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This is such a bad idea it's almost laughable. Have these people not seen how many fans show up to the Friday and Saturday tournament games now when the hosting team is not playing? That is what all the games will be like, especially as mentioned if Oakland or Detroit aren't playing.

Valpo opens as 300-1 odds to win the national championship next year.  Easy money.

http://espn.go.com/chalk/story/_/id/12639147/kentucky-wildcats-north-carolina-tar-heels-open-las-vegas-favorites-2016-national-championship

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but did anyone else notice the Cleveland St. mascot at the last two games?  I've got to give the guy, or girl, some credit.  Between high fiving fans, doing one hand push ups, trying to get girls' phone numbers, and all the other antics, I thought the mascot was really good.  Watching him made some of the time outs a little more interesting.

Anyone else at the game who was disappointed by the lack of noise the Valpo fans were making?  For the number of Valpo fans there were at the game I thought they would have made more noise than what there was.  The UIC fans got pretty loud a couple of times, but not much from Valpo, at least where I was sitting.

Here's a game link in case you want to watch the game live and don't have ESPNU:

http://firstrowusa.eu/basketball/first-valparaiso-green-bay-row581073

Attendance: 4155

The band wagon is starting to fill up. 

Is this game going to be shown on the tv/internet?

Can't shoot, can't guard, can't box out, can't rebound. Heckuva first 5 minutes.

Look at the bright side...We are still good at turning the ball over.  We better pull it together.

Do you have any figures for how close Moussa is to breaking the record for travels in a season?  I swear he has at least one every game.

Does the Horizon still permit/pay for one chartered flight per conference season (NCAA Tourney money) and did we choose this game to be that flight (which would have been my suggestion -- thursday, 6 hour drive, home game Sat)? If we bus this game, we lose by almost 20 -- 72-53. If it's a flight, we lose by 5 with GB hitting FTs the last minute to clinch -- 72-67. Remember first team to 70 usually wins Horizon games. Upset keys, however, our bigs have to score in total 11 or more and block 6 shots (Moussa and Vashil), we have 10+ offensive rebounds and Peters scores 15, oh and <15 turnovers.

My guess is that we would have used the flight when we played in the "Holiday Classic" in Orlando back in December.  I know I as well was a little worried about a Thursday night game away followed by a Saturday afternoon game back at home.

I'm going to keep my expectations down about Keith.  You guys got me all excited about Ben Boggs a couple of years ago after he transferred from Virginia Tech and was eligible after the first semester.  Not to say he wasn't a nice addition to the team, but he never played up to my expectations that I had of him.

Coleman was noticeably limping when getting up from the bench during timeouts.  I am not sure if that was the reason as to why he wasn't out there.

Also, I don't know if Chadwick is still hurt or if Bryce feels he is not capable of playing, but tonight was a game where we definitely could have used him.  Once Bobby fouled out and Clay got put in we really had no chance to compete.

The interesting thing will be to see how it affects--hopefully improves--our offensive flow.

Make no mistake, we are humming offensively.  We are 31 in the country -- out of 351 teams! -- in ORtg.

We have 3 players basically each averaging 15 ppg (Dority, Peters, Coleman).  Right now of course.  There have been YEARS we didn't even have one that high.

Will be interesting to see what changes, that's for sure.  Meanwhile, let's mow these suckas down.

I know it is early as well, but boy is it nice to have more than just one or two guys on the court who can score regularly.  Not to take anything away from the guys last year, but Buggs, Bogan, Kenny, and Boggs where inconsistent at best and really couldn't be counted on to score.  It was great to have five guys out there last night putting up double digits.  Hopefully this scoring continues.

Also I hope we keep using that ally-oop play to Fernadez.  If he could just catch the ball it would work every time.

Anyone know if this game is going to be tv? I was hoping it might be on the Big Ten Network.

Great video.  I hope they show it at halftime during one of the games this year.

Spartan,

How are you guys going to contain Horizon League Tournament MVP Erik Buggs?

So if we win Tuesday night's game, is it worthy of storming the court?

Nice to see Coleman get some playing time today.  Still don't understand why he hasn't been playing more.

What do you mean?  Didn't you have assigned seats?

It was assigned but the students were way up in a corner.   I guess I just like it when I see the student sections under the basket.   However, our student fans were loud, even though they were not down by the court...  Really glad to see a great group of student fans!!! 

(I was sitting with the ... um ... older VU fans - closer to my age.  We were behind the bench.  There were a couple guys in the last row that were very vocal ...  I got a smile from them a few times during the game.)

That might have been my friend and I.  We were sitting in row U, the very last row.  We were already excited to be at the game, and then you add in the few drinks we had before the game,  needless to say we had a great time.

The alumni event was great.  We went to Milwaukee a couple of years ago for the Horizon League Tournament and the turn out for those alumni events were nothing like this past weekend.  I would like to thank Andy again for opening his house to everyone.  His house is quite impressive and it's so great that he is willing to host an event like this.  If you didn't go this time, I would highly recommend going next time if they ever do something like this again.

By the way, as I was leaving with a couple of minutes left in the game I walked by the Valpo bench and told Fernandez that he had a nice dunk.  I didn't expect him to even acknowledge me, but he turned around and smiled and gave me a thumbs up.  Made my day.

Too bad Buggs didn't get the super accuracy, that's what he really needs.

http://apps.ohlulz.com/ncaa/?lulz=rtmp://cp98724.live.edgefcs.net:1935/live&id=stlo_m-baskbl@31636

This link is working for me.  Free too.

I am Valpo

This is the Buggs video.  It's been on Youtube for a little while.  I could hardly understand a word of it either when I was at the game.  Good video though.

I for one am sad to see Jay go.  Yeah he did have his moments where he took bad shots and couldn't hit anything, but I really felt like he was due to have a break out year next season (although I thought he would have a breakout season this past season after the performance last year against Iona).  I think he was more of a team leader than some realize.  He was the one who everyone circled around after the pregame introductions.  Not to mention I will also miss seeing all of the different high fives he used to do with everyone.  It seemed like he had a different one for everyone on the team (even the team assistants).  Best of luck to Jay.

Everyone back from a league championship team plus 3 quality transfers that undoubtedly will be competing for serious playing time.  So many good players and only 200 minutes to go around.   It should be interesting...

Not to mention that Fernandez will be eligible too.

If you are interested in just seeing the dunk, it's part of the highlite video on the Valpo game report.

Valpo Crusaders (MBB) vs. Detroit Titans (2/2/2012)

I know our announcers are total homers, but could we not get some more emotion on that dunk? That will most likely be the best dunk we will have seen all year at the ARC, and all they act like it was just a casual play. I don't care who does that, my jaw is going to drop.

Yeah that dunk topped Matt Kenney's dunk in the Bowling Green game.  That was the previous dunk of the year at the ARC in my opinion.