Monday, November 17, 2014, 7:00 p.m.
Gentile Arena, Chicago

The Ramblers beat Division II Rockhurst Friday night to start the season, 71-58, despite being outrebounded by double digits. Montel James scored 19 points for the Ramblers in an impressive debut, and Loyola held on to the ball well despite so many minutes from newcomers, committing only 8 turnovers on the game.

McKendree is another Division II school, located about 40 miles east of St. Louis. They are known for having a very strong sports emphasis, competing in 28 men’s and women’s sports including fencing, ice hockey, bowling, and bass fishing—despite having only 2500 undergraduate students. Many of their players are Sports Management majors. McKendree coach Harry Statham, in his 49th year as McKendree’s coach, has the distinction of holding the record for most all time wins in men’s college basketball history with 1078 coming in to Monday’s game.

The Bearcats have played two exhibitions against Division I teams so far this season, losing at Evansville by 28 points and at Northwestern by 50 points. On Friday, they beat Robert Morris-Springfield in their season opener, 74-45.

McKendree will likely start three forwards, a center, and a guard. Brandon Book is their most powerful offensive player, a 6’6” center/power forward transfer from Southwestern Illinois College. Matt Holmes (a 6’5”, 230 pound senior small forward), Logan Carson (a 6’5” senior wing), A.J. Schmidt (a 6’1” junior guard), and John Murphy (a 6’6” forward from Peoria Richwoods) round out the starting lineup. Off the bench, the Bearcats have some size in centers Arthur Williams (6’7”, 240) and David Newton (6’8”, 235).

In their two games against Division I teams, McKendree was dominated on the boards despite their emphasis on frontcourt players (although Book did not play in their game at Evansville). The Bearcats’ weak backcourt doesn’t pose much of a three point threat, either, as they’re a combined 18 of 60 on threes, with most of them coming from Book (6 of 16). Meanwhile, opposing teams are 17 of 43 against them on three point attempts. McKendree is averaging 17 turnovers per game in their three outings to their opponents’ 15. McKendree was held to only 31.6% field goal shooting in their games against D-1 opponents, but shot 50% in their win over RMU-Springfield.

Tight defense and taking care of the ball should make this a no-drama win for the Ramblers. Expect Christian Thomas to have a good night on the boards, and Devon Turk should be able to get on track from behind the arc.

Loyola game notes: http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/loy ... 117aaa.pdf

I thought I'd supplement JCT's excellent preview with some additional scouting reports of key McKendree personnel:


Charlie Kreke, freshman.
Charlie's knowledge of Carlyle Lake is a huge asset to the team. His favorite approaches are crankbaits and spinnerbaits.

Austin Chapman, freshman, Meridian High School in Blue Mound
Austin brings several strong fishing techniques to the team, He is a great jig and worm fisherman, and he specializes in shaky-head and sight fishing.

Trenton Robinson, freshman, Lewistown High School of Havana.
Trenton’s strengths are jigging and worming heavy cover. He especially loves to entice bass with a topwater frog. He can really make that frog dance.

Reece Ellerbusch, a sophomore, Massac County High School in Belknap.
Reece is well versed in all types of presentations. His favorites are pitchin’, flippin’, spinnerbaits, and finesse fishing. He is fantastic with a little Mojo Rig.

Woops.

Wrong sport.

1. Gentile is as empty as I have ever seen it. Might not even be 500 there.

2. The audio on the stream is brutal with an echo. Had to mute it.

I've seen it worse but what do you expect? We have terrible opponents.



No problem on my end. I had a similar experience using Firefox on Friday. It seemed to be duplicating the audio. Try it on Chrome.

_________________
Cigarboy sucks!

Yeah I had no problem with it using Chrome on Friday. It seems like the audio is playing from both the audio and video feed (when I pause the video, I still pick up the audio). It is all screwy.

A team in a world-class city with numerous other sports and entertainment opportunities that won 10 measly games last season schedules a D2 school on a Monday night and nobody feels compelled to show up? You don't say.

The schedule was basically made without a full-time administrator holding the coach's feet to the fire (assuming Grace was preoccupied with applying for the Penn job starting in January/February of this year). It was made to maximize wins not fan interest. So of course we should look really good against D2 schools.

By the way, what kind of parent names their kid Michael Jackson?

Joe and Kathrine Jackson

I was seriously debating putting a qualifier by my last post but I got lazy and didn't. So I guess I walked into that.

As for the game, 29-23 us at the under 4 timeout