Messages

I wonder if the FBS pay game we took at New Mexico State is going to help us in our coaching search. Does anyone know how much we got and how much of that will actually go to the department instead of being eaten up by travel  food and lodging?

Murray has beaten Texas A&M and Tulsa and has narrow losses @Chattanooga and on a neutral floor to UMASS. This is a good team. Probably an upper half MVC team. Being at home may help but we'll be lucky to keep this one close.

Murray State 88  #24 Texas A&M 79  (First Racer win over a top 25 team since 2012) at the Myrtle Beach tournament

That team also went to the tournament and won a game #NotSayingJust Saying. Very proud of the Racers and of the MVC for getting that done today! While the league's overall results have been decidedly mixed there are some soaring high notes that should serve the league well if we get another team into contention for an at large. Just need to keep adding to them!

I still care right now but I am getting dangerously close to falling into that indifferent category. I'm already less passionate and engaged than I used to be and losses like this will only continue that trend. I hope this isn't the new normal for Valpo basketball and that all we have is a Lottich problem but I don't know for sure and I'm very nervous that this really is going to be where we are going forward. I mean Murray State beating a top 25 team before they even play an MVC game just shows us that it's not the transition that was the problem (as much as we all wanted to use that to give Lottich grace the first few years in the MVC). Good coaches find ways to win even when they shouldn't. Matt does not demonstrate that ability on anything remotely resembling a consistent basis. If anything he demonstrates the opposite: finding ways to lose even when he shouldn't. Matt has had some high points on his resume but at this point they appear to be the blips that mask an overall trend of mediocre to bad results. This is not the 1998 team. This loss is not the Bethel loss. This program is not in the same place. We are in year 7 of Matt Lottich's tenure and we can honestly say the program is in a decidedly worse place than it was when he was hired. We used to beat MVC teams regularly. Now we're lucky to stay out of the bottom 4 against them. Better league or not, that is a stinging indictment of Lottich as a coach and these facts tell me everything I need to know. They all point in one direction: a change of leadership is sorely needed and I'm not sure if there is anything this team can do over the course of the rest of the year to change my position on that.

Did not know he turned us down. Rick Pitino from Iona, half tongue in cheek. Half.

At least that was the rumor when Bryce left for Vanderbilt. He was supposedly Valpo's first choice and was even offered the job. He chose to follow Bryce to Nashville instead and later as we all know ended up in Spokane learning under Mark Few. I think he's going to be an amazing coach someday and whatever program that gets him is going to be so lucky. He's learning from one of the best to ever do it right now.

Roger Powell would get my vote Midwest ties, Valpo ties, Successful Mid major in Gonzaga.

He already turned us down once. And we were a much better program back then. He's got his eyes on a better job and I don't blame him. Would take him in an instant if he'd say yes to coaching here but I know it's not happening.

"Well obviously they're a really good team over there and shot the ball incredibly well. When you play against a team like that that shoots the ball that well you're not going to win a lot of games. We obviously just didn't make shots and we definitely had our opportunities. We just didn't make the most of them and the game got away from us. We're a young team though and we'll learn and grow from this and get better as the season goes on. I think we're going to be a really good team by the time we get to MVC play and really be a lot of trouble for anyone at that time."

I don't know something like this? All fluff. All BS. No substance. No truth. No accountability. Same Lottich. Rinse and repeat.

Dr. Small won't make a move this quickly, but we will see what happens after this season for sure.

True, it is difficult to believe Small will fire Lottich this soon. However, now is the time that he must assert himself as the Athletic Director and publicly make a statement that Valpo's tradition means success is expected from its basketball program and neither failure nor even mediocrity is acceptable. Someone needs to be the alpha male in the Athletics department right now, and it would be beneficial if Small quickly asserts himself. This team has had three poor outings already: a 15-point loss to Toledo, a 13-point loss to Chicago State, and almost a loss (a nearly made 3-pointer at the end of the game would have given them the win) to non-D1 Cedarville in the exhibition game. If Small isn't going to fire Lottich, he needs to set a fire that gets some attention. Fans need to know something is being done.

This.

Dr. Small should be on the phone with Jake Diebler right now.

Do you honestly think he'd want to come clean up this mess? Surely Dielber can get a better job than this. He'd likely be an awesome hire though!

I know firing a coach causes  short term instability for a program but would it honestly be any worse than where we are right now? Could we really fall any lower than this? I almost feel like I'm tempting fate by even asking these questions and I'm honestly more than a little afraid of the answers.

Not arguing your point, but would Dr. Small have enough sample size from his time watching Valpo basketball to make the switch right now? I would understand firing him after the season, or later in this season, but what do we know? Maybe the team was overconfident or had other things going on this week in preparing for this game that took them out of it?

With all due respect what more sample size do we need? Barely squeaked by a D2 in an exhibition, got drubbed by Toledo, beat Western Michigan, got hammered by Chicago State. Overconfident? I would have hoped after Krikke's comments post Toledo that would not have been an issue but apparently it still is. Respectfully, what has this program done in the past several years to be walking around overconfident in any game? I know I obviously was overconfident going into this game, but I am not a player and have the benefit of having watched them play and beat Chicago State numerous times).  I'm sorry. When your other results have been far from stellar and you lose by double digits to Chicago State there really shouldn't be any wait and see. If it's not with this loss where does it end?

Valpo really needs to improve their non conference schedule, it is as exciting as a ham sandwich on Wonder bread without the cheese and mustard. c'mon Valpo, surely you can do better than this!

Valpo needs to consistently BEAT the opponents on the non conference (and conference) schedule regardless of who they are.,,,

I know firing a coach causes  short term instability for a program but would it honestly be any worse than where we are right now? Could we really fall any lower than this? I almost feel like I'm tempting fate by even asking these questions and I'm honestly more than a little afraid of the answers. Still it has to be done and we must take the risk. The bottom line is that where we presently are is wholly unacceptable. Full stop.

Even if Valpo plays out of their minds I am very pessimistic about a second half rally. Last major rally I remember was at Detroit  (2013 - 2014?) led by Capobianco.

This needs to be it. This needs to be the loss that finally gets Lottich fired. He has little support amongst the fanbase, the community is mostly apathetic, and students do not care about the program. Where is the upside of keeping Lame-Duck Lottich around?

The only thing I can think of is the (I believe 2+ years left on his deal at God knows how much for a buyout... Can Valpo really afford to swallow that right now even if it's the right thing to do? Or are we stuck until the contract finally mercifully ends which I believe is in (sigh) 2025...

I'd be very happy for Chicago State. If this wasn't happening against my alma mater and favorite team. I want to celebrate their success--God knows they deserve some good things happening to them and they should enjoy them--but why against us? This program has fallen so far so fast under Lottich. Will we ever get back to where we were under Bryce?

They are a D1 team so it is a countable game. But how can anyone be thinking about tournament seeding at a time like this? We're lucky every MVC team gets invited to Arch Madness. If that weren't the case the team that showed up to play this game tonight would be staying home. I can't even fathom a Lottich coached team making the NCAA Tournament at this point. Like that's not even a distant dream right now. This is absolutely unacceptable. How can we not make a coaching change after this? I can't even remember the last time we lost to Chicago State. I can't even remember the last time it was even close. Unless we have a furious second half rally Lottich must be fired immediately. There's no going back from this. An absolute low point for this once-proud program. Maybe do a national search next time so we can actually attract a good candidate (assuming any decent candidate even wants this job at this point. Hopefully the MVC affiliation is attractive enough to lure a hungry up and comer but I don't know. And people think Lottich would still be successful even if we had stayed in the Horizon? The problem isn't our conference it's our coach. Full stop. Fix that and Valpo will be just fine in the MVC.

1680 is such a sad attendance number but I totally get it. If this is the start of Valpo getting hot and winning a bunch of games that number will rise by the time we play our first MVC home game. If we can start by winning a few more in conference as well then we'll surely see that number rise dramatically. The fanbase just needs a reason to believe. Maybe this is the start we need but for right now the best we have is cautious optimism. Too many ifs in this post  and too many unknowns with only two data points that are in no way similar to each other this season to expect anything. I know this "Wait and see" attitude is a much different tenor than my posts in the Toledo thread and I'm sorry that my mind is biased towards negativity (because I was fully ready to say Same Ol' Lottich Era Valpo after Toledo) but I'm sure it's hard to blame anyone who is in this same frame of mind RE: the state of the program right now. I don't like being in this mindset either. Just like any other Valpo fan, I want to believe.

Well then... That's a night and day difference... Western Michigan has the looks of a potentially solid team judging from their near victory over Minnesota so this could be something. We're going to learn a lot about this team over the next 3-4 games and beyond. They better win the next two. After that, there's plenty of decent competition on the schedule that will tell us a lot about what we have. If we can string together some wins and be competitive throughout, my optimism will grow.

Hoping for the best. Hopefully we'll get off to a better start and come prepared this time. Hopefully we'll at least be competitive in this one and have enough to pull out the win at home. That's about all I've got right now unfortunately. Just hopeful platitudes until I see a definitive reason for optimism.

SLU is good and will probably be in the Big East soon if I had to guess. Absolutely no shame in losing to them especially for a school that just stepped up to the MVC and went through a huge transition (new coach bunch of transfers etc). Prohm has a track record at Murray though he'll get it turned around I'm sure.

Friday hurt. A lot of big opportunities for the conference went by the boards but I'm still reveling in SIU's victory over Oklahoma State! Those are the kinds of wins we need in order to be a multibid conference. I love being in a conference with multiple teams that have the capability to take down P5 opponents!

Just in case anybody truly misses being in the HL I invite you to review the scores from around that league last night. I really hate bagging on other conferences but I mean would you seriously miss THIS even if it resulted in more wins for VU?

The HL had ONE D1 win last night. ONE. Youngstown State over Canisius 92-81. Every other win was over a non-D1.  The other highlight was PFW (Who looks like they should be good the move to a more geographically friendly conference seems to have really helped them) keeping it semi-close against Michigan and losing by 19 75-56. Moreover, their one D1 win was matched by Cleveland State--last year's REGULAR SEASON CHAMPION mind you--losing to Non-D1 Notre Dame college at home 72-68. Other notes around the league:

Ohio State ripped Robert Morris by 38 91-53

Iowa State demolished IUPUI by 49 88-39

Northern Kentucky lost to Kent State at home by 22 79-57 (Kent State is a good program they won the MAC last year but it's not a good look to get blown out like that on your home floor especially when NKU has been a strong program of late).

And of course there's Green Bay getting throttled by a mid-pack MVC team (Indiana State) by 27 80-53.

Granted the MVC had a pretty sizable slipup with Illinois State losing to Western Illinois at home 71-68 but at least our biggest slipup was against a D1 team  in the first game of a new coach's tenure. If you seriously miss this, and you don't enjoy what we have by comparison (a conference where teams do well in the non conference and can potentially make at large cases and win tournament games) even if it results in less success for Valpo individually then your interest was not in seeing Valpo grow as a program and you were fine with being a one and done low seed tournament team at best. I wanted more. And I hope most of the rest of the fanbase still feels the same way.

Stepping up to the MVC was not a mistake just on the tournament money alone. Moreover outside of men's basketball we are showing the ability to compete at the MVC level. Our volleyball team has posted some outstanding results and our women's soccer team just won the conference. We're doing fine.  Our flagship program hiring a coach completely unprepared for the job on the hopes of one last glorious run during the Peters era before we moved conferences however was a mistake. That decision is the entire reason we are where we are today. It would have been better to conduct a national search and find the best candidate after Powell turned us down. I have no doubt the program would be much better off in the MVC today if they had done that.

Sigh... At this point there really are no words... At least we fought hard in the second half but that's not even a moral victory at this point. It's just another Lottich team with all that that entails. No offense No cohesion No game plan and another loss to the kind of team we used to beat regularly. I want to give it a few more games before I call the season a failure but I see no reasons for hope and optimism even one game in. I'm just so tired. This program needs a change badly.

Should we be concerned that we barely beat a D2 team on our home floor? I mean at least we won this time so there's that. Not sure I'm feeling terribly confident going into the opener against a solid Toledo team. It would be great to rattle off a few wins to start the year but I can't shake the feeling that this is just going to be another year just like the others in the Lottich era in the MVC. Maddening inconsistency. Some brilliant moments. A lot of head-scratching moments and a trip to the Thursday game. Prove me wrong Beacons. I want to believe.

Well it's a D1 school from a good conference and a solid measuring stick game for where we are right now as a program. It doesn't wow me but I'm more than okay with this especially considering the alternative was a non D1. The MVC's only one non D1 allowed mandate may have saved us here as I don't think the Sun Belt (which doesn't emphasize hoops to the degree that the MVC does) has such a mandate.

So financial realities dictate that it's going to be awhile (if ever) before we're a competitive MVC program. That doesn't inspire optimism.