. vs Illinois Chicago (71-60, 87%)
Green Bay vs Cleveland St (76-66, 82%)
Milwaukee vs Northern Kentucky (76-69, 77%)
Detroit vs Youngstown St (93-86, 73%)


So who is going to be left playing Sunday?

[Team]

I know you're reading this going "Free Throw Defense? Vashil can't through his arms up to block free throws." Exactly, but sometimes it's easier or hard to shoot depending on where you are playing.

Sometimes you're shooting into this:	And other times you're shooting into this:

So I decided to take a look at who has the best defense, who has the best road free throw shooting and what's the toughest arena to shoot at.

So here's some numbers for you.

Team	Home	Road	Opp	Overall
N Kentucky	64.3%	77.4%	75.5%	69.9%
Oakland	76.4%	83.7%	75.4%	79.6%
Detroit	71.9%	66.1%	74.2%	69.6%
Milwaukee	76.5%	76.1%	73.7%	76.3%
Ill Chicago	59.2%	58.5%	71.9%	58.9%
Green Bay	67.2%	68.8%	71.7%	68.1%
Wright St.	70.9%	64.8%	69.5%	68.6%
Youngstown	73.4%	73.9%	68.9%	73.7%
Valpo	66.9%	78.3%	63.4%	72.6%
Cleveland St	68.7%	65.7%	58.8%*	67.0%
*- Games inside Quicken Loans Arena not included

Now some analysis

• Oakland has the best free throw percentage. It appears they have the easiest shooting background at home, but they also are killing it shooting on the road. They seem to be immune to even the fiercest of banners that depict fans screaming.
• Speaking of banners of fans screaming, Cleveland State's opponents can't deal with shooting at the Wolstein's famous banner. Teams shoot 58.8% in the Center.
• But the Wolstein doesn't appear to be the hardest to shoot at. The Athletics and Recreation Center seems to not only hurt the opponent (shooting 63.4%) but also the Crusaders, who shoots nearly 12% worse at home.
• The best place to shoot Free throws? It's on the blacktop up in Rochester, MI.  Opponents are shooting the second best there and Oakland trives. The Bank of Kentucky Center seems to help the opponents when they visit boasting the best Opponent FT %, but the Norse actually shoot 13% better on the road!
• Wright State and Detroit's free throw shooting doesn't seem to travel well. Wright State shoots 6.2% worse on the road and Detroit follows with 5.8% worse. The average team actually shoots BETTER on the road by 1.8%
• UIC might be bad but they are a worse free throw shooting team, shooting a Wolstein like 58.9% overall. While at the Wolstein, they shot 39.3%!

I'm going to keep track of this through the remaining 18 games of the season, but I feel as if the sample size for each arena was big enough to see if there were any effects. I'll also track this to see if there's any trends that come about in future seasons. If anyone wants to run the data for past seasons, by all means they're welcome to it!

It's the Jeopardy college tournament and the Horizon League has a representative in the form of a young lady from Wright St. Spoiler alert (the show aired last night) she won her first match and is on to the next round of the tournament. I'm kind of rooting for her since it's a HL compatriot. She'll return next week for the semi-finals.

[Overall]

Let's have some fun and take a look at some Valpo stats. Because I like numbers, and you should too! We're in the middle of a week of no games, so what better time than now? These categories are from BBState. PPWS Is points per shot, Eff is efficiency. Both are self explanatory, the higher the better.

Overall

Rk	Player	Pos	G	MPG	FG%	FT%	3PT%	True%	RPG	APG	SPG	BPG	A/TO	PPWS	eFG%	Pts40	Eff	Eff/Pos	PPG
1	Peters, Alec	F	19	27.6	51.1	84.4	47.2	65.5	6.3	0.9	0.7	0.3	0.7	1.3	61.9	26.3	17.1	0.4	18.2
2	Walker, Tevonn	G	19	26.4	43.4	66.2	23.5	51.9	3.0	2.0	1.2	0.2	1.3	1.0	47.2	15.9	8.5	0.2	10.5
3	Walker, Darien	G	19	26.3	37.4	57.9	33.3	46.9	4.1	1.9	0.7	0.3	1.3	0.9	45.2	15.3	7.7	0.2	10.1
4	Carter, Keith	G	17	29.1	50.0	57.9	41.9	60.5	4.1	3.8	1.5	0.2	1.9	1.2	60.2	13.4	12.1	0.3	9.7
5	Fernandez, Vashil	C	19	23.1	64.1	63.5	0.0	65.9	6.4	0.3	0.6	3.0	0.3	1.3	64.1	12.1	11.9	0.3	7.0
6	Skara, David	F	19	19.6	48.8	83.3	30.0	58.7	3.5	1.6	0.5	0.4	1.3	1.2	54.2	11.9	7.3	0.2	5.8
7	Nickerson, E. Victor	G	18	15.1	40.8	70.0	17.6	49.7	2.2	1.8	0.4	0.2	1.0	1.0	42.8	13.7	4.3	0.2	5.2
8	Adekoya, Jubril	F	17	21.3	47.1	43.8	50.0	48.1	4.6	1.0	0.6	0.3	1.3	0.9	47.8	8.7	6.3	0.2	4.6
9	Chadwick, David	F	10	10.2	47.8	30.0	33.3	51.1	1.5	0.2	0.0	0.4	0.5	1.0	54.3	11.0	2.3	0.2	2.8
10	Davidson, Nick	G	12	7.3	38.1	100.0	42.9	59.2	0.7	0.5	0.3	0.0	1.0	1.2	52.4	12.9	2.2	0.1	2.3
11	Joseph, Max	G	16	10.8	38.1	43.8	33.3	46.4	1.3	1.0	0.5	0.1	0.8	0.9	45.2	6.0	1.6	0.1	1.6
					46.7	65.9	36.8

Rk	Player	Pos	G	Min	FGM	FGA	FTM	FTA	3FM	3FA	OReb	DReb	TReb	Ast	Stl	Blk	TO	PF	Pts
1	Peters, Alec	F	19	525	120	235	54	64	51	108	33	86	119	18	14	5	27	39	345
2	Walker, Tevonn	G	19	502	69	159	49	74	12	51	20	37	57	38	22	3	30	35	199
3	Walker, Darien	G	19	499	70	187	22	38	29	87	13	65	78	36	13	6	28	25	191
4	Carter, Keith	G	17	494	64	128	11	19	26	62	11	58	69	65	25	4	34	37	165
5	Fernandez, Vashil	C	19	438	50	78	33	52	0	0	54	67	121	5	12	57	19	48	133
6	Skara, David	F	19	372	41	84	20	24	9	30	19	47	66	31	9	7	24	40	111
7	Nickerson, E. Victor	G	18	272	31	76	28	40	3	17	13	26	39	33	8	3	32	29	93
8	Adekoya, Jubril	F	17	362	32	68	14	32	1	2	25	54	79	17	11	5	13	39	79
9	Davidson, Nick	G	12	87	8	21	6	6	6	14	3	5	8	6	3	0	6	3	28
10	Chadwick, David	F	10	102	11	23	3	10	3	9	4	11	15	2	0	4	4	8	28
11	Joseph, Max	G	16	173	8	21	7	16	3	9	5	16	21	16	8	1	19	22	26

After having 4 games in 8 days, we get a nice week to relax, rest up, and hopefully heal some dislocated toes. After this 7 day break we get 4 games over a 9 day stretch. Then we get 5 more days off. The Horizon League: Where spacing our a schedule is non-existent. 

Wright State plays Cleveland St. on Wednesday, so we'll have a little bit of a better idea of this year's Raiders. They've beaten Detroit at home and YSU on the road while losing by 24 at Green Bay. I'd expect them to get a rightly pissed CSU so that should be a really good game.

I won't make a prediction right now because I want to see what happens in the CSU game, but this isn't going to be an easy game. When playing at Nutter the Raiders are 6-1 this season and 16-3 there last season.

We're a little over 24 hours until the next game and there's nothing up yet, so I'll take the opportunity to start one of these guys.

Gary Waters and crew come into town and I think we remember last time they were here.

Also I think I heard correctly when they said first 300 fans at the game get stocking hats? Seems like a cool giveaway but a very low amount.

You guys know what's up. I'm going to be covering the HL full time this year at MidMajorMadness.I know you all have already looked at this season's preview that won't be fraught with errors come this time next season.

Anyway I didn't come just to get page views, which really don't help me, but I'm sure my editors like them. Starting on the 26th I'm going to be doing a mailbag segment where I'll be looking for Horizon League fans to ask me questions and I'll answer them. Why? Because I'll be watching way too much basketball and if I can't share my insight with others my wife will bear the brunt of all my inane thoughts.

I'll also let you guys know when I'll have a Valpo recap up, but you already knew that.

So I hope you guys send in some questions for the mailbag.

Now, to attract not just athletes but quality students to cheer on those athletes, just a few changes have occurred on campus since "The Shot"
1. 2004 $33,000,000 Christopher Center
2. 2005 Kalley-Christopher Center for Meteorology and Geography
3. 2009 $74,000,000 Harre Union
4. 2013 Fites Addition to Engineering
5. 2013 Solar Energy Research Facility
6. 2013 New Arts and Sciences Building
7. 2014 New Welcome Center
8. 2014 Beacon Hall
9. 2015 Completion of $15,000,000 addition to the Chapel
10. Significant addition to the University's Endowment

I know I've missed some things.  All this with a living alumni base of less than 50,000.  Has Loyola built as much in the same time frame?

The things I can think of is Kade-Duesenberg in 2000 and Uptown East Apartments even more recently for residential. But that's a pretty good extensive list of things.

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This sucks, but I wouldn't mind getting an extra year of Lexus if he redshirts.

[First round bets]

Place to discuss the NCAA Tournament.

This year I loaded up my Bovada account with $20 (plus the $7 I had leftover from the Super Bowl and random NCAA Bets). I'm going to put $1 on every game until my money runs out or the tournament is over.  Let's see how long it lasts! I'll try to update the OP as frequently as I bet. I put $1 on Wichita St. (10/1) and Oklahoma State (40/1) to win it all.  Now I have $25 to play the tournament.

First round bets + $3.67
Pittsburgh -7 (-105)
Ohio State -6 (-115)
Syracuse -13 (-110)
Harvard +3½  (-110)
Wisconsin -14½ (-105)
Oregon -6 (-105)
Florida -21½ (-110)
Mich St. -14½ (-110)
St Louis -3 (-115)
Oklahoma -3½ (-115)
Michigan -15½ (-105)
St. Joseph's +5 (-105)

Let keep the rock rolling off the cliff. 

Not sure how many people are planning on attending the pre-game pep rally buffet but I'll be there.  Apparently today is the last day to register as well.

Anyway this should be a win and a great chance for locals to see the team on the road.

Let's get this out of the way... I've been invited to go to the HL media day.


Thanks Willy.  But I didn't come here to brag.  I came to get some insight.  I know everyone dreams of being able to ask their favorite sports commissioner or coach a question. So here's a chance.  I've got a few ideas for what I want to get out of being at media day (some soundbites that I'll share via Mid-Major Madness, maybe a video if I'm allowed to do that and an article.) But right now I don't have any good questions.  So fire at me, what would you ask the commish, the coaches or players.  You can probably figure which player each team invited if not here's the list:
Cleveland State -- Gary Waters, Anton Grady
Detroit -- Ray McCallum, Evan Bruinsma
Green Bay -- Brian Wardle, Alec Brown, Keifer Sykes
Milwaukee -- Rob Jeter, Jordan Aaron
Oakland -- Greg Kampe, Travis Bader
UIC -- Howard Moore, Hayden Humes
Valparaiso -- Bryce Drew, LaVonte Dority
Wright State -- Billy Donlon, Cole Darling
Youngstown State -- Jerry Slocum, Kendrick Perry

Oh and there will be feeds on the Horizon League site. Check them out as I'm sure there will be some awesome interviews.

So I do a bracket every year.  Thought I'd open it up to anyone on here who wanted to join.  I'm sure you'll fill out at least one bracket, why not do it here? If this doesn't belong in the OT Sports Talk someone can move it to the right spot.

http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/t1/group/45977/invitation?key=adfb5748a89d9ac3[/size]

Sorry if this is considered spam, I'm just super excited for my favorite TV show returning tonight.

October 19th

mfw i woke up this morning and realized it's October 19th:


You, if you don't have NBC turned on at 8/7cst:

and


What I'll be doing on FB for all the Community posts:

and


This, and Big Bang Theory


What I wish I was doing RIGHT NOW:


He's a one man party


I wish work was over and it was 7 PM CST:


Yep.


What I'll do if you watch Community with me


What happens if you don't watch Community