Wednesday, December 20, 7 PM. Link to the livestream is on Chicago States online schedule.

Chicago State faced B-C last season and lost by 13 in one of the Cougars disappointing showings of the season.

Bethune-Cookman is 5-5, 3-5 versus D1 teams and have won 2 out of their last 3. They last played December 9, so they should be well rested. Chicago will have played 4 games in that same time frame.

Bethune opened the season with a 20 point loss to Minnesota, and several of their losses have been to fairly strong teams that may not be recognized for their quality NET rankings, with 8-1 Longwood ranking 81, and 9-1 Purdue-Fort Wayne at 74. They also lost to Lamar, 220. Their wins are versus Charleston Southern (NET 347), Incarnate Word (315), and South Carolina State (331). The 3 teams have a combined 5 wins.

But they have largely taken care of business versus teams closer to bottom of the NET. They currently rank ahead of Chicago State by a few spots, 298 compared to Chicago States 303 as of today.

I think Chicago will handle them at home with the way the Cougars are coming together, but Cookman isn’t a pushover and the Cougars will still have to show up.

The Valpo win was important for a few reasons. First, it avoided the dreaded let down loss that often comes after a big upset win. And building momentum and confidence are a big part of establishing a winning culture. And a win against B-C would be nice so Chicago can head to Wisconsin on a 4 game winning streak! The Badgers are 17 in the NET right now.

Definitely a game that we can and need to win.

Here is Bethune-Cookman’s roster. Notice they have way more Chicago kids than Chicago State, and few kids from Florida. Meanwhile, nearly all of Chicago States roster is from Florida, with basically one or two guys from Chicago.

https://bcuathletics.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster

B-C’s coach Reggie Theus is a former New Mexico State coach, and later at CSUN.

Nice looking crowd.

Ugliest game I’ve seen in a while. Cougars get their 4th in a row and can move on to the next game.

Looking at the stats, I’m disappointed in Wesley Cardet, but even more so the coaches. It isn’t good to let him play like he did tonight. Running no offense, except throwing it to the left wing, then back to Cardet, he then spends 10 seconds dribbling and trying to stare a defender down, and then drives 25 feet into the lane where everyone on the court has collapsed, and heave up a prayer shot.

That’s bad basketball. And it doesn’t work. Cardet was 5/19 from the field and took 40% of the shots for the entire team. CSU has capable scorers. They need to run some sets and get other people involved, because half of the scoring the rest of the team did tonight was on offensive rebounds from missed Cardet shots. When you take out the other 4 players on offense and make it 1 on 5, you get 25% shooting. And most of those shots were from 2 feet.

And by doing too much himself, he ended up with 7 turnovers. When a team like B-C is known for forcing lots of turnovers, Chicago needed to game plan an offense to help minimize those turnovers. Instead, they fell right into the trap of sloppy play and wasted possessions.

I think the best part of this game was seeing a decent crowd in the stands. This was probably the biggest crowd in a long time.

I know Bethune Cookman had a good crowd at the game, with a good number of Chicago/Midwest kids on their roster, but you could hear how many people were there for the Cougars. A nice dunk in the second half brought out a roar from the crowd that isn’t heard enough at JCC.

The home crowds should continue to grow as the team improves.

I figure quite a few were there to see the team that beat Northwestern.