After last week's loss at Iowa (90-56) and home win against Eastern Illinois (64-57), the men's basketball team is 7-2 overall now, which is (I think) the best start in the first 9 games since 80/81 when we started 9-2 before our third loss of the season. We'd end up finishing 21-8 overall and first place in the Mid-Con conference that year. That was the last year we were D2, so it's the best 9-game start in the DI era for us, although 2012/2013 comes close (3 losses fairly early, but would end up starting 14-3 and finishing the season 22-9, regular season conference co-champions, and was invited to the CBI).
Western is currently ranked #118 in the NCAA's RPI rankings, #140 in ESPN's Daily RPI, #118 in realtimerpi.com's rankings, #176 in Ken Pomeroy's rankings, and at last check, #18 in the College Insider Mid-Major Top 25 (although that hasn't updated for last week's games yet).
Western is currently averaging 75.6 ppg and giving up 64.6 ppg. We are currently ranked #7 in the country in 3-pt percentage with 43.7%.
I'm just going to go ahead and post the rest of the games for 2015, since there's only two, so this is (I think) Week 6 & 7.
Saturday, December 19th at 4:35 PM at Chicago State
Chicago State is currently 3-8 on the season. They started with a defeat of D3 Illinois Tech (137-59), loss at #7 Iowa State (106-64), win over NAIA IU-Northwest (105-64), win over NAIA Trinity International (81-70...not the same Trinity that we played earlier in the season), and then losses at Illinois (82-79), Jacksonville State (68-65), Alabama State (66-64), at Northern Illinois (80-58), at DePaul (96-72), home against Valparaiso (71-53), and at Northwestern (77-35). They have a game coming up on Wednesday at Minnesota before our game against them on Saturday. CSU plays in the Western Athletic Conference.
Chicago State is currently ranked #307 in the NCAA's RPI rankings, #296 in ESPN's Daily RPI, #308 in realtimerpi.com's rankings, and #339 in Ken Pomeroy's rankings.
Chicago State averages 77.8 ppg and gives up 76.2 ppg.
Monday, December 21st at 7 PM at Loyola (Chicago)
Loyola is currently 5-4 this season. They started with a win over UT-San Antonio (76-64), and a win over D3 Eureka (84-51). Then they had a loss at New Mexico (75-51), and win at home against Toledo (69-62). They competed in the GSI Great Alaska Shootout in Anchorage, winning against San Diego (67-57), and losing to Toledo (82-74) and UNC Ashville (59-48). They then had a home win against Creighton (68-65) and a loss at Notre Dame (81-61). They have games against Cleveland State (12/16) and UIC (12/19) before our game against them. Loyola (Chicago) joined the Missouri Valley Conference in 2013.
Loyola is currently ranked #196 in the NCAA's RPI rankings, #170 in ESPN's Daily RPI, #196 in realtimerpi.com's rankings, #161 in Ken Pomeroy's rankings, and received 4 votes in the "Others Receiving Votes" section of last week's College Insider Mid-Major Top 25 Poll.
Loyola averages 67.1 ppg and gives up 64.4 ppg
I think both games are winnable if we play well although Loyola will be tough. We're ranked a bit higher than they are, but in terms of common opponents, we lost to a (now 7-3) Creighton team by 30 points at their place and Loyola beat Creighton at home by 3. It seems like, just from looking at the numbers, they're somewhat similar to some of our teams under Coach Mo, with a stingy defense that is able to keep them in games. They don't put up a ton of points, but they don't generally give up a ton of points either.
After these two games, it's conference-only games from here on out...other than post-season tournaments, of course
Scott Lawson - Board Admin
