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I know most everyone who posted about the women's games were putting their comments in last season's thread. Time to get this year's thread rolling...

The women beat Liberty, 70-68, at the ARC. Dani Frankin had 29 points, and no one else was in double digits scoring for the Crusaders.  It was a very back and forth game, and tied until Amber Lindfors made a catch and shoot final shot with 0.8 seconds left. It was a good game. Liberty put up a struggle for the women, but they stayed in it nicely. Yes, Liberty hasn't won a game this season, but they didn't lose to equal or lesser competition. They scheduled above them to get ready for their Big South foes. They are now 0-4, but they'll win games once they get to where they aren't playing above what they can win against.

The Valpo women are now 3-2 overall, 2-0 at home, with the first home win being Monday's game against IU-Kokomo. The women definitely need to play with some more height, but they are able to run. They just need to control the turnovers. They had 19 tonight. They'll get better, but they just need to get things under control, in terms of passes and basketball IQ. They'll be ready to do some good work in the conference this season.

First saw this posted on Twitter, but instead of going with it, I checked the team website itself...Vashil Fernandez has signed to play for the Miami Heat.


http://www.nba.com/heat/news/heat-signs-vashil-fernandez

Now I have a reason to watch the NBA a little more closely. I now have a local guy in Fred Van Vleet playing for Toronto, and now Vashil in Miami. Congrats to Vashil for signing, and here's to a great, long NBA career!!

I looked to see how things went with the Crusader Open for 2016. I am beyond disappointed in what has happened with this meet since being moved off-campus in 2002. This meet used to be on Saturday mornings run in the area behind Kretzmann, the Chapel, and the old Union. It was a loop race, but had a great campus crowd base, post-Union breakfast. Once construction started on the Christopher Center, the meet had to move off-campus. Mind you, this meet used to get 14-16 teams to come race on those Saturdays.

Since moving to Sunset Farms in 2002, the race went from a Saturday morning to Friday evening. With this, teams started backing out and going to other meets that were on Saturdays, and not as hilly or rough to begin the season. Long story short, after years of seeing the meet run with maybe 4 or 5 teams, and traditionally won by the B or C runners from Notre Dame, the 2016 edition of this meet was run Friday with TWO, yes, I said TWO, teams. The competing teams were Notre Dame and Valpo. Of course, Notre Dame ran away with the meet on both sides, but I can't believe it was worth the time to have a dual meet that wasn't competitive at all.

It will be a long season for Valpo Cross Country, especially when many of the runners will only have two meets run before their season ends.

Valparaiso retires Drew, Lindner No. 24 jersey

I found this video on YouTube from the NWITimes. I don't know if HLN showed the pregame festivities, but this was nice to have some video and the postgame interviews with Bruce and Bryce. Does anyone have video from the full retirement ceremony, or will the Athletic Department post a video on the website? I know I'd like to see all that happened and was said on this special night.

Not expecting a whole lot of talk here, but as the resident cross country and track guy on the board, today was the HL Cross Country Championships hosted by Youngstown St. at a local high school course in Boardman, OH. I wasn't at the meet, but the men ran 8K and the women ran a 5K (why 5K? I don't know). Anyway, this was the first year since I was running at VU that the conference titles were up for grabs in the most open sense of the comment. In the Mid-Con/Summit days, it was always Southern Utah winning both titles. In the HL, it was Butler on both sides until they bolted, then last year Loyola swept both sides of the meet. This year, the men of Detroit Mercy won the title with 33 points, and the women of Youngstown State won with 36 points. Both races were won in seemingly dominant fashion by the Titans and the Penguins. In the case of Valpo, both the men and women were 7th overall in their races. Jessica Richardson was 7th overall, and garnered a 1st Team All Horizon League honor. David Rutkowski was the top finisher for the men with a 20th place run.

Not excited by another bottom of the pack race for the Crusaders cross country teams, but I hope with the investment in the new track that it will generate some more scholarship dollars to get some quality runners in to develop a true program, with something to proud of in the program again.

Coach Dorow has announced the 2013-14 Women's Basketball schedule.

http://www.valpoathletics.com/wbasketball/schedule/

It features what seems to be a decent schedule, including a Thursday, November 14th matchup with University of Illinois, so it sounds like my tv will be stationed on BTN two nights in a row. They also face Saint Louis as the regular season opener on the road, plus having Notre Dame, Tennessee Tech, Florida International, Tulsa, South Dakota, and Butler. Should be an interesting season with more question marks than the current crisis in Syria. Should make for a good season of finding out what the women's team will be like with no real indication of the team leader, scorer, rebounder, or all-around floor rat of the Jake Diebler variety.

For those who would like to watch Betsy and the Florida Gulf Coast team she plays for, they will have their A-Sun quarterfinal game on ESPN3, or the Watch ESPN program and app, at 12ET or 11CT. I posted this here because she's not on the Valpo roster so the women's basketball thread mentioning her wouldn't have been the right place, in some posters' minds. Sadly, wish she had been on our roster, but hope she's a GA or coaching somewhere next season. A good floor leader, like she was for us, should be coaching somewhere, even if she's in the high school ranks first.

Hey guys! Thought I'd start a thread like the "Opponents Scoreboard" for Horizon League baseball, including standings and results, now that we have games going.

As of 2/16/13

Wright State is 2-0
W vs. LaSalle 9-5
W vs. Temple 8-3

Wisconsin-Milwaukee 2-2
L vs. New Mexico State 4-3
W vs. NMSU                11-0
W vs. NMSU                13-8
L vs. NMSU                 16-8

Illinois-Chicago    1-1
W vs. #24 Texas A&M   2-0
L vs. #24 Texas A&M    4-3

Valpo                 1-1
L vs. Belmont               4-3
W vs. Ohio                  1-0

Youngstown State 0-3
L vs. Samford              5-3
L vs. Samford              17-3
L vs. Samford              13-0


I will do my best to update this regularly. Instead of going to the individual school's athletic sites, I like going to d1baseball.com to get my results and game updates. It's a good resource for seeing how all the college baseball teams at the D-I level are doing on a daily basis. It also has links to Live Stats for every game, for those who want to keep up, but for work purposes and whatnot, can't stream audio or video of games during work time.

The Class of 2012 Recruited Roster is now on the VU Athletics website. Looks like a great number of players coming in.

Roster:
http://www.valpoathletics.com/football/news/2011-12/11808/valpo-announces-2012-football-recruiting-class/

Coach Carlson also has a link within the link to the story about the roster that had a quick comment about every recruit in the incoming class.

In negated track action this weekend, for the first time in our five years in the HL, the men's team finished higher than 7th. The men took 5th, with sophomore Julian Smith qualifying for the NCAA regional meet in two events, as he earned HL championships in the 100 and 200 meters. This kid is impressive for someone going to a school with NO home track to train on. Just as impressive, the men's track team BEAT BUTLER!! Mind you, Butler isn't as dominant on the track as they are in cross country.

The women's team finished 8th. I don't know what the issue is with recruiting for the women's team, but we're young and only have distance runners and throwers. We can get a couple field eventers, but NO sprinters. You can't be competitive with just young distance runners and throwers.

Seeing some of this success should help the program secure funds for the new track, but another thing is that we just need to get the new track put in anyway, and the program will grow based on that result too. An example of this working is a local private high school in the same conference as the one I ran in never had a track, then in about 2003 they put in a track, and the program has grown in numbers and productivity in the athletes' progress towards winning events at the conference meet and even getting to the state meet. Sometimes, "if you build it, they will come" does work, it's only a matter of getting it done, instead of sitting on it waiting for people to jump to make it happen. I know VU athletics doesn't want to take on the debt that would come with building a track and dealing with a bank loan to build it, but having the track there already, it would get paid off just as easier as it would waiting for a conglomerate of donors to pool money to make it happen.

We speculated what would happen, and I just saw on the Valpo athletics site that Greg Kirby has officially retired. I definitely didn't pay attention to his background, other than how he was at Valpo High, but never knew he started out as a freshmen boys basketball coach at Danville High School in Danville, IL. He seemed to have quite the resume in 41 years of coaching.

http://www.valpoathletics.com/wbasketball/news/2011-12/11570/greg-kirby-to-retire-from-coaching-after-six-seasons-on-valpo-staff/

I know some of you will run me over the coals for bringing BWood into the Valpo Basketball threads again, but this article mentions a little about his overall college career. From his one year at SIU to his community college year at Highland Community College in Freeport, IL, to Valpo, and now MSU. I thought I would pass it on. The writer seems to ramble a bit, but that's most of the Rockford Register Star's writing staff these days, wordy, disconnected, disinterested, lost in translation.

http://www.rrstar.com/sports/x1612624825/Highland-sparks-MSUs-Wood-toward-national-title-run?zc_p=0

Green Bay will be going to Ames, Iowa to play the Cyclones in what is slated as the Phoenix being the home team at Hilton Coliseum, where the Cyclones play. This is the 7-10 matchup in the bracket that features Kentucky as the #2 seed, and UConn as the #1 seed. I tried to look at the bracket about this, but the NCAA didn't have it on their site totally filled out, nor did ESPN.

I did hear Kara Lawson say that she feels Green Bay, with a 30-1 record, should be seeded higher than #7. I have to agree, but much like the NIT, the women's tourney goes more by conference and who will draw money for the bracket. Even though the games are on campus sites until the Sweet 16, with the Final Four in Denver, the Big 6 conferences see all the gate advantages to hosting here.

Have any of you seen the uniforms that Baylor has for the Big 12 and NCAA tourneys? If the lights go out at the Sprint Center, you'll see the Bears glow in the dark. I would post a picture of them, but I'm not finding one on the interwebs right now. They are playing on ESPN2/ESPN3 right now though.

I'm watching OTL today because part of it is talking about rivalries in college football and basketball. Some of it will probably have to do with the lost rivalries in all of this conference realignment, and what happened in last night's Duke-UNC game, since it is rivalry week. What I wanted to do with this post though is ask what some people feel are the best, or their favorite, rivalries in college football or basketball?

It could be any of the Big Ten football rivalries involving Paul Bunyan's Ax, Old Oaken Bucket, or any of those rivalry games. It could even been the Valpo-Butler Hoosier Helmet game. Don't be afraid to even talk about the old rivalry of Harvard-Yale.

If you missed this, go to the Outside The Lines page on espn.com, and they'll have it there later.

I received a text from ESPN Alerts that former Valparaiso University Men's Basketball Coach Gene Bartow passed away at the age of 81. He was men's basketball coach from 1964-1970. He also coached at University of Illinois, UCLA (where he succeeded the great John Wooden), and at UAB. The story on ESPN doesn't mention that he was a head coach at Valpo, but he was a coach before we went D-I.

Here is the link I promised:

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/7421903/gene-bartow-former-ucla-bruins-uab-blazers-coach-dies-81

Tuesday night will be an interesting game to see what kind of confidence we can get back from last night's tough loss. The Huskies are 0-10, but this is because they are having to play up to seven FRESHMEN in their first season under Mark Montgomery. Montgomery was an assistant under Tom Izzo at Michigan St. He'll be relatively familiar with our program in terms of some of the players on the roster, maybe not some of the uptempo changes that Bryce has made though.
Hopefully, we'll be able to put up a comfortable lead on the Huskies, and NOT coast thru the remainder of the game. I'm going to predict a rather large final score, and hope that KVW and Rowdy go on a scoring frenzy. Would be nice to get see Rowdy with a double-double at the half, maybe have a Reggie Hamilton-like performance, but also get scoring support from more than just Kevin. Maybe a Ben Boggs breakout game? Buggs will definitely need to work on his hands this game, so he can stay in it. We'll need him to really be a leader on the court, rather than leading from the bench with most of the second half remaining because he has 4 fouls, or has fouled out.

Valpo 78
Northern Illinois 47

For those that are interested in the women's team, they are currently playing SIU-Edwardsville. The game is available on video thru SIU-E, and the women are looking good, though they are trailing the Cougars currently. Richards and Varner are holding the team together so far.

In more 2K C vs. C action, the Akron Zips, whom we play next week in the tourney, are leading Mississippi St. by 8 at half. The score is 37-29 at Hattiesburg, MS. The second game that ESPN 2 is showing tonight will have Duquesne and Arizona. It will be a good night of basketball, I hope.

I just saw on a Mid Majority Twitter Re-Tweet that Arizona lost to Seattle Pacific, 69-68, in an exhibition game. This might not play a huge factor in what we do against the Wildcats to open the season, but it was worth pointing out that ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN.

I'm listing the first exhibition games for all HL teams here. This will give us opportunity to get an idea of how some players might have improved from a season ago, or get a look at freshmen or transfers. I purposely put this topic/thread in On The Horizon because it is open to the entire league to add comments or notes about what anyone saw at these games or heard, if there is audio/video, or if you attended.

Butler- Northern State on Wednesday, November 2nd at 7PM ET.

Cleveland St.- John Carroll on Wednesday, November 9th at 7PM ET

Detroit- Madonna on Saturday, October 29th at 7PM ET

UW-Green Bay- Lawrence on Friday, November 4th at 7PM CT

Loyola- Apparently no exhibition game, so first game is Illinois on Friday, November 11th at 8PM CT

UW-Milwaukee- UW-Parkside on Saturday, November 5th at 7PM CT

UIC- Red vs. Blue Scrimmage on Friday, October 28th at 7PM CT
     - University of Chicago on Wednesday, November 2nd at 7PM CT

Valpo- Hillsdale on Saturday, October 29th at 7:05PM CT

Wright St.- Central State on Saturday, November 5th at 7PM ET
              - It looks like the Raiders also have two preview programs to show off this years team prior to the exhibition games.

Youngstown St.- Opens the regular season with Samford on Saturday, November 12th 7PM ET?

I will check around the Loyola and Youngstown St. boards and media guides to make sure I didn't miss something with their scheduling.

Just saw this on Yahoo.. Juwan Howard, Jr., a sophomore 6-6 guard has transferred to Detroit from Western Michigan. The story says that he will be eligible to play at the start of the 2012-2013 season.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/news?slug=ap-detroit-howard

Here is the link from the Western Michigan website about Howard's leaving the program:

http://www.wmubroncos.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=24351&SPID=1924&DB_LANG=C&ATCLID=205264751&DB_OEM_ID=4600

I was listening to Carmen, Jurko, and Harry, and they were discussing the corruption of the college game due to the "one-year out of high school" draft rule. A thought came to me about this, Why not let the NBA teams draft the 18-year-olds, but their first year is down in the NBDL developing and taking some life courses that help them understand their contract, their paycheck, and actually putting most of this money into better investments than 7 vehicles/motorcycles, 5 mansions, and all the extravagant amenities that most rookies throw their money away on?

This would allow those 18-year-olds the ability to help their families financially, and keep them from corrupting/degrading the college game with their attending enough fall classes to stay eligible for the spring, and then quit going to class in January, but still be able to play ball. I suppose it would also be the best way to get a coach like John Calipari out of the college game for good?

Any thoughts?

Is there a way to change the font color for threads with multiple pages, so that you know which pages you've viewed? I don't really want to have to guess which page I left off on, if I happen to be gone for a few days, or if the thread didn't have new posts to it for a few days before someone adds to it.

What are some of the other conference tournaments fans have paid attention to, whether on the men's or women's side? Thought it would be a fun way to see what people are doing this week in getting ready for the CBS side of March Madness. I've watched or listened to games from the Big East, America East, Southland, Horizon, Big 12, Patriot, Ivy, SWAC, and I'm definitely sure of a couple others I will add as the week plays out. I could have done a poll, but that means taking time away from the games. I may add one later though... HAPPY CHAMPIONSHIP WEEK!!!