(01-19-2018 07:29 AM)BKTopper Wrote:  

(01-19-2018 07:22 AM)EverRespect Wrote:  

(01-19-2018 06:49 AM)BKTopper Wrote:  Q: Is there a scenario where the league could nab 3 bids? Outerspace long shot but it could hypothetically happen. Marshall, UAB, ODU, MT, WKU are all March-ready.

We have a long way to go before "March ready". 4 of our wins were Charlotte, N Texas, Rice, and FIU and we struggled in 3 of those. We did beat a less than full strength Marshall handily at home, but then failed to hold serve with WKU. Our record is smoke and mirrors... we haven't really played well since before Christmas break or beaten anyone of consequence except for a short-handed Marshall at home and Dayton and Towson in November.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

Gotcha. Smoke and mirrors is how I felt about Harper's last couple of seasons at WKU. NT's playing well, though so that's a quality win in conference. UAB is the real deal, don't have a good handle on Marshall-- wonder how Herd fans feel about the season so far.

We've been split as to whether there's anything really there for us as a fanbase. Many of us have been saying be patient, it's coming. We have a great coach, good talent, and a good scheme. But with the injuries and illness we hit a rough patch and a lack of cohesion early on cost us a couple games we should have won. That said people were slowly coming around, we had a great finish at Xavier, beat LaTech, who we thought at the time was much better than they've shown to be. Then we got crushed by WKU, lost our best defensive (maybe best overall) player and the fans backslid a little. A lot of fans felt like we had no defense as some of our conference mates do. Some of them just don't like D'antoni as our coach, but watching him coach, live, you can tell he has "it." Anyway, last night seemed to really change some minds and hearts. It was a good win over a top tier team and showed that at the very least we can be very good now that our bench and starters are healthy.

I can't say if we would have beat WKU or ODU with Penava back and George healthy and the flu completely gone, but I believe WKU wouldn't have scored in the paint nearly as often or got so many rebounds, and it would have been a lot closer. ODU I think we maybe could have won if we played like last night with everyone ready. We made a run at them that we usually have been winning even after being down, but just didn't have the horses to finish.