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This topic has already been started on the Valley fan board and not surprisingly Cooper is the leading FOY candidate. Sepp and Williamson also mentioned as long shots in the all freshman team composition. None of us have weighed in yet but I eventually will and having this topic here should help us keep our 4 freshman comments in one place.

Buffalo, Valpo, George Washington, Wright St.  4 more TBD
Maybe we will have a coach and some new players lined up by then. 

Suddenly I've found a little optimism to actually look forward to next season. 

Valley fans are just as desperate for information as we are. The few of us who posted there irregularly pretty much quit when it sunk in how quickly our program had turned to crap. Go on over and comment. I think they would appreciate  whatever we can add.

Both games 3:00 PM central tipoff with ours on ESPN+ and the other on ESPN2. One of these games is pretty meaningless and the other is hoping to draw 10,000 fans for all the marbles and the #1 Valley seed. I think I will be watching ESPN2. Who will be with me?

They play San Jose St tonight on the Pac 12 Network at 10 central. If "big dummy" is not doing the color commentary I will watch AND listen. If his mouth is running then I will still try to watch. 

So far they have beaten Tarleton St 62-50 and lost to Santa Clara 88-72. Can Matt deliver them a homecoming surprise?

Time for a new thread where we can talk about our same old familiar faces. Some quick calculations showed that our guys will return about 45% of their 20-21 minutes (higher than I thought). Meanwhile the girls (subject to last minute change) look to return over 90%. If you followed last year there shouldn't be much confusion on who is who. Just remove Ellenson while adding freshmen Lovie Malone and Ella Van Weelden plus transfer Olivia Brown from St Bonaventure.
Looks like an even better 3 point (32% conference) shooting team but inside play will still be our vulnerability.

It is way too early but for the purpose of debate only, I'll ask which team (boys or girls) will end with the higher NET ranking? I'd say flip a coin and both could be near 100. Intelligent  and ignorant  guesswork will both be welcomed.

From Rambler board--both Drake and Bradley had a positive test in their Tier 1 personnel but have enough players and coaches to play. So MSU withdrew (with the NCAA in mind), Drake moves to title game, and Bradley beats Loyola to advance to title.

Nothing on Valley board. Do any of you know anything? Could we be a 3 bid league?

Everybody is over here checking and we have nowhere to comment. 

Lets throw away the rule book and try a 2-For thread because nothing else is working.

Do we still have a men's basketball team? As a recovering men's basketball addict I'm still trying to lose track.    Looking forward to the girls game hoping that more of the Maya Dunson Loyola to Valpo transfer story will come out. Her addition looks like 2 or 3 additional Valley wins if all 18 scheduled games are ever played. For any MVC tourney success her inclusion was essential.

Thoughts on either contest will be welcome. 

Nobody seems eager to open this thread with no word on Nick. However they have a NET of 335, RPI of 319 and have only won once. With that in mind I am going to stick my neck out and try to break my losing streak of opening threads. I don't know how but I am expecting a win. 

I don't know what has happened, but I suspect that bits and pieces may trickle out for months or years.

If anyone wants to speculate on why the whole program has exploded lets put it here. Looks to me that multiple conflicts might have been ongoing.

Golder played like trash during Feb. Was it injury or foot dragging related?

It is a bright, sunny, beautiful day and the temperature has already skyrocketed to a balmy -11. A good nights sleep and a strong cup of coffee have persuaded me to move forward to a fresh subject and challenge.

Why don't all of you join me?

Well I started the UNLV thread and got results. Lets try it again.

I always try to watch every future opponent but Texas A&M has eluded me. Did any of you catch one or more of their games? If so please comment.

My recent record with opening game threads has been unspectacular but the team is headed for Vegas and I'm feeling lucky. Gradually these guys are finding the answers and I see nothing that will interrupt this trend. I have seen zero minutes of UNLV basketball so I will not predict an outcome. That said I'm expecting us to play well either in victory or in defeat.

I've collected a few numbers from here and there to kick off discussion. Most are or were bubble teams we have previously discussed.

                                    Kenpom                              Sagarin                       BracketMatrx Projected Seed                   
St. Mary's.                     28                                      43.                             11

Loyola                            41                                     62                              12

NC State                       43                                      46                              9

Rhode Island                 47                                     51                               8

Middle Tennessee.          49                                     64                              ----- NIT

Boise St.                       57                                     61                              ------NIT

St Bonaventure              64                                    55                                9

Buffalo                          81                                    77                               12

Valpo                            150                                  151                             

Obviously I included NC State because they bought out the Loyola road game, have 11 losses , played 0 OOC true road games and in  The Battle For Atlantis neutral site they lost 2 of 3 with one of them being to Northern Iowa.       

I am not sure what Sagarin does but by memory I'm thinking Kenpom gives some credit for games with missing players. Loyola lost 3 games without MVC Player of the Year Clayton Custer. Will that effect their seeding?

Nobody else feels the hot hand and I am ice cold in recent attempts so no way will I kick this thing off.

Just call this a place where we can not talk about our upcoming visit to 60 RPI MSU. While we are not on that topic, lets also not discuss the recent drubbing they recently handed us at the ARC.

Ok I'll give this game thread startup another trial. These kids desperately need to regain their confidence.

OK. I'll try my hand at opening a game thread, but don't blame me if this trend continues.   

For what it is worth Oakland has opened a thread for this subject and their OOC is 70% set. They have games at Kansas, at Syracuse, against Michigan St, at Oral Roberts, several MAC contests, and are hosting Texas Southern.

What do we have locked up? We host Indiana St again, go to Ball St and travel to Santa Clara with a probable second game attached (Stanford, or one of many others in that area). What else do we know?
Rumors and speculation are always welcome.

I want to kick this off before most of you disappear for the next 6 months. This and recruiting are typically our biggest off season topics of discussion.

By my memory we will be hosting Indiana St, Chicago St, Ball St, and Rhode Island while we travel to Missouri St and IPFW. At this point I believe we will remain a top 80 program with slim but not unrealistic at large type potential. Once again we will need to compile an at large quality list of opponents.

It looks to me that inclusion in the right exempt tournaments is the key to our OOC SOS. I would think being an excluded bubble team with NIT success might crack open a few doors that had previously been manned by armed guards.

This is a good organizational process to concentrate our thoughts and comments towards what has worked best or worst for the 15-16 season. For no particular reason I will start with the 5 (center) position and work down.

Center (5)---As good a defender as Vashil is he carries some obvious limitations (offense and defending on the perimeter). Jubril is a much smaller but solid defender whose versatility is an asset. Had Smits been healthy he could have filled some of these situational gaps.
Overall Grade 3 1/2 Stars  With Smits it might have been 4.

The (4)---- Starting with Alec and a host of solid replacements it doesn't get much better.
Overall Grade 4 1/2 Stars

The (3)--- By my count we had 5 players who could adequately play the 3 but none were reliably consistent 3 point shooters.
Overall Grade 3 3/4 Stars

The (2)--- When healthy Tevonn he is a great defender and opens up the offense for the drive. Who exactly is his backup? There seems to be no defined pecking order so his replacement minutes are assigned based mostly on defensive match ups. The fact that we had no traditional backup 2 stood out like a sore thumb vs GB.
Overall Grade 4 1/4 Stars with Tevonn maybe 3 Stars without. There are just times that you need controlled, smaller, quicker people on the floor.

The (1)---Keith is fantastic and when we only need 8 backup minutes from Shane, EVN or others we are in great shape. With Carter injured (@ WSU) or in foul trouble things go downhill in a hurry.
Overall Grade 4 1/2 Stars but without Keith it drops to 3 Stars or less.

The decision by Bryce to go with taller backup guards didn't work out badly and could have worked out great. The fatal flaw looks to be our over reliance on Tevonn and Keith being available.     Thoughts?

Everybody has total familiarity with who we are, what we do, and how we try to do it. We have never worn a bigger target. 16-2 looks like the best we can expect to do and I wouldn't be shocked with as many as 4 losses. I'll go with the best case 16-2.

I had already forgotten how to start a new thread but here goes.

Must win for any at large discussion. I can already hear the March conversations saying "who did they beat" disregarding the fact that nobody would play us.

Did anybody see any of the OSU- Iona game? Will we go back to man or continue to mix in the zone?

Skara could really help with this effort. Will we see more of EVN?

I was thinking along these lines in conjunction with some of our earlier discussions about bracket buster revisions. Anyway----

Lets divide all D1 schools into two permanent number categories of odd and even. Conference members must be split as close to 50-50 as possible. So our starting point would be 175 odd number and 175 even number schools. Temporarily forget team 351 because this can be resolved.

Each year after the plan is instituted the period from Dec 26 thru Jan2 will be left open by everyone for the inclusion of 2 additional games. Year 1 the odd teams will be home and year 2 the even and the home vs road designation can not be either bought out or bartered.

Year 1 the odd number teams (year 2 the even) will have a lottery on November 15th (arbitrarily chosen) to determine a 1 -175 order of selection. Lottery pick one can choose any two teams from the opposite category (in year one it would be teams with an even number). These 2  teams will receive a checkmark for each time chosen  and will be crossed off the list with the second checkmark. Lottery pick #2 then makes his choices then #3, #4 and so on down the line.

Deals can be cut (subject to "Scheduling Czar" approval) up until Dec 3rd when destinations will be written into stone.

Are there any fatal flaws with this system other than it would have to be sold to all as something that would be long term good for college basketball?

I am going to take cover before you folks start shooting holes in it. I'll get my white flag  out and ready ahead of time.

So with 6 players in the mix for 15-16 point guard playing time will-------- nope don't go there as we can talk about that this summer.

My predictions for the HL tournament seedings are--------wait---- just a bit too early for that also.

Our return game with CSU could be a hard nosed, bloody----------Oh that is our last game of February!

I think our defensive match ups with Green Bay will be---- no, no, no Ducky, need to backtrack even further!

There is only one thing we need to remember about our Tuesday trip to YSU and that is that they CAN beat us!!!

I have no comments on the game yet but decided to start the new thread just to update you on the ticket sales. This is not good! Almost no mezzanine sales along with sections A, E, F, and J being cumulatively less than half sold.

I hope I don't have to round up another crowd at gunpoint because explaining this to law enforcement has always been difficult.

Just want to throw this out there more for future than current discussion, and before I get so busy that I have no time to post it.

Maybe the small schools could concede the single bye to the top 32 if certain concessions are given in return. In my format the bottom 64 teams (of the 96) would play down to 16 at the same time that the top field of 32 would play within that field to get down to 16. At  that point we would combine these fields for a total of 32.

This would require the 4 regional brackets to be seeded from 1 to 24 with the 1-8 seeds going to the single bye field and the 9-24 going to the other. The catch for this would be the introduction of chaos and excitement into the bottom 64 field by giving the 9-24 of each region a blind draw (no seeding with no regular season rematch restrictions) Maybe 9 plays 10 with a chance to face the winner of 22 vs 11. (who knows? it is a blind draw.)   

Should the 1-8 seed field be blind drawn or not could be a seperate question but the first round (or whatever you want to call it) matchups of regular season opponents should be avoided. (for that 32 team single bye field)

I realize that there are loose ends here all over but I believe it is just a matter of time before the NCAA will propose a well thought out 96 team proposal that will tilt the balance even further to the power conference schools. We need to have our own answer which has something for us before this debate even begins. I think we talked about this eventual expansion to 96 on the old board and couldn't seem to agree on anything. Maybe now is the time for mid-major schools to establish a united position?

After watching Neb-Minnesota last night I think we all can all agree that winning on the road against decent competition is tough no matter how good you are. So just for fun imagine us as a full time Big 10 or A10 member who played 18 league games in both (half in the ARC). We would also have to imagine a random selection of home vs road opponents and which teams we might have to face twice.

What do you believe would have been our best case and worst case records in both?

I'd say BiG worst 5-13 best 9-9. For the A-10 I would say worst case 8-10 and best case 12-6. Thoughts?

With our turnover numbers in decline this team is just now starting to perform at the level I was expecting to see a month ago, but from here how do they get better? The seniors are now playing like seniors except for Boggs who might have been turf-toed  into obscurity. Does anyone have some idea about his condition because a healthy Ben should be playing more minutes than Coleman even if Matt has driven him from his starting position?

At this point in the season team improvement would seem to be as equally important as securing home court advantage and would argue against the safe strategy of playing our starters 28+ minutes per game. With all their flaws I still like what I see from Capo, Coleman, Dority and Fernandez but they need more time on the floor. They need to not hesitate when wide open. We can play things safe until HLT time and maybe only lose 2 more games or maybe we can reshuffle the deck a bit and keep the Horizon League guessing at the risk of maybe losing 4 or 5. I hate falling into a predictable stagnant pattern of play even when it is working. How do we get better?

No guts no glory! Playing it safe might get us to the NCAA but I want to get there and win. Is a drop from a 13 to an at worst 15 seed that important? What do you folks think? Is the risk worth the reward?