The ref situation was horrible. No one could figure out what was going to be called or not. There were times I thought we fouled, nothing. Then something that wasn't called 2 minutes ago was suddenly a foul. We should be upset with the way the game was called. SIU should be upset with the way the game was called. It was that bad.

Glad to just get a win! Hopefully we look better Sunday. At least we know that we are capable of winning if it's an offensive shootout or a defensive battle.

My Apple Watch alarm went off at least 3 times in the last 10 minutes to warn that my heart rate was high.

Big plays down the stretch. A gritty road win to go to 7-1. I'll take it.

Yeah, they were terrible on both ends. One of the worst games I’ve ever seen. There’s “letting them play” and “If I see blood I might call a foul.” I’m honestly shocked nobody was hurt tonight. That’s actually really a credit to both teams that they didn’t let the way too physical play lead to dirty play.

Positives:

1) We won.
2) Chris Knight is a gamer and single handedly kept us in this game, great effort.
3) good defensive effort, kept a fairly efficient team to 39 points at home on 15-53 shooting.

Bad:

Offense. What is our offense? We are eight games into conference play and our offense is broken. We haven’t looked good since San Francisco. Whatever we are doing is not working, don’t know how or what to do to fix it but we can’t shoot the three with any consistency, we don’t move or cut as well as we used to, and struggle to put up more 55 points on any given night. Coach V needs to do something, anything, whether it’s more of PM sets with passing every 1.5 secs and cuts or something because the constant 3s and one on one is not working. We aren’t that type of team.

Don’t feel great about the team right know. We can’t score consistently at all and havent even played Drake or UNI yet. Glad we won and am pulling for them to break this streak because we don’t look like an MVC championship team let alone a tournament team. We all know they can play better than what they are showing.

Amen to everything Rambler 303 said in his “bad” section. Perfectly said. We have been awful on offense since the USF game. Whatever our offense
is …. It ain’t working. And schweiger , marquise , and Tate have contributed nothing on offense recently. Drew has to change it up…..now … or we will end up in 3rd or 4th place.

I think one thing to keep in mind with the offense is how games are being called in The Valley. Games like tonight have been the norm, though not to this extreme. Refs just aren't calling anything. Everything is super physical and teams are getting away with way more down low than we saw in the non-confrence schedule. That's playing a huge role in our offensive play.

As we get to Arch Madness and then to the tournament, games won't be officiated like this. We'll see a lot more games called like the Michigan State game was.

A perfect example of this is the simple "freedom of movement" foul. Where a defender gets called for a foul for restricting the movement of a ball carrier by putting their hand on them. It's seen as a ticky-tack foul, but it's one that refs usually call. The Valley refs don't call that. You can see how frustrated our guys get as they do everything they can to score and then get a layup only to be whacked and get nothing. They go for a steal and get shoved to the ground for a no call. Jump on a loose ball only for another guy to land right on top of them and no call. It's just impossible to get into a rhythm when you're getting battered and bruised for no reward.

As I said above, that won't be the case in higher profile games at Arch Madness and the NCAA Tournament. That's where you'll likely see a revival of our offensive efficiency. This team's blueprint is very similar to an NBA team. Drive and kick for an open 3, or drive and either get a layup or get to the line. The issue is that when this team drives right now it's entering a black hole because refs are swallowing their whistle. When the whistle come back out, usually late in games, you always see the efficiency come back.

Long story short, when the game stops being physical to the point of absurdity as we've seen in The Valley so far we'll be back to the team we saw early in the season.

BROT SAYS Our oxen were better than theirs ---YAY !!! I do not want to read what a great coach we have --he is just fair--We played their game not ours-- Our length won out again..
DRAKE next I think we will win as our bench will wear them down

That’s probably part of it. Although, the Missouri State game the refs were calling a foul if we sneezed on someone.

Most of it is just the fact that we can’t hit open shots right now, IMHO.

I think this is it. We just have multiple guys who are proven (to at least be respectable) shooters in horrendous slumps right now: Schwieger, Kennedy, Clemons...heck even Norris and Lucas tonight. I'd have to rewatch the game (which no sane person would do after that rock fight), but it seemed like we were getting decent looks, just like we have been lately. Shots just aren't falling. Now that's not to say we didn't have some bad offensive possessions today because we clearly did, but this team has proven to be able to shoot the rock and move the ball especially early in the season. When shots don't fall, there's a natural tendency as a basketball player to force, leading to some bad 1 on 1 possessions like we saw tonight.

All of this is to say that I think we are bound to even out shooting-wise sooner rather than later (please), and it's very encouraging to see us still winning games with our defense when we are shooting like crap. Once the shooting comes back (and it has to...it can't stay this bad), we should be in pretty dang good shape.