12/6 games

[rlh04d]

After tonight he is actually at 44% for the year. In fact, if you are willing to count last season as an anomaly (not saying anyone should ignore it), he's shooting 40% from 3 the rest of his career. My guess is that Wessel's true shooting ability is somewhere in between. But a Wessel that is willing to take 2-4 open 3s a game and hit something like 37% of them, when you add in the other things he brings, is a huge asset.

Absolutely. He doesn't have to be the team's leading scorer, he just needs to be an offensive plus, that teams can't just back off of and dare to take shots from the perimeter like they have in the past. If he's confident and able to hit 35-40% of his threes, while also working the interior some, I'm very happy with him.

If you could give that man Nurger's height, he'd making a ton of money in the NBA.

[saluki762]

SIU is 3-0 vs the OVC. Still three OVC games remaining can we make it 6-0?

[SHOXMVC]

Jim Crews is not a great coach

But at least a couple steps ahead of Geno and Jacko.

Bradley's offense is a train crashing into a tire fire.

Wichita will hold us under 30, twice. Book it.

Deal. $30 in Scottrade Center concessions are yours if Bradley fails to score 30, twice, against Wichita.

That's only two beers...TAS has more of a thirst than that.

[MVCfans]

UNI holds on in OT. Thank God. To do all that good work and then potentially flush it away against Mason...

That's what I was thinking too. Losing at home to a dreadful team would have been an RPI albatross in March.

[Lou_Valley]

Wichita State is a great team. Jim Crews is not a great coach, and his best players are freshmen.

Good luck to the Shockers in March. I think we'll see them for a nice long run.

Not a great coach and odd recruiting numbers. Where the heck are all of SLU's upper classmen?

I don't understand how a team like SLU ends up with only three upper classmen, one of which is simply terrible. This isn't Kentucky where you're dealing with one-and-dones.

They all graduated last year. Coach Majerus didn't recruit as much when his health deteriorated. WSU is very good, but the worst part is that Jim Crews will get a pass this season no matter what.

Best of luck to you guys on a long March run.

[rlh04d]

Wichita State is a great team. Jim Crews is not a great coach, and his best players are freshmen.

Good luck to the Shockers in March. I think we'll see them for a nice long run.

Not a great coach and odd recruiting numbers. Where the heck are all of SLU's upper classmen?

I don't understand how a team like SLU ends up with only three upper classmen, one of which is simply terrible. This isn't Kentucky where you're dealing with one-and-dones.

They all graduated last year. Coach Majerus didn't recruit as much when his health deteriorated. WSU is very good, but the worst part is that Jim Crews will get a pass this season no matter what.

Best of luck to you guys on a long March run.

Seniors graduate every year. That's why you stagger recruiting classes. SLU basically skipped two consecutive recruiting classes.

I get that Coach Majerus had obvious health issues, but he had a staff to do the recruiting for him.

Best of luck to you guys as well ... SLU's going to be fine long term. But having such a lack of upper classmen on the team for a program unable to recruit one-and-done talent is silly. If nothing else you balance these last two classes with JUCO players to even things out. Instead SLU's going to have a long one-to-two years, and then get good just in time to repeat this mistake again when everyone graduates at once.

[Khan4Cats]

UNI holds on in OT. Thank God. To do all that good work and then potentially flush it away against Mason...

Mason is going to improve over the year, not enough to contend for post-season, but should still be solid in the A-10. They did play Old Dominion to a 6 point game just before ours as Hewitt has shuffled thier line-up.

That said, UNI let this game stay closer than it needed to. A week off between games after that packed early schedule had them shaky. Also, shooting 37% from the field and 62% from FTs (actually 15-28 before Jesperson made 6 in a row in overtime) left them in the game.

On a side note from the game, Bennett Koch scored 11 points in 8 minutes of action making him the 10th different Panther to score 10 or more in a game this year.

[PowderBlue]

Indiana State will definitely be playing on Thursday, we're bad and getting worse by the game. When you're 318th in the nation in FG% there is very little hope.

I cannot believe how little progress has been made since IUPUI. I expected that kind of result to start the season with all the turnover...I didn't expect that to be as good as it got. Quite honestly, the team I've seen the last two games is one of the worst basketball teams I've seen in TH in the last 15 years. I sincerely HOPE this is just a funk, but this team won't even be competitive in the MVC.

Indiana State has several measures of comparison with other Valley teams by common opponents now:

- OT win @IUPUI - IUPUI loses by 13 @Drake (Drake's only win), by 27 @Evansville.
- Loss by 13 vsSLU - SLU wins vs SIU by 3, wins vs Bradley by 3, loses @WSU by ... well, 29, but might as well have been 50.
- Loss by 10 @Memphis - Memphis wins vs Bradley by 18, loses n. vs WSU by 15.
- Win by 4 vs Austin Peay - Austin Peay loses @SIU by 22.

Making too strong of opinions based on that sort of thing is silly ... but ISU has the worst Valley performance against three of those teams now. That's not a good sign.

No, it's definitely not. The bigger picture for me is that the team doesn't seem to be making any progress in it's biggest areas of deficiency; namely, shooting and passing. Defense is an effort based thing that comes and goes in young/inexperienced/poorly coached teams. I'd like to think we aren't the third in that group, but it is really alarming that improvement isn't really happening right now. It's far too early in the season to be saying, 'well, we're just a bad shooting team'.

Arguably, the Syc's worst 'eye test' efforts have come in their most recent games against BSU, Austin Peay, and Butler. (Full disclosure, I didn't get to see/listen to the Vegas games.)

SOMETIMES I see 4 minute stretches where I think this team can be competitive in the valley, but when you offset that with 16 minutes of what I can only assume is supposed to be basketball, it's really disheartening.

I say this all as a huge Lansing supporter, BTW. I think he's a loyal guy and a good young coach. I appreciate what he's done in his time in TH and don't in any way think it's time to kick him to the side. That said, I think it's unacceptable for ISU as a program to be 'okay' with this being a terrible year because we lost 4 good players last year. That type of attitude is what makes up a middling program. I know for a fact that people in and around the program are neither satisfied nor accepting that this is where the program currently stands. I just wish we could see the results of that frustration and drive on the court.