Illinois St @ Drake 1/15

[mecha_bulldog]

I hope Drake will be good next year but will Phelps and more importantly Rice be back??

I fully expect Phelps to be back next year. Barring a collapse at this point, Drake is at least better than they were last year so Phelps has probably done enough to earn another year.

I have no idea what will happen with Rice, although I hope he sticks around. Rice could certainly transfer to a better program than Drake, although another program probably wouldn't build its offense around Rice like Drake does. Rice's mother seems to really like Drake, and that might keep him around. Rice has gotten into some trouble in the past few months (the sock theft, the internal matter that cost him a start, and whatever happened with the shaving incident), so who knows how that could affect things.

What shaving incident?

The time Phelps made everyone shave for an unstated reason. Rice may not have had anything to do with that unstated reason, but he had to shave along with everyone else.

[Red]

What the hell happened to us last night. We are a totally scizophrenic team right now.

[BirdmanBB]

We seemed to have lost our way defensively. We went from one of the best in the valley to one of the worst. I guess that will happen when you have two games in a row against the top two teams in the valley. My feelings are that we might have simply been worn out when we played at Drake. We looked extremely sluggish.

[DUBulldog]

We seemed to have lost our way defensively. We went from one of the best in the valley to one of the worst. I guess that will happen when you have two games in a row against the top two teams in the valley. My feelings are that we might have simply been worn out when we played at Drake. We looked extremely sluggish.

Or maybe, just maybe; when Drake is playing well, Drake is a pretty good team.

As far as the sluggish and worn out reasoning, I don't buy that. Every MVC team, including Drake and ISU were playing their 4th game in 8 days. After the first 5 minutes of the game, Clarke went out with an injury/illness.....at that point, Drake was down to 8 scholarship players available. Illinois State had a lot more players available, so Drake is the team that should have been tired and/or sluggish.

[MoValley John]

Drake is good.

[DUBulldog]

Drake is good.

Sometimes.

[MoValley John]

Drake has the one intangible that nobody else has.

[getreal4]

Drake is good.

Sometimes.

Talent occassionally wins regardles of restraints...

[MoValley John]

Drake is good.

Sometimes.

Talent occassionally wins regardles of restraints...

The only restraints I ever heard of were the restraints used on Rice's wrists when he stole some socks.

[BirdmanBB]

We seemed to have lost our way defensively. We went from one of the best in the valley to one of the worst. I guess that will happen when you have two games in a row against the top two teams in the valley. My feelings are that we might have simply been worn out when we played at Drake. We looked extremely sluggish.

Or maybe, just maybe; when Drake is playing well, Drake is a pretty good team.

As far as the sluggish and worn out reasoning, I don't buy that. Every MVC team, including Drake and ISU were playing their 4th game in 8 days. After the first 5 minutes of the game, Clarke went out with an injury/illness.....at that point, Drake was down to 8 scholarship players available. Illinois State had a lot more players available, so Drake is the team that should have been tired and/or sluggish.

Yeah, but not every valley team has had to play the best two teams in the conference during that stretch, not to mention two of the best in the nation. While I agree DU is a good team, they have gotten to play BU (6-13), E-Ville (8-9) and us (11-7) during that stretch where we have played WSU#34 (15-4), Creighton#18 (16-2) and you (11-7). I just think our guys poured their guts into playing WSU and Creighton and came into an away game at DU and got run over because we had no legs. We definitely did not look like the same team that had played the previous two pretty tough.

Just my humble opinion though. It should be an interesting and challenging game at our place next time.