Todd Golden: DOWN IN THE VALLEY: Five takeaways from ISU's wins over Alabama A&M and Oakland City
Dec. 21—By necessity, I had to combine the Down In The Valleys from the two games in three days to one edition.
The weekend before Christmas is always tough on us. We do a First Financial Wabash Valley Classic special section and I'm the one who does the production on it.
Plus, Andy Amey usually takes the week before Christmas off too, so we're short-handed. ISU's pre-Christmas schedule was kind the last couple of years, but this year? It was a bit of a bear. Even though the Northern Illinois game is now off, planning for the week happens before that, so my week was ramped up around that.
So with that explanation out of the way, how does one assess the last two games?
Two wins, so it could be worse, but one win was perfunctory and the other was quite possibly the worst performance in a win I've ever seen on the ISU beat ... and I go back to 2004.
It's hard not to let the horror that was the 78-69 sleep-through victory over Oakland City on Monday not cloud judgment, but it's most recent on the mind and it did expose some of ISU's worst flaws.
The 67-43 win over Alabama A&M was not really in doubt, and compared to Oakland City, it was light years ahead, but it still wasn't by any means the evidence of a finished product.
Josh Schertz wanted ISU to get closer to the best version of itself. That mission was not remotely accomplished, in fact, the Oakland City game was, without question, ISU's worst version of itself.
Let's get into it.
1. This team cries out for a leader — If there's one thing that the Oakland City laid bare, it's that ISU has a leadership problem.
ISU has intense guys like Xavier Bledson and Cam Henry, but those guys, good as they can be, aren't calming influences.
Sometimes? A basketball team needs someone on the floor to simmer everyone, play within themselves, and can everyone relaxed.
That's not what happened on Monday. You saw guys forcing the issue instead. Bledson's line looks pretty damn good: 21 points, five assists, five rebounds and four steals? Hard to argue that.
Except Bledson also had five turnovers and didn't recognize in the second half that Oakland City had his post moves sussed out.
Worse? Bledson was among the guilty parties who spent too much time complaining to officials. On one possession, he was gesticulating while his man was making a break down the floor for an open opportunity.
I'm not trying to single out Bledson because Henry was over-doing it too and no one had the gumption to make a stand defensively until the very end of the game.
A leader would also recognize pre-game that ISU had every bit the look of a team that thought they would coast through the day.
It's OK for you and me to think that, heck, I was in snark mode before the game posting a picture of an Old Milwaukee ad from the 80s sarcastically stating that a non-Division I game "doesn't get any better than this."
I can have that attitude because I'm not a participant. The players? That's a whole different story and a leader would snap them into shape.
Unfortunately, ISU's best leader (Tyreke Key) is out for the season and Cooper Neese, the next-most experienced player, didn't play.
Maturation doesn't happen overnight. I hope the players who need to grow up got the right lesson from Monday.
2. Schertz didn't mince words — There was plenty left on the cutting room floor of my game story from a deeply disappointed Schertz. Some of these quotes I was saving for the Northern Illinois game preview, but since that's off, here are some of other things Schertz said.
"You're never going to give a win back, but winning this way stinks," was one blunt way Schertz said.
On taking the right lessons from a casual effort and what to take from it.
"I'm hopefully be calmer tomorrow, but in there [the locker room] that's just unacceptable. There's no excuse for doing that. I don't care who you're playing, what the turnaround is, what the situation is, there is no excuse for not being ready to play and not playing as hard as you can and competing with everything you have in every situation," Schertz said.
"The messaging is, if we play that way, to me, we've won six games. We'll finish the season with six wins. There's not a game left we can win playing that way. There's not a single team we can beat playing at that level," Schertz continued.
Schertz did say ISU has also demonstrated it can play vastly better, which is what makes a night like Oakland City all the more frustrating.
When Schertz had his press conference, the NIU game was still on. He was asked how the nature of Monday's contest changed preparation for the Huskies.
"Normally, we'd have film here, head to Northern Illinois and have a lighter practice because we're coming off of a game and expended energy. I told them in there that we are going to practice full bore. I don't think anyone expended any energy today, other than maybe Julian [Larry]," Schertz said.
"We jogged through at a light shootaround today and gave about the same amount of effort for 40 minutes. No one should be fatigued. It's like having a day off. ... We're approaching tomorrow like today was an off day, because for most people in the program, it was an off-day," Schertz said.
3. Can ISU shoot from the outside? — This team was supposed to have lined up some shooters, but so far? ISU hasn't been wonderful from 3-point range.
The Sycamores have been pretty good in the paint and that's been their saving grace. Against Alabama A&M was 22 of 32 from two-point range. For all of the ballyhooed notion of Schertz's teams liking the 3-point shot?
He actually likes high-percentage shots and there's nothing more high-percentage than a layup.
Still, to keep defenses honest, you need some shooters. ISU is only shooting 32.6% from 3-point range. While there's been individual good games in there, none of ISU's shooters has attained anything like consistency.
Cam Crawford is slumping a tad after a hot start. Simon Wilbar has missed his last four attempts.
Neese didn't play on Monday, but he's sandwiched a good 9 of 23 combined performance against Miami of Ohio and North Dakota State with a combined 1-for-20 against Ball State, Loyola and Alabama A&M.
4. An opportunity missed — Schertz will no doubt hoping to get some players who haven't played very much some valuable court time.
Dearon Tucker, who hasn't been playing much lately, did get a few more minutes, but this was supposed to be a time for someone like freshman guard Quimari Peterson to get some run.
As it was, Peterson did make his ISU debut against Alabama A&M with four minutes of action, but the Oakland City game didn't allow Peterson or Nick Hittle or Sam Mervis to play at all.
That stinks and that's on the starters for not doing their job to give their teammates a rare opportunity to get some playing time.
5. It's cold inside Hulman Center — Probably should be filed under random, but if someone can figure out why there's still a breeze blowing through Hulman Center, I'm all ears.
The renovations were supposed to fix the varying degrees of temperature that were once notorious inside Hulman Center, but it gets very cold down in the lower bowl. And for some reason? It seems to get worse as the game goes along too.
Someone help me out. Is it the way the air is circulating from the vents? Is it blowing in from the front entrance?
Time to crank up the heat a bit.
—ISU Player of the Game — Cam Henry gets the nod for the Alabama A&M game as he was 7 of 10 from the field with 17 points and six rebounds.
The Oakland City game? Collectively terrible, but though there were a few Sycamores with more points, Julian Larry was the only Sycamore who consistently played defense. He also drew the most fouls of any ISU player.
—Opposing Player of the Game — I'm not picking a player from A&M because they were very mediocre across the board.
Oakland City? Though Allen Sims and Jamarcus Clark scored more, I thought Abdul Wurie, who is from London, England, gave ISU fits in the lane on both ends. He scored 11, but drew five fouls, and ISU rarely responded to what he was doing in the lane.
In addition, Wurie had four blocked shots, though that's as much an indictment of some of the lazy shots ISU took as much as it was Wurie's defense.
—Random — Somehow? I've made it through my time on the ISU beat without having seen the Sycamores lose to a non-Division I opponent.
That doesn't mean there weren't some close calls, though.
A quick check of the ISU media guide after the game revealed some skeletons in the closet. I remembered a few, but forgot a couple of others.
Jefferson Airplane once released a compilation in 1970 called "The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane". (Good Lord, that was not a prophetic title. They had miles to go the scrape the bottom of their own barrel.)
Here's the worst of ISU's non-Division I close calls since I've been around, and as a bonus, I dug up the gamers from these to find some entertaining self-flagellating quotes where applicable.
—2006-07, ISU 66, Oakland City 52 — Monday's game wasn't the first time Oakland City put a scare in the Sycamores. On Nov. 27, 2006, the Mighty Oaks, then still playing as a NCAA Division II team, pushed the Sycamores before ISU pulled away late for a 66-52 win. There were 10 lead changes and though the Oaks never led in the second half, it was a seven-point game at the last media timeout and the ISU lead was as low as three after halftime.
Like the current team, that ISU team was inexperienced. That was the year Marico Stinson, Cole Holmstrom, etc., were playing big minutes as freshmen. Oakland City also played a 2-3 zone, the bane of the existence of so many motion offense teams under both Royce Waltman and Greg Lansing.
Waltman, in his last season at ISU, was surprisingly not his usual quotable self.
"I think [the players'] reaction to struggling with a Division II team [was positive]. They didn't come off and were like, 'This is ridiculous' they didn't make excuses, they took it like, 'We're in a game and lets compete.' Their attitude towards competition has been very good all year," said Waltman, who knew when to rip, but also, when to protect his guys.
—2008-09, ISU 66, DePauw 60 — Monday was the 13th anniversary of this gem (my Lord, have I been here that long?) and I do distinctly recall that the Division III Tigers probably should have won.
ISU had 16 turnovers against the Tigers, and much as ISU did on Monday against Oakland City, the game report implied poor effort and execution.
At the time? It was a much-needed victory. ISU started that season 0-6 and 1-8. Still, then-coach Kevin McKenna, in his second season, wasn't having it. ISU still wasn't playing well.
"We ran a play late, right out of a timeout, and we had three guys out of position. We just can't have those things happen," McKenna said. "Either I've done a poor job or they've done an inconsistent job of paying attention to detail."
ISU would go on a nadir of a 4-19 record, before a dramatic late-season turnaround in which the Sycamores finished 7-2 (kick-started by the famous Jay Tunnell game at Illinois State) and gave Northern Iowa a big scare in the MVC Tournament.
—2011-12, ISU 68, Maryville 57 — Greg Lansing's second year, the one after the NCAA Tournament season, had some big highs and lows. It was a team that had big expectations, but who seemed to let the weight of those expectations affect them. That's also the year that Jake Odum was plagued with plantar fasciitis.
The Saints came out smoking, leading by 13 in the first half, using a Princeton-style offense and hot 3-point shooting to put the Sycamores back on their heels.
ISU closed the gap to four by halftime and then out-muscled the Division II school in the second half. Myles Walker scored 20 in the contest.
This Dec. 11, 2011 win actually served as a springboard. ISU went down to No. 25 Vanderbilt a week later on beat the Commodores at Memorial Gym.
No killer quotes from this one.
—2012-18, Truman State quintet — Lansing loved playing his coaching buddies and former players and so it was in a five-game off-on series with Truman State. Over those years, the Bulldogs were coached by Matt Woodley and Jeff Turner, both friends of Lansing.
ISU won all five games, but none were easy, the largest margin of victory was 14 points. The closest shave was a 77-69 win in the 2018-19 season. In that game, ISU needed a 20-0 second-half spurt to beat the Division II team.
However, Lansing was really irritated by the first game, a 70-57 ISU win in Nov. 2012.
"What you saw out there was a really poor job of getting a team ready to play," Lansing said after the game. "I'm embarrassed about how I coached and how we played. We got outcoached and outplayed."
At least that season, ISU would get over it. The 2012-13 team went on to beat Miami, Ole Miss, Wichita State and Creighton in a banner year that went south right at the end.
—2017-18, ISU 79, Indianapolis 75 — I had forgotten about this one, the closest shave of all against a non-Division I foe. I guess I blocked it out of my mind.
Former ISU assistant Stan Gourard brought the game Greyhounds into Hulman Center. ISU was down nine with 11:04 left to the Division II opponents. However, ISU kicked up its defense late and Indy didn't have a bucket from the 4:38 mark onward. At that time, they led 71-67.
"I can't think of anything for about 30 minutes [of game time] I was happy with," Lansing said. "Indianapolis dictated the pace the entire game and they looked like smarter, harder-playing team throughout the game. They looked like the team that wanted to win more, but we overcame it."
This near-miss came just a few games after ISU had down Indiana by 21 at Assembly Hall.
—2019-20, ISU 62, Missouri-St. Louis 55 — ISU played the Tritons a few times in the Lansing era. ISU had trouble in a 2017 game before pulling away in the second half, but UMSL hung in for much longer in a 2019 contest. The Tritons led by three with 10 minutes and change to go before ISU inched ahead late.
Lansing was asked if ISU overlooked UMSL because they were Division II competition.
"Yes. Absolutely. You don't want to say it, but it's a Division II team, you get up early, and you think it's going to be easy. Those guys aren't going to stop fighting and competing. They punched us right in the face," Lansing said.
I guess this little exercise is a reminder that these close calls often have the same theme and they aren't confined to one coach or one era. Every ISU coach I've covered has been plagued by a game like the one ISU had on Monday against Oakland City. Some of those seasons turned out bad, but some turned out pretty good.
We'll see how ISU responds under Schertz.
