Bringing in the New Year by Getting the Hell out of Here

In case you haven't noticed, the posts have been pretty thin over the past few weeks. Between work and holidays (i.e. traveling) there has been limited amounts of time to really keep up with the blog. This will continue for the next few weeks as I will be heading to Aruba to regroup and continue the celebration of the new year.

Two thoughts about the past week:

• Evansville is a solid team. They're a bit better than I'd give them credit for, but I am still not sold on them being a Valley leader yet. We are much more talented and it would have been a great game to have. Given our horrendous shooting, it's fair to say that we probably deserved to lose -- but I think it gives us a feel for how strong our talent level is when we actually led in the second half of that game before totally collapsing. We NEED to take care of business against them when we see them again at Knapp at the end of January.
• We absolutely handled Missouri State. It was evident that we were a much more talented team inside and out, and once we found our rythym it was surely something that wasn't going to be in doubt. Great to see 6,000 fans make it during the week. While it was a holiday and $1 day (2 bucks for a hot dog and popcorn was unreal) I still think it was a great showing for us. Taking care of business against teams like Missouri State is exactly what we need to be doing.

Since I'm going to be out for the next week and a half, there are three games coming up:

1. We play at Carbondale against Southern Illinois this Sunday. Southern Illinois is a very talented but young team -- unfortunately for them, they're learning basketball at the college level in a very hard way this year. While they have beat UMass and SLU (both at home, mind you), they're 5-8 (0-2) and are struggling bad with a poor loss just in their last game against UNI. Looks like they scheduled themselves into a bit of a disaster as their non-conference SOS is #51 according to Ken Pomeroy. For a team that relies on a lot of young kids to do important things, it's understandable to see the predicament they are in. Yet, this is a team that might grow up quick and cause trouble in the Valley. While Drake is surely talented enough to sleep through the first 10 minutes against Missouri State (evidenced by 5 points in that span), they should not think they can do the same against SIU. One glaring weakness I see in SIU is that they don't have those on-ball defenders like they did in years past. You recall Jamal Tatum being one of the top dogs in the valley, but its easy to forget how strong he and his teammates were at pushing and defending other guards. Mullins is solid, and the kid Kevin Dilard looks to be up to task, but they are just so uncharacteristically insignificant on defense (Steal% is 295 in the nation, hard to believe) that they have quite some work to do to get back into shape. Still, this is a danger game for the Bulldogs, one that SIU easily just sneaks up and wins at home.
2. Indiana State comes into town on 1/7. They are awful, currently 3-10 (1-1) with a big win over UNI. They are basically bad in all facets of the game this year and look to be heading to the bottom of the Valley for the remainder of the year. There are some shooters (4 players have made 10+ threes and they shoot 40.7%, 38.5%, 35.5%, and 38.7%) so they might be able to exploit Drake's zone to get some open looks beyond the arc. But, in reality, this is an area that Drake has improved on over the past few games. I am not concerned with a home game versus Indiana State, and will be extremely disappointed if we do not win by 20+.
3. Wichita State comes into town on 1/11. Their season has taken a very bad turn for the worse. They beat a solid Siena team earlier in the year and played the GTown Hoyas tough, but they've also lost to UMKC (who I didn't even know was Division I). Their MVC season is off to a rough note at 0-2, but mostly due to the fact that they've played Creighton and Bradley. Looking at their roster, size seems to be a strength for them, they've got a 7 footer in Garrett Stutz, two 6-7's and a 6-6 that see significant time. Again, as with SIU they are extremely young. Even younger than SIU. They have a nine man rotation, and only three of them are upperclassmen (two juniors, one senior). It will be of help that they are a young team on the road, but we're going to have to force the pace and tempo. As seen with Missouri State, our zone defense allows a lot of easy layups and can be solved by patient teams that find the right seams and have multiple threats to penetrate. Not seeing them play it's tough to tell who on their team can do that, but it is fair to say that their size poses issues. They are a Top 10 team in the country, statitistically, in keeping their opponents off of the boards - so it seems to come down to how well we can get into our offensive flow and knock down shots. If we come out laying a stinker on the offensive end, they'll rebound enough to keep in this game.

For me, the following are huge keys for how we deal with the upcoming stretch of games:

• Interior Defense. We have been allowing way too much wheeling and dealing on our matchup zone -- almost at the cost of trying to limit opposing teams three's. Our guys are doing what they can, but there is a bit of a dropoff in how well we can defend their big men. This will be a legitimate issue against SIU, who has solid bigs and two point guards that can break us down. The size of WSU scares me in this regard as well.
• Wake Up At Tip Off. I'd say that our ghost walk through the first 10 minutes of games has been a real big issue for us this year. We'll be fine, except when we matchup against marquee teams (Creighton) or teams that have enough talent to just step on our throat when we do it (SIU). I'd like this to not continue on the road at SIU, but to be honest, I just don't know if we're there yet.
• Ball Movement/Other Options. Our assists were up (16) against MizzSt., mostly attributable to better ball movement and penetration. Phelps mentioned on the post game interview that we're a better team when guys (and the ball) are moving around more on the offensive end. I couldn't agree any more with him, and I think this is something we're still feeling out that can be partially responsible for some of the lulls we go into. Likewise, we need other players to start stepping up and shooting the ball better. Bucky just did this with a monster game. If we can get to the point that numerous players are shooting the three, and we're actually moving the ball around all the time -- we are probably the best team in the Valley on the offensive side of the floor. But, if we continue our inconsistency and lean on Josh Young too much, that's certainly not the case. Josh will come up big in big games (Iowa, ISU, etc...), but I think we're fooling ourselves if we think that him averaging 20+ PPG is a good thing -- we NEED other guys to step up because a one sided attack is pretty easy to defend.

We're 10-4 (1-1) right now. Hopefully if we can win two of those three games we'd be 12-5 (3-2) and I'd sure take that as an early 2009 present. Go Dawgs!