Messages

Are you saying we midwesterners have Plumped up the numbers?

I prefer to say we learned the Sweet way to shoot FTs.

http://wdfn.iheart.com/media/play/27628066/

It's actually about the top 10 players in OU's 50 years, but part-way in he talks about that game from his perspective.

Where is the link to 14? 

http://www.nwitimes.com/digital/audio/union-street-hoops/podcast-union-street-hoops-episode/audio_859abe86-dda2-11e6-b3f7-cfaf998c53a0.html

I think he tweeted out the soundcloud link to it, but not the nwitimes link.

I took a swing and lucked into the page where all of them are:

http://www.nwitimes.com/digital/audio/union-street-hoops

Which lost to northern Iowa (A MVC team) after beating GB by 30

That was Texas

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

Oh snap

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

You meant Texas Tech

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

Warren Nolan RPI has them    Illinois-Chicago

RealTimeRPI has them:       Ill. Chicago

CBS Sports has them:   Illinois-Chicago

Headline in the Youngstown Newspaper:    Illinois-Chicago Beats Youngstown State 92-89 In OT

Can I just call them Circle Campus?  Just once??? OK, not a good idea.

You and Ed bleepin' Farmer... bleh

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

[My big weekend wrapup: #MACtion and the Mid-Major Madness Jinx]

http://www.midmajormadness.com/2017/1/17/14296328/my-big-weekend-wrapup-maction-mid-major-madness-jinx-gonzaga-saint-marys My big weekend wrapup: #MACtion and the Mid-Major Madness Jinx We recap that last three days and set the table for what's to come. by Russell Steinberg@Russ_Steinberg  Jan 17, 2017, 7:57am PST Stock Falling: "Oakland: We jumped to the front of the Oakland bandwagon when the Golden Grizzlies beat Valparaiso last week. Since then, they squeaked by a bad Illinois Chicago team by one, then lost a pair of home games to even-worse Detroit and Cleveland State. What's going on in Oakland?"

Don't tell the UIC fans that someone referred to them as "Illinois Chicago".

I'm with UIC fans on that one.

They should really complain to the NCAA website. They are listed at "Ill.-Chicago". And that annoys me when I'm trying to compile RPI stats and figure out who is in my NCAA bracket

Agreed.  I assumed their media guide pushed "UIC", but if they haven't followed through everywhere they should, that's on them.

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

Great list. I've really liked Tevonn's athleticism since I first saw him play as a freshman. He really has freakish athletic ability, and he has the ability to just come out of no where and make a huge play after you sometimes forget he's on the floor.

I can't think of too many other guards who had his combination of size, strength and leaping ability.

At the Detroit game at one point in the second half amidst the Titan onslaught, Lexus' dad was near me and I turned to him and whispered, "Thank god for Tevonn".

Joking aside, can we confirm there will NOT be any score updates on the NFL game?

It's like #LastMan come early!

Didn't Whelliston's game get broken -at the ARC- one year, by somebody in the student section with a sign board?

Yes it did.  I suspect ValpoHoops was in on it, in fact

By the way, I'll be hoping Green Bay loses Sunday because I have a coworker who is a huge Packers fan, and if they are in the Super Bowl, I'm afraid he'll kill me in #Lastman at some point.

At first I panicked for an instant because that's the weekend of my Milwaukee-Green Bay road trip, but fortunately I'll be long gone from Wisconsin by the time the Super Bowl starts   But avoiding my coworker will be a lot harder.

[My big weekend wrapup: #MACtion and the Mid-Major Madness Jinx]

http://www.midmajormadness.com/2017/1/17/14296328/my-big-weekend-wrapup-maction-mid-major-madness-jinx-gonzaga-saint-marys My big weekend wrapup: #MACtion and the Mid-Major Madness Jinx We recap that last three days and set the table for what's to come. by Russell Steinberg@Russ_Steinberg  Jan 17, 2017, 7:57am PST Stock Falling: "Oakland: We jumped to the front of the Oakland bandwagon when the Golden Grizzlies beat Valparaiso last week. Since then, they squeaked by a bad Illinois Chicago team by one, then lost a pair of home games to even-worse Detroit and Cleveland State. What's going on in Oakland?"

Don't tell the UIC fans that someone referred to them as "Illinois Chicago".

I'm with UIC fans on that one.

Maybe this is a poor question.  But on the radio broadcast when they sign off, who is the guy with the speech issue?  Is that a real sign off?  I am trying to be polite, but the voice sounds audibly handicap.

Any insight is appreciated.

That's Ryan Miller.  I see him at the ARC whenever I take my Dad, because we also sit in the handicapped section (my Dad will be 88 in a couple of months and needs a walker to get around).  Through his helper (because I can't possibly figure out what he's saying - and he does the best he can), every time he asks me what our RPI is, and through her I have a wonderful conversation with him.  His ears work perfectly, so he understands exactly what I'm saying.

I would tell you what his condition is, but I'm deathly afraid of getting it wrong.

Cleveland State stuns Oakland at the Orena, 76-65.

Grizzlies shot about 1-20 from three. They really haven't been playing well since they beat us.

Nobody does.  Been like that for a couple of years now.  The vaunted "Valpo hangover".

Our true PGs are Lexus and Max (I'm not sure about Micah). They've atruggled of late so I guess this fella doesn't think much of them.

Enough that they don't fit his definition of "true".  Is this standard usage in CBB parlance?

I also failed to impress upon the guy that that word doesn't mean what he thinks it means.  I hate the way we butcher language these days

I'll admit that my initial response was an emotional one.  I was not under the impression that Lexus was *that* bad.  I also tried to make the point that a year or two ago when Keith Carter was injured you might more reasonably say we didn't have a true PG because those who played the position were playing out of position.

Obviously, I'm with you.  Since Micah replace Lexus in the lineup and the other 2 guards are Tevonn and Shane, I'm thinking he's slotted into the PG position.  Of course, as a starter, he's been gone by the first media TO, so I guess you could see his starting career is off to a rocky start.

https://twitter.com/jorcubsdan/status/821112619708940289

Apparently I'm not hip to the CBB definition of "true".  Can anyone help me out?  This tweet really hacked me off, but I'm sensing that somehow the one that's off.

He just goes by win loss record for auto-bids. It still makes no sense.

It suggests laziness - that makes sense.

What makes no sense is that in 2017 people still expect Joe Lunardi to make sense.

What have I been trying to tell you all these years?

Not sure how that works, exactly, but would love to hear any ideas you have that might level the playing field.

I wish I had the answer, but I thought Mark Adams' rant last year was good starting place: outlaw all buy (guarantee) games.  Period.  Every non-conference game must be a straight home-and-home or on a neutral court.  If someone with leverage wanted to take this on, I'd suggest that they start with this and tell anyone with a frown on their face to come up with a better idea.

There are a, perhaps, a couple of things I don't like about that idea, but I think it would get the conversation started a lot better than my lame idea from a few years ago (which I shared with no one, I think) of establishing a neutral committee to approve all non-conference scheduling.

Anyone else wanting to throw some shots at me? Raise your expectations for the program and maybe you'll be as frustrated as me. Should've capitalized after our sweet 16 run and we didn't. Should've capitalized after Bryce drew left and we didn't. We need to take steps and we aren't. We just lost to a team with a 300 RPI how is that okay? Butler would never do that. Cmon stop being so biased and be stern for once

I'm not in the habit of taking such huffing and puffing seriously about a team for which at-large bids are the scraps that fall from the master's table.  Only a few of them are apportioned to the 250 or so lower-tiered schools in Division I, mainly because non-conference scheduling is so damn corrupt (but such corruption is legally sanctioned) that Valpo will never be seriously in play for an at-large because we'll never be allowed to amass the kind of schedule required for it.  At-large will always be a pipe-dream.  Once a year, Valpo will stub its toe and a bunch of folks will be all over this board and social media groaning about our at-large possibilities going down the drain, and I will chuckle to myself at the outrage expressed without any sense of context.

Before you slobber too much over Butler, please remember they have a famous arena to play in on their own campus.  They probably have done better than us at elevating a Men's basketball program, but they've also gotten damn lucky in a lot of different ways.  They are, to use one of the weaker definitions, "an exception that proves the rule."

Furthermore, if you are clamoring for special academic treatment for student-athletes, you're barking up the wrong tree here.  You might as well go into full hate-valpo mode and pick some other school to root for because I don't think you're ever going to get your wish here.

Bryce Drew beat his brains in trying to assemble an at-large worthy schedule, for all the good it did us.  I'm convinced that part of the reason he left is because he got tired of competing for at-large consideration with one hand tied behind his back - and that's NOT on Valpo, that's on the NCAA.  Until non-conference scheduling becomes less Darwinian and more dedicated to the pure spirit of competition, I adamantly refuse to share even an iota of your outrage.

Moved from 4th to 3rd, replacing Dayton.

From 5th to 4th, you mean.

Oh, and Dorow's twitter feed shows that she also retweets Joel Osteen 

Sitting in the bleachers on the south side is unpleasant even down low (no leg room, people stepping over you all game, very uncomfortable for anyone who has had back, knee or hip issues, etc.)

To say nothing of the first few rows closest to the floor being absolutely horrible for sight lines (since the players and coaches make better walls than windows).

Ultimately, Valpo doesn't owe them anything more than a "thanks, but no thanks".

But we do owe them more and we are all hoping that an honest and adequate explanation was provided. Perhaps Coffman didn't hear the full story or has abbreviated it for some Tom Davis soundbites. As always I would rather believe the best until I know the worst and as I implied in an earlier post maybe there is a little fire under this smoke but probably not much.

And of course, neither Valpo nor IPFW owes *us* anything, right pgmado (I'm agreeing with Paul, not being sarcastic)?

I would like to think that this was more of a scheduling problem this year and not a snub to IPFW.

I would love to believe this but some of our past discussions about Ft. Wayne not being on our schedule suggest there may be more to the story. Some details about our long term schedule planning process could be helpful for us and for the Ft. Wayne press. A school that close and that competitive deserves the truth. Hopefully a good explanation will not force me to side with Tom Davis.

I think Tom Davis spends most of his time looking in a mirror and loving what he sees.  For being an editor of a mid- sized Indiana newspaper, he lets his predudices  get in his way way too often when he reports.  I wonder when the last time was when he talked to anyone from Valpo about anything.  Let IPFW, or Fort Wayne or whatever they are called schedule their Stetsons, Spring Arbors, etc. While the IU thing was a once in a lifetime thing, good for them.  But TD's reporting of Butler and lack of saying anything about Valpo speaks for itself.  And now we can add IPFW, or Fort Wayne, to his list of preferencial, one-sided reporting.  He has no use for VU and that will never change.

Lets remove IPFW from this conversation. They are not the bad guy and Davis is not their regular champion. Isn't this more of a rationalization of Butler practices? If your school (Butler) behaves with arrogant indifference then it is comforting to believe that this might be a common practice at every level of competition.

Sort of like Chekov's maxim about the gun on the wall.

I have no idea what this maxim is about but everything else that StLVUFan said is exactly what I was thinking. Sometimes I think I am his evil twin. 

Quote from: StlVUFan on Today at 12:59:17 PM

    Sort of like Chekov's maxim about the gun on the wall.

I have no idea what this maxim is about but everything else that StLVUFan said is exactly what I was thinking. Sometimes I think I am his evil twin. 

Google is your friend, but ...

I'm not an authority, but I've heard it often enough from people who should be, so here goes my cheap-seat understanding:

Anton (I think?) Chekov, a famous writer/playwright/etc., asserted that in any good story, "if you see a gun on the wall in Act 1, it had better be fired by Act 3".  In other words, don't put something prominent in your story and then never pay it off.  The gun in this example is featured so that the reader/audience can't possibly miss it and immediately begins to anticipate it will be used.  The writer who teases his audience like that and then does nothing with it is a moron according to Chekov.

Davis' "gun on the wall" was "when Coffman called to schedule a game this season he got a familiar answer".  He never gave what that "answer" was ("answer" in this case, means "Valpo said they wouldn't play us, because ...", not Coffman saying, "they wouldn't play us").

My guess of course is that Davis didn't get the answer because Coffman didn't give it to him.  So he shouldn't have intimated an answer he wasn't prepared to reveal.  Per Chekov, if you're not going to fire the gun, don't put it on the wall in the first place.

Sort of like Chekov's maxim about the gun on the wall.

Color me educated. I'll have to reflect on that one.

Pragmatically, that maxim would have at least helped me on an American Lit quiz once upon a time. What color was that handkerchief, anyway? Was it in Young Goodman Brown?

The best I can infer is that Coffman and/or Davis know the reason but don't wish to spell it out publicly, which allows them to imply something nefarious without actually saying so.

Fort Wayne wins again, but is that a good thing?
(By Tom Davis of The News-Sentinel)
Mastodons having trouble finding games due to growing success
Sunday, December 18, 2016 8:12 PM.

From the article:

"The coaches understand the quality of our basketball," Coffman said. "But I'm not sure that their fan bases do. Even with the top mid-majors in the Midwest, they're not psyched to play us because they know it is a quality game, if they care about their RPI it is good for their RPI, but their fan base doesn't necessarily recognize that."
Take Valparaiso for example.
The Crusaders are a dominant mid-major program (9-2 this season) with a potential NBA Draft pick (senior forward Alec Peters). In 12 of the past 13 seasons, Fort Wayne and Valpo have played each other, however, when Coffman called to schedule a game this season he got a familiar answer (from most programs), but a surprising one from Valpo.
"They had Alec Peters back," Coffman said, "they knew that they were going to be good this year, we've played that game (12 of the past 13 years), and they wouldn't play us this year."

I'd be more impressed if Coffman or Davis actually gave us the reason Valpo gave for not playing them.

There is always a reason I will find perfectly valid for refusing to play someone (but one you rarely hear these days): "In order to play you, we'd have to bump someone else who is better than you are."  (This ignores an even better reason, of course: "We'd have to buy out someone we're already contractually obligated to play.")

There is of course 1 team that fits the bill: D II Trinity Christian.  So, I think IPFW has a case.  Southern Utah and Coppin State do not fit the bill since they were part of the MGM Grand event.  Anybody else on our schedule could arguably be said to be as good or better than IPFW before the season started, but -- and I say this without knowing the details of scheduling Trinity Christian -- we could have played IPFW instead of them.

Logistically, Valpo may have a case that they couldn't make that swap if it was going to be at IPFW, so who knows ("If we're going to have to play a game on consecutive days it better be a home game and a game where we can reasonably expect to rest our regulars some..." <giggle in hindsight>).

But instead, all we got was, "they refused to play us."  Poorly written.  You set us up with "a reason" and then didn't give it to us.  Sort of like Chekov's maxim about the gun on the wall.