BG opens season with Drake

Drake seen on NBA sideline

So, the Jans era will begin in Des Moines, Iowa...as the Falcons take on Drake, who is well known in basketball and was last seen prowling the sidelines at the Air Canada Centre as an apparent member of the Toronto Raptors staff.

Drake is a member of the Missouri Valley Conference and was picked 9th by their media (out of 10) and 10th by the Blue Ribbon basketball magazine.

The Bulldogs were 15-16 last year and 6-12 in the MVC.  They finished with an RPI of 179 last year and have been sort of languishing between 140 and 179 over the past five years.

They are in the 2nd year of the Ray Giacoletti era.  Giacoletti has a very solid coaching background, having been a head coach at North Dakota State, Eastern Washington and Utah before going to Gonzaga, where is he was an assistant for 6 years.  He has a 56% winning percentage as a D1 head coach.

They return only 2 starters from last year's team and most of what you see with Drake is an unknown.  (In fact, for sheer mystery, this game, which features a new Head Coach for BG and a Drake team with 6 FR on the roster to go with 2 transfers from the Big 10 (Northwestern and Penn State) qualifies as a stone-cold whodunit.)

The Bulldogs have 10 FR and SO on the roster...and in their exhibition game they started 4 G and 2 FR and a SOPH...going young and small.  Oh, yeah, and in their exhibition game they beat Coe by 25 after trailing by 1 at halftime.

The two starting freshman are Reed Timmer (a freshman from New Berlin, Wis.) and Ore Arogundade (a freshman from Chicago) who were the two marquee players from the recruiting class.  The sophomore is a 7'0" Dane named Jacob Enevold Jensen who averaged 5 PPG and 4.9 RPG in about 18 minutes.

Beyond that, they have their 2nd, 3rd and 5th leading scorers returning.

When you look at last year's stats, they were frankly in the middle of the pack in most things in the MVC.  They were the best 3fg% shooting team in the MVC and shot a pretty high number.  Jordan Daniels was 2nd in the MVC last year and is back...while Andrew Hawley was 3rd and is not back.  Chris Caid was #8 and he is back as well.

Anyway, early season previews are tough and this one is really tough.  I don't think anyone knows what to expect out there.  I would not be surprised to see BG win, even though I think it is less than 50/50.  At any rate, it should be interesting.