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At least the ORU Ladies took care of business tonight at Mabee....

Can the Eternal Flame Collective start paying the ORU big men per rebound? Asking for a friend...

When you don’t have a defensive system with guidelines and focus then you can’t rebound. We are never in the right position to rebound because our players are all over the place. If you force the offense to the outside and not middle and switch screens then the team is working together and you are in a good position to rebound. Our bigs don’t match our guards. We have athletic bigs that can dunk (minus Josh) but they can’t shoot, struggle on defense and are not rebounders. The team needs an identity. We are known for shooting but only our guards can shoot, so we are easier to guard. If we have a team of shooters then we will be difficult to guard and it will open up the middle for our slashers. At our level, we have to be really good at one thing to win. Maybe we should put all shooters on the floor and have a defensive system and the game will open for us. Coach Springmann has never been a head coach at any level, which was my biggest worry with him.

Just not impressed with coaching. Inconsistency in play is always a coaching issue. Defense doesn’t seem to have a system. They give up post passes but also don’t guard the three. Force them baseline in one play and middle on the next. Typical rotation is struggling but don’t sub other players that could give a spark. Next year we will have to rely on the next 5 players since there will be so many grads but no one else is getting experience. Doesn’t make sense with experience we have on the team why we can’t win. We always play to the level of our competition, which is a major problem.

The Lady Eagles continue to impress.

Had the privilege of watching Max vs UCF in person this past Wednesday night. Max started off hot with 9 early points but cooled until late in the game. It was weird seeing him in other colors, but he seems to be thriving and I think the move definitely increased his earning and career opportunities. I will say, he was hunted on defense for the last 10 minutes and had many points scored on him while he was the primary defender. Height will likely be the only thing keeping him from a solid NBA career. Will always cheer for Max!

I'm thinking about how our team's success in March Madness inspired a donor to help us build the Mike Carter Athletic Center. If we could do so well without great facilities, imagine what we could do with new ones! I want us to live up to the donor's faith in our team. I don't think the coaches are "calling it in." There's a learning curve, sure, but they are workers and they care. It feels more like we've lost the team chemistry that we had in the past 3-4 years. What I see at the games, sort of, is 2 teams on the floor: Issac, Kareem, and DJ, and then, the other 2 guys. There's not a seamless meshing of styles, or some "mind-reading" that tells them when to zig or zag or pass or shoot. It's a head-scratcher for sure. Us fans just want the team to win!

I was not able to watch the UND game last night, but the box score showed that our bigs got more minutes than usual while Phipps only played 3 minutes. I have been thinking that more size would translate to better post defense and rebounding but apparently it did not. As was mentioned earlier, it seems like we are often out of position to track down rebounds both from not always boxing out and sometimes just standing under the basket and watching. This seems like a correctable situation. I have heard Coach Springmann mention the need for better rebounding on the radio broadcast. It is a head scratcher that by conference season this team is still playing with a low basketball IQ and/or execution of fundamentals.

Crazy - in the Summit League men's basketball standings this morning Denver is listed as tied for first with a conference record of 3-1, and ORU gave them their only loss. In last place is UMKC at 1-3, and we gave them their only win. This team truly is all over the place.

That wasn't really shouting - I'd call that more like posting emphatically!! I think we all feel like shouting right about now . . .

I have watched only the first 4 minutes of the second half and it is just more of the same. There is NOBODY blocking out. Sorry to shout. But this is very hard to watch.

My first thought after reading those grades is that it's a good thing Western Illinois ditched the Summit, or we might have a three-way fight for first place, leaving the rest of the league with the best hopes of a distant fourth place. I think that sometimes when you're too emotionally connected to an outcome you tend to read too much into that outcome, so in ORU's case it's easy to be overly pessimistic. That said, here's what I feel about this team at the midpoint in the season: Rebounding issues identified themselves very early in the season, and at midpoint they seem to be getting worse, not better. At least they haven't improved to any consistent level. Our defense is weak, creating frustration. At one point during the game last night, Adam described action on the court as, "{North Dakota player} charged past two Oral Robert defenders for the layup." I was watching that play. Can you call two players that don't move to disrupt the play or put a hand up or do ANYTHING in the way of defense, "defenders"? Our big guys seem to continue to struggle with positioning, boxing out, and shooting. They are inconsistent under the basket. There are probably other issues that could be addressed, but those are the three biggies. Those, and perhaps the lack of running discernable plays on offense. I'm not really good at seeing that sort of thing, so I can't really comment on it other than to say it seems we play one-on-one isolation offense more than I'd like personally. To me, all of these things can improve with coaching. Not sure we're seeing the improvement I would expect along those lines. So, to me I might say B- is higher than I would give - but not a lot. You also need to consider the positives - strong back court, continued growth of Isaac and Kareem as players (I'd say the same about DJ, except that he seems to have lost a little mojo since returning from his injury or whatever it was. I assume he continues to play hurt). Plus a couple quality wins and a couple of near misses against quality teams. You also have to take into consideration what Keenan said - every new coach since I've been following ORU basketball has struggled in their first season. After that, in following seasons they improved. The future may tell us more about Coach Springmann's grade than the present.

It usually takes about 3 years for a brand new coach at D1 to start winning. Bill Self, Scott Sutton, and Paul Mills had losing seasons their first two years and finally in year 3 they had a winning season. So we just need to be patient with Springmann. He will find his system, players, coaches, etc but it may take a few years. When I watch ORU vs Summit League opponents for the most part they look overmatched in size and physical strength at almost every position. The league used to be a lot of 3 point shooters but it seems they have changed to finding bigger, tougher guards and bigs. Just a thought. ORU may have to go in that direction to keep up.

At this point I honestly have more questions than answers. This I do know: the Abmas era team gave ORU a renewed culture and identity. They gave both us loyal ORU fans and bandwagon fans something to be genuinely excited about. They played with toughness, enthusiasm and skill that captured the attention of the nation. Now our current team with enough talent and ability has all but eroded what took several years to build. How can our current players step on to the court night after night and not have enough pride to give it their all! We cannot always control the wins and losses but we can ALWAYS control HUSTLE, ENTHUSIASM and REBOUNDING! The crowds at the men's games have been amazing and this will come to a screeching halt the way our current team's actions and mindset is. It is tough and often a grind to create momentum and once you have it you guard it with your life. As we are now witnessing that momentum can be gone much quicker than which it took to create. Springman and his players will have tough questions to answer as where we are is not a good place.

I'm a little concerned about Springmann's start, so I went back to Paul Mills' first season to try and reassure myself. At this point in 17-18 ORU was 3-3 in Summit League and 7-14 overall, with multiple 38 point+ losses. Then I thought to myself, you can't compare a team led by a young EMAN, Javan White and Kearns to a veteran team of McBride, Thompson, DJ (+ the surprising Bedford) to that team, so now I go back to being concerned. Our team has too much talent to be performing this way, and the culture seems to be a tad bit off.

ORU's frontcourt was outrebounded by UND's frontcourt 30-3! I cannot ever remember a stat like that in college basketball. It is just unheard of. Yes teams bigs get outrebounded but 30-3. No words for that. Put Trey at center, at least he will fight, scrap and give it his all. He may give up 8 inches but at least Trey tries.

Sigh.......

North Dakota outhustled, outrebounded, and outplayed ORU. The Hawks just looked like they wanted it more. I just do not see the fight, passion, and work from the Eagles to win many league games. They just seem like they are content to hope some made 3s will mask all the other issues. Sorry it won't . It will be a long year for ORU at this pace.

This team couldn’t guard an empty chair

Geez Max is such a CLUTCH player......ORU truly misses him this season....heck TheEagleman misses him......not just the above but his heart and soul......Max is what ORU is all about......