You guys ever been on the WIU campus? I have and if there are any alums here, I apologize in advance but what a sad campus and college town. And the academics…well, let’s just say they are not stellar, nor is their sports history or tradition.
To think it’s OK to lose in a major sport to this school is beyond the pale.
Well it happened and it’s not like WIU is not having a decent year…
Not surprised by this…Eli has to contribute and really Dalonte has yet to have a BIG game…that will be a must if have a shot against UC
Let’s take a breath here. We were only favored by something like 3.5. WIU isn’t a “good” team, but they knocked off a B10 team on the road, and they only lost by 4 at DePaul. They shot a ridiculous % from 3 today. This isn’t a terrible loss. Winning on the road against a D1 team is hard.
Looking at the rest of our OOC, we’ll beat Spalding. Bellarmine won’t be a cakewalk, but we should win that, too. Let’s say we go 1-2 vs. UC, ISU, and Clemson. That’s 8-3 non-conference. Between the MAC regular season and tournament, we should get more than 10 wins. 18-13 is certainly possible, but not likely. I think we get to 20. So far we have upset an ACC team on the road and took care of business at home against bad/below average opponents. None of our last 4 wins were ever in doubt. Now if we go out and lose by 20 to UC, and we could, I’ll change my tune.
I joke only because they have one of the strangest team names in basketball. To amuse myself after this piss poor loss, I started thinking: what would be (based only on team names) the funniest 4 team pre-season basketball tourney ever. I don’t have an answer yet, but I will.
UC Santa Cruz, South Dakota School of Mines, Carnegie Mellon, Scottsdale Community College
They need names. Ie: The Norse Leathernecks Mean Green Banana Slugs Fall Classic.
I didn’t watch the game, but looking at the stats, our bench was terrible today (shooting wise). We played 12 players, while WIU played 8. I hope Owens learned a lesson last year and is simply giving a few players some minutes now. We cannot afford to have, say, Ames and McNamara playing 12 and 9 minutes and shooting 0/5 and 0/2. Meanwhile, Brown and Precious played 22 and 20 minutes
I don’t think Dalonte Brown played much in the second half. Nursing an injury?
WIU announcer said Dalonte went out with an injury early second half and never came back.
Jackson Ames was minus 15 in 12 minutes of playing time and doesn’t seem like he’s ready to contribute yet. Head scratcher why he played so much, especially late in the game. I wonder if Ames was guarding Caurius when he went off to ice the game.
Oh goodness, this is so bad 
Yeah…Ames and Eller don’t look be able to help much yet…
Anyway…Western almost beat 5-0 DePaul…lost close one to EMU, has Ball State up next.
Does anyone have a status update on Brown? In the post game, Owens referenced him going out but didn’t elaborate.
I can tell you why I am cranky about loss
you say we won 4 straight and none were in doubt. That counts wins over Heidelberg and Defiance. Those dont count in most computer ratings- I am sure we brought out the pirate flag but come on. We are 3-1 vs division 1 opponents
WIU probably is decent but we were favored and we lost. So this is an unexpected loss
This is a very senior laden team- this is it- we havent been recruiting well of late- we need a big season to change the momentum of this program. Like 20 wins and compete for a MAC title season
Football lost and I was frustrated and frozen from it
3 point defense continues to be our Achilles Heel. In D1 games, we currently rank 336 out of 358, allowing opponents to shoot 41.2% from 3 against us.
Interestingly, teams are only shooting 43.8% on 2 pointers against us and we rank 47th in that category.
On a positive note, we rank 2nd nationally in Turnover Rate and only turn it over in 10.7% of our possessions.
I saw that precious had 5 fouls. He must be extra careful now since we don’t have Beck.
A few things can be true at once. One, we should have came more prepared and left WIU with a win and 6-0 record for the level of program we aspire to be. But two, we’re still 5-1 with a win against the reigning ACC tourney champ (which I would absolutely take if you told me before the season that’s where we were now) with our loss being against a decent mid-major on the road (not like a home loss against an average low-major like SC State we had that year with a ton of seniors under Coop). And three, I don’t think this will affect attendance that much; there probably aren’t a ton of students/townies/others out there thinking “I was gonna go see Miami basketball against UC on a December weeknight but they’re not undefeated anymore so never mind”, if we have you considering a trip to Millett then this likely won’t be the deciding factor. Fortunately the weather forecast looks alright so that shouldn’t be an impediment.