Northern Illinois men at Miami 7:00 Tuesday

Men's Sports Men's Basketball
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On ESPN+. Northern just won their first MAC game of the season on Saturday, beating EMU at home by 10. On the year they are 7-14 ( 1-8) and 2-8 in road games. In November they beat DePaul by 10 and beat Georgia State by 6 in a neutral site game. We play at Georgia State Saturday. Miami is 11-11 ( 5-5) and we are 7-3 at home.

Rashon Burno is in his third year as NIU coach and last year made good progress with a 9-9 MAC record. However, Kaleb Thornton ( Akron) and Darwishii Hunter ( Miami) transferred after the season. They do have one of the best players in the MAC in 5-11 Jr David Coit ( 3rd team all MAC last year) 19.1ppg and over 3 rebounds and assists per game. On Saturday 6-5 FR Will Lovings-Watt led their win with 18 points. On the year 6-7 JR Zarique Nutter averages 15.4/5.3 and 6-8 SOPH Xavier Amos averages 13.7/5.5. They have been starting a 6-11 SOPH Yanic Niedemeyer from Sweden at Center.

Ryan Mabrey has missed the last 2 games. Seems to have effected our 3 point shooting a bit. We have had a hard time getting and staying above .500 on the year and in MAC play. We need to get two wins this week and get both records above .500. As Coach Steele or Coach Martin would say, take every team in the MAC seriously, each game is a battle and NIU has good players.

Personally, I was unhappy with our defensive effort against Ohio’s 3 point shooters, in particular their Center, who was 5 for 8 on threes and those were his only FGA. Almost all of those shots were wide open. Our centers were busy hedging on the high pick and rolls or helping out on drives and often lost track of him. I hope we rethink how to defend OU the next time we play them.

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I have seen NIU multiple times, they are athletic, have positional length and aggressive for offensive rebounds. Extremely streaky three pointing shooting team.

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Coit was a problem for Miami last year. Very quick.

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We’re in pretty good position to make it to Cleveland, but this is one we need to win.

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As a couple people pointed out on the OU thread, we were really hurt by not defending the three, and by the hedging our big men were doing. NIU is long. If we hedge like we did last game, we are going to get burned again like last game.

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I hope Hunter lights them up for 40.

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I just hope he doesn’t try too hard and take a bunch of bad shots.

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I have a feeling coach Steele and staff lit a fire under the team after Ohio. We will play well tnite. That’s my prediction.

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Whiteout tonight if you are going. Also GPA night, so there will be a ton of students there to get honored at halftime.

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A Julian Lewis sighting! Not dressed, but in the team sweats and on the floor.

Mabrey dressed and warming up.

Couple recruits talking with coach Richburg and Brant Byars on the floor.

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The hockey team decided to sit with me. Nice black hoodies.

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I think your street cred just went up

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I’ve checked the score three times so far: tied at 15, up 27-18, up 29-28. I have a pretty good feeling about this game, but it seems unlikely we run away with it.

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Started hot from behind the arc then couldn’t hit a thing.

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Gotta be a lot tougher with the ball. Lazy passes, soft handoffs.

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One possession had three lazy passes leading to a turnover. Other possessions lazy passes as well plus sloppy passes, like we are in a
hurry. Jacking up three ball after three ball instead of moving the ball for a good shot. That is why we lost our 10 point lead.

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Hockey team left. Screw them.

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Leaving Bultman in with 3 fouls?

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And there’s four.

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Since coming back From his injury Dean has been very solid

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