My thoughts on the DePaul game and this team...

[ZiggyZoomba]

Well, it was a fun trip to Chicago, to be sure. Unfortunately the Falcons didn't come away with a W, but I came away pleased, optimistic and REALLY excited about this season.

Allstate Arena was nice, once the shear fear of being directly in the approach path of O'hare wore off! I swear you could jump up and hit the landing gear of some of the planes that were coming over!

DePaul definitely has a quality program! This was a GOOD team! They had a great intro video which highlighted the "glory years" of DePaul hoops (read Mark Aguirre, Dave Corzine, Rod Strickland, Dallas Comegys, Tyrone Corbin et al)...the 80's merged into the present day team on their video. Very well done and exciting. It got ME pumped!!

Another AMAZING moment for me was when they introduced the LEGENDARY coach, Ray Meyer, who was in attendance. VERY cool to see THE DePaul coach on hand and still doing pretty well!

As for the game, in the first half we looked FANTASTIC!! We were energized on defense, we were quick and smothering. We were hitting shots and Josh Almanson was dominant. He was the player we all knew he can be! We got solid play from our two new point guards in Floyd and Moon... we really looked good.

Second half DePaul really stepped it up. They were a GOOD team people, they made the tourney last year and in my mind is a top 25 caliber team.

Anyhow, we really gave them the momentum with the way we ended the first half. We were up 5 with the ball with less than a minute. We turned the ball over and they hit a 3 to close the half. A big swing that we never really recovered from.

All-in-all, after much thought, I really like what I saw from our team Saturday. We looked strong, we looked like a TEAM, and I didn't see many of the lapses we saw last season. There's plenty of room for improvement, Reimold didn't get many good shots, Eyink missed a few shots early and got timid after that, and the chemistry with the point guards and the rest of the team can only get better. Steve Wright looked VERY good and I already mentioned Josh's performance... I can see this team contending for a top spot in our division come February. If you'd have asked me a few weeks ago, I don't think I could have said that.

Get to Anderson for these early games, it'll give you a good benchmark to judge this team's growth. I really think this is going to be a fun team to watch this season, both in terms of on-court play AND long-term development!

[windycityfalcon]

Good analysis .. and nice to meet you in person at the game.
I would say that one area we do need to improve upon is offense.
It was ugly..
Most of the time we didn't get good looks

[Flipper]

So my predicition of an 18 win season may hold true? Was Lefeld wearing a brace on the same knee that he injured last year?

[Big E]

Grant,

After the post about spelling players names correctly, did you happen to notice you misspelled Eyink's last name.

[ZiggyZoomba]

Grant,

After the post about spelling players names correctly, did you happen to notice you misspelled Eyink's last name.

Thank you! I'll now wipe the egg from my face.

[BleedOrange]

Grant, I appreciate your concern for language, precision in communication, and respect for players. However, I just looked at a number of recent posts, and I just don't see it as that big of a problem on this board, relatively speaking. I'm curious about what motivated your post.