This Week’s The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

Valley Teams Enjoying Great Success

(St. Louis, MO) – Our weekly feature ‘The Good, The Bad & the Ugly’ finds the good very good, the bad, not that bad and the ugly, only slightly ugly.

The Good

Valley teams won eleven of twelve games this week! They were 7-1 on Tuesday and with fewer non-Division 1 games, the wins were even more important. There were outstanding individual performances and important team wins and milestones.

Illinois Chicago, Evansville and Valparaiso recorded significant team wins and Belmont’s Casey Alexander reached a significant mark.

Missouri State started the week off with a convincing 84-69 win over Oral Roberts. Alston Mason is living up to my preseason hype and scored 28 points and grabbed nine rebounds, While the Bears held ORU to .205 from deep, Donovan Clay, N.J. Benson and Matthew Lee had big nights. Lee recorded a double-nueve (9 points & 9 assists).

Valparaiso gave first-year coach Roger Powell Jr his first Division 1 win with a five point home victory over Green Bay. Jaxon Edwards is putting together a very solid start. Tuesday night he scored 19 points, grabbed eight rebounds and blocked four shots. The Beacon defense held Green Bay to a 9% success rate from deep.

Indiana State thumped IUPUI 96-57. Robbie Avila rejoined the lineup and he and newcomer Isaiah Swope each scored 16 points. Jayson Kent recorded a double-double with 11 points and ten rebounds.  The Sycamores didn’t allow an IUPUI three pointer (0/13).

Illinois Chicago went to Gentile Arena and defeated Loyola Chicago 72-67. In what might be the biggest win in the Luke Yaklich era, former Rambler Marquise Kennedy was perfect eight times from the charity stripe, with most of those opportunities occurring during crunch time.

Bradley’s first game of the SoCal Challenge was a home game with Tarleton State and Christian Davis (16 points) and Almar Atlason (18) did most of the scoring as the Braves won decisively (86-63).

Two Valley teams defeated two Ohio Valley Conference teams. Evansville is 3-0 after going to Cape Girardeau and defeating Southeast Missouri while Illinois State is 2-1 after edging Eastern Illinois. UE’s Ben Humrichous (18) is off to a great start and Redbird newcomer Dalton Banks is showing why Ryan Pedon wanted the former Saluki on his team.

Southern Illinois continued its undefeated season with a 71-55 home win over Chicago State. The Salukis have won twenty-two straight non-conference home games. A.J. Ferguson scored a career high 20 points while guards Xavier Johnson and Trent Brown also reached double-digits.

Belmont, Drake and Northern Iowa defeated non-D1 teams. The Bruins’ win over Berry was coach Alexander’s 100^th win at Belmont. Drake’s Tucker DeVries scored 21 points, grabbed eight rebounds, added four assists, and recorded four steals.

The Bad

Murray State losing at home to Western Kentucky isn’t terrible. It didn’t make the ‘Ugly’ category. The Racers played well and lost an entertaining game against a good WKU team. Now 2-1, the Racers’ home non-conference winning streak comes to an end at 27 straight games.

Murray State’s narrow loss to Western Kentucky (86-81) was the first meeting of the two neighbors in nine years and hopefully is the beginning of a long-term commitment by these two high level mid-majors. They will play the next four straight years. Let’s hope this becomes a long-standing game for these two.

Five Racers reached double figures in scoring. Rob Perry led the way with 21 points.

Murray was bad defensively allowing WKU to make more than 52% from the field and 50% from long distance.

The Ugly – Injured Stars

While none of the injuries we’ll talk about here seem serious, the thought that Bowen Born, Cade Tyson, Chance Moore and Darnell Brodie were MIA this week is troubling and ugly. Moore played three minutes before sustaining what coach Dana Ford called a ‘grade 1’ ankle sprain.

UNI’s Born, Belmont’s Tyson and Drake’s Brodie were in the ‘Did Not Play’ category. We’re told Born has a tight hip flexor and should be fine for the upcoming Battle 4 Atlantis. It remains to be seen if he will be available for the Panther’s weekend game with South Florida.

Tyson has what hockey teams call a ‘lower body’ injury and Brodie a mild leg injury. We’ve been told that each of these players fall into the ‘day-to-day’ category. However, if any of these injuries prove problematic, they will become a massive on-going story. Born and Tyson are preseason Valley first teamers. Brodie was a preseason second-teamer and Moore landed on the league’s third team.

The most glaring ‘ugly’ within any of the games were the eight turnovers by UIC’s Toby Okani. During their game’s closing moments Okani struggled to inbound the ball against the Loyola full court pressure.

MTE season is upon us and we’ll preview those important games tomorrow.

Do Good