Blers wrote:What's tough this year is from the outside looking in, I don't know how many teams got worse. Illinois State sure, but they reloaded pretty well. I really feel that no matter how this season shakes out, there's going to be one team playing on Thursday that wouldn't have been playing on Thursday most other years. If i had to guess a lot of conference records from the 3 to 7 seed hovering around 9-9
9-9 for 3rd only happens if you have two teams that win 16 or 17 league games and that isn't happening this year. 14-4 is a lock to win and 13-5 might get a share. You'll get distribution similar to this-
14-4
13-5
12-6
11-7
9-9
9-9
7-11
6-12
6-12
3-15
The more I've thought about it is there are only two coaches in this league that have proven the ability to win double digit games consistently in the league regardless of talent. While I don't like some of the character issues that Muller has brought in over the years (and that's an institutional problem in general at Illinois State), I think he knows what he's doing on the bench. Jacobson is Jacobson, it looks like he went and got 12 guys from the bar getting off the bus and yet, somehow, he wins a lot more than he loses.
I just can't imagine Lusk or Moser doing enough to get the 13 or 14 wins its going to take to win a title. you're basically assuming that Missouri State is going to double their win total or that Loyola can add 6 wins to what they did last year while losing Milton Doyle and several other talented players thou. Even if you assume you're trading two Wichita losses for two Valpo wins (which isn't a given) that seems like a stretch to me.
This is year two of the classic Ben Jacobson cycle where he's typically got an NIT level team that can sneak in and win in StL and I think Muller is going to be better than we're giving him credit for.
I'm revising my previous thoughts--
1-UNI
2-Illinois State
3-Loyola
4-Missouri State
5-Southern Illinois
6-Bradley
7-Valparaiso
8-Indiana State
9-Drake
10-Evansville