Illinois State/Indiana State

[oldtimewomen's hoopcoach]

I'm predicting an angry sweep this weekend. Wear your pink. I'm looking forward to reading 1972's pre-game write-up, I hope.

[1972Shocker]

Duplicate post deleted.

[1972Shocker]

I'm predicting an angry sweep this weekend. Wear your pink. I'm looking forward to reading 1972's pre-game write-up, I hope.

Calling me out, huh! I was hoping you or @flyingMoose or one of our other astute Shockernetters would take care of that.

Despite their 1st conference loss of the season last Sunday at UNI the Shockers still control their destiny as they still have a 3-game lead thanks to Indiana State's loss at home to an improving Evansville team who has Jr post Mallory Ladd back in the lineup after missing 6 games due to injury.

The Shocks can clinch a tie for the Valley Championship with 2 wins this weekend a the take on 2 upper division Valley teams. Up first is Illinois State (7-15, 6-6) tonight at 7:00. Since losing to the Shocks 58-72 on Jan 25th the Redbirds are 3-3 with 4 games at home. Although all those games have been pretty close with an average margin around 5 points.

The Shocks play Indiana State (13-10, 8-4), the preseason Valley favorite, on Sunday at 2:00. Indiana State has the personnel to give the Shockers all they want. Anna Munn (5-10) and Bilqis Addul-Qaadir (5-4) gives the Sycs 2 very solid senior guards and Marina Laramie (6-2) and Rachel Mahan (6-1) give the Sycamores one of the stronger post tandems in the Valley.

If the Shocks do win both of these games and if UNI loses one of its two road games this weekend at Loyola and Bradley then the Shocks would clinch and outright Valley Championship. Not sure that will happen as UNI is playing very well right now.

One more win will make Jody the all-time WBB coaching wins leader in Shocker history.

Shocker Game Notes.

[DUShock]

The ladies are looking good on Fox Midwest. 85-66.

HCJA is now the winningest coach in WSU history. Congratulations Coach!

[oldtimewomen's hoopcoach]

The ladies are looking good on Fox Midwest. 85-66.

HCJA is now the winningest coach in WSU history. Congratulations Coach!

The Ladies reved up the defense and we blew them out. Congrats to Jody on being #1 in wins, Alex 1,000 plus points. The bench demonstrated why they have a ways to go. They must work and learn in practice and will get their chance. Allie was in a funk. Her shot was off, then her game then she didn't care to listen to the coaches. Not a good move.

[1972Shocker]

Shocks got off to a slow start offensively and for some reason the game plan was apparently not to guard the 3-point line in the 1st half. Illinois State hit their 1st 7 treys before missing 2 (both of which were in and out). Fortunately, ILS was on 2-13 from inside the arc in the 1st half and despite outrebounding the Shocks 19-13 and outscoring the Shocks from the line 8-10 vs 3-6 the Redbirds trailed 40-33 at the half. The reason was 12 Redbird turnovers to only 2 for the Shocks and a 14-0 advantage for the Shocks in points off turnovers.

The Shocks came out with much more energy in the 2nd half and used their swarming defense to pretty much dominate the game after intermission as the Shocks opened with a 23-7 run over the 1st 10 minutes of the 2nd half.

Jody emptied her bench with about 5:00 minutes left and it got pretty ugly after that although Baby Dapp showed a nice stroke knocking down 2 treys, one from each corner in her mop-up minutes.

Alex Harden continued her stellar play with 20 points on 9-16 FG's and 2-2 FT's, 3 rebounds, 7 assist (to 2 turnovers), 8 steals and 1 blocked shot. Jamillah Bonner had one of her better games in a while with 21 points on 7-12 FGs' and 4-4 FT's.

The Shocks turned the Redbirds over 30 times in the game and only allowed them 2 trey attempts in the 2nd half after the 7-9 shooting from distance by the Redbirds in the 1st half. The Shocks turned the ball over 14 times but 6 of those came by the freshman in the last 4 minutes of the game.

Congrats to Jody Adams on becoming the all-time winningest WBB Coach in Shocker history and to Alex for passing the career 1,000 point mark.

Indiana State is up next on Sunday at 2:00. The Sycamores destroyed MSU in Springfield tonight 73-37. In fact, the Shockers 19 point win was the closest margin of the 4 Valley games played tonight.

[flyingMoose]

Shockers 51-63 Indiana State

Jasmine Grier, with her three-point shooting and length at the top of a 3-2 zone, gave us fits in this one.

[The Mad Hatter]

Worst I have seen us play all year. I was particularly disappointed in our lack of rotation and intensity on defense.

[1972Shocker]

The Lady Shocks laid and ostrich sized egg today losing to pre-season favorite Indiana State 63-51 at Koch Arena in a game that was really not that close. The Shocks were pretty much laid bare in every facet of the game including coaching. I would be hard pressed to single out any player that played well, because quite frankly none really did. So I guess in that regard it was pretty much a team effort.

I'm not sure I will look at the game stats. I did hear Ted report in the post-game show that the Shocks were 1-13 on treys and the 1 they made was an off-balance chuck by Jamillah to beat the shot clock that banked in. In other words pure luck. Unfortunately, that was about the extent of our luck today. Kelsey Jacobs picked up 4 first half fouls although I'm not real sure that made much difference as Kelsey was not better than her teammates when she was in.

Looks to me like the Shocks weaknesses have been exposed and targeted. Teams are pretty playing predominantly zone defenses against us now and taking advantage of our inconsistent perimeter shooting (today that was non-existent perimeter shooting). Indiana State add a very effective wrinkle by playing a couple of their longer wings at the point of a 1-2-2 or 3-2 zone.

If I had to come up with one positive out of today's game is that considering how bad we played it was a minor miracle that we only were beaten by 12 points (or perhaps that's just an indication of how weak the Valley is this year).

One of the better crowds today of around 2,800. A lot of them probably won't be back for some time after today's performance.

[1972Shocker]

UNI defeated Bradley in Peoria today 81-77 to stay within striking distance of the Shocks as they and Indiana State both have 4 losses.

[shoxlax]

Our threes we shot weren't even particularly good looks. There was someone flying at us almost every shot.

Credit to ISUB. They are hot right now.

I'm starting to think women's basketball appears to be way more streaky than mens. In other words, teams can be absolutely unbeatable for a two to three game stretch and then just disappear. Or be awful for a two to three game stint and pull it back together. Maybe I'm just crazy.

[oldtimewomen's hoopcoach]

UNI defeated Bradley in Peoria today 81-77 to stay within striking distance of the Shocks as they and Indiana State both have 4 losses.

I'm pretty much an Idiot. I really believed we would run the table. We didn't; and then I thought we'd finish big time strong. Whoops!! I wish I could blame the refs; I can't; we didn't finish, we didn't adjust to the Refs and Jody didn't adjust to the defense of Indiana. Their coach had a nice game plan and executed it. I'm a bit nervous now. The Valley has figured out Bonner; They will zero in on Alex; they know Kelsey can't shoot outside of 5'; they know to pack in a zone. I still believe we will win the Valley, but we need to get going. Please, don't tell me we need to play the bench. Our bench would have been destroyed against this Indiana State team.

[shoxlax]

Indiana State and UNI play each other the last game and I don't see us losing all three games so the worst we will do is tie, IMHO.

[flyingMoose]

Indiana State and UNI play each other the last game and I don't see us losing all three games so the worst we will do is tie, IMHO.

We play Evansville (6-8) and Southern Illinois (2-12) on the road, and close out at home against Missouri State (7-8). We will win out, but since we are a one-bid conference, that regular season championship does not mean much as far as NCAAs go. Our predicted season-ending RPI by Warren Nolan is 75.

[oldtimewomen's hoopcoach]

We play Evansville (6-8) and Southern Illinois (2-12) on the road, and close out at home against Missouri State (7-8). We will win out, but since we are a one-bid conference, that regular season championship does not mean much as far as NCAAs go. Our predicted season-ending RPI by Warren Nolan is 75.

Very disappointing. Michelle rebounded well. Aside from that, we were out-coached and outplayed. We may have been figure out.