Street & Smith's College Basketball Preview - **Recommended

[tornado]

People can decide for themselves, but if you are in the market for an inexpensive College Basketball Preview,
then this issue is the one I'd highly recommend for the various reasons noted...

It's in the $7 range and FAR bigger and better than the other issues I have seen (Athlon & Lindy's) and has gobs more coverage for folks like MVC fans.

First - they classify the Missouri Valley among their "POWER CONFERENCES" and give more detailed previews..

The writer is Jim Benson form the Bloomington Pantagraph - one of the most knowledgeable guys on Valley stuff.

They have SEVEN full pages of MVC coverage - about 400% of what the other guys have...
but- as usual - most Bradley fans are very well educated and stay caught up and thus there's virtually nothing in the MVC section that was news to me at all.
In fact I'm kinda surprised he picked Wentzien from UNI on All-Newcomer since Wentzien is WALK-ON juco transfer that's almost a carbon copy of Hunter Rhodes from the same DII juco last year - and Wentzien plays shooting guard position that at least 6 or 7 other UNI players will be battling for such as Rhodes, Lohaus, Haldeman, Brown, Pickford, McDermott..

A few interesting points about the Valley such as possibly adding more teams for expansion, and that there are a lot of quality big men in the MVC this year (Alize Johnson).

They pick the MVC:
1- UNI
2- Missouri State
3- ISU
4- Loyola
5- Valpo
6- SIU
7- Indiana State
8- Bradley
9-Evansville
10- Drake

All MVC- Donte Ingram, Alize Johnson, Bennett Koch, Brenton Scott, TeVonn Walker (Valpo)

All Newcomer- Marcus Bartley (SIU), Joe Burton (Valpo), Tyreke Key (InSU), Miles Wentzien (juco transfer to UNI from same school that produced Hunter Rhodes), Milik Yarbrough (ISU)

All Defense- Thik Bol, Obediah Church, Daoud N'Diaye, Tevonn Walker, Armon Fletcher

Sharpshooter- Ingram, Kreklow, Richardson, Scott, Smithpeters

[Da Coach]

.....

All MVC- Donte Ingram, Alize Johnson, Bennett Koch, Brenton Scott, TeVonn Walker (Valpo)

All Newcomer- Marcus Bartley (SIU), Joe Burton (Valpo), Tyreke Key (InSU), Miles Wentzien (juco transfer to UNI from same school that produced Hunter Rhodes), Milik Yarbrough (ISU)

All Defense- Thik Bol, Obediah Church, Daoud N'Diaye, Tevonn Walker, Armon Fletcher

Sharpshooter- Ingram, Kreklow, Richardson, Scott, Smithpeters

I have not seen much of Tevonn Walker, Valparaiso's 6'2" senior shooting guard, but Benson names him to the first team All MVC.
He averaged 11.9 ppg in the Horizon League last year. Playing with an All American and NBA player (Alec Peters) on the floor with him may have benefitted him a little. He shot a lot of threes, and averaged only 29% from three on the season.
There are several MVC guards, including Darrell Brown, who will also be contenders for All-MVC.

[tornado]

Illinois State's freshman Elijah Clarance will be out 6 weeks with stress fracture left foot

http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/illinois-state/isu-freshman-guard-clarance-to-miss---weeks-with/article_c8d88337-1452-55ac-9468-1e4eddbc0f44.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=user-share

[Da Coach]

Illinois State's freshman Elijah Clarance will be out 6 weeks with stress fracture left foot
http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/col...ign=user-share

This could hurt ISU in the first part of their season. They are a little thin at the point guard position, and Clarance, a freshman, was projected to play backup point guard behind Keyshawn Evans. The only other guards they have who have played any point guard are sophomore Madison Williams, but he played very little last season and adds little on offense, 5th year grad transfer Jerron Martin, who likewise played very little in the last couple years at Texas Southern, and Matt Hein, who has scored a total of 7 points and has zero assists in his 2 seasons at ISU.

[tornado]

Another injury being reported..
SIU's Austin Weiher is undergoing surgery and will be out at least a month
The Saluki's are not deep in the frontcourt but one odd thing is that they appear to be hiding the reason he is having surgery

"Hinson declined to go into specifics about Weiher's injury, but said that he would know more about his prognosis after the surgery."

http://thesouthern.com/sports/college/salukimania/salukis-weiher-to-undergo-surgery-could-be-out-a-month/article_fd42004c-f0c2-5c86-b696-a887dad0dbc6.html

SIU has only four players listed as frontcourt players - Thik Bol, Jonathan Wiley, Rudy Stradnieks and Weiher- and three of them have extremely limited experience
Bol is a starter and will log solid minutes, but Wiley (9.9 mpg, 2.6 ppg) and Stradnieks (7.8 mpg, 2.2 ppg) along with Weiher have all never been much more than deep bench guys who rarely score and even more rarely get a rebound (avg. just 1-2 rpg - overall numbers that were roughly what Davante Cooper or Alex Foster got for us).