WBB: Final Weekend of Regular Season @ Evansville and @ Indiana State

[1972Shocker]

Because of the Valley Tournament coming up two weekends from now this weeks Valley games have been pushed up a day to Thursday and Saturday. This gives the team an extra day before the grind of the possibly having to play 3 games in 3 days in St. Charles.

The Shocks (24-4, 15-1) play @ Evansville (10-16, 6-10) on Thursday at 7:00pm and at Indiana State (16-10, 7-9) on Saturday at 1:00pm.

The Lady Shocks have a two game lead over Drake (17-9, 13-3) with 2 to play. It is very unlikely Drake will lose to either Bradley (6-21, 5-11) or Loyola (1-27, 1-16) this week.

So if the Lady Shocks want to win an outright Valley regular season championship they need to win 1 more game this weekend. BTW, the Lady Shocks have never won an outright Valley championship. The past 2 years have been co-championships with Creighton and Indian State, respectively.

Perhaps more importantly is the goal of having a shot at an NCAA at-large bid in the event they don't win the Valley tournament. They are probably on the bubble as it is with an RPI of 43 today. A loss to either Evansville (RPI 248) or Indiana State (RPI 157) would probably put them on the wrong side of the bubble.

I will give scouting reports in separate threads.

[1972Shocker]

Evansville (10-16, 6-10) has underperformed expectations in Valley play. Evansville was picked to finish 4th and they are currently sitting in 7th. They got off to a 5-1 start in Valley play but have now lost 9 of their last 10 with the only win coming against last place Illinois State.

Evansville has some nice players on it's roster including 5-1 So. G Sara Dickey (19.0 PPG), 6-1 Sr F Mallory Ladd (14.4 PPG, 7.4 RPG), 5-8 RSr G Khristian Hart (10.2 PPG) and 6-1 So. F Sasha Robinson (6.0 PPG, 7.9 RPG).

I don't think Evansville is particularly deep but they do play their bench much more than the Shockers play their bench. However, Jaleesa Chapel has now played 3 consecutive solid games for the Shocks off the bench and hopefully she can continue that as that has been of great value in those games.

Evansville does get outrebounded by 8 per game. However, they did outrebound the Shocks 37-31 at Koch Arena in early January. That was only the 2nd Valley of the game of the season and the Aces gave the Shocks a decent game losing 54-44. However, that was during Evansville's hot start to Valley play. In that game Alex Harden pretty much carried the Shocks with 20 points, 8 rebounds, 3 assists, 4 steals and 1 block with Michaela Dapprich the only other Shocker in double figures with 11. The Shocks have been much more balanced in their attack in the 2nd half of the Valley schedule.

Nevertheless, Evansville has enough talent to a be dangerous at home despite their struggles over the last 10 games, especially with them and Indiana State fighting for 6th place and the avoidance of the play-in round at the Valley Tournament. They should be relatively focused.

Let's get this win and get the outright championship in the bag ASAP.

:poster_shocks:

[1972Shocker]

Indiana State (16-10, 7-9) has also slightly underperformed expectations in Valley play. Indiana State was picked to finish 5th and they are currently sitting in 6th 1 game ahead of Evansville and 2.5 games behind SIU. They can't catch SIU and they hold the tiebreaker over Evansville.

The Sycamores got of to a very good 10-1 start in non-conference play including a win a Top 100 St. John's to lose out non-con play and head into conference play with a Sub-30 RPI.

Conference play, however, has not been so kind to the Sycamores. All of their 7 wins have come against the bottom 4 teams in the conference.

The Sycamores rely on a very aggressive, half-court defense and they also play a lot of players. They have 10 players on their team that average double figure minutes with their top 3 players averaging about 24 minutes a game.

The Sycamores are led by 6-1, big body Sr F Rachel Mahan (11.8 PPG, 6.6 RPG), 6-0 athletic Sr. F Jamine Grier (9.2 PPG, 3.8 RPG), and 6-1 Sr. F Chelsea Small (8.8 PPG, 4.8 RPG). Indiana State likes to chuck the 3-pointers as they average 16.4 attempts per game but they are not particularly good at it as they only shoot 28.5% as a team from behind the arc. They only shoot 37.5% from the floor and 64.5% from the line as a team.

In Valley games only (Shocker stats still screwed up) the Shocks shoot 44.4% from the floor and an excellent 78.7% from the line. The Shocks are not a good 3-point shooting team hitting only 25.3% on 3-pointers in Valley play. Alie Decker has really struggled with her perimeter shot since the disaster at Drake where she went 0-11. In her last 8 games Alie is only 6-33 on 3-pointers and if you throw at the MSU game where she was 3-5 she is 3-28 in 7 of her last 8 games. While Jaleesa Chapel has come on strong in the past 3 games it would certainly be nice to get Alie back on track heading into the Valley Tournament.
I think one of the things hurting Alie is that teams realize that the 3-point shot is Alie's primary strength and they are running her off the 3-point line much more aggressively than earlier in the year and taking her out of the mix.

It is very possible that the only meaning of this game to the Shocks will be the impact on it's RPI and NCAA at-large chances which is actually pretty significant.

OTOH, this game could be totally meaningless to the Sycamores. They will probably be locked into 6th place in the Valley Tournament seeding and they have no shot at an NCAA at-large bid. It will be Senior night for 6 or 7 Sycamores. So the Sycamores have the advantage of having nothing to gain or nothing to lose and just come out to have a good time on Senior night.

[1972Shocker]

Somewhat of a unusual occurrence may result in the Valley regular season standings after this weekend. I would say that their is at least a 50-50 chance (and that may be conservative that the Valley standing will be totally symmetrical once the dust settles on the regular season:

1st. WSU 17-1 ----------- 10th. ILS 1-17
2nd. DU 15-3 ------------- 9th. LOY 3-15
3rd. MSU 13-5 ----------- 8th. BU 5-13
4th. UNI 12-6 ------------ 7th. EU 6-12
5th. SIU 11-7 ------------ 6th. INS 7-11

Just some useless trivia if it happens that way.

[Shoxtastic]

With the pseudo 'symmetrical' mirroring of the conference schedule they use, that would put things in the 'Twilight Zone' type territory

[flyingMoose]

Other Thursday Scores

Indiana State 56-65 Missouri State

Drake 86-70 Bradley

Northern Iowa 69-64 Loyola

[1972Shocker]

Lady Shocks 77 - Evansville 63

Congratulations to the Lady Shockers on the program's 1st ever outright Valley Championship.

Looks like Michaela had one of her finest games as a Shocker. 18 points on 8-12 shooting, 11 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals and a block. Very nice.

Jamillah with 19, Alex with 15 and Alie with 11 round out a balanced scoring attack. Shocks shoot 52.7% from the field and knockdown 13 of 14 FT's. The Shocks hit a solid 9-15 (40.0%) on 3-pointers including 3-4 from Alie which was good to see.

Symmetry in the Valley standings in place heading into the final day of the regular season on Saturday. Let's make sure we keep it that way. Time to wrap up the season with an exclamation point Ladies.

[1972Shocker]

The Lady Shocks will no doubt be overshadowed by their male counterparts in St. Louis today but they will be tipping off shortly against Indiana State in their regular season finale. The Lady Shocks have already clinched an outright regular season championship and the #1 seed in the Valley tournament. However, they need to win this game to keep their chances for an at-large NCAA bid alive.

Live Stats.

Go Shocks!

[1972Shocker]

Jamillah has some sort of left shoulder injury. That could be a factor not only today but in the Valley Touranment as well.

Alex picks up her 2nd foul only 4 minutes in and that could be an issue a well. Alex is very good at playing in foul trouble but picking up early fouls, which has happened on a number of occasions this year, does impact how aggressively she can play on both sides of the ball and on the boards.

[1972Shocker]

Alex just picked up her 3rd foul 6 minutes into the game + Jamillah hurting = Shockers in a great deal of pain.

[1972Shocker]

Shocks getting outrebounded 12-3. 5-0 on the offensive boards. Alex and Jamillah are both on the bench.

Indiana State 17 - Shockers 14 with 9 minutes to play in the half.

20-14 have Indiana State banks in a 3-pointer. Things certainly not going the Shocks way so far.

[1972Shocker]

Michaela who has been keeping the Shocks in the game with 8 points on 4-5 shooting just picked up her 2nd foul.

Indiana State 20 - Wichita State 18 at the under 8 media timeout.

[1972Shocker]

Jamillah and Alex back in with 5:30 remaining in the half. High risk move with Alex but consistent with Jody's coaching philosophy.

[1972Shocker]

Indiana State 32 - Wichita State 28 at the half.

Indiana State hits a 3-pointer just past half court at the buzzer.

Considering everything that went against the Shocks in that half the Shocks are probably fortunate to only be down by 4.

Michaela has also picked up a 3rd foul.

Live stats have gone down.

[1972Shocker]

This may be the game where the Shocks lack of depth costs them. We had said all year long the Shocks are very susceptible to injury and foul trouble. Today they are dealing with both of those problems.