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I certainly agree that there is risk with moving to a power 5/6 conference, but isn't that what it's all about? Shooting for the highest league in the land is a risk worth taking. Even if he doesn't get the prolific scoring numbers, he would at least get a ton of experience against the type of talent that he's going to play in the NBA camps.

I'm just afraid, for Alec's sake, that since averaging 19ppg/9rpg in the Horizon hasn't put him on anyone's NBA Draft radar so far (that I can see), coming back and averaging 22ppg/10rpg isn't going to shoot him up the boards unless Valpo gets a win or two in the NCAAT next year.

I really hope I'm wrong! (Fingers crossed that he comes back, drops 28/12, we make a S16 run, and Alec's a lottery pick!)

I don't think anyone has a good idea of where Alec will be next year right now mostly because I think his biggest influence will be the advice he gets from the NBA scouts in the next month.

I do not think he is NBA ready today and judging by what I'm reading at most mock drafts/NBA draft rankings, the experts don't think so either. He will go through the whole NBA workout landscape for two reasons:

1. (And most importantly) For the chance that he shows up nearly everyone in the gym and impresses the hell out of the scouts against the best competition in the world and jumps up 50-80 spots in the current draft rankings. (I've seen him presently sitting at #32 Junior which isn't anywhere close to being drafted if this holds true.)

2. (And most realistically) To get a better idea at where he sits and to get advice on how to use next season to climb the draft ladder. If the feedback that he gets says dominate in the Horizon, set Valpo records, etc., etc., then he will be back. If the consensus advice is that he needs to prove himself against power 5 talent night in and night out, then I think there is a good chance he will be elsewhere next season. I believe that this is the advice that BW received. I think the reality is that after their Junior seasons, neither had the body of work to make a great case for the NBA... Lucky for Alec, the new rule gives him another stage to prove himself to the scouts.

However, I'm nervous the advice he will get will be the latter...

When do tickets for Tuesday go on sale?

Man, the ARC would be bursting at the seams if they could somehow coordinate the LBAA tourney and keep the Valpo v. Davidson/FSU game either Saturday or Sunday night.  Wouldn't it be some kind of consolidation if VU said "sorry for the last minute reshuffle, but here's a couple of tickets to get the kids to see Valpo play an ACC team prime time"?

I think the kids could get over that pretty quick... What an unexpected, but great, experience!

While Monmouth has a pair of "flashier" wins, their loses are a lot worse then ours.

Only one of our loses was to a team with less than 20 wins. That one is Ball State who would have easily had 20 if they didn't fall flat on their face at the end of the season.

I know someone said in another post that head-to-heads don't matter, but I can't possibly think that when anyone on the committee is down to a couple of teams to put on their selections, they won't notice if the teams played each other or not...

Super interesting read on the at-large selection process that vusupporter posted...

Certainly doesn't hurt our chances that we are automatically "considered" since we won our regular season title.

Agreed that rebounding is a big reason we lost. I actually liked our zone defense. We forced a good amount of turnovers and forced them to take some bad shots (a few of which they actually hit). However, you're correct that we did not know how to box out in the zone which gave them a few easy put backs.

We never got in any offensive flow, especially in the second half and especially against their zone D. Over half of our shots were contested three pointers and we were consistently taking that shot with 2 or 3 seconds left on the shot clock because we couldn't get any decent looks before that. We took that contested 3 out of necessity which was evident because we could have easily had the same shot earlier in the shot clock. I think this problem could have been prevented if Peters would have stepped up and knocked down a couple of the "okay" looks from the top of the key that he was getting as we were spinning the ball around against the zone.  That might have gotten them out of the zone. The only other good half court offensive possessions were a couple of moves by the Walker's and a drive or two by Hammink.

The bottom line is that we are not a great 3-point shooting team and so if we are forced to take more than half of our shots behind the arc, we are going to lose against quality opponents.

With all of that being said, I do believe that Skara could have really helped in this game. I think he could have made a difference in the short corner against that zone and could have hit a cutting Peters a few times to open things up.