Kenpom dropped us to 33, not a huge fall.

Not just a bad day for a game, but bad time. Might be great for TV viewership for people who don’t want to watch the 4 hour Super Bowl pregame show, but a late Sunday game, on not just any Sunday but Super Bowl Sunday, is going to prevent some from attending…including me, unfortunately.

I'm sure Wardle will speak out about this

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“Bradley Brand”

Should be a 1pm start. A 3pm start means an OT game could bleed into (or very close to) Super Bowl kickoff. Although it's an ESPN2 game so I'm sure they dictated the time.

Still hopeful for a good crowd...

Been thinking about this a lot. Am I hallucinating, or do other remember the beginning of this season when Aher was super aggressive and looking to score? The team looked great then. Now he’s immediately looking to pass, completely uninvolved and puts more pressure on the other 4.

It's frustrating. There's games where looks to attack and cut and move around a lot off the ball to get open. See his first game vs Bradley or vs USF or vs SIU. Then there are games where he just kind of disappears on offense...See his 1-5 performance @SIU, 1-4 @Drake, 1-3 vs ISUr and his 1-4 tonight. He's too athletic and talented to be putting up those numbers on offense. I'd much rather have him attacking the hoop than Schwieger at this point.

I don’t think this is on Aher. If you look at the stats in MVC play, Williamson and Norris account for nearly 50 % of 3 pt shots and 40% of 2 pt shots through 12 games. Not enough distribution on offense and a lotta standing around and watching. As the season wears on, 2 guys control the ball and dictate the touches...too much talent on the roster to not spread it around more. Eventually, players realize or are told by the staff what their role is in the system. Outside of Marquise, who was missed, nobody else really has a green light.

To me one of the primary issues is we just don't really have anyone who can create their own shot. Either guys don't have the athleticism or the handle to do it. As a result teams seem to be loading up on pressing our ball handler, we're turning it over and it stifles the offensive flow. It puts a ton of pressure on our guys to make their jumpers too which has some level of variance from game to game. We need a Townes or Doyle or Schlib type of guy badly.

With that said, everythings in front of us as far as the Valley goes. Win on Sunday and the tone of the conversation changes dramatically.

I am concerned that heading into A10 when the level of talent will go up on the higher end that we're really going to struggle.

Yep. We need to remember what Porter always said: Can't get too high after the wins or too down after the losses.

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