HoriZone Roundtable

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.

While the Power Rankings on the men's side have been a headache, things are much more clearcut for the women. For the second time in league play, every single series of the weekend ended in a sweep. The biggest difficulties so far are that some teams have played schedules that might have their records misrepresenting their abilities and that taking last week off makes coming up with this week's title a little confusing. Because UIC had to cancel last week's games due to COVID-19 protocols and Youngstown State still hasn't played half of its league games, the Flames and Penguins will be left out of the rankings this week.

After the early season made it seem like the league's best players might need their career performances to overlap with Wright State being on the schedule in order for the Raiders to lose league games, WSU took an unexpected loss and now the team isn't even the last undefeated in Horizon League play. And while it could've been a lot more complicated if a few shots went differently in a couple contests, the league is every bit the mess we all thought it would be before the season. This last paragraph before the rankings seems to get more confusing every week. Going forward, the teams left out will be any team that cause COVID-19 protocols to kick in (so Milwaukee should've been in the rankings last week) and any team that has played less than half of its league games. This week that means no Detroit Mercy, IUPUI, Robert Morris or UIC.

Robert Morris’ frustrating season continued in the program’s second weekend of Horizon League action with a gutsy win sans three starters on Friday followed...