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Pray tell, why in the world are Horizon League teams still playing cupcakes this far into the season?  These games should be first or second game matches.  Could it possibly be that this is the only way for some teams to get wins??   

It's not like we're looking down a murderer's row of opponents going into conference season. Indiana St., Santa Clara and Chicago St. have win probabilities of 80%, 86%, and 97%.

Damn. That would look good over by the new union and the Christopher Center.

Did I hear that Alec's second in Division 1, overall, among active players for career scoring?

Yep. Since 2014 Alec is the 4th highest scorer in all of college basketball. Damon Lynn of NJIT is 27 points ahead of Alec.

How many people will we have in Lexington? My dad and I are driving down and will be staying the night within walking distance of Rupp. It'd be cool to grab a beer or two with some of you all!

He's hiding under a bridge asking three questions. (sorry, that may be a bit obscure for some)

Actually, he just wants you to throw him a treasure and he'll let you cross the bridge

They just beat a Bobby Hurley-coached Arizona State team by 46.  Granted, ASU hasn't done anything spectacular this season, but that is still a beat down of another Power 5 program.  This will be an interesting game.

That's ok, we just beat Dan Hurley!

It feels good to be right!

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

I know a lot of us are concerned about Alec's 3 point shooting woes. I am, I know that. I decided to take a 5 game rolling average of his 3 point shooting. After the Oregon game, Alec hit his career low since January of 2014. In fact he hasn't been below 30% for a 5 game stretch since his freshman year.

Here's a graph for you all to take a gander at.



Now back in January of 2014 it was widely believed that Alec was starting to tire a little from the riggers of a freshman season where he was playing 25-30 minutes a game. We also saw teams starting to focus on him and LeVonte Dority stepped up and carried the load for a few games.

I don't want to try to jump into Alec's mind or be an arm chair psychologist. There's been a few threes that have been the in and out type, and really we could see the 3 point line jump up to 50% for the next 10 games. I know we need Alec to shoot hit usual 50-40-85 if we're want to have a chance to advance in the NCAAs.

episode 4?

Paul's in Vegas. He's probably got more "important" things to do than do the podcast.

Lets not overreact it was a good win but I haven't seen anything that would suggest that Alabama is going to be anything close to a top-50 RPI team. SEC is not very good.

Agreed. I thought we looked better overall but I also think Alabama isn't a great team. BYU is going to be a much tougher match up.

I probably should have said top 100. Either way, in the long run, it will be in the top 5 of our wins this season.

Well we'll be playing on Thanksgiving Day, so that's something!

Right now KenPom has us losing 79-74 (32% chance of winning) as they are the #43 team in the country.

They have a 6'10" kid, Eric Mika, who is returning from something, as he hasn't played since 2014 but is still listed at a sophomore. He's averaging nearly 21 points a game and 11 rebounds. Against Princeton, their best opponent this season, he had 9 OFFENSIVE rebounds. He's an all inside player, but he's also a good FT shooter, so Hack-A-Mika won't work to slow him down. He's also pretty good on the defensive side of the ball too.

Their guard Nick Emery returns from last year's game. He's still a bit of a slashing guard, if you remember from last year, we did a good job on him inside the 3 point line. He's only hitting 27.3% of his threes this season, but he went 3 for 6 in the semifinal last year. A 1-7 game against Princeton is bringing him down.

Against St. Louis, senior forward Kyle Davis has a career game. I trust Alec to shut him down again as he did a good job in the semi-finals, holding him to 5 points.

Keeping them off the offensive boards will be the key to this game. They shoot well, but they also do well getting Oboards. Also winning the free throw "battle" will go a long way to winning this game.

If we sweep Vegas, we could be looking at two potential top 50 RPI wins at the end of the season. This one will be tougher. We've not seen their best player, but the 3 guys who are his sidekicks (and it really looks like they are mostly his sidekicks) have been seen and handled by Valpo.

One thing is for sure in this game. Alabama will be well coached with Avery Johnson at the helm.

I just don't think that Valpo is ready for this game. I hope that I am wrong but I think that there will be too many possessions in which they struggle to get good looks and Oregon will be too athletic for many of the Valpo players.

Oregon 78
Valpo 54

I would really like to be wrong on this.

Welcome aboard, Parker!  Could be our next AP?

We were saying can AP be the next Rowdy. How bout we let Parker be the first Parker.

7-1 with a close loss coming to Oregon.

35-1. Lose in the Horizon League championship game. #1 seed in the NIT though.

So we win the NIT?

We're going to go 36-0 beating Butler in the elite 8, Baylor in the final 4 and Vanderbilt in the NCG.

This is great you guys!

Any way you guys could create feed on iTunes? I think it would help drive subscribers and listeners and it'd be easy for someone like me who keeps all their podcasts in one nice a neat location. It would be awesome for me to go from the FiveThirtyEight Podcast to the Jonah Keri Show to Union Street Hoops with the click of a button.

I love all the press that Peters is getting but think that Paul Orens comment on Peters not being on the cover is obvious. Clearly they are gonna put bigger and higher profile school players on the cover, their goal is to sell magazines. Unfortunately Peters just doesn't move product.

This tweet was in reference to all the White Sox fans that are complaining about how their team is overlooked.

I'm a White Sox fan and a Valpo fan. I'm also an independent voter in a non-swing state. Life is tough being overlooked.

Interesting to see Vanderbilt is ranked 64 in KenPom. That could be a fun 7-10 game in the NCAA tournament...

Alums should meet at Tito's after the game to see Ron Burgandy play jazz flute.

Just don't talk bad about San Diego, they'll serve you dog poop

Jubril is a true 6'7", so I'm thinking Alec is a true 6'9" and Smits might not be 7'2", I'm thinking there's an extra inch added there.

Shane and Jubril are going to serve a 2 game suspension also? When did this all happen?

No he's talking about the 2 gamer they served after the house party 2 years ago. Jubril served it during his Sophomore season, Shane served it last season.

Just saw the U.S. news release.  As usual, top 5 ranking etc.

Then highest enrollment of NEW STUDENTS is cited. And then all wrapped in a total of undergraduate, graduate, and law.   

So.....how does the undergraduate freshman number compare to recent years?  Is this an artful dodge?  Hard to imagine a strong number in this category would not be highlighted.

Hmmm.....

I can't give the exact final number, but I can say that I have been told the undergraduate freshman class is one of the largest seen in decades, if not the largest, and the undergraduate transfer number is clearly a record.

and this comes after the VUMBB team reaches the NIT finals.........................hmmmm, I wonder what the board of directors attributes this greatest increase in enrollment in decades.

I feel like most students commit to colleges before April.

Ok so let's look back at what happened in the spring of these high school student's junior year...