Shocks Host Loyola (Friday), Bradley (Satruday) and SIU (Monday)

[flyingMoose]

way too early to do Bracketology, IMO.

For sure. His thoughts are very RPI-driven and there is still time for RPIs to move. I was interested in his comments which mirror things that have been said here.

OTOH, he thinks two Valley teams will qualify. Perhaps he is thinking of the host team being the AQ. :)

[1972Shocker]

Paul Suellentrop Match Report in the Wichita Eagle

[flyingMoose]

Interesting pre-match thoughts.

Another Chris Somebody was doing the interview since Mike was on ESPN3 tonight. At least I think it was a Chris.

Lambo noted the quality of coaching in the Valley and the comments he has heard from friends saying the same. He noted that Bobbi, Melissa and himself were not going anywhere - the Valley was not a stepping stone to a higher profile job somewhere for them. He commented that Melissa Stokes told him once she was so glad he came to the conference else she might have left - he raised the quality of the Shocker program so that the Valley was no longer a one-bid conference. He realized he was in the pat-myself-on-the-back mode and backed off a little, but he noted elsewhere in the conversation that he is a big Justin Ingram (SIU) fan.

As a follow-on point, he thought that in (many? most?) years, the Valley compared well top-to-bottom with the Big West and to the Mountain West in some years. He thought it was tougher to compete (again, top-to-bottom I think) with the Big East because it was private schools. By that, I think he meant that since VB schollies are full-rides, getting a full-ride to a high-dollar, high academic standing school is hard to turn down.

Okay, I hope that summary was close to his remarks.

[boyshocker]

Great day to be a Shocker. Jody named player of the week and Shocks kick some Saluki butt!

[1972Shocker]

Another Chris Somebody was doing the interview since Mike was on ESPN3 tonight. At least I think it was a Chris.

Chris Solwecki. Chris normally does the ESPN3 video streams. However, the SIU match was also on Cox 22 and because of that Mike did the television/ESP3 broadcast along with Cori Myer-Broddle and Chris did the audio stream.

I think Chris does a good job.