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Anyone checked on the dead horse to see if he's tired of being beaten on here? We get it...YOU WANT LOTTICH SENT PACKING NOW!! Look at our interim options...Gore, Bowen, Townsend....MORE OF THE SAME!!! Might as well deal with Lottich until the season ends, because none of the three assistant coaches are going to be a breath of fresh air.

Back in November, vu72 posted that Mary Evans knows how to blend together new, transfer personnel.  What are your thoughts now?

I hereby rescind any previous statement or opinion either verbal or written, concerning Mary Evans, her knowledge of blending together new, transfer or any other type of personnel.

It's hard to blend this team to win games, when we have ZERO height or physicality inside to contend with other team's frontcourt defense on the boards. We don't have the true shooters and floor general that we had in recent years. Graduation and injuries make this year a rebuild. Hopefully, Evans is out recruiting the height, and not focused on 4 guards who can shoot and dribble, but can't get inside to battle for boards.

It's definitely a different UNI team without A.J. Green. If Green had stayed, I think UNI would have been a favorite to win the MVC, and get the auto bid. When Green left for "greener pastures", Ben Jacobson just had to do what he will do for a year to keep the team moving forward. Jacobson, unlike Lottich, has a renewable contract for as long as he can still walk, being a UNI grad himself. I just see this game being a yawner, as both teams struggle, but we might get a whimper of hope that we can get the home win on a Wednesday night, than we do if this was Cedar Falls.

Wow, over 10 minutes of game time without a basket...

More of the norm. Not only has this team quit on the coaching staff, not just Lottich, but all of it, THEY QUIT ON THEMSELVES!! They show ZERO leadership or tenacity. The "G" word can't even be attached to this team. The team is as bad as the coaching staff.

I loved listening to Union Street Hoops. In terms of podcasts about the non-football and basketball sports, I would listen to hear updates on things are going, but don't think we'll need long podcasts devoted to one specific "Olympic" sport. The occasional interview with the head coach getting closer to the championship portion of the schedule would be good.

valporun - Perhaps I am wrong, but I don't see Valpo donors being the same as donors to schools like USC, Texas, Kansas, etc. I don't see Valpo donors, to any meaningful degree, donating lots of money to the basketball program unless it is winning.

The schools you named have big business or oil names primarily backing their athletics. Valpo doesn't have that because they have never felt that they needed ONE specific name to pay for an entire department, like a USC, Texas, or Kansas does to survive in their POWER 5 settings.

Looking at the coaching staff since Lottich was named HC in 2016, the only assistant from Day 1 still there is Luke Gore, and Gore has been a part of the program since I was a student in 2003. He came as a grad assistant. Bowen was an assistant to Homer at the time, then left to be a D-II head coach down the line, before coming back, and Rob Holloway is on his second go-around with VU. I don't want a coaching change happening now, because I don't trust the three assistants to do anything good with interim attached to their name. I also don't feel that firing the coach now does any great change to how the team plays once we're fully MVC play. At this point, Lottich stays until the season is over, and once the season ends, AD Small will have his exit interviews, which most likely would result in going in a new direction.

The only reason why President Padilla and AD Small didn't make any change is because it wouldn't have improved the program, and it would have cost more to buyout Lottich than the University would have been wise to take on, when the finances are already being questioned, after students not returning since the pandemic started.

Do I want Coach Lottich replaced? Yes, but only when the season is over. Doing it now wouldn't improve alumni sending in money because the University couldn't hire whomever they wanted until after the season. The change wouldn't improve donations from alums, regardless of income level, until a new head coach could be named appropriately.

Watching this game..we have ZERO leaders. Teyvon was brought in to help that out, right? I don't see that helping. Ruedinger looks like the sophomore slump is getting to him. Barrett and Palesse are getting Zero productive minutes, and finally, we just have a bunch of guys that look in over their heads at this level. DeAveiro is also struggling with that sophomore slump problem. We just don't have the team this year. The coaches can only do so much with talent that look like deer in headlights from top to bottom.

So now that we're well over a year past this...what came to pass with this? Did the deal fall through completely, or was it just a way to increase the number of potentials in health fields that weren't able to attend in person classes while home with kids who were working remotely, while schools were closed, or limiting in-person attendance?

Watched the last quarter of the game, and missed free throws were the difference. Leah Earnest is one of the most gritty physical players I have ever seen in the women's game. Last night she had 13 pts and 13 rbs. Unfortunately she is only shooting a little above 50% from the free throw line and missed 3 crucial FT during crunch time down the stretch in regulation time. Please work on her shooting form, the flying elbow will never allow her to shoot FTs consistently.

Did you get to watch Jeanette Gray?

Jeanette looked like a linebacker with a jumper. She played on great teams, and made the rest of the girls on those teams better. Those were the days of VU Women's Basketball.

We definitely lost some players that should be here, but either found they weren't going to be the "go to" star they were in high school, or something about who they talk with away from the program got in their heads. The number of players we lost to transfer, and then the current transfers getting their feet into the rotations here are NOT playing to our favor of getting wins. Is it all about the coaching staff, and what they are recruiting, or is it player egos coming out of the AAU programs that tout these guys as the next big thing, but don't teach them how to mature off the court, so they can be more when the game isn't the only thing they have in life?

Either a lot of people are traveling home from the holiday weekend, or are at church at this part of the day. If they haven't given up on caring about this team, there are valid reasons why some people aren't hooked to the message board right now.

Whatever happens with CSU the rest of this season...they are a D-I independent this year. The only guess I have, since I haven't listened to The Victory Bell Non-Conference Schedule Podcast yet, is just to help them get a game, since we were close, and could save money on a game we didn't have to stay at a hotel for, could leave early in the day for shootaround, and didn't have to miss so much class time to travel about an hour away.

One basketball and too many pieces trying to figure out where they belong in this program. We might need to use some other parts of the bench a little more, instead of trying to figure out the rotation for the MVC season right now. The transfer portal has definitely hurt the consistency, and it does seem that Lottich has thrown some players out that could have been something here over that time. We spend too much time trying to find shooters from the starting rotation...might need to bring out some of the bench a bit more, or at least see what we have. Is Palesse injured, or has he already fallen off the rotation?

At this point, if Lottich was fired, I think Matt Bowen becomes the interim head coach, as he was a previous head coach at the college ranks. Luke Gore has been a 20+ year assistant coach from the graduate ranks to his current position at Valpo. To go 20+ years over 4 head coaches says something about his staying power as an assistant, and maybe that's where he feels most comfortable/effective as a coach. Once Lottich is let go, the rest of the coaching staff will also be gone. There is nothing about this coaching staff that I would keep as the future of the program. Even if it means we have to go 5-6 more years of rebuilding to get a new Valpo Basketball map drawn.

One thing that Todd has been mentioning a lot is that the clock operator seems to not be paying attention to the clock at all. They haven't stopped it much at all.

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?

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

We last lost to the Cougars in 2006. This doesn't even make sense to play this game. Who thought this was a good idea?

They are playing as an independent, and we can't hit the broad side of the rim, or the officials don't even care, since Chicago St. is playing just for the hell of it these days. They LEFT the WAC, and don't have a conference for most of their sports...WHAT THE F!!! WHY are we playing this game, other than CSU just needs games? Do these count against us in the NET or whatever metrics the NCAA uses for tournament seeding these days?

I can't watch the game anyway tonight, but I really want to know how much money companies like FloHoops are making from games like this. What is the benefit to buying the rights to this game? How many people do they think are going to pay to watch a game between Valparaiso and Chicago State?

FloHoops uses this as a fundraising source for both themselves and the schools they cover, but I'm not interested in spending about $30 for one game online, even if I get a full month's access. I don't need to spend that much for this game.

THREAD!
https://twitter.com/Super70sSports/status/1489080944606724098

Tom Izzo and Rick Pitino might be the last of that breed, with their "whacker" being John Calipari...    (I'll see myself out...)

Are you suggesting that Rollie Massimino was their pasta maker, or the wine connoisseur?

Deji had a longer pro career than Greg Oden...and might have a longer career than Chet Holmgren, and he might have been amazing for Chicago State's record and history books, if he had stayed 4 years.

I'm not paying to watch this game. Will be nice to listen to Todd and Brandon calling this one.

THREAD!
https://twitter.com/Super70sSports/status/1489080944606724098

Tom Izzo and Rick Pitino might be the last of that breed, with their "whacker" being John Calipari...    (I'll see myself out...)

I was a member of the Crusader Pep Band from 1999-2004, and each year we had so many members, when we started out only doing football and men's and women's basketball. The directors were voted on by band members the year before, and the directors shared responsibility to handle recruiting freshmen, and also asked other members to talk with people in their departments about coming to play. We never struggled to get people to come play at games, and it was all student-led. We had great fun. I think when they hired a permanent director about 10 years ago, she was an alum, but was not on campus to help build excitement for the upcoming games, or had the connection with students to get them to come to games since she wasn't on campus during the academic day to show her excitement for game day.

In my honest opinion, the pep band should stay student run, even if there is a faculty advisor to be a guide to the directors, and the director should be a student, not an alum or someone from the outside who teaches in the area or works in another capacity. That always worked really well, and the band was fun. Valpo needs to get back to that soon! While paying members would be great, having the directors being fellow students goes a lot further with the band because the players know the directors understand when they need to miss a game because of class, homework, or something else going on.