So far, the yearly poll has voted on which team will finish 10th, 9th, and 8th. For the first time, Loyola hasn't received a single vote for any of the three bottom places in the upcoming season's standings.... I could actually see the Ramblers finishing as high as 2nd place if players stay healthy, but I think the consensus will be 4th or 5th.

It does seem as though we have gained some respect throughout the league. I think we'll probably get picked for 5th over there, but I'll be voting for Evansville 5th and Loyola 4th.

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How can you vote the Ramblers 4th with a projected conference record of 17-0-1 ?

They're currently voting on the 7th place team. Drake is leading the voting. Loyola still yet to receive a vote.

10th - Bradley
9th - Missouri State
8th - SIU
7th - Drake

Based on previous voting, it looks like Indiana State will be picked 6th.

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I went there to vote, but they don't have a CIGARBOY SUCKS option, so I voted Wichita State 7th, which was the closest alternative.

Encourage Ramblermaniacs to vote in the Poll for 5th place, which closes 9/28 @ 5:48 pm.

Loyola is currently leading the poll (which is a BAD thing), ahead of Northern Iowa.

If you want the Ramblers projected for higher than 5th in the poll, vote for Northern Iowa.

Well, 5th it is for our Ramblers. Illinois State and Norther Iowa are battling it out for 4th/3rd right now. The MVCFans are high on the Aces, who look to be a lock for 2nd in the voting.

For what it's worth, I don't think 5th would be a bad result for us, assuming it comes with a winning record. Given the bad teams likely to be at the bottom of the standings and the logjam from 2-5, 11 wins might only be good enough for a 5th place finish.

Stay tuned for the official ahunte1 prediction...

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I think 5th would be disappointing. We should have/quite probably would have finished 3rd or 4th last year if not for the 11 league games missed by Milton Doyle, and a couple of other injuries. We were 0-5 against Indiana State, Evansville and Illinois State without Milton Doyle, and 2-0 against those teams with him-- including a 28-point neutral site win and a road win. The two losses to Illinois State without Doyle were by three points at home and seven points on the road; we played Evansville close at home for most of the game, and lost at SIU in a game where we led late and Doyle's injury limited him to two fg attempts. If we had gone just 3-2 in those five losses against 3rd to 5th place teams instead of 0-5, we could have finished third at 11-7 or better.

As for this year, I think we SHOULD beat everyone but WSU at home (8-1) + win at BU, MSU, SIU, Drake, and possibly ISUb (5-4) = 13-5. Even with a lot of parity in race for the second spot, 13-5 or 12-6 should be good enough for third. I think we should beat UNI on a neutral court and have a good chance against ISUr or UE on a neutral floor. If we split with any of the expected top 4 teams, our improved non-con schedule is probably not going to be enough to win that tiebreaker (unless two or three among Creighton, Toledo, UTSA, UIC, and New Mexico are much better than expected). So I'd pick us 4th to give us some wiggle room for an unexpected bad outing at a critical time.