I do think Henry is an important piece for them. He cleans up a lot of messes.

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MBB Scholarship Chart

Couple of thoughts:

1) ISU loss is looking like the best thing that happened to this team...and for that reason, not pathetic in my book.
2) Bradley is good and their style of play gives us fits. The key to the games against BU the last couple of years has been the refs. If they call it tight, benefits us, if they dont (Arch Madness anyone?) it does not. As far as their loss tonight, similar to our loss in Terre Haute (Though I think Lansing's team is actually pretty decent). Overall - its the year of covid, blowouts/upsets are happening all over the country, I wouldn't get to far gone with some of the final scores.
I suspect it is a 4 team race with Ramblers, Drake, Bradley and Mo State and the Ramblers being the favorites for the MVC title and what a great way that would be to go out for the seniors.

Team is coming together, getting some confidence...subtly coaching moves as Kennedy PT is improving and Hall looks very comfortable off the bench. But, man are we small at the guard...watch Bradley try to do a lot of posting up off switches to exploit size advantage. Will be a very good couple of games and if we can win em both...confidence will be supremely high for this team.

I am really excited to see us matched up against Bradley, MoSt and Drake. Wish we would get one of the three at Gentile, but such is life.

If I am being honest, I think Missouri State might be the squad that scares me the most. They have played us really tough the last few years (including one absolute blowout of a good Rambler team). And Prim-Mosley is the best 1-2 punch in the league. Krut and Lucas/Uguak will need to be ready to go on the defensive end against those two.

Yet another game where the walk-ons play while Damezi sits on the bench. The guy played more minutes at Indiana then at Loyola. I wonder if he'll stick around the full year, or enter the transfer portal.

That was fun game to watch. We ran circles around them. One could argue that Valpo may be the worst team in the valley this year. The momentum is in our favor for Bradley. If we win both games over them, I would be overjoyed.

Moved from #41 to #30 in the NET overnight. That's at large territory if the team can get a Q1 win-- basically, right now that means winning at least one game against Drake.

I am not sure why Damezi is not getting more playing time. Some programs and players use their transfer year so that the player can improve a specific aspect of his game. I know that Gonzaga has a special program to recruit quality transfers who want to work on a certain aspect of their game. Gonzaga puts together a special development program for its transfers. I am not sure if our program has a special arrangement with Damezi.

I could be wrong, but it looked like he had some type of wrap on one of his thighs yesterday. Maybe that's always been there and I am just noticing it now. Looked beige and more "medical" than "for style".

Also read that Frank took warm-ups yesterday. Wonder when we see him. Will be interested to see how we use him when he is 100%. Welch has been our second best player this season and should continue getting 20+ minutes per game.

I guess I am in the minority here, but it seems to me Damezi being the last guy off the bench is totally justifiable. First of all, he came here knowing he would sit out a year. Did we even apply for a waiver? Just because he is suddenly eligible doesn't mean that he should leapfrog five seniors (or even our two sophomore studs).

We have eight guys that should be getting 20+ minutes a game, plus Cooper who would be pushing that number as well, if healthy. That doesn't leave a lot of room in the rotation. If you just divide up the game between the top eight, it's 25 minutes per guy. So, who do you want to take minutes away from to experiment with someone new? Why mess with it?

And at the end of games, I have a hard time believing that Damezi is worried about getting a few minutes of playing time ahead of the walk-ons -- or even ahead of Paxson or Hebb, who came here this year expecting to contribute.

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MBB Scholarship Chart

THANK YOU. We already have had a ton of folks noting that the ______ should be getting more minutes over _______ and a little over a week ago people were saying we need to solidify our rotations. I feel like we really have a good 9 man rotation going with Baylor/Pax/Hudson as the last 3 up. The only good it'd do is so fans and OTHER TEAMS early tape on him for next year. We're 11-3, top 30 in NET, highest KenPom rating ever, and I feel like there's so much concern over a transfer who wasn't even supposed to play this year. I'm sure it's FINE. I doubt we'll ever have a team this experienced, or this deep again. We should enjoy it.

I'm also 99% sure Nick Schultz tweeted out before the season started that we didn't apply to get Anderson a waiver, which makes sense. We run a complicated system that takes time to learn. I'd rather have him fully committed to getting better for next year than worrying about play time. It's worked for literally all our other transfers, why mess with it?

The Anderson situation is interesting. I’m not all that concerned about it anymore for 2 reasons:

1) it’s obvious now that we don’t need him this year and the team has finally begun coming into their own with a good chemistry within the roster rotation. To upset it now when we’ve won 8 of our last 9 with 8 double digit victories seems foolish. Demezi, Wojcik, Alcock, baughman, Ismail and maybe even Hutson are not going to be part of our game plan to win - they are there to save minutes and prevent the possibility of our core guys getting injured when the outcome has all-but-been determined. Maybe coach doesn’t use him to prevent a needless possible injury for him, or maybe he chooses to play the walk-ons instead because the chances of them using an extra year of eligibility are slim and he wants to give them the playing time they deserved while he can. Also, there’s the obvious possibility that he’s either in the doghouse or injured. But no matter what - he’s not going to be part of our plan this year, so whether he’s sitting for good or bad reasons - it’s irrelevant.

On a similar note but with a different player - I don’t even know that it’s with trying to plug Frank into the equation now. Do we even see him as being able to contribute? Love Frank - but at this point I’m fine with him just getting end-of-game minutes if we continue to blow teams out. I’d be afraid to try and put him out there in a first half of a game and risk upsetting the team chemistry or have him making mistakes due to the rust of sitting out so long.

2) The writing may be on the wall. Demezi last played on Dec 27 vs. ISUr. On December 28, it was announced 6’6” Chris Knight (transfer) signed to play for us next year. That was after we already secured 6’7” transfer Ryan Schwieger on December 21st. We already have Welch (who Porter seems to now be all-in on.) and with Frank and Hutson having another year, we look to have a great amount of depth for the 5 and 4 positions. That’s not even factoring in if any senior sticks around.

For whatever reason, Porter brought in those 2 Ivy League guys, and they look like they are going to be ahead of Anderson on the depth chart. Maybe he brought them in because Anderson has not been working out, or maybe they were brought in for a completely different reason. Either way - if I was Anderson, I probably wasn’t thrilled to see them sign if I expected a ton of playing time next year.

With the talent coming in next year, the talent we will likely have back, and the talent that MIGHT come back (even though they weren’t supposed to when Demezi signed), we are going to be absolutely fine with of without him next year.

BUT - he may be a great dude, great player, great teammate and everything is fine and he’s good waiting for next year. Everything above is pure speculation.