Here is Treeman's in-person point of view of the game.
The Bad:
- Graves rotation. I've been pretty impressed with Graves this year as far as just getting us to a point of being competitive. We DON'T have the most talented roster and here we are competing night in and night out and could easily be 5-0 with a 2 game lead on everyone. Honestly after the FAU and first few weeks of the season I'm willing to be most knowledgable fans would take 3-2 and 2 overtime losses to start the conference season. However yesterdays rotation was just bad. Multiple times I was sitting in the stands and I was telling my buddy (who doesn't follow ISU) "I don't like this line-up". Harding just has to sit at this point. I really like JD coming off the bench and as along as he gets starter minutes I'm good with him coming off the bench to provide a spark. With the way Vorst played; how does he not see the floor the 2nd half? He is rusty, it showed the first couple of possessions but he played pretty darn well and made multiple plays multiple ways majority of his run. Right now I'm starting Vorst with JD coming in for him pretty quickly until he gets some stamina. Bruno hasn't done much if anything lately, not sure who you start in front of him but at this point I'm at least getting Walker in pretty quickly and seeing what he can do. Gray has played pretty well the last 2 games, however I don't think he is the answer. LeGree has fallen off lately, just not a good finisher and now much of a shooter, really not much of a scoring threat at this point in his career. I like him going forward but needs to work on finishing. But in a weird way, this is where I'm impressed with Graves, because if you aren't getting much from MULTIPLE positions and there really isn't anyone to put in over them, it's pretty impressive that we are actually playing decently.
The Good:
Just like the Bradley game, I thought we did a real good job of fighting back into the game. There was that moment when we were hovering around 10-12 points down and it could have REAL easy for us to just pack it in and lost by 20+. Really proud of the team for fighting back into it. That's tough to do when everything is a foul, Valpo was hitting at a good clip from 3, and we couldn't buy a free throw. As I said before Vorst did some really good things for us out there, can't believe he didn't get a run the 2nd half.
The ugly:
The refs. Let me first say the refs were pretty bad on BOTH sides, they were just bad refs. The entire arena was getting pretty annoyed by it. I was walking before some VU students after the game and they were complaining about just too many fouls in the game. When you can't make your free throws, that's not a good thing. But there were a few fouls that particularly horrible.
- I don't know how you don't even look at the potential goal-tending in the first half. I don't know if it was or not but once the TV time out game the refs didn't even go the monitors. They just stood around talking and smiling. Like how do you not just go back and make sure?
- LeGree had a CLEAN steal at mid-court that would have led to an easy lay-up when we were making a comeback in the 2nd half. That was an absolutely horrible call. Even a delusional VU fan that complained about everything turned around and said "yeah that was a real bad call" when I was losing my mind.
- It probably didn't change anything Bruno was called for a foul when the VU ball handler just shoved him with his forearm. I was right in line with the ref and I have no idea how you call that on Bruno.
- And honestly maybe the worst call of the game was something you probably couldn't tell on TV. Teel was just holding the ball at the wing near the sideline the 2nd half. The VU defender SLAPPED THE SHIT OUT OF TEELS ARM. I mean it was pretty quit in the gym in that moment and it sounded like someone just slapped someones ass and is going to be deported to Alcatraz for it. The ball ended up just going out of bounds and it was still our ball but Teel about lost his mind when it wasn't called a foul and it's hard to fault him.
Other shit:
The student section was riding Grays balls hard. Which was fun to watch. I think it was because he missed that dunk in front of them but the rest of the game there were about 4-5 students in the front row jawing with Gray. it went on during time-outs and anytime AG was in the area. As long as it doesn't get out of hand I love the passion of Missouri Valley basketball. I'd much rather have that then a conference of people just sitting on their hands.
