Completely understand your thoughts, and think we as a collective fan base will have to reset expectations next year. A good year for year one in A10 will be .500 conference record, and if Knight and Schwieger come back maybe a little better. Not sure we will have a collective melt down over every loss, it’s just happening this year because expectations were sky high with 4 seniors from a sweet sixteen team coming back. The expectation was tourney or bust by most of us, next year is a completely different ball game.

DRAKE came out with a great offensive plan...started a small line up forced Knight to defend on the perimeter. I think first 4 possessions were scores with Knight defending.....but tough for him to guard a quick gaurd although he did have a couple really good defensive possessions in the 2nd half. Also Drake seemed to have done a great job of scouting us and then defending us.They really stopped the high pick and roll...which was our bread and butter against Valpo...They were ready for WIlliamson when he drove and tried to pitch it out and ready for his spin move....Ready for Schwieger and not going for his fakes...He is a good coach.......
And they are physical ..man they held and pushed and got away with a lot of it...but all their guys rebounded. It was poorly officiated across the board.
I thought Drake played good defense and we did not seem to have many answers....
Offensively we just did not get a lot of clean looks...We had 21 assists against UNI.....We missed a lot of shots at the hoop..
They were more rested than we were.....
How many times did we take the head fake of DeVries..including the one that put them back up 7 after we had cut it to 4....
I also agree that the student section was inappropriate...even started last game with "over rated.....and na na na good bye....cheer your own team....
Thought the team played hard, maybe too hard,,,,,and now 3 more in 6 days...thought Clemons had a lot of energy and poise...we could really use Marquis back
Drake fans by me were flat out rude and crude.....

Drake is a tough team to defend. Devries, Sturtz, Penn. It seems everyone on their team can score and Sturtz - who played 40 minutes - just out hustled us. They looked like the team that was picked to be first in the Valley/

Our offense was not smooth. It just doesn't flow well. Way too many turnovers. 12 assists - 18 turnovers. We need to take care of the ball better. We really missed Kennedy in the rotation. We miss his defense and his ball handing skills on offense. It seems like a few players get stuck going to he basket and either no one else helps or they turn the ball over. When it does not work - it is hard to watch.

The fouls on Hall early screwed up our rotation. Our defense is not as good as last year, but you need to remember we have several players who are in their first years with the team and they miss assignments.

Despite the overall poor performance, we had a chance to pull it out at the end. We need to win out. We need Drake to win out and We need UNI today.

Hard for me to put this one down. Drake made some tough shots in crunch time, Penn had two and Tucker was, well, a handful.
Our offense doesn’t flow and when Norris has zero threes, something isn’t running right. Seems our losses come when our center situation breaks down. In our losses Knight gets into foul trouble and we don’t have a backup plan. Jake seems to be a key here but he hasn’t been developing as to position and hands… I guess Krut was the gold standard and it’s gonna take Hut some time. Seems his confidence is way down and I hope he can dig out..
So, as I watch the sunrise over Lake Michigan this morning, I guess it’s time to get on with it and quit whining about the past.
Todays UNI game will be interesting, as will Bradley, (Oh don’t we just love that team) and Missouri St next week. Of course our own games too.
Go Ramblers….We can do this!

A win at ISU on Monday would really be something. All said the Ramblers played hard and up hill for a long period of time last night. Now they have today, one day to rest and get ready for the Redbirds...this is a difficult task we have....hope these guys getter done......win or lose , it is a good group whose fault is never effort.

Regarding the start of the game, I wonder if we would start Tommy if we could do it over. I didn't quite catch everything that happened in the first few possessions, but it did seem like Knight's man was scoring a lot. Tom might stand a better chance guarding Murphy. But there's still the rebounding problem.

We're capable of winning the next three (against teams we handled pretty easily first time through). Need to prove it.

Three wins should get us back into the top 30 in the metrics, especially if we beat expectations by a little.

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Well, we continue to digress as the season goes on. Yesterday was not a good performance and this goes for the players and the Coaches. My takeaways:

1. Drake Loyola Us! What Drake did to us last night is what we have been doing to teams the last 4 years. Their spacing was great. They were in constant motion all night, they passed the ball and they hit open shots. This is how we play when we are at our best.

2. Confidence is a fragile thing. Our pattern this year is that when we make our early shots, we roll. When we don’t, we struggle. Yesterday we came out and looked good the first few possessions with movement and passing, but missed some bunnies right at the rim and things went downhill from there. We reverted to too much dribbling and not enough motion.

3. As Pat Foley says, “Your stars have to play like stars.” Ours did not yesterday. Braden and Aher were lousy, 5-19 shooting the ball. We are not going to win games with these two shooting the ball like this.

4. Defensive Rebounding. When we did play good defensively, we did not rebound misses an gave Drake 2nd and at tie 3rd opportunities. The last 6 minutes f the game were particularly frustrating. When shots go up, we are stationary and we just turn to look at the basket. We need to find opponents and put a body on them.

5. Coaching. Drew has done a good job most of the year, but yesterday was his and his coaching staff’s worst day. Drew looked visibly shaken at times by the refereeing of the game. Let’s face it, this was a horribly reffed game. The next time Brodie stand stills on a screen will be his first! We are a pretty good press team, but we went to it too late and inexplicably with about a 1:14 or so to go after creating havoc and getting to within 4 points, we stopped pressing and let them walk the ball up! We then allowed Drake to take 20 or seconds off the clock and gave up a 3 to Devires. So instead of pressing, going for a steal or good trap and then immediately fouling we did the opposite. The result, it became a 3 possession game with Drake now up 7. If we go for a steal and then foul, even two FT make it 6 point game, 2 possessions. This is Coaching 101. When you are trailing, you EXTEND the game because time is not on your side. This was a glaring mistake by Drew and me and my friends were like is Drew doing.
Drew was also slow calling timeout again. He allowed Drake to build big lead. Every time we cut the Drake lead to single digits, they called a time out. We did not as built up leads.

6. We continue to go underneath screens and give good shooters space for 3s. We are also not showing and preventing ball handler from going where he wants. How many times does this have to brought up? Drake did not shoot a great percentage by the end of the game, but they made them early in building up their led and gaining confidence (there is that word again) that they held the whole game. We also got beat back door a couple of time. Again, this is happening way too much. Drew seems to be aware of this, and seems to talk to the players abut this, but they continue to do both. It is frustrating.

7. Kennedy. His absence is really showing. He has missed the last 5 games and we have gone 3-2. We have gone from 31 in KenPom to 36. Our NET has dropped to 37. His absence is making a big difference on both ends of the court.

8. Finally, I am not sure this team has the mental toughness to win 3 in a row at Arch Madness. We should all be rooting for UNI today to beat Missouri State and we have to run the table to get the 1 seed and win the Conference. I am not sure how tie breakers work, but is Missouri has 5 and we run the table and beat UNI again, UNI will have 5 and we will end up at 4 losses. If we do not playe better these last 3 games and get out NET and KenPom up, the committee will have a good case not to invite us as an at large bid. Funny, before we got ranked 22, we looked like a legit NCAA at large. Last 5 games, not so much. We have picked the wrong time of the year to play some of our worst basketball. My fear is that it is becoming mental with this group.

^ Great analysis Mudville. Agree with all of your points. Yes, Brodie wasn't called at all on his screens. Bit irritating. The fact that it seems everybody is looking to Luke to score, even the veterans, was uncharacteristic. Aher was taking threes, not driving the paint, Braden didn't seem to be taking 3s and more driving/probing the paint and actually taking paint shots and getting rejected was again uncharacteristic.

I'd rather see them lose playing to their strengths instead of looking seeming off kilter, which is what they looked like yesterday. Was most likely the aggressiveness (and lack of fouls called on) Drake, especially in the first half.

Why Coach Drew had them stop pressing in the last minutes of the game when it was working well and not taking advantage of the Drake chaos was puzzling. Seems we let them off the hook when a win was possible.

The decision to stop pressing was really inexplicable. I've been traying to think of the reason why Coach Drew made that decision. If we had last year's defense and we were playing in a low scoring slug fest, I could MAYBE rationalize the decision to rely on your defense to get a stop. But this year's defense is nowhere near what we had last year and Drake was scoring fairly easily when it was allowed to run its sets. We have the bodies to throw presses more often. It was working. And we just...stopped. Mind boggling.

Well, UNI trucked Missouri State.

Take care of business and go play for a conference title next weekend!

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