MBB started off its season last night with a charity exhibition game in Morgantown with West Virginia. On the pre-season kenpom, WVU is ranked #73 in the country, which would make them the highest ranked team in the MAC. They beat BG by 16 in front of over 9,000 people.
Not sure there was anything too surprising in the outcome. WVU was up 5 with 10 minutes gone, didn't crack a 10-point lead until there were 5 left in the half and it was a 10-point lead at halftime.
Three minutes into the second half, BG had the lead down to 6, but a 9-0 run for the Mountaineers made that a moot point and BG never got closer than 9 the rest of the way.
Nobody shot well, but BG shot worse. Also, the Falcons had 20 TOs over 8 assists. (WVU plays a pressure defense and was #20 in the nation last year in forcing turnovers).
To me, the most interesting thing is who started and who played for how long.
BG went with an 8-main rotation. We ran a much deeper rotation most of last year as we attempted to find time for our many transfers. The only real surprise to me was that Mills only played 7 minutes.
So, within the rotation of 8, we had Agree and O'Neal in the front court, with Metheny at the point and Curtis and Agee at the other guard positions. I was surprised to see O'Neal start, but I guess we felt that with Turner or Towns we would be a little light in the blocks. O'Neal rarely played more than 10 minutes in MAC play last year, even after Reece was dismissed, and didn't play at all in the last 2 games.
Willie Lightfoot is a FR that they really like, so it will be fun watching him develop and contribute.
Neither Felt nor McCloud McComb played at all. It wouldn't have impacted any redshirt for them to play, so I am not sure what is going on. Felt did seem to be walking gingerly at the scrimmage and McCloud played in the scrimmage.
Mansfield (the one in PA) will be in Tuesday for more exciting exhibition action.
I was at this game (there were probably more like 5-6,000 there) and put a little write up over on AZZ. The short of it is Curtis is our best player and the half-court ran well through him. Metheny was visibly impacted by the stress of being in his hometown. Agee had horribly negative energy the whole game, which I was not a fan of. Ayers played poorly but had great energy and I think will do fine here. I thought Diarra was an impact player for the time he was on the court and would love to see a lot more of him. Hopefully he plays 10-15 minutes against Mansfield.
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