Missouri Valley Basketball: 4 emerging trends early in league play

Sycamores playing well as of late

Indiana State’s Josh Schertz can coach. Coming from Division 2 Lincoln-Memorial, we frankly didn’t know what to expect. Schertz’s wildly successful stay at LMU made Sycamore fans hopeful, but until a person picks up the microphone, you don’t know if they can sing.

During his 13 Railsplitter seasons, Schertz’s teams competed in ten D2 NCAA Tournaments. His teams won 83% of their games and posted the eight highest grade point averages in LMU basketball history.

But, the jury was out on whether he could coach at the D1 level. The Sycamores (8-6) have won four straight and five of their last six games. Sunday’s victory, minus three starters (covid), might have been the final piece of evidence we needed.

They weren’t just three starters. Second leading scorer Cameron Henry and Xavier Bledson (see ’10 Biggest Impact Transfers) both average double-figures in scoring and Henry leads the team in rebounding, while Bledson is the team’s top assist man. Seven-footer Simon Wilbar has recently joined the starting rotation and is easily the team’s tallest player.

Three players played all 40 minutes during Sunday’s win, and one more player played 38. Five tallied double figures in scoring with Cooper Neese leading the way with 19 points.

Schertz tried everything Sunday. Man-to-man, several kinds of zone defenses and prevailed over a Bradley team that beat them by ten on the boards and had nine players score, while only seven Sycamores even played.

Josh Schertz can coach.

Covid is a significant problem for these Valley teams, and this conference season is an 18 game marathon so emerging trends could become a thing of the past or could turn into some teams’ true identities.

We will know so much more on our next Missouri Valley Monday.