2020 Arch Madness - Thursday Night

[just ducky]

Aces just could not catch a break this year.

Maybe, but they’re bad. And Lickliter’s coaching/personnel decisions is bad, too,

Lickliter and the Aces dictated the style, pace and nearly the outcome of the game. Hard to be too disappointed with that.

[siudawgs]

Aces just could not catch a break this year.

Maybe, but they’re bad. And Lickliter’s coaching/personnel decisions is bad, too,

Lickliter and the Aces dictated the style, pace and nearly the outcome of the game. Hard to be too disappointed with that.

Respectfully disagree.
All spin aside, going 0–19 in MVC play and losing to Valpo on a night when they made zero 3s and Freeman-Liberty was not himself is an alarming indictment of the state of the program.

[VUGrad1314]

Three wins over Evansville by a combined 7 points... Either Evansville isn't that bad or Valpo isn't that good... All I know is that if we play like that against Loyola we're going to get pounded which will help their NET number for anybody monitoring the race for any potential at large bid. I'm just glad we clinched a .500 D1 record so we can go to a postseason tournament if we wish which I think would be really good for this young team if they did it.

[patnb]

Three wins over Evansville by a combined 7 points... Either Evansville isn't that bad or Valpo isn't that good...

One of those two is definitely correct

[uniguy]

Aces just could not catch a break this year.

Maybe, but they’re bad. And Lickliter’s coaching/personnel decisions is bad, too,

I don’t think they’re good but I don’t think they’re 0-19 bad.

What would you have done differently if you were Lickliter?

[AcesAces]

UE is simply not very good. Their defensive FG% is near the bottom in all of NCAA D1. Teams may not score every time down the court but it is easy enough to score against the Aces that they score at the important points in the game.

On offense, there is no one that can consistently score for the Aces. Cunliffe is either good or terrible. There seems to be no in between. They do not seem to have any objective on offense. There seems to be no strategy to attack and score. Too many times, they allow the shot clock to run down and the wrong person ends up with the ball. Too many wasted possessions.

This team is just bad. The best thing for them is that the season is over.

[VUGrad1314]

I refuse to believe that a team that beat Kentucky and Murray State and took SMU to the wire is a bad team. Sorry you just can't convince me of that.

[AcesAces]

I agree. If the 9-23 record, the 0-19 MVC record, the last place in almost every MVC stat, the 311th out of 350 D1 teams in defensive FG %, the 0 players being honored by the MVC and the games you've watched with your own eyes can't convince you then neither can I.

Of course, we are talking UE without Williams for most of the MVC. With Williams, UE was not terrible. Without him, they were terrible. Also, we have no idea why Labinowicz rarely played since Lickliter took over. And also, Henderson, a pretty good freshman, has been out due to injury. But Williams was the major blow to this team.

[patnb]

I refuse to believe that a team that beat Kentucky and Murray State and took SMU to the wire is a bad team. Sorry you just can't convince me of that.

There is a reason there hasn't been a winless team in 22 years in the MVC and only 2 in the "modern era" (back to back years by the same team - with even one of those winning an Arch Madness game. It's almost impossible to go winless in conference play unless you truly aren't very good. It's not just catching bad bounces every night. Bad bounces don't compound to 19 straight MVC losses in the same season (20 overall and just 5 total MVC wins over 2 complete seasons.

Their MVC wins over the last 2 full seasons
1/2/19
1/8/19
1/16/19
2/2/19
3/2/19

20-44 (5-34)

You're caught up on a one off game on November 12th against a team that clearly didn't give a crap that night while the other was playing the single best they have played as a program in probably many many many years.

If you're willing to overlook going 0-19 in MVC play and going 20-44 over 2 years as a "bad team" because of one miracle win that will never be replicate by them, beat an OVC school that other MVC teams have beaten, and lost to an AAC team close then there's no helping you. Trying to twist UE isn't "not a bad team" because of how much your team has struggled to beat them doesn't make them "not a bad team"

[AcesAces]

Williams played against Valpo in the first meeting. That UE team was decent and would have had a pretty good year in the MVC but Freeman-Liberty was too much that night. That was the game Williams got injured.