|
|
Post by BBFran on Jan 11, 2018 11:05:58 GMT -6
This team needs a point guard who can run offense. Too much time is spent outside the three point line aimlessly pounding the basketball. They also need to take care of the ball better. Motor City Madness Malaise will be a lot of bad basketball but it will also be entertaining because all 10 teams can literally win the thing. Fixed your reference for you. There's a long way to go until late February, but putting aside significant injury issues among the contenders I'm going to go out on a very short limb and say that UWGB, YSU, CSU, IUPUI and UDM cannot win the thing. The limb is only a few inches longer for UIC. One or two of them might knock off one of the top four in a prelim round. Of the contenders, OU has the best talent, but NKU is very close, and it's better coached. And while OU has the "home court advantage", that hasn't helped them the last two years. I haven't seen WSU play yet, but I have a lot of respect for Scott Nagy. As for Milwaukee, we can play with anybody (well, anybody in this league) and lose to anybody. That sounds good, but in reality it means we're dangerously inconsistent. That's seldom a recipe for success in a multi-game win or go home tournament. In short, if you gave me NKU and OU against the field, I'm not betting on the field. |
|
|
|
Post by steveisback on Jan 11, 2018 11:35:22 GMT -6
Fran, I think you nailed it here.
|
|
|
|
Post by FTA1982 on Jan 11, 2018 12:02:08 GMT -6
This team needs a point guard who can run offense. Too much time is spent outside the three point line aimlessly pounding the basketball. They also need to take care of the ball better. Motor City Madness Malaise will be a lot of bad basketball but it will also be entertaining because all 10 teams can literally win the thing. Fixed your reference for you. There's a long way to go until late February, but putting aside significant injury issues among the contenders I'm going to go out on a very short limb and say that UWGB, YSU, CSU, IUPUI and UDM cannot win the thing. The limb is only a few inches longer for UIC. One or two of them might knock off one of the top four in a prelim round. Of the contenders, OU has the best talent, but NKU is very close, and it's better coached. And while OU has the "home court advantage", that hasn't helped them the last two years. I haven't seen WSU play yet, but I have a lot of respect for Scott Nagy. As for Milwaukee, we can play with anybody (well, anybody in this league) and lose to anybody. That sounds good, but in reality it means we're dangerously inconsistent. That's seldom a recipe for success in a multi-game win or go home tournament. In short, if you gave me NKU and OU against the field, I'm not betting on the field. Would you have taken 14-4 OU and Valpo last year? Neither made it out of the quarters. All I know is a 9 win team made it to the finals. YSU made it to the semi-finals. The league is easily worse than last year. |
|
|
|
Post by steveisback on Jan 11, 2018 12:17:17 GMT -6
Hate to admit it but I am not so sure we beat Valpo last year if Alec Peters was playing that game
|
|
|
|
Post by Pantherholic on Jan 11, 2018 12:49:57 GMT -6
Hate to admit it but I am not so sure we beat Valpo last year if Alec Peters was playing that game We don't but that doesn't matter since it's nothing more than a hypothetical situation. There's no guarantee Milwaukee beats them last year if Jeter and everyone else stayed either. |
|
|
|
Post by steveisback on Jan 11, 2018 14:40:18 GMT -6
Good point...got it!!
|
|
|
|
Post by BBFran on Jan 11, 2018 15:36:12 GMT -6
[ Would you have taken 14-4 OU and Valpo last year? Neither made it out of the quarters. All I know is a 9 win team made it to the finals. YSU made it to the semi-finals. The league is easily worse than last year. Hence why I qualified my point by noting that significant injuries suffered by the contenders could change things. Valpo was the walking dead once Peters went down last year. Just so, if Drew McDonald slips on a banana peel and sprains his ankle the week before the tournament this year, things will change. As for Oakland, they always suffer from Kampitis; it's just a question of whether their talent advantage will carry them through notwithstanding. But assuming that NKU and OU stay healthy, I still like my bet. The league is indeed PROFOUNDLY worse than last year, and almost unimaginably worse than just 6 or 7 years ago. But that doesn't necessarily mean the tournament is more wide open. The reason the league is so much worse is that it has five or six teams that are absolutely horrible. The top two contenders are nothing special compared to most of the HL's history, but there is still a huge separation between them and the dregs. |
|
|
|
Post by FTA1982 on Jan 11, 2018 16:11:32 GMT -6
NKU literally just survived Callahan Hall on Sunday with Detroit down Chatman. And as we know Detroit is terrible and dealing with all kinds of issues.
Oakland is 2-3 in League and have Kampe. It feels like that team is just Nunn shooting 25 times a game.
In a survive and advance, I feel like the field is usually the way to go.
|
|
|
|
Post by ghostofdylan on Jan 11, 2018 18:33:46 GMT -6
It seems to me that many of us continue to underrate Wright State, which doesn't have the best talent but is very well-coached.
|
|
|
|
Post by FTA1982 on Jan 11, 2018 20:29:21 GMT -6
WSU wins at Northern Kentucky.
|
|
|
|
Post by BBFran on Jan 11, 2018 21:20:11 GMT -6
They looked good doing it too. As I said, I hadn't seen them yet. Unsurprisingly, they look like a very well coached team. They are now 5-0 in the league and very easily could be 7-0 when we play them. (Before then they play YSU at home and GB away.) Basically it sets up the same potential scenario I mentioned with NKU, and underscores how important it is that we beat UIC and GB if we want to stay in the race.
|
|
|
|
Post by PantherU on Jan 12, 2018 12:07:49 GMT -6
I don't know if there will ever be a Horizon League Tournament that is more fun to watch than 2013. This was our Klotsche year, knocked out in the first round, but there were four - FOUR - buzzer beaters/last second shots in that tournament, one of the last ones that was mostly on the Horizon League Network (quick aside: what a great thing HLN was, I hate they gave it up to be part of the ESPN Internet behemoth).
If I were to make a bet, I'd probably take the top two seeds versus the field (assuming Oakland and NKU are the top seeds). My reasoning is this: NKU got a taste for winning last year and learned how to win. It doesn't matter as much that they had the easiest path a tourney champ has ever had. They won. Oakland, on the other side of the coin, has had to hear for two years how cheap and crappy it is that they automatically get the tournament in their town every year. They've had to hear for two years about how, even with that incredible advantage, they've failed to win even a single game in the Horizon League Tournament. They're going to be playing with an unbelievable chip on their shoulder. I honestly think even if NKU wins the regular season title and looks stronger heading into Motor City Malaise, Oakland is still the team to beat.
This "anyone can win it" feeling is based on a few things: Front-runners Oakland and NKU losing unexpected games in non-conference; predicted low-level teams (like us) scoring big non-conference victories; the disappointment of a couple teams expected to be good (GB and UIC); and last season's HLT that featured the #9 and #10 seeds reaching the semifinals; and our surprisingly good non-conference (in comparison to expectations).
I'm sorry, I don't see it. I hope we're competitive and who knows, maybe we'll get some lucky bounces and pull off some W's - the good thing about losing games in the conference schedule is that it's incredibly hard for anyone to sweep three games against another team in one season - but I really don't see IUPUI, GB, CSU, YSU, UDM or UIC pulling it off and winning the HLT. I think we're in the same boat but in reverse form from UIC and UDM; by that I mean they have tremendous individual talent that always always always fails them in the big game, whereas we're a team that has thin depth and little all-conference-level talent beyond Brock Stull.
Oakland or NKU should win the conference tournament. Of the other seven, Wright State is the one with the absolute best shot. I don't think it's a coincidence that Oakland and NKU have the best talent and Wright State has the best coach in the conference.
When I think of Motor City Malaise, I continue to be pissed off.
And just when you thought I was going to get through an entire full-length Jimmy post without mentioning She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, remember who giddily jumped at the chance to be part of the Detroit Cash Grab.
Check out this tweet:
These were the available seats hours before last night's WSU-NKU game.
And as long as Motor City Malaise is a thing, you'll never see that place packed for the HLT Title game.
|
|
|
|
Post by ghostofdylan on Jan 12, 2018 13:09:47 GMT -6
The reason it's so aggravating is that there is NO single site that will provide the tournament sustained success because we don't have fan bases that travel ... and this presently affects our program more than ANY other, with Wright State and apparently NKU being a distant second!
|
|
|
|
Post by BBFran on Jan 12, 2018 15:34:17 GMT -6
Watching the WSU-NKU game last night something seemed...wrong. And then after a few minutes I realized what it was. There were FANS in the building! THOUSANDS of fans! There were even STUDENTS watching!
Once upon a time in Milwaukee....
|
|
|
|
Post by FTA1982 on Feb 23, 2018 15:11:23 GMT -6
I'm bumping this thread....
Do people want NKU and Oakland vs the field still?
I sure don't.
|
|
