http://basketball.realgm.com/article/234896/College-Basketball-Preview-14-15-Missouri-Valley-Conference

Now this is something to be proud of! I hope Porter touts this big time!

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Cigarboy sucks!

Well, we know what we have in our returnees--Doyle and KiKi should rank way up at their positions in Conf play. Turk and Thomas will be competitive, Now then I feel the Finlander MUST come through--If he does and the rest of the newbies help a little , we will be OK--It is all on the FINN in my opinion . as I know the rest of the four starters will deliver.

PM ?? He is what he is and probably is safe until we get an AD !!!!!!

The whole article is riddled with awful analysis.

1.) It's clear he doesn't really watch a lot of Valley basketball and overcompensates with stats
2.) He puts way too much stock in recruiting rankings, writing teams off based on the fact that their kids don't have a lot of stars. Shaw isn't even the only Top 100 prospect in the Valley; his teammate Cunningham was 96 in a strong class. In addition to the factual inaccuracies, he can't possibly convince me that he wouldn't have Van Vleet, Baker, Cotton, Carter, or Early (graduated but far from a highly recruited player out of HS) just because they weren't in the Top 100 in their HS recruiting classes.
3.) I think he also has a slight bias by putting LU, the facility upgrades, and the Chicago market down: his twitter picture is of Dee Brown...

That's a quote you don't want to read, but it's a terrible article. We'd all love to get 3 and 4 star recruits, but it's rare. Sometimes guys are just overlooked and get rated two stars.

Look at the all Freshman team from last year:

Doyle (2)
Morgan (2)
Lynch (2)
Simmons (2)
Ruder (2)

And the Newcomers:

Doyle (2)
Carter (2)
Knight (2)
Lynch (2)
Washpun (2.3)

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Doyle was a 2 star recruit? If he was a 2 star recruit, then who the hell is the 3 star guy on our team?

Listen, I don't put stock in recruiting stars. I think its an overrated system. But what has this team shown you to say he's wrong? Doyle is an incredible talent, but let's be honest... he disappeared at times last year.

Let's call a spade a spade. We aren't good and this is going to be a terrible year and that all starts with the coach.

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Cigarboy sucks!

Ben Richardson was rated 3-stars by Rivals, unrated by ESPN. Verbal Commits has him as a 2.5 average.

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Yes, the article has all the earmarks of a review written by a freelancer who's never seen an MVC game and did all his research from Google.

ahunte1 makes a point that I was going to mention, but did it better than how I was going to make it. There are few players at all in the MVC that are over 2 stars. Seth Tuttle was a 3. Anthony Beane at SIU was a 2.7. Justin Gant and Jake Kitchell at ISUb were 3-star recruits. Yet Ron Baker, Milton Doyle, Nate Buss, Darius Carter, Reggie Lynch, Kristian Smith, and Tekele Cotton were all 2-star recruits.

I saw a report/analysis about star rankings somewhere last year, and as I recall it basically said there is some creedence to star rankings, but it's not at all definitive. I can't find it now, but it basically said it's not as accurate as a seven day weather prediction, but in general it tends to have some relevance.

What it didn't say is how the ratings (pretty much a subjective ranking) are influenced by the perceived quality of schools making offers. In other words, how much does the fact a recruit gets offers from Duke, UCLA and Kentucky affect what ranking the scouts give? I've seen it happen before where a recruit gets an offer from a Big 12 or SEC school and their ranking suddenly goes up by one star. Did the ranking go up because the player actually improved, or just because he got an offer from a BCS program?

Wow Doyle was only four points off Alfredrick's freshman record. He hit the freshman wall as well as teams started to double him.

I do not know what you guys see. I can not imagine a player like James who is only one inch shorter than Oleary and Osborne with a much better leap is going do worse.

We return a strong core in Doyle, Thomas and White. Doyle was 7th in scoring and Thomas 10th. Thomas was 6th in rebounding.

James is an improvement and Peterson will help too.

Just curious, Jim...

Did you not see Doyle disappear from games for a full half? No one doubts his talent.

Also curious...do you see us finishing better than Thursday night? I don't.

We have two players 6'7" and above. We were killed on the boards most of last year. Do you think a team that is shorter will do better? The way I see it? We get dominated because we are shorter, our guys get into foul trouble and we struggle to keep pace with our opponents.

Truth time: with this coaching staff and our lack of height, we are staring down the barrel of a 10th place finish...maybe 9th if we're lucky.

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Cigarboy sucks!