Primarily a collection of news links about all 12 Missouri Valley League teams on a daily basis, culled from online newspapers, school athletic websites, the conference website, and school newspapers, plus some other content from time to time.
Alize Johnson of Missouri State played well in the five-on-five on Thursday, but 6-8 in shoes with a 6-8.75 wingspan, 215 pounds and an 8-7 standing reach is not ideal for a player who garners a lot of his value on the glass. Gordon Hayward is probably the best size comparison at 6-8 with a 6-7.75 wingspan and a similar 8-7 standing reach at 211 pounds.
Weinman to join Crusaders: While Mary Evans is putting the finishing touches on her staff, the first-year Valparaiso women’s basketball coach has made her first impact on the recruiting trail.
Carie Weinman, a 5-foot-9 guard from Glenview, Illinois, announced on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon that she would be transferring to Valparaiso from Denver. A former high school teammate of Valparaiso junior Caitlin Morrison, Weinman averaged 6.4 points while shooting 44 percent from the 3-point line in 13.1 minutes per game with the Pioneers.
Weinman was a fourth-team All-State selection her senior year and averaged 15.6 points and 4.0 steals per game for Glenbrook South. Weinman will sit out the 2018-19 season because of NCAA transfer requirements and then have three years of eligibility.
Evans is expected to announce her coaching staff within the next several weeks.
Update (5/9): Just hours after I posted this, the Horizon League’s Milwaukee Panthers announced their participation in the Belfast Classic, with Buffalo also on the list, along with the Albany Great Danes (America East), Dartmouth Big Green (Ivy League), LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds (NEC), Marist Red Foxes (MAAC), and San Francisco Dons (WCC). Given the fact teams will play a pair of games in Northern Ireland and Buffalo has two home games as part of the event, one team is still TBA and there will be some sort of split-bracket arrangement for this event.
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As for the other events needing teams . . .
A Penn State message board discovered that the Nittany Lions, SMU Mustangs, and Wright State Raiders are set to be hosts in the Cancun Challenge. While the visitors’ quartet is full, one host, who naturally won’t come from the American, Big Ten, or Horizon, is required to fill that field.
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11 non-committed teams from the top tier of mid-major conference are other possibilities to fill these spots, and again, if Richmond and Wyoming are no longer tied to the Suncoast Classic, that number will stand at 14 13.
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MVC: Bradley Braves
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Mid-Major Focused Tournaments
The remaining events without teams are either ones that are totally focused on mid-majors or visitors’ brackets of tournaments with (primarily) power conference headliners. Two returning events—the Gulf Coast Showcase and Savannah Invitational—fit in the first category. So might the Rocky Mountain Challenge, a new event the Mountain West Conference will sponsor that’s set for the U.S. Olympic Committee’s headquarters in Colorado Springs.
But there look to be plenty of places available for mid-majors willing to exchange a possible beating for a sizable pay check in the visitors’ brackets of a split-field event.
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The host Chaminade Silverswords will play in the Maui Jim Maui Invitational on the Mainland for the first time, with the Evansville Purple Aces apparently joining them.
As a junior in 2016-17, the 6’9” Johnson burst onto the scene for the Missouri State Bears. His play over the course of that season propelled his name up draft boards all across the country as he asserted himself as one of the top forwards in the nation. He returned to school for his senior season, and despite the Bears not being able to live up to the preseason expectations that surrounded the team, Johnson is still among the best big men in the country.
Over his two year career with the Bears, the native of Williamsport, PA combined to score 982 points and pull down 735 rebounds. He recorded 20 double-doubles as a senior this past season, giving him 37 such performances over his career at Missouri State. Johnson has the ability to stretch the floor with his three point shooting, but is also an interior threat around the rim.
His rebounding ability and effectiveness on the glass on both ends of the floor will set him apart from other forwards at the combine. Many have Johnson tabbed as a late-second round selection as of now. If he can perform well in the drills and five-on-five game action in Chicago, he could climb to the early parts of the second round or higher.
The Paradise Jam revealed the bracket for the 2018 edition of the annual tournament at the University of the Virgin Islands yesterday, and K-State will face the Eastern Kentucky Colonels in the primetime game in the first round on November 16.
Two nights later, the Cats will face the winner (or loser, if they somehow stumble themselves) of the first-round contest between Northern Iowa and Pennsylvania. They’ll play again on November 19, with a multitude of possibilities; the hope, however, is that they’ll be in the championship game. Who would they face?
