Leaderboard

Thoughts For The Day: Any team that gives up 80+ points at home in regulation deserves to lose. Even losing teams have leading scorers and rebounders. No performer worth their salt should take pride in headlining the "D Stage" at Rocklahoma. At some point, a continous lay-up line by the opposing team must be met with a good, hard foul. Or five. Since the knee injury, New D.J. has morphed into Old D.J. This is not a compliment. Drake Stoops was nearly as impressive as St. Thomas' point guard as he was in OU's receiving corps. After almost 30 years, Frank Spencer is still a tool. When I saw him before the opening tip, I peed my pants a little. Could've been my prostate, but I don't think so. The 40-year-old bass player bursting everyone's eardrums with his solo version of "Seven Nation Army" is an affront to all that is decent in the world. Chris Squire is rolling over in his grave. (Google him). Despite it all, my guests tonight said they still had a great time. But then, they are very polite people.

TheEagleman not feeling any better today....credit to St. Thomas but losing at home to a Summit team that was D-III a couple years ago stings....it just can't happen....but recognize that ORU just doesn't have the horses this season....Connor and Mwamba in the line up would make a huge difference and Williams' injury stings too.....

I think ORU has a hard time dealing with facing teams that just come out and punch them in the mouth. Both KC and St. Thomas really took it to the Eagles and they basically had no answer. ORU was 21-0 in league play and now they are the hunted team. Everyone wants to get a little revenge on ORU this year.

I look at the hustle stats and ORU had: 0 blocks, 1 steal, and 4 forced turnovers. That is not going to win any games. The Eagles versus South Dakota had: 4 blocks, 8 steals, and 18 forced turnovers. That is winning basketball. ORU has to win those hustle stats because they do not have the horses to out rebound teams or control the paint. I think that as the season goes on we will say sometimes ORU looks really good and sometimes they are missing in action. It just seems to be the pattern. They have to play with that fire and intensity every night and not just sometimes.

I give St. Thomas a lot of credit: they just outplayed the Eagles. They are a challenging team because all their guys can dribble, drive, shoot and cause a variety of problems. There is a reason the Tommies are 13-6 and a contender for the league title. This might be St. Thomas's biggest win in school history. It just felt they wanted it more after they basically gave away the SDSU game. ORU looked ho hum for about 30 minutes and then tried to wake up at the 10 minute mark but it was just too late for that. Just when I thought the Eagles had turned the corner and could be a force in the league and then they have another off night. So many ups and downs this year.

For the record, the St Thomas "forum" is private for now and quite lively tonight. Maybe someday we'll go public but as the originator of our thing, I have no desire to moderate or deal with everything, so maybe some young guys will take the reigns on that. McBride is a stud and we can't stop him but our shots are mostly falling

St. Thomas is a good team that always looks prepared. ORU has the same problems they have shown all season.

A little bit about a lot re: a key Summit League match-up at the Mabee Center: First off, how is it the University of St. Thomas, located in Saint Paul? Can we get a little consistency here with the Catholic canonization terminology? Much more prefer the original name for Saint Paul, MN: Pig's Eye (Google it). Come to think of it, why is a single member of the Tommies called a "Tommie", and not a "Tommy"? Are individual athletes from the University of Montana called a "Grizzlie"? Or a "Huskie" from UCONN? Blame it on Texas A&M, I suppose: calling one of their guys an "Aggy" just doesn't look right, either. Big game for both teams: the Tommies may not lose another game at home following Thursday night's heartbreaker with SDSU, and ORU shouldn't lose too many either at the Mabee Center. A Tommies win Saturday night would be a significant development for both sides; an ORU win (with an SDSU loss at Denver) would put the Golden Eagles in a tie for first place and would knock the Tommies down to .500 in conference play. DID YOU KNOW: St. Thomas is ineligible for an NCAA automatic bid if they win the Summit League tournament (still in their probationary transition period till 2025). If they win it all in Sioux Falls, the Summit League REGULAR SEASON CHAMPION gets the automatic NCAA bid (not the tournament championship game loser). And if the Tommies are also the regular season league champ, then the regular season second-place team gets to go dancing with a UST tournament championship (which has "First Four" play-in tournament in Dayton written all over it). If UST wants to truly be considered a D1 program, shouldn't they have a fan forum? None out there that I could find. If any Tommie faithful happen upon this post, shoot me a PM and we can help you get one started. It's pretty addictive, as many of us can attest.

Ladies lost to St. Thomas also...the world has turned upside down...what's next? Biden vs. Trump again in 2024?!?! Oh yeah.....

It is a hard cold slap in the face admitting that we don’t have the horses this season but realizing this fact doesn’t set you up for unrealistic expectations. How Springman handles and adjusts for next season will be a huge factor moving forward in determining our success. I am afraid last night’s game showed what we really got this year.

We were enjoying your ridicule from across the court!

On offense the frontcourt never got going: St. Thomas's frontcourt had a 39-13 advantage in scoring. Without any post production, it makes the 3 point shot difficult and basically reduces ORU to depending on McBride/Bedford driving versus bigger/stronger guys. The biggest disappointment was the lack of energy from ORU. They knew this was a big game and basically a battle for 1st place but where was the fire? The coach needs to have another meeting one on one and challenge the guys again. They had the early 10-2 lead and then just went on cruise control. Two keys that really hurt ORU tonight: McBride picked up his 2nd foul at the 10 minute mark of the first half and we went to the small ball lineup at the end of the half. Then St. Thomas went on an 11-2 run as they went into halftime and never looked back.

Man I want to find a positive so badly, but I can't. Can't blame it on officiating as horrible as it was. We have got to find some consistency on both ends of the court and find ways to move the ball. We have some great 1 on 1 players, but as a collective we need to find ways to move the ball and distribute at a higher rate. Going into this I assumed they (Tommies) would hoist up a plethora of threes and I was right, but I didn't think we would get blown by every other possession by some white kids. The only positive I have at this point is that we have time to get better. What matters is that we are playing our best basketball in March and we have pieces to be a good team, but we've got to clean it up and find ways to be more efficient. I like what @ORUTerry said in his previous post about how fundamentally sound St. Thomas is... If we can find a way to be like that with our athleticism and quickness we can be lethal. Anyways hope everyone has a good night and stays safe out there with this cold.

Our section raised quite a ruckus at the official, Frank Spencer, that whistled Coach Springmann for being out on the court. Although I never saw him signal, we thought he was issuing a technical foul and we let him have it!! However, apparently it was just a warning, and all of our angst was for naught! Frank probably wondered what all the fuss was about, and kind of hid himself behind the basket stanchion while we continued to boo!! We may have missed the call on that one, but he deserved the treatment for about a dozen other calls he made tonight, so it wasn't wasted effort!!

So much for my inaccurate prediction. Very disappointing night for the Eagles. We are proving to be an up and down team this year. Coaching staff needs to get things figured out soon or realistically we will be a 3rd to 6th place team in our conference. Always difficult to weather the storm when we have had several really good years. The silver lining could be we have quality coaches who should be able to make some adjustments

Booooooooooo!!!!!

Can someone please tell me why our entire offense is just standing around and watching guys play one-on-one?

St. Thomas finished the half on a 44-23 run after the Eagles led 10-2. Shades of the KC game where they just look lost on both sides of the ball.

Unbelievable that they allow so many clear drives to the basket. C'mon Eagles. You gotta close the lane. There appears to be no help defense whatsoever. So far our best defense is to foul them because they have been missing a lot. A very sad display of coaching and execution in the 1st half.

I think St Thomas crushes us tonight.

Denver pounded SDSU this afternoon by 19....ORU can grab a share of the Summit League lead tonight....

North Dakota's win at UMKC and Denver's home win against SDSU provides more ammunition of how BAD the loss in Kansas City was - and how GOOD the win in Denver was two days later. This post aged well in three weeks time. No more undefeated Summit League teams.

We have to cover the back cuts. The Tommies run a Princeton-like offense that is deliberate and based on lots of movement & back cuts. They are normally fundamentally sound… low turnovers, lots of assists and good shooting. We need to value the basketball, take good shots and grab rebounds.

So impressed with what Coach Musick has done so far with the women's program, especially after cleaning house following last season. They play hard and fast, and finish STRONG in the fourth quarter. That's back-to-back wins over the vaunted Lady Coyotes dating back to the stunning tournament semifinal victory in Sioux Falls, and to read some of the stuff on Twitter last night after the game, you would think the sky was falling in Vermillion from this latest loss. Their head coach was doing some soul-searching in her post-game comments: "Our coaching staff is going to have to reevaluate what we've done over the last 17 games...you have a couple of big conference home losses that really hurt and now you're going back to the, not back to the drawing board, but back to just reevaluating at a high level like ‘Are we doing the right thing?'." LOL - nothing like beating a rival in such a frustrating way that you have them contemplating their very existence! Congrats to HCKM and the ladies - great start to the conference season!

Video evidence. "Tulsa's Team" my.....foot.

In the midst of their predicted swan dive this month (0-3 since my previous post), Tulsa manages the following tonight at Charlotte: Loses their third straight (against no wins) in AAC play Remains winless away from the Reynolds Center (0-5) Trails by 20-ish from midway through the first half until late in the game. Rallies to single-digits against the reserves before finally falling by eight. TU player slaps the ball out of the hands of a Charlotte player at the buzzer; prompting yet another bench-clearing episode (at least three last season) featuring a referee getting knocked silly to the floor. Such a combination: losers AND classless.