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***ARTICLE*** On the Prowl: St. Louis Follies

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  • ***ARTICLE*** On the Prowl: St. Louis Follies

    On the Prowl: St. Louis Follies

    The wonderful thing about being a fan of the Missouri Valley Conference is that it's just high-profile enough that you can watch every game on television, the Big South notwithstanding. I did this and more, enveloping myself in that MVC-style basketball that can't be described in any less than a paragraph but I'll just say this: Creighton and Drake are considered high-octane offenses in the MVC, and neither average more than 75 ppg.

    Let's take a look at quarterfinal results, where we saw everything pan out just the way we pretty much expected it to. The Drake Bulldogs in all of their "how in the name of St. Peter do they do that?" glory defeated Indiana State 68-46 in a classic effort from this year's team. They are 28-4, and there are still some nonbelievers. I am no longer one of them. Incidentally, I would like to submit a new word to Webster's:

    Drake (v.): To constantly have the upper hand in a conflict despite overwhelming evidence that you will fail by executing said goal in a meticulous manner.

    How to go about using this word? That's easy: every single one of Drake's opponents this year got Draked.

    Bradley lived by the three and they died by the three. That's the way it goes in a league that prides itself on defense to the point that other leagues call it ugly (more on that later). Barry Hinson's swan song came in the form of a 63-58 grudge match that Illinois State came out on top of. Missouri State lead for a great deal of the game, but couldn't close the deal. That's going to be expected when one of the worst ball handling teams in Division I plays one of the better defenses in the league.

    UNI played as though every game was its last because... well, it was. This why the UNI Colviets (a combination of Coleman and Viet) edged out a 54-49 game that makes you think the result wouldn't be much different if the football teams squared off. Cruising the web, you'd think that this was the worst thing that could ever happen to Southern Illinois this season. I disagree. Losing by 25 to the USC O.J. Mayos was a lot worse. That pretty much set the tone for this year's SIU team, a team with a bunch of defenders and no shooters. Randal Falker's last season should have been more memorable, but the fact of the matter is that Lowery HAS to get some offensive sparks on this team, or else 17-14 might become the norm in the coming seasons.

    Drake was the overwhelmingly predicted to choke in the rounds beyond Friday, so it's probably a tad poetic that this team became the first in over ten years to be double-champion. They beat Creighton 75-67 in the semis, and what else could you say about the game except Creighton got Draked. The other game was enough to make me want to invent another word, one that means the opposite of titillating. When I entered that word into an online thesaurus, I got "gross, charmless, repellent," and "disgusting." That's a good way to start as UNI finished their season in a microcosm for the schedule on the whole. They lost 56-42, shooting a dreary 32% and missing a bounty of wide-open three attempts. This was a conspicuous accusation of their guard play all season, but the most frustrating part is that it's not really anyone's fault. Jared Josten was shoehorned into a PG spot that he was not expecting to take, and a series of young guard showed their youth all season. It's a lot for UNI Hoops fans to ponder in the off-season, but if certain people are right about John Moran the Panthers will have a place to start.

    Then there was the championship game, which ended in a 79-49 rout of Illinois State, and makes a perfect segue into a recap of the MVC season.

    If you could come up with a statistic that best exemplified a "Draking" it would be a 1.2 assist-to-turnover ration. In other words, enjoy Drake giving you the ball, because it's not likely to happen again for a long friggin' time. The Drake Bulldogs carry the banner for the eight-ranked conference in hoops, and why not? They took on all comers and walked away victorious 28 times to date. This is the quietest 28-4 team in the country. Would the masses be this apt to ignore a 28-4 Texas? Or a 28-4 Kentucky?

    You see, Valley basketball is often characterized by the words "ugly, slow, excruciating, boring," and "mid-major." Then come NCAA tournament time, the insanely attractive quarterbacking homecoming king hero asks out our ugly Betty and is taken aback when they say no and then go on to the Sweet 16, eventually losing to a team that finally has the necessary components and respect for beating the league's best. ESPN is one of the biggest culprits of calling the seemingly-annual MVC Sweet 16 team "shocking," but at what point do you stop doing that? When you stick a fork in a toaster and get fried, when do you stop saying "Wow, I wasn't expecting that?"

    The truth of the matter is this: The Valley can ball, kids. Any coach whose worth his 1.5 million-a-year contract in The Big Six will tell you that. It's why the conference as a whole struggles to schedule. The Missouri Valley Conference is the closest thing this country has to well-played European-style basketball. This is something that's always going to hold it back as long as people demand more scoring in the NBA. The other side of that coin is this, though: remember all those pundits and fans who cry in outrage when Team USA is inevitably bounced from world competition? That's what happens every March in the NCAA Tournament when Southern Illinois backhands Virginia Tech or Wichita State stuns Tennessee in the Round of 32.

    If you really want to know how the NCAA's powers-that-be see our fair conference, all you'll need to know will be made clear this coming Sunday. Will the eighth-ranked conference in all of basketball only send one 28-4 conference tournament champion to the NCAAs? Will they take their 28-4 record all the way to a 5 or 6 seed? Illinois State lost by 30, but their previous worst loss was by 13 to Indiana. Will that come into consideration?

    It's a Matrix-esque Red Pill versus Blue Pill scenario. If Illinois State's name flashes on the brackets as an 11 or 12 seed, then the NCAA will return you to your world where everything is fair and good in the world of college basketball and the most deserving teams get in. If not, then there's a great deal of nonsense clouding everyone's judgement. Only then will you see how far the rabbit hole of money an greed goes.

    And in an effort to end this article on something less heavy-handed and foreboding, I present to you the following question: doesn't Tim Jankovich kind of remind you of Dracula? At least a little bit?

    "Once it starts, it never ends."
    -Eldon Miller

  • #2
    Re: ***ARTICLE*** On the Prowl: St. Louis Follies

    Great writing Marc. I loved the Ugly Betty comment. Very good stuff.
    The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice, clouds and thick darkness surround Him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne. Fire goes before Him, and consumes his foes on every side; His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles; the mountains melt like wax before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim His righteousness and all peoples will see His glory.

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