HoriZone Roundtable

During the off-season, I put together my best guess on what the Horizon League All-Freshman team might look like. While I acknowledged Northern Kentucky's Marques Warrick, I thought the incoming and returning backcourt talent at NKU would have proven too much for Warrick to get major minutes right away despite him being one of the highest regarded freshmen in the league. With star rankings having less to do with early success than opportunity at the mid-major level, I thought he'd need to wait his turn to break out. Whoops! Warrick is second on NKU in scoring with 13.9 points per game, one of just two players averaging double-figures for the Norse. He has taken home four of the Horizon League's six Freshman of the Week awards to date. Barring injury, he might not even need to play as well as he has so far in the next 12 games to come away with the Horizon League Freshman of the Year award. The only other freshman averaging double-figures in the league is Youngstown State's Shemar Rathan-Mayes at 10.8 points per game, and he hasn't been nearly as efficient as Warrick to date.

Last week, our friends at Phear the Phoenix came up with a great way to lessen the blow of 10 months away from fellow fans with a Green Bay Phoenix-based drinking game. Hopefully the direct link and a very upfront acknowledgement that we're stealing the idea will lessen the blow of us COMPLETELY stealing the idea for a Horizon League-wide version. Starting tonight when the first place Cleveland State Vikings face off with the second place Wright State Raiders (or...third place by win percentage I guess? This season is weird) on ESPNU, we'll host the first of a weekly drinking game aimed to bring fans closer together at a time when we can't be together. We're still figuring out the best way to run this, but for the time being follow along on Twitter to make sure you don't miss out. Be sure to use the hashtag #HLMBBWTO...and let us know if we miss a drink!

Now I know it’s been a few weeks since I’ve talked about Youngstown State men’s Basketball. Don’t you worry, though, I’m back and better...

It happened! Somebody other than IUPUI took over at the top of the Power Rankings! ...because IUPUI was forced into a COVID-19 stoppage and won't be appearing in this week's rankings. The timing likely stole a second straight Horizon League Player of the Week award from Macee Williams, who has been posting better numbers than the ones required to take the award this week even when she spends most of the fourth quarter resting for the next game because the Jaguars are up by 25. Joining IUPUI on the sidelines due to COVID-19 protocols this week are fellow Horizon League undefeated Northern Kentucky as well as Robert Morris and UIC. Also, we're calling it Week 7. It'll get too confusing otherwise.

After Wright State spent most of the early season positioning itself as the clearcut favorite we all thought they were in the Horizon League, last week's upset loss at the hands of Oakland was a shocker. After the Raiders lost again and the Golden Grizzlies got swept by a 1-9 Green Bay team, WSU is looking as vulnerable as could be heading into a pair of games against Cleveland State that could indefinitely change the Power Rankings. Chaos ensued in the middle of the rankings, to the point that I'm leaving it up to chance and making arguments in favor of (and sometimes against) the rankings on the backend. Robert Morris and Detroit Mercy are left out of this week's rankings. RMU fails to meet the threshold of half of Horizon League games played, while Detroit Mercy will have gone three weeks between games if they're available to go this weekend.

After dropping their first game of the season at Oakland, Wright State would begin their next series on national television against Youngstown State. The...

The NKU Norse followed-up a 2 game sweep of Purdue Fort Wayne with a 2 game dud against Cleveland State.

It was a strange tweet from the Oakland University Men's Basketball team. "These four balled out in the GB series." The words were followed...

The Cleveland State Vikings came into this past weekend’s set against Northern Kentucky with history on their minds. CSU needed a victory in game...

In 2020, Jarred Godfrey averaged 15.6 points, 4.5 rebounds and 3.5 assists per game on his way to being named Honorable Mention All-Summit League as a sophomore. He helped lead the Mastodons to a somewhat underwhelming 6-10 record in Summit League play. Following second-leading scorer Brian Patrick's transfer and third leading scorer Matt Holba's graduation it seemed likely that Godfrey's workload would increase this season, at least while former role players got used to being relied on to produce regularly. After leading the team in assists in his first season as the Mastodons' primary ball handler, it also seemed possible he'd settle in as a distributor in his second season at point guard.