brot4britu wrote:
Yeah ! But Gal. I think you will admit that the Shockers are a ton classier than say--BUTLER and their fans. EG--SUB GOD !! And where has he been lately--I like his comments. Also on the MVC Fans board a lot of Wheatshockers have been giving our RAMBLERS props.Now the real fun commences tho.
SubGod changed jobs the week before Thanksgiving and just doesn't have as much downtime as he used to. I'm done talking in the 3rd person. I'm seriously in love with my job though and very happy about the move.
As to my beloved Shockers, most of us knew we'd struggle some early. We have 8 new players for crying out loud. But we also have two All American candidates which you'd think would help. Our big problem lately has been that both Baker and VanVleet have been shooting poorly and that's not good. Carter hasn't quite been as consistent as we thought he'd be inside as fouls have plagued him most of the season. On top of that, we're waiting for a FR big to step up and I think that's started to happen with Rashard Kelly. Our rebounding and D haven't been up to standards but those things can and will be corrected.
The positives are that in the past week or so, some of the young guys are starting to move forward. On top of Kelly, FR guard Zach Brown has removed himself from the end of the bench and taken his place as one of the first off the bench. I knew it would come at some point, as he's a very skilled 6'6" SG. Currently shooting 72% from three. I believe he's 8 of 11. FR guard Corey Henderson JR. looks more comfortable now and the kid is another good shooter. I believe he may be the future backup PG to VanVleet and he's a long and athletic kid.
We're still waiting on some consistency out of Rauno Nurger. He's out big 6'10" Estonian kid we got out of SCA. Solid player that gets behind defensively at times but shows a lot of promise.
Getting Evan Wessel back from injury will also help. He got a nasty sprained ankle in the final game before we left for Hawaii. He didn't play at all on the island and played for about 30 seconds last night. He's a glue guy that rebounds and finds loose balls and brings an energy to the floor. He's also capable of hitting shots so he helps keep defenses honest. He probably won't see much time for another week or so.
We're a better shooting team than we've shown recently and once that picks back up I think we'll look much better than we have been. The good news is that for the most part, even with the poor shooting and defensive woes at times, we've been doing enough to win. With how we shot against Hawaii and GW, we should have lost both of those games by double digits. So I do find it encouraging that we're still finding ways to stay in games and give us chances to win.
And I agree that the MVC fan board is brutal. I haven't been on in a long time. I stopped when reasonable Shocker fans were having posts deleted because one or more of the mods had a bone to pick. At one time you couldn't make an honest evaluation of Creighton or Missouri State if it had any negativity at all. But outright attacks on WSU were constantly allowed. I couldn't stand the double standard. I was even someone who wrote some articles and did some research for the site prior to this. And those boards have a history of the top team having the site flooded with "fans" and make it difficult for the others. SIU fans were once despised for running the board and Creighton fans were there as well. It's probably WSU's turn to make the board unbearable for others. I've come to learn that outside of Creighton, the fans of the other teams are much better in real life than online.