No, the Jenkins brothers are not walking through that door but Bryce Drew is as he is the head coach of the Crusaders. Valpo finishe the year at 26-7, winning the Horizon League regular season title and conference tournament.
Valpo ranks 67th overall at KenPom. They're 43rd overall on offense and 107th on defense. To score an upset, they'll probably do so by scorching the nets. They're 5th overall in the nation in effective fg%, shooting 56.1%. From deep, they're 37.5%, 39th and from the line in, they shoot 56.1%, 4th best. They're an average rebounding team on offense and turn the ball over too much but they are good at getting to the line and shoot well, making 73.7%.
Defensively, they're not as efficient. They hold teams below average shooting and teams don't make many 3's against them, getting roughly 22% of points against Valpo that way. That's 223rd worse for opposing teams. Valpo doesn't board great on offense but do much better on defense. They allow 27.3% of misses back to the opponent on the glass. That's 31st overall. They don't force turnovers and will foul opponents too often.
They have two seniors that are the leaders. 6'7" Ryan Broekhoff averages 15.9pg and 7.3 boards per game. Broekhoff also shoots 44% from 3. Fellow senior, Kevin Van Wijk from the Netherlands gets 12.8 pg and 5.5 boards per game. He has an overall effective fg% of 64.5%.
Valpo has been knocking on the door the last few seasons and has finally broken through. Are they satisfied to simply dance? We'll see but they'll have a shot at knocking off a higher seed if they're red hot and they're certainly capable
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