UNI 81923, Drake 59

What an absolute embarassment of a game yesterday. UNI dominated Drake at both ends of the floor, building an insurmountable 47-25 halftime lead. They absolutely had the Drake 3-2 zone figured out and found open 3 after open 3 -- draining pretty much all of them. On the defensive end of the floor, they played physical, cut down driving lanes, and frustrated our guys into completely losing their focus. I saw Drake players (and fans) spending their time complaining calls when we were down 30. It was easily the top 3 ugliest games I've ever seen as a Drake fan. To make matters worse, it was our only appearance on ESPN2 this year -- very damaging to the program.

Let's just say it's intentional that I took a day before adding this post.

As far as attitudes are concerned, I've been on DrakeNation and they are absolute garbage. While it's reasonable to be pissed at an ass whoping, there is a "Fire Phelps" thread that is absolutely despicable. I've discussed expectations at varying points this year. To recap, I have little patience or respect for someone who believes that one year of success entitles us to be a top tier program year over year. The problem is that many of these people are bandwagon fans that know nothing other than 28-5 and 21 game winning streaks. To those people I say get the cojones to support a team in its ups and downs and stop making ridiculous statements only a quitter would say. In his first year as a head coach Mark Phelps is 13-6 (4-3). I want to win as bad as the next guy. But, to overreact to one game and claim the guy should be fired shows that one is nothing less than the pinnacle of ignorance.

We have a variety of things to work on. Given that this team has taken strides (until yesterday), I have no doubt that they will rebound and put together a strong performance at MSU.

Yesterday I gave a rough projection of how I expect the remainder of the season to go. Well, I had a chance to actually put some numbers behind that. If you look at Drake's record against certain splits in the RPI, you have the following:

RPI____W L Avg
0-50___0 2 29
51-150_5 4 96
151+___8 0 260

So, we are 0-2 against "great" teams (Butler, ISU), roughly .500 against "good" teams, and about undefeated against "bad" teams. To me, that's about exactly what I would have expected from this team, and they're looking to deliver.

So what do we have down the stretch? Well, for MVC play -- we have 1 "great" team, 7 "good" teams, and 3 "bad" teams (using the same criteria). That should give us about 6 more wins if you give us the three bad teams and say we go 3-4 against the good teams. That still puts us at 19-11 (10-8) and outside of the play-in game. We also have the ESPN Bracketbuster that I'm not counting that could get us to 20 wins.

So, give we still have a realistic shot if we get back to playing good basketball -- I think it's time to start breathing again and maybe collectively backing the entire men's basketball fanbase away from the ledge.