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BASKETBALL Middle Tennessee vs Evansville, (ESPN+), 6:30PM, Wednesday, November 13, 2024

SpaceRaider

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If you're a fan of good basketball, I invite you to watch North Texas' first half against Evansville last Monday. Ross Hodge was a great promotion within to follow McCasland and run a similar system. UNT is going through an annexation of their roster for last year, and looks like a well oiled machine in that film session.

I bring that up because Hodge continues that snail pace offense and put up 80 points against Evansville because of their unselfish style and players hitting their open shots. If last Saturday was any indication of the skill of MTSU's offense, I think they have the ability to put up big numbers tonight. Evansville played man defense the entire time and guarded the ball all the way out to the half-court line. Not sure how much they will do that tonight because the game got out of hand early against UNT. Consistent off-ball movement, "scoring without the basketball" made finding an open man easy when their defense rotates off guard penetration.

Freshman Gabriel Pozzato (#0, 6'7") is an impressive player that could very well be in the MVC Freshman of the Year conversation. Averaging 23 points through his first two games in college, he is a Guard in a Forward's body. A three-level scorer that runs the floor well can be a matchup problem because of his versatility. Evansville plays most of their minutes to their starting 5. EKU Junior transfer Tayshawn Comer (#12, 6'1") is a career 36% 3 point shooter and averaged nearly 8 points per game at EKU has been their biggest scoring threat outside of Pazzato. Junior Guard Cam Haffner (#3, 6'2") is their third leading scorer (10 ppg) with 14 points against Brescia, a career 38% 3 points shooter.

I think this game is pretty straight forward. When Evansville was at their best against UNT, they were knocking down the 3 and 4 of their starting 5 are capable of doing that. MTSU is currently the best team in the country in steal % and Evansville is bottom 100 in the country in turnovers. I don't see a matchup Evansville could exploit (just stop Pazzato), make them find other scoring options. I also like our bench depth in this game. Defend the three and continue being active on defense and this should be an easy Wednesday night at the Murph.
 
I think we score 90 tonight. Porter, Weston, & Counter on the floor has some magic developing.
 
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Feels good to have optimism around this team again. The fans, and the school in general, need it.

I'm staying away from -10.5 though...

Let's take care of business tonight and set the stage for a big game Saturday.
 
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Per McDevitt on the Blue Raider podcast, the series (which I believe he said will go for four years) was in part put together in commemoration of the tragic plane crash that killed the entire 1977-1978 Evansville MBB team as they headed to Murfreesboro to play MTSU.

Evansville was picked to finished 9th (out of 12) in an MVC that is usually ranks in the same realm of C-USA. The Purple Aces are coming off a 17-18 season after finishing with just 11 total wins over the prior two seasons.

Evansville has struggled with rebounding under each of their seasons with head coach David Ragland. That looks like it remains the case with them being outrebounded on the offensive glass by North Texas last week 13-3. Mostafa lived up to his resounding rebounding reputation against Abilene Christian with 5 ORebs in 22 mins. Look for him to make an impact tonight.

The Purple Aces improved behind the arc in 23-24 making 37% of their 3s in conference play, ranking 4th in the MVC. Last year only about a third of their FGAs were from 3, but the volume has increased in the small sample size of this season where exactly half of their 118 FGAs have been from 3. The flip side... Evansville has ranked dead last in the MVC the last two years in 3p% defense. North Texas shot 38% last week, so it is very possible its still a vulnerability of theirs. MTSU shot the 3 well (35%) and guarded ACU from 3 well (14%) last Saturday. Interested to see how that continues given what Evansville is scouted to be as a perimeter offense and defense.

I have been busy with duties in my professional and personal life lately so I haven't gotten to say much on the Abilene Christian game, but I was very very pleased. Still want to be a little careful in expectations, we all remember what happened in their first D1 game in 23-24 and how the rest of the season went, but everything I liked about the blueprint in building this team this past offseason was on display in Abilene last weekend. In short, it seems like Nick made a conscious pivot from a positional versatility identity to one with more specific positions and roles in mind for each individual player. Right now it looks like they have a pure point guard. A pure scoring guard. A real backup/combo guard. A pure low post threat. A rim protector. Wing scorers. Wing defenders. Energy athletes. Etc etc etc. Hope to see more confirmation of this so I can write more extensively on it soon.

While keeping in mind that college basketball is where the unexpected becomes ordinary, Evansville is expected to be along the same level of team the Blue Raiders saw in ACU. This time its at home where we all know MT has had pretty good success at. Spread currently sits at MT being favored by 10.5. Barring an unforeseen breakout year from Evansville, anything short of a comfortable win will be disappointing, and anything short of a win will be pretty concerning and erase all the goodwill they earned on Saturday.
 
For the first time in ages stopped & picked up the Murfreesboro Daily News Journal. Absolutely no word about Middle Tennessee athletics. No mention of last night's game or the men's upcoming game tonight. What an unfortunate shell of what it once was. Definitely miss not having a locally owned newspaper, but I realize we're living in a different digital era now. But for old school guys it's still kind of sad.
 
For the first time in ages stopped & picked up the Murfreesboro Daily News Journal. Absolutely no word about Middle Tennessee athletics. No mention of last night's game or the men's upcoming game tonight.
There are no basketball articles in the hometown newspaper. There are no basketball broadcasts on the university radio station. Without a doubt, this has a connection to the trash leadership that has plagued this university.
 
Per McDevitt on the Blue Raider podcast, the series (which I believe he said will go for four years) was in part put together in commemoration of the tragic plane crash that killed the entire 1977-1978 Evansville MBB team as they headed to Murfreesboro to play MTSU.

Evansville was picked to finished 9th (out of 12) in an MVC that is usually ranks in the same realm of C-USA. The Purple Aces are coming off a 17-18 season after finishing with just 11 total wins over the prior two seasons.

Evansville has struggled with rebounding under each of their seasons with head coach David Ragland. That looks like it remains the case with them being outrebounded on the offensive glass by North Texas last week 13-3. Mostafa lived up to his resounding rebounding reputation against Abilene Christian with 5 ORebs in 22 mins. Look for him to make an impact tonight.

The Purple Aces improved behind the arc in 23-24 making 37% of their 3s in conference play, ranking 4th in the MVC. Last year only about a third of their FGAs were from 3, but the volume has increased in the small sample size of this season where exactly half of their 118 FGAs have been from 3. The flip side... Evansville has ranked dead last in the MVC the last two years in 3p% defense. North Texas shot 38% last week, so it is very possible its still a vulnerability of theirs. MTSU shot the 3 well (35%) and guarded ACU from 3 well (14%) last Saturday. Interested to see how that continues given what Evansville is scouted to be as a perimeter offense and defense.

I have been busy with duties in my professional and personal life lately so I haven't gotten to say much on the Abilene Christian game, but I was very very pleased. Still want to be a little careful in expectations, we all remember what happened in their first D1 game in 23-24 and how the rest of the season went, but everything I liked about the blueprint in building this team this past offseason was on display in Abilene last weekend. In short, it seems like Nick made a conscious pivot from a positional versatility identity to one with more specific positions and roles in mind for each individual player. Right now it looks like they have a pure point guard. A pure scoring guard. A real backup/combo guard. A pure low post threat. A rim protector. Wing scorers. Wing defenders. Energy athletes. Etc etc etc. Hope to see more confirmation of this so I can write more extensively on it soon.

While keeping in mind that college basketball is where the unexpected becomes ordinary, Evansville is expected to be along the same level of team the Blue Raiders saw in ACU. This time its at home where we all know MT has had pretty good success at. Spread currently sits at MT being favored by 10.5. Barring an unforeseen breakout year from Evansville, anything short of a comfortable win will be disappointing, and anything short of a win will be pretty concerning and erase all the goodwill they earned on Saturday.
I know I'm getting a step ahead, but watched Murray St at Pitt game last night on ESPN+. They are in one word, good. Extremely athletic, & very crafty getting to the interior. Murray was totally in that game, & played great against a quality ACC team all night until the final 3 minutes. The final score was misleading to how competitive the game was.
I feel comfortable about the Evansville game, but if we come out of the Murray St game unscathed I feel very good about our upcoming holiday tournament games. BTW- those are all ESPN Network broadcast games. One last thing about Murray, they remind me specifically of us accept for one thing. We have a hulk in the interior at the 5 spot that they don't have. That's where I give us an additional edge.
Murray St will be an excellent guage to how successful I think this year's campaign can run. I'm anticipating a 5-6 point closely contested game, & their is that chance it could go in Murray's favor. But if MT continues to excell in its play, & wins somewhat comfortably I definitely see us as a much better squad than the anticipated #4 team in CUSA. If we can beat this Murray team by a score similar to what Pitt did look for Middle Tennessee to definitely challenge for the conference championship.
 
There are no basketball articles in the hometown newspaper. There are no basketball broadcasts on the university radio station. Without a doubt, this has a connection to the trash leadership that has plagued this university.
The crowd shots of empty seats all the way up behind the team benches on ESPN+ are pretty damning.
 
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Mcdevitt needs to come out of that halfcourt trap stuff on defense. They have burned us too manty times for lay ups or open threes. We are also 0-9 from three point land and have 9 turnovers at the half. Can't believe we're ahead.
 
KenPom just moved us up to #130. Murray St. is at #121. Huge game Saturday.
More good things to take out of this than bad. Some unforced turnovers & missed 3's, but for as many players as we use we had a great night at the line.
My takeaway is comparing MT's players who are not considered fully developed compared to our more experienced elder statesmen like Counter, Porter, Mustafa, & Weston. We know their potential, which is great in itself. The two players who came in as untapped question marks were Alston & Lands. They seem to be adjusting & adapting to this team better and better each night. Tonight they combined for 17 points, & are helping to make our interior play dominant. I believe Lands is finally developing the one thing he's been missing with his previous teams, a sense of self confidence. One of these nights I can see him going for a 15-17 point night on his own, & when he does that MT could take that next step into becoming one of this year's surprise G5 teams on a larger scale.
 
KenPom just moved us up to #130. Murray St. is at #121. Huge game Saturday.
More good things to take out of this than bad. Some unforced turnovers & missed 3's, but for as many players as we use we had a great night at the line.
My takeaway is comparing MT's players who are not considered fully developed compared to our more experienced elder statesmen like Counter, Porter, Mustafa, & Weston. We know their potential, which is great in itself. The two players who came in as untapped question marks were Alston & Lands. They seem to be adjusting & adapting to this team better and better each night. Tonight they combined for 17 points, & are helping to make our interior play dominant. I believe Lands is finally developing the one thing he's been missing with his previous teams, a sense of self confidence. One of these nights I can see him going for a 15-17 point night on his own, & when he does that MT could take that next step into becoming one of this year's surprise G5 teams on a larger scale.
Team still needs to find wing shooting but if you can get Alec Oglesby back legit healthy, that should help. Team looks a lot better than I thought I'll admit. Team is very good on paper. Need Loofe to take a step forward down low tho
 
Jlynn Counter had a very nice first half tonight. Mustafa is a tank down low. Gonna be fun to watch.
 
So I decided to tune in tonight. Is Evansville a bad basketball team? I don’t know anything about them but I saw the same things I’ve been seeing for six years so I can only surmise that EU is not that good of a team.

Just really sloppy with the ball. Lots of turnovers. But also lots of plays breaking down because of being careless with the ball. Weston still plays nothing but hero ball after all this time. Hell on one shot (I think porter tried to shoot it from directly behind the basket and hit the back side of the glass). Lazy passes. A lot of dribbling and fumbling. Difficulty catching the ball. I thought the big guy was really effective however and something different I haven’t seen from Nicks previous teams. That was the one bright spot I saw even if he did get away with traveling several times.

On defense just a lot of uncontested shots (most of them missed by Evansville) on the perimeter, terrible transition defense, and a lot of free runners unabated to the basket. This is why I thought perhaps this is a terrible team we played because a decent shooting team would have clobbered this MT team tonight.

Same issues just as I expected. Now the real season begins. Expect us to be 3-3 after the next few games after what I watched tonight.
 
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So I decided to tune in tonight. Is Evansville a bad basketball team? I don’t know anything about them but I saw the same things I’ve been seeing for six years so I can only surmise that EU is not that good of a team.

Just really sloppy with the ball. Lots of turnovers. But also lots of plays breaking down because of being careless with the ball. Weston still plays nothing but hero ball after all this time. Hell on one shot (I think porter tried to shoot it from directly behind the basket and hit the back side of the glass). Lazy passes. A lot of dribbling and fumbling. Difficulty catching the ball. I thought the big guy was really effective however and something different I haven’t seen from Nicks previous teams. That was the one bright spot I saw even if he did get away with traveling several times.

On defense just a lot of uncontested shots (most of them missed by Evansville) on the perimeter, terrible transition defense, and a lot of free runners unabated to the basket. This is why I thought perhaps this is a terrible team we played because a decent shooting team would have clobbered this MT team tonight.

Same issues just as I expected. Now the real season begins. Expect us to be 3-3 after the next few games after what I watched tonight.
They were preseason picked 9th in the Missouri Valley. The MVC is usually about as good if not a little better than CUSA in MBB. For reference, incoming Missouri St is predicted to finish 11th in the MVC. We were clearly the better team but they should be an average to slightly below average mid major team by the end of the season.
 
I thought we played well offensively. Defense left a lot to be desired. Not much pressure on the Evansville shots. Thankfully they simply stopped falling in the second half. Transition defense was pathetic and you better believe future opponents will be looking to exploit it. We will have to shore up our defense big time, especially when we go on the road. We really won this game because of rebounding (47 vs 29) and just crushing them in the paint. Evansville had no answers but we won't be able to do that against the better teams we face.

I really like Mustafa. It's been so long since we had a guy with size who could play like that. Makes me think all the way back to JaCorey Williams, though he's obviously not THAT good. I know we had Dishman, but he was so undersized. Mustafa has the moves and the size which will give us favorable match-up's at the 5 in the majority of the games we play. He's really making Loofe like a bust. Hate to say it because I love his size but he just doesn't have those quick twitch fibers and athletic instincts around the rim. Too stiff and predictable.

We don't seem to be chronically turning the ball over like we had been in recent years but it's still bad. 16 turnovers to 9 assists is still objectively speaking pretty bad. That needs to be closer to a 1:1 ratio. Definitely something to try and improve on.

For this year it looks like we have another athletic team that. This team reminds me quite a bit of our 21-22 team that won 26 games and lost in the CIT finals. And if we are being honest, when you throw a team together in this fashion (Essentially a bunch of seniors/transfer seniors) they better be in the running for a championship run/tournament appearance.

We will learn a lot about this team heading into the rest of our OOC schedule. Every single game is winnable outside of the UTK one and I expect this team to be highly competitive and win most of these games.
 
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