Much better to learn lessons in a win than a loss. That FDU team isn't very good, but I do think they are well-coached and brought a few of the D2 players with the coach (similar to ISUb last year).

We were "trending" like crazy on Twitter after Sheldon's shot. What a freakin' pass by Welch there. And Sheldon JUST got it off in time. Laettner-esque.

Rebounding and three point shooting were both rough. As was the defense. Got burnt a lot by simple dribble drives. And burned a lot on backdoors.

Saint had a couple nice 3's early but seemed to make a lot of mistakes. Bad turnovers and defensive lapses. Need more from him.

Golden and Hutty didn't bring much to the table. Welch was great. Love his hustle.

Quinn might be our best player by the end of the season. He can do so much on the offensive end. He'll get better on D.

Dawson, the other freshman, had some open looks that didn't fall. Nice defensive play at the end of the game to force the TO.

Schwieger didn't do much. Wilson didn't play much.

Braden played too much. His legs will be dead by conference play with the minutes expected of him. Hopefully Quise is back soon and can spell Braden some much-needed rest. I think an offense with Quinn and Quise as the guards would be FUN. Both can get to the hoop in a hurry.

Lots to learn. UIC is going to be hungry just like last year.

Sloppy win, but a win’s a win. I will say if Alston plays in the second half I don’t think we need overtime to win. He was scoring at will inside in the first half before foul trouble, and that was the biggest thing we were lacking in the second half: interior shot making. Hoping he’s good for Friday and it was just some major cramping. He’s a huge difference maker and may up being our best player this year.

I’m concerned about our trainers/training staff. Multiple guys cramping up and those guys looked like Mike Tyson’s corner in the Buster Douglas fight! Didn’t think Corey retiring would be a major impact but it just might?

I agree with most of what has been said. 3 pt shooting is obviously a concern, but I think they are going to keep shooting them. I kept an eye on Valentine after some of the bad misses/turnovers and he was very encouraging. In some of the France/exhibition game, I thought he had a little more Porter to his temperament, but last night he was clapping and encouraging after almost every bad shot/pass it seemed like. I think this team is going to be playing super fast, looking to score 80-90 every game.

I'd love to see Quinn be more selfish. I think he is already a star- his finishing ability and ability to penetrate may be the best on the team already. Last night he dealt with foul trouble the whole game so his minutes were limited but man is he fun to watch. I think he will need to take 2-3 three pointers a game just to keep the defense from playing way off him, but that part of his game is not nearly as pretty.

Alston missing the second half definitely had an effect. Rebounding was really bad last night, and Alston/Welch are gonna have to really get aggressive on the boards as we start to play bigger teams. I do think FDU was just a weird matchup for us, every player for them was small, very quick, and just slippery. But the rebounding is going to have to improve a ton.

The defense worried me for sure. I can't even count how many times it seemed like Schweiger/Thomas/Quinn/Norris would take a strange step either left or right at the top of the key and the FDU players would immediately beat them off the dribble to the other side. The zone seemed to work a little better, I wonder if we will start to play more zone as the season goes on. That may exacerbate the rebounding issues.

Overall it was just good to get a win. Obviously some things to work on, but they will be a fun and frustrating at times team to watch this year. I think Valentine will be looking to the portal next year to get a lights out shooter or two. I'm hopeful that Schweiger/Dawson start to see a few fall. They both have nice looking strokes, and if they could hit 35% from 3, our offense suddenly becomes almost unstoppable.

Got a lot of work to do, wouldn't be surprised if we drop the UIC game. Hope I'm wrong.

POSITIVES

-Sheldon is absolutely fearless, nice to see the big shot-making he displayed against us at Valpo. Nice to have an irrational confidence guy on the team, but as with most of those type of guys he has a quick trigger. I don't mind too much since he looks to be one of our better shooters, but some of the shots he took should only be end of the shot-clock shots.

-Welch stepping up. Great hustle and a nice workmanlike performance, especially down the stretch with Alston going down, although probably a few too many defensive lapses.

-Quinn has really nice moves to the basket and a nice touch around the rim.

NEGATIVES

-Injuries... really hope Marquise is OK, he is our best perimeter defender and one of our best rebounders (maybe our best?), both areas we clearly really struggled with. And he can help us break a press. And let Braden get some breathers. Please come back soon Marquise! And we could also see the change without Alston, we're really going to need him healthy.

-As others have mentioned, way too many blow-bys and backdoors on defense. Hopefully it improves with more experience and cohesion, but yikes.

-Rebounding was obviously really poor.

-Poor shooting. For Braden I think it was tired legs. For the others, hopefully just jitters. Quinn's shot mechanics look pretty clunky though. If he learns how to shoot, he has a chance to be better than Lucas.

-Saint was very up and down. Was great in spurts, but as others said, he looked completely blown for a lot of the game. If he is recovering from an illness, I'm not sure why Drew wasn't subbing him more?

-Not very encouraging games for Golden, Schweiger or Hutty. For Golden and Hutty, it may have been a matchup issue keeping them from getting minutes, and not looking great out there. Schweiger looked like he was getting beat a lot on defense, wasn't rebounding, and his shots all missed. He'll need to correct those if he's going to keep getting PT.

It is hard to say off what we have observed so far. Both teams we played were anomalies. They were short and quick. We are not short and quick. Those teams had at least 4 guards in the line-up with no true center. We had 1 true guard and tons of 1.of wing players with slow first steps 2. Other than Welch pretty slow post players. So defensively we were chasing our tails. The other two teams did a good job of getting one of our post players guarding one of their quick ball handlers and once they beat them off the dribble everyone is trying to help, lose sight of their guy and we are in trouble particularly w/o a rim protector. Defensively a lot of our wings have slow first steps. If you picture the team with Custer, Richardson, Townes, Ingram and even Krutwig who could defend on the perimeter, well this is not that group. They are taller with arm length but not a quick first step. Kennedy will make a difference but we may struggle all year with teams with quick ball handlers. You can see that they would like to double team with two of those long armed guys. The defense is a work in progress. Marquis where are ya?
Offensively , we need to hit the 3 and as people have said...get Norris some r and r. Quinn has been a life saver.
With everyone healthy we have the potential to have Edwards, Norris, Kennedy, Quinn and the 3 headed monster at center or do you put Alston in? and for who?
Going to be fun to see how the season develops....

Maybe, but we were supposed to be bigger and more athletic this year, so it's pretty alarming that a really small team was able to make us look bad defensively with relative ease. And we certainly should have been able to get more than 60% of the defensive rebounds.

I guess Drew is fine with all the threes we take. I don't really get it. When you shoot 75% from two and 22% from three, it seems pretty easy to figure out.

The other trend from last year is that it seems like we foul a ton. Really hope the young guys clean that up with some more experience.

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Few thoughts:

What has been posted about the defense, shooting etc. is all correct, but I have some different takes.

1) We used to be the smaller quicker team that gave bigger teams fits. We are now a bigger team and smaller teams with jitter bug guards are going to give us some problems. This is especially true when they spread the floor and stretch the defense. You see this in March in the NCAA Tournament too when upsets get sprung. We are athletic and we are not "slow" by any means, but a real quick 5'10" guy is probably always gonna be a problem for a quick 6'5" guy. Quick is size relative.

2) We have a lot of new faces and it seems every year we are little suspect out of the gate with the newer players picking up the defense. Our defense was actually pretty good for the first 10 minutes of the game or so. It was more of a discipline problem as the game went on as we 1) got caught looking at the ball too much on the weak side instead of moving and staying in position based on what FDU was doing weak side, and 2) we did not move our feet and bodies leading to reaching in and fouling. All correctable.

3) What is getting lost in the wash is look at the lineups down the stretch last night. This was the big takeaway for me last night. At some points we had two true freshmen (Quinn & Dawson) on the floor with a redshirt Freshman or Sophomore (Schweiger or Thomas) along with a transfer (Edwards). We had some YOUNG players on the floor in crunch time and that type of experience can only help down the road. It has to also be a huge confidence booster for those younger guys.

4) It was obvious that with the depth on this team that Drew did struggle a little with his rotations. He had to incorporate Edwards back into the mix and he had a bad match up game with how small FDU was, which rendered our bigs (Golden and Hutty) useless. This issue will only become exasperated when Quise comes back. I do not think Drew has a great handle on what exactly he wants to do with lineups yet as he has to figure out what he has, who he trusts, and who is or is not ready. I think this showed up in how quick people were being subbed in and out. I am all for playing a lot of guys, but 30 seconds or minute is just too short. I would like to see a given line-up get the chance to get some traction and play a bit longer, especially when they playing well.

Overall, it was not pretty, but its a win and the staff has some tape to coach off of now. I think this group has high motor guys who are competitive and they will only get better.

I have a feeling (and I could definitely be wrong here) that Kennedy will take up a lot of Dawson’s minutes once he comes back. Not that Dawson was bad by any stretch (I actually thought he looked really poised), but there just needs to be some sacrifice in the rotation assuming Kennedy will get 20+ a game (and hopefully give Braden some rest as a backup PG as well).

Based on yesterday (keeping in mind we had a lot of foul trouble), my best guess at a pared down rotation is:

Norris
Quinn
Thomas
Alston
Welch

with Edwards, Kennedy, Golden, and Schwieger as the main bench contributors.

On a separate note, I was surprised how little Wilson played. I thought he has good size and would be an experienced 3&D guy, especially considering how we needed both 3s and some defense last night.

I haven't seen enough from Thomas to put him over Edwards yet. Coach Drew talks a lot about him and there seems to be a high level of optimism around his potential, but between last year and what we saw yesterday, I am just not there.

I would have liked to see Hutty get a few more minutes yesterday. I think we could have easily ran the pick and roll with a lob to him at the hoop like we used to do with Krut. The size advantage was significant.