Opening Week Games

[Drakey]

Evansville lost to PRIRIE VIEW A and M. They better reconsider keeping Lickleiter around all season.

[DUBulldog]

Bulldogs win big over South Dakota. Up by 20+ for most of the 2nd half. Final tally 69-54.

Bulldogs bench scored 37 points Wednesday and 37 again today. Real good depth. Nobody played more than 27 minutes, and two bench players played the most minutes.

Sophomore Joe Yesufu led the Bulldogs with 14 points, 3 assists and 3 steals off the bench.

[freddycat68]

Bradley beats Oakland 74-60 to go 2-1 at the Xavier tourney. Meh. Only real bright spot in the game was 6-9 Freshman Darius Hannah, who went for 12 points, 8 rebounds. He had a dunk that should have BU on the espn top 10 plays for the second time in 3 days
https://twitter.com/bradleyumbb/status/ ... 2928046082

[MissouriValleyUnite]

Can we retroactively award last year’s UNI team MVP award to Isaiah Brown?

[spoon]

There’s a term in Bloomington/Normal that I believe fits both UNI and Bradley’s games yesterday.

The Panthers and Gargoyles both “birded” it. As you probably know, for decades, the Redbirds have been notorious for being close but no cigar in game they probably should’ve won had the ball bounced their way another time or two.

Northern Iowa is going to be a very good team. Born and Kimmons are legit players. Noah Carter didn’t have quite the game he did previously and UNI desperately missed his 9-threes. . UNIs carelessness with the ball was shocking. I’ve been watching this league for years and don’t ever remember seeing a more undisciplined Coach Jake team. But it’s the second game of the season. Watching the first two games, it very much seems Green is pressing. UNI needs to be careful. A season ago in their MTE, ILST lost a close one to Cincy, close one to WKU (both good teams), and then lost their third game to Grand Canyon. I think that was the starting point of the Birds crashing down last year. However, I think UNI will be fine and contend for the league title. They’ve given college hoops fans a couple fun games to open the season.

For Bradley, they thought they had that game won when the kid in the corner three late. Then from what I could tell, played very passive defense. Looking at the numbers in the game, Bradley only shot 6 FTs and missed 4. Xavier shot 8. Value your free points, and that game is won. Like I said with UNI, plenty of time to work out the kinks but that 3-2 zone in the second half was no effective. Though the game was VERY low scoring, there were at least 4-5 times Xavier got an open shot in the corner while BU was in their zone. The wings play too high and can’t recover when the ball gets swung to the corner. They’ll get it fixed.

I look forward to watching the other MVC teams play today! I didn’t get to watch Drakes impressive K State win. Look forward to seeing them.

Hopefully no other MVC teams “Bird” it today.

I really don’t believe you watched the Bradley game if you say their defense was passive and that Xavier had open threes against the zone. Bradley played zone for maybe 6-7 minutes, and the whole game was a dogfight which is why it was low-scoring. Bradley had a chance to win at the line and failed miserably, but to lump them in with UNI so far is really lazy.

[Drakey]

Bradley absolutely should have beat Xavier. It took quite a few flukey things to occur to cause that loss.

[freddycat68]

Bradley absolutely should have beat Xavier. It took quite a few flukey things to occur to cause that loss.

Agree. And I'd note that Bradley didn't "bird" against Toledo, which as it turns out looks like a solid club. They took Xavier to the wire and throttled Oakland. BU had every opportunity to lose that game but stayed poised and pulled it out.

[tribecalledquest]

Bradley absolutely should have beat Xavier. It took quite a few flukey things to occur to cause that loss.

Agree. And I'd note that Bradley didn't "bird" against Toledo, which as it turns out looks like a solid club. They took Xavier to the wire and throttled Oakland. BU had every opportunity to lose that game but stayed poised and pulled it out.

Im not sure how good Xavier is to be honest. That's a game Bradley needed to win.

[freddycat68]

Bradley absolutely should have beat Xavier. It took quite a few flukey things to occur to cause that loss.

Agree. And I'd note that Bradley didn't "bird" against Toledo, which as it turns out looks like a solid club. They took Xavier to the wire and throttled Oakland. BU had every opportunity to lose that game but stayed poised and pulled it out.

Im not sure how good Xavier is to be honest. That's a game Bradley needed to win.

I don't think anyone would disagree BU had that game and should have won. But losing to Xavier on its own floor and going 2-1 in that tourney is not the same as going 0-3 and losing to a weak Utah State team on a neutral floor. I still think UNI is the team to beat in this conference, but the whole UNI and BU both getting "birded" this week thing is just a tad silly.

BTW, frivolous but fun: BU did get the Valley on ESPN's top 10 plays 2 of the last 3 nights--this time at #3. https://twitter.com/bradleyumbb/status/ ... 9161689089

[Blers42]

Bradley didn’t let the conference down with one close loss to a respectable opponent. Xavier was the favorite to win that game. UNI was the favorite in all three of its matchups and couldn’t even get a win. That’s going to hurt the conference as a whole because I know they’re going to fix their issues come conference play.