Valley Down? No good wins and some early season losses

[real fan]

Here"s my take on this matter:
Let"s win the conference and Tour. title and not worry about what happens to the other teams as with the way things are going we are looking at another 1 bid league.

[Garland 22]

I'm not sure how anyone can consider the Valley to be "very young". Over 30 returning starters compared to 23 and 24 the last two seasons. 34 returning players started 10 or more games for their teams in 2008-09. 57 players who averaged double-figure minutes and 56 players who played in 25 or more games are back. All 10 coaches are back this year as well.

I think that most would agree that even though the conference is experienced, it isn't exactly a league stocked with seniors. I also believe that the majority of stars in this league are really young.

[Tulsa Brave]

Iowa State is not the team they've been the past couple years. They'd be favored to win the MVC this season most likely were they in it. Akron and IUPUI aren't terrible either...I'd expect the bottom 3 teams in the MVC to be no better than those teams are this season. IUPUI and ORU are the only 2 teams that may challenge Oakland in the Summit this season. Auburn is better than Colorado State...they aren't the worst team in the SEC either...that would be Georgia. If Auburn finishes 250 or lower in the RPI, I will never post on this board again. Bradley is losing to Wofford at half and barely beat an Idaho State team that will end up with an RPI much closer to 250 than Auburn will. At least Wofford is halfway decent...on par with Akron and maybe a bit better than IUPUI...not in Iowa State's league though.

[tornado]

I guess I would suggest giving it more than a week before writing something like this....

we report, you decide...

Iowa State is not the team they've been the past couple years. ...

Agree..they are a much more solid team...they should contend for an NCAA bid!


Further proof of the Valley struggling...
BU beats a decent Wofford team but it was close.
Drake loses to Central Florida, Josh Young was 1-8 and so now he's 10-33 on the season and 2-17 from 3-pt.

Missouri State is beating Eastern Michigan...but this is not a solid win, and Creighton likewise beats UALR.

[Grassman]

Valley down

After todays games, if you take Drake out of the equation, Valley is 21 up and 6 down, not to shabby!

[TheAsianSensation]

Not to be cynical, but 21-6 is really only average for a conference like this one.

The bottom of the Valley can be considered equivalent to the bottom of the other conferences in terms of quality wins and bad losses. However, the frontrunners of the other conferences are getting their scalps, and no one in the conference can break through so far.

[Bravesfan]

Is it possible that the quality gap is closing between the Low Majors and the Mid-majors, similar to what happened in the 80s when the gap between High Majors and Mid-majors closed noticeably...??? Many times, MVC schools are recruiting the same kids that are being recruited by the lower tier conferences. One star and no star kids are in play for teams like Wofford, etc.

Well then those CBI and CIT type tourneys are going to be just as we have seen the last two years for Bradley. A lot of very close "grind them out" type games that will come down to the wire (maybe not all 70 foot shots, but down to the last play types of games). In other words, it's probably no fluke that a solid "lower" tier team like an Oakland of Michigan can come in here and put a real scare on us on any given night.

Heck, it happened again tonight against Wofford!

[Bravesfan]

we need five or ten wins in a row by the MVC..but sadly -even tho the going is early, the RPI and SOS stats look bad for the MVC.
Thus far the Valley has the 29th worst SOS!
ISU is ranked #326 and SIU ranked #341!!!

http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_conf_Men.html

those guys are killing us!

Big mistake for Doug Elgin to get rid of the scheduling requirement he instilled earlier this decade. AD's and coaches are human like anyone else. Sometimes forcing teams to schedule tougher works to their advantage.

[Bravesfan]

Pretty much the only way the MVC becomes a 2 bid team this yr is if 2 teams get at least 1 signature win and those same teams nearly run the table during conference play. Either that or the possibility of 2 out of 3 teams if the 3rd team wins the Conference Tourney. As of right now, it's not looking likely though.

Jason

And those scenerios both come down to Bradley and Creighton as both have far and away the best schedules in the league. We'll revisit this topic after Las Vegas next week to see if that's still in play.

[Bravesfan]

Pac 10 conference had some bad losses Saturday by their lower ranked teams...Sat night USC loses at home to Loyola Marymount, Oregon State loses at home to Sacramento State, Oregon loses on the road to Portland...weaker teams in BCS conferences getting weaker?

Yikes! Those are some pretty bad losses, but again, plenty of time for those teams to make amends just for being affiliated with the conferences they belong to. But that still gives perspective to the Valley's early season struggles. The Valley teams have won the majority of the games they were expected to, and early season struggles don't always indicate how a team will be playing by the end of the season. Plenty of time to go this season!

[amckillip]

we need five or ten wins in a row by the MVC..but sadly -even tho the going is early, the RPI and SOS stats look bad for the MVC.
Thus far the Valley has the 29th worst SOS!
ISU is ranked #326 and SIU ranked #341!!!

http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_conf_Men.html

those guys are killing us!

MVC is now #7 in RPI... I def. agree that MVC is down, but we're not hopeless yet.

[tornado]

BU is the only Valley team thus far who have played two Top 40 opponents...so someone is doing some decent scheduling..

and the Big Ten is the 20th ranked conference with the absolute WORST (#32) ranked SOS thus far!

http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_big10_Men.html

[BradleyBrave]

UNI losing to DePaul was a bad loss. Not only will DePaul prove to be nothing but an also-ran this year, but it cost UNI (and our league) opportunities at some other 'name' opponents. BU, CU, and WSU (tonight) are the only teams with legitimate 'signature' opponents left at this point.

[tornado]

guess who has the #1 RPI among all of D-I?
As of yesterday, it is DePaul, but they'll drop now..

http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_Men.html

[TheAsianSensation]

It's way too early to use SoS and RPI with any kind of accuracy whatsoever.

Quoted for posterity