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Lady Eagles get it done at the Mabee today and now are 14-5 overall and 10-0 in the Mabee. This week will be interesting. On Thursday the Lady Eagles will be in Omaha to play the Lady Mavs, then next Saturday they will be the featured national game on CBS Sports playing SDSU in Brookings. Right now SDSU is the top team in the Summit and the Lady Eagles are 2nd. Tip off for that game is 3:00 pm CT. Go Lady Eagles and keep it up.

Morgan got three offensive rebounds under the basket on one possession - while Herron was behind the backboard watching. He never jumped or got involved…just watched. Play Moore or Navarro or other players. They couldn’t do worse. They outrebounded us by 13 and grabbed 13 offensive boards to our 3.

Again, our defense doesn’t have to seem a defined system or goal. We double the post and they hit a three. No one at this level should be doubled. No one is held accountable for offensive rebounds. We have all these athletic players but they don’t want to rebound. Let’s put in some of the bench players to create a spark and hold the regular rotation accountable to rebounding. Everyone has to box out and rebound. NDSU is slow but smart, we should win this by 10. No second chances on offense. They block-out with guys that have no athletic abilities. Create a defensive system and blockout. We are good offensively but defense and rebounding is killing us. Too many seniors for this to happen.

Max's offense is his value. Steph Curry and Trae Young are two small guards that make a pretty good living off of scoring points and are part of those teams' offensive strategy. If they use Max correctly, I'm sure he could be happy making half the money those guys are making. Plus he is articulate enough for many endorsement opportunities.

Well we can now say we own the basement of the Summit. We are dead last in MBB Summit League standings, so why not play everyone else and experiment to see who really wants to play what amounts to nothing more than fundamental basketball in all aspects of the game. At this point what do we have to lose?

At this point what does it hurt to play Moore, Navarro, etc? My gut tells me the problems we have like lack of rebounding and hustle may not be fixable. Effort is an ATTITUDE!!

Game was called well by refs. We just suck.

I still believe in this team as well. The easiest and fastest way to get better is to have more effort. We have good shooters and solid bigs. As much as the offensive system is lacking in movement at times, our offense isn’t really all that bad. We barely turn the ball over (9.2 per game is 1st in the Summit, 6th nationally) and we shoot an effective field goal percentage of 52.5% (fourth in the Summit, 120th nationally). Our scoring of 75.8ppg is 3rd best in the Summit League, 158th nationally. NDSU and SDSU are 78.3ppg and 77.1ppg respectively. While the offense isn’t at the level it probably could be, it’s good enough to win a lot of games in the Summit. Defense could be the problem. However, our opponents are only shooting 43.45%, so it’s not all that bad. With our good shooting and the fact that we barely turn the ball over, we should be able to win most games. The issue is rebounding, as has been mentioned elsewhere. We get out-rebounded on average by 7 rebounds per game. Those 7 extra shots are a big reason teams are able to beat us, despite most teams being worst shooting teams. So, how do we fix the rebounding? Here’s what I think. Rebounding, in theory, is an easy problem to fix. It’s mostly an effort thing, right? But it’s also about mental focus. Size obviously plays a role as well, but we have enough size on the floor most of the time that it shouldn’t be causing us to give up offensive rebounds. The mental focus side of things is the most important I think. I don’t think any of our players are afraid of playing with extreme effort. However, making your body put out the effort to make sure your team gets every possible rebound takes a completely locked in mindset. If you play with this mindset long enough it should become a habit. Then, rebounding isn’t quite as hard. I think this is why some teams are so good at rebounding year after year. The coaches have built a culture where rebounding is almost second nature. Since our team obviously hasn’t built the proper habits yet, or developed the right mindset, it will take the team several games probably before it becomes a habit. On every shot, every player will have to make sure they are mentally locked in enough to make the effort. They will have to do this on every possession of each game. It will be a grind. The coaches will have to be disciplined as well to make sure they’re holding guys accountable for any lack of effort on rebounds. Also, I think the coaches should be emphasizing it so much in practice that they don’t practice other things. For example, it’s pointless to practice how they want to cover screens or contest threes if the other team is going to just grab the offensive rebound half the time anyways.

The dribble weave and iso-ball is exactly what we saw the last several years of Sutton. The opposing team doesn't really have to expend much effort because the ball movement is predictable. I don't know how you fix the obvious effort deficiency on defense. Almost every possession a shot will go up and every Golden Eagle player is just flatfooted watching the ball. You have to move to get the ball . Most of the players are the same as previous seasons. The Coaching staff is still comprised of Springmann and Patterson. What has caused the extreme drop off in effort and Basketball IQ? It doesn't make sense that losing Mills, Abmas, Jurgens, etc. would cause players to completely forget how to rebound.

You don't box out....you take Greyhound back to Tulsa....

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

Rinse and repeat: outrebounded, outplayed, and outscored in the paint. Just the same old song.

I agree.

Max with 15 as Texas comes back to beat Baylor on ESPN today....big win for the Good Guys....er, Longhorns...

Thanks for the reminder - gonna head over to ESPN+ and check it ....oh, nevermind.

I think it’s a reasonable grade. He should be able to put together a .500 record minimum, much better than Mills first year. Speaking of Mills, I remember Springmann talking about how he would run the program very similar to how things had been run under Mills and I think that needs to change. ORU has not been a good defensive team in a decade. Sure, last year was an outlier but it was based on personnel, not game plan…just my opinion. We had these complains every year during Mills tenure, I just don’t think defense was emphasized as strongly as it had been in the past. The rebounding and play from our BIGS is maddening. We have 2 out of the 3 (William Kyle III SDSU) most athletic bigs in the conference and we cannot control the glass. Our guys should be absolutely dominant under the rim. Opposing teams bigs should be so exhausted from battling our guys that they don’t have the energy to shoot 3’s, haha. I still believe in this team, we have several players who know how to win, they’ve been the distance. The league is as open as it has ever been. Let’s turn things around and hopefully dance again in March.

It’s like a golf swing. You’ve got to believe in the process. You’ve got to commit to boxing out your man, even if you’re 20 feet away from the rim and it doesn’t seem important…otherwise the other team has a +9 in offensive boards and +12 attempts at the line and you lose by 10.

I think Springman should institute a penalty for not boxing out on defensive boards. You dont box out, you sit for three minutes.

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.

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!

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.

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.