South Dakota at ORU — the good, the bad and the reality

Scott Sutton was agitated on Thursday after his ORU Golden Eagles beat Western Illinois by 10. Just imagine his irateness Saturday night, when ORU was dump-trucked at the Mabee Center by South Dakota.

It wasn't pretty.

"As disappointed as I was Thursday, I think I'm quite a bit more tonight," said the always-candid Sutton, whose quotes are always refreshingly honest — even with his boss Mike Carter sitting in the room after every home game.

"I did not see that coming. I thought our guys would respond, and we just got kicked."

What did Sutton not see coming, you ask? He didn't see South Dakota demolishing the Golden Eagles, 83-70, on the evening of Valentine's Day.

No one did. ORU was an eight-point favorite in Vegas. The Golden Eagles had beaten South Dakota once this season, a one-point victory in Vermillion on Jan. 31.

But when the Coyotes came out scorching hot, that was it. ORU fell behind — way behind in the first half — and the hill was too high to climb.

So, with that, here are the gruesome details...

The good: I thought Aaron Young and Darian Harris played well in the first half. Young attacked the rim — which I think we'll start to see more of as his career progresses. Harris buried some 3-pointers in the first half and looked like the shooter that the Golden Eagles had been hoping for.

But both disappeared — like witness protection disappeared — in the second half. Harris finished with nine points — all in the first half; Young's six points were all in the game's first 20 minutes. 

It's been repeated nonstop, but guys like Young and Harris have to play key supporting roles if the Golden Eagles are going to alleviate any scoring pressure off of Obi Emegano and Korey Billbury.

- ORU was 12 of 12 at the free throw line. Never can complain with a 100-percent shooting effort.

Well, wait a minute. The gripe can be that the Golden Eagles didn't get to the line enough.

- Emegano didn't play half bad. A 19-point, four-steal, four-rebound effort is usually nothing to scoff at. He did go 7 of 19 from the floor, but no one else was making shots for ORU, so he had to become a volume shooter.

Same story, different verse.

- ORU had 13 assists to seven turnovers. Close to a 2:1 ratio is something a coach will take most nights.

That just shows how bad ORU was in other areas.

Unfortunately for ORU fans, that's where the good ends. Prepare yourselves, though, because the bad could get lengthy. 

The bad: Have to start with Denell Henderson. Biggest game of ORU's season to date and he shows up late. Per Sutton, Henderson said he overslept.

ORU sticks to the same routine before every game, and I noticed when Henderson came jogging out of the tunnel while his teammates were stretching. I thought that seemed odd, but I thought maybe Henderson was getting extra treatment in the training room.

Apparently not.

Henderson played 15 minutes, scored nine points and grabbed six rebounds. And Sutton debated whether he should have played Henderson at all.

"He showed up late before the game, and he didn’t deserve to play," Sutton said. "Didn’t deserve to start, and I’m not sure he deserved to play."

- No context is really needed for this quote:

"I think it's the worst loss ... in (16) years," said Sutton, in the midst of his 16th at the helm for the Golden Eagles. "...I don't remember getting beat like this. On top of that, how big of a game it was."

Pretty much sums it up.

- Korey Billbury was 4 of 16 from the field, and he ended up with 11 points. Some nights, shots just won't fall, but Billbury has to find a way to be better than 25 percent from the floor.

He did, however, make an impact with eight rebounds and five assists. So have to give credit there.

- South Dakota, despite a lot of shots being off-balance, was shooting 70 percent at one point in the first half. Best example: Casey Kasperbauer was throwing in shots from all over the Mabee Center, throwing up long, high-arcing shots that seemed to drop from the ceiling. Most went in.

Kasperbauer was 6 of 9 from the field and 4 of 5 from deep, including a 3 he made in the second half from the right corner, after which he stared down ORU's Bobby Word. (Ya know, the kind of taunting the NCAA's no-fun police would lose its mind over if the officials had half a clue as to what's going on out there.)

Later in the game, Kasperbauer drained two free throws and gave the same piercing glance toward a section filled with ORU students, whose attempts to rattle the shooter were foiled.

Basically, Kasperbauer was red hot and staring everyone down. That's likely how I'll remember this game years from now — aside from the fact that remembering the game in future years will surely serve zero purpose.

- ORU was out-rebounded 41 to 27, a margin that matched ORU's largest deficit of the year. Making matters worse, South Dakota coach Craig Smith after the game talked about how small his team is.

ORU isn't the tallest team in the world, but getting out-rebounded by South Dakota shouldn't happen. A lot of rebounds qualified as loose-ball battles, that almost all went in South Dakota's favor.

- South Dakota won all the hustle plays. Pretty much just re-read the item above this^^.

The reality: By the end of the season, the narrative for this ORU team may read along these lines: quality scorers, decent role players, serviceable big men, and a solid coaching staff, but none of it meshed together and produced what ORU was capable of. It's like someone put the track on repeat, and no one could figure out how to turn it off.

It's been repeated ad nauseam this year, but ORU has two players that are capable of putting up big point totals (Billbury and Emegano). The role guys — Young, Harris, Word, Singleton and Webber — are far from great, but should be able to handle the responsibilities thrown their way. The big men — Henderson, Owens and Conley — should be able to band together to give other teams some problems, especially when Henderson is locked in and ready to go.

But none of it has gelled to the point where it felt like the Golden Eagles would go on a torrid run through the league. There was always an underlying feeling that ORU would slip up somewhere along the way.

Even Sutton admitted somewhat to that point after the South Dakota game.

"These guys, can't figure them out," Sutton said. "If you had told me before the game that you guys have a chance to control your own destiny, if you win these last five games, to become conference champions. And for them to go out and play like they did is unacceptable and really disappointing."

Unacceptable and really disappointing — barring a massive turnaround in the last couple of weeks, that could be the motto of ORU's 2014-2015 season.

Summit League picture with two weeks to go...

In contention for a league title

1. South Dakota State (19-8, 10-3) - 3 games left (at Western Illinois; vs. Oral Roberts; at South Dakota).

2. North Dakota State (18-8, 10-3) - 3 games left (vs. IUPUI; vs. IPFW; at Oral Roberts).

Fighting for third

3. IPFW (14-11, 7-5) - 4 games left (at Denver; at North Dakota State; vs. Omaha; vs. Western Illinois).

4. Oral Roberts (14-12, 7-5) - 4 games left (at Omaha; at South Dakota State; vs. North Dakota State; vs. Denver).

5. South Dakota (14-12, 7-6) - 3 conference games left (vs. IUPUI; vs. Denver; vs. South Dakota State).

The rest

6. IUPUI (9-17, 5-7)

7. Denver (10-15, 4-8)

8. Western Illinois (8-15, 3-9)

9. Omaha (9-16, 3-10)

ORU vs. Western Illinois — the good, the bad and the reality

Win No. 301 for Scott Sutton certainly wasn't the most enjoyable victory of his career. Sure, his ORU club beat Western Illinois 77-67 inside the Mabee Center on Thursday night, but Sutton wasn't handing out back slaps, handshakes, rainbows and sunshine following the contest.

All you have to do is listen to his opening remarks once he began his eight-minute postgame speech with the media.

"Well, that wasn't a whole lot of fun for me," he said. "Disappointed in our guys. I didn't think we played with the type of energy or intelligence that you have to play with."

Ouch.

With that we'll dive deeper into the game...

The good: Per usual, Obi Emegano and Korey Billbury did their thing offensively. Billbury had a game-high 20 points on 8-of-15 shooting, and Emegano had 19 points while making eight of his 13 field goal attempts. Both also grabbed seven rebounds apiece.

Those are the typical outputs that ORU needs from those two to be consistently successful.

The two, however, combined for only 58 minutes. Emegano (28 minutes) was limited after being checked out ORU trainer John Joslin midway through the second half, and Billbury was saddled with foul trouble much of the second half.

There was good news about Emegano after the game, per Sutton. Apparently Emegano fell victim to a lack of hydration after halftime.

"Just had cramps," Sutton said. "He was dehydrated. Once you start getting cramps, they keep coming back."

**Denell Henderson continued his recent run of solid showings. He scored 14 points and hauled in eight rebounds for the Golden Eagles. That's now five straight games — and six of his last seven — where Henderson has scored in double figures. The eight rebounds were the most he's had since nabbing 11 rebounds against IUPUI on Jan. 7.

The big man also made a 3-pointer, his third of the season on 10 tries.

**Aaron Young may have found his niche while on the floor with Billbury and Emegano. He realized on Thursday that there's plenty of distribution to be had with those two on the floor.

He turned that into a career-high eight assists, to go along with nine points and four rebounds. And most importantly: zero turnovers.

"I thought he made easy plays and didn't try and force it," Sutton said. "...Zero turnovers, and again, he shouldn't have any against (Western Illinois). The way they play, I'm not taking anything away from them, but the way they play it's ridiculous that we have 14 turnovers."

**The Golden Eagles' 45.9 percent shooting from the floor was far from great, but it was good enough. The down side was 51.6 percent (16 of 31) turned into 40 percent (12 of 30) in the second half.

**Points off turnovers — turning 21 Western Illinois turnovers into 21 points — and scoring 12 points off 12 offensive rebounds was a good sign for ORU. Again, there's a but: it'd be nice to score more points when the other team turns the ball over 20-plus times, and the same goes for second-chance points.

**ORU reaped the benefits of a full-court press during a 2-1 road trip through South Dakota, IUPUI and IPFW. So it didn't take long for Sutton to deploy his team into a 94-foot pressure scheme on Thursday.

From the outset, ORU spread defenders the length of the court and caused several miscues for Western Illinois early on. It eventually led to a 10-0 lead for the Golden Eagles.

"Sometimes when we press, it gives us a little bit of energy," Sutton said. "We came out in the start of the game and played well."

The Leathernecks looks mystified by ORU's propensity to pressure early. It clearly left Western Illinois out of sorts early on.

"We've been running that the last couple of games, and we've had some success with it," Billbury said. "We started off in it, but (Western Illinois) started getting comfortable and breaking it easier so we backed out of it."

The bad: Normally, this category isn't nearly as full as "good" after a win. That's not the case for ORU after round two against Western Illinois.

**Once again, free-throw shooting became an issue for the Golden Eagles. ORU made 18 of 29 foul shots, making it the fourth time in the last seven games that the Golden Eagles have shot 63 percent or below at the charity stripe. That's alarming for a team that prides itself as a dominant free-throw shooting establishment.

"It's amazing," Sutton said (and not in a good way). "You look at just our percentages throughout the year, and we shoot the ball pretty well. We've struggled, at times, late in games."

It was no different late against Western Illinois. Starting with Jabbar Singleton's back-to-back misses at the line with 1:19 left, the Golden Eagles made 7 of 12 in the final 79 seconds.

It nearly cost ORU, too, but Western Illinois' Garret Covington missed a 3-pointer that rimmed out that would have gotten the Leathernecks with three points with 54 seconds left.

At that point, Western Illinois doesn't have to foul, and it would have been up to ORU to score a basket without any help from Billbury or Emegano.

**It was pretty clear that Sutton delivered a message about closing games out in the postgame locker room. Without being provoked, Billbury started addressing issues about how the Golden Eagles need to learn how to finish games off when they have teams on the ropes.

"Late-game situations keep coming back to get us," he said. "Hopefully we can get these kinks out in the last five games."

What should maybe be the bigger issue is that ORU shouldn't even be having to deal with clinging to leads late in games. The Golden Eagles enjoyed double-digit leads at every turn, but they never succeeded in putting Western Illinois away.

ORU even led by 16 with eight-plus minutes left in the second half, but the Leathernecks came storming back again.

At some point, ORU needs to put its foot down and make it to where the other team just throws its collective hands up and surrenders.

**Billbury fouled out with 1:18 left to play in the game, and it was silly fouls early on that put Billbury in a situation to be disqualified from the contest.

For instance, when Billbury missed a wide-open layup with 11:26 left in the second half, Western Illinois' Jabari Sandifer grabbed the rebound. In pure frustration, Billbury slapped at Sandifer while going for a steal, and instead Billbury was whistled for his fourth foul.

"Instead of missing it and saying, 'hey, I've got to get back,' he goes to get the ball back and he fouls. You can't do that," Sutton said of Billbury. "I told him before the game, you can't be trying to steal the ball. He gets so many fouls when he reaches in to steal the ball. There's very few guys that can do that. It's hard to do that, and more bad things are going to come of that."

You can never question Billbury's intensity level, but he does need to reign in his thought process when he's attempt to go for steals that likely have a 7 percent success rate.

He's a good enough to defender to stay in front of a guy and force an errant shot, rather than slap at the ball and pick up a costly foul.

**The second half, in general, was largely forgettable for ORU against Western Illinois. It wasn't the worst half of basketball the Golden Eagles have played all year, but it was far from the best.

(Few halves of basketball can compare with the awfulness that ORU spewed out at Oregon State in the first half or at Missouri State in the second half.)

The Golden Eagles managed to balloon their lead to 16 points over Western Illinois, but then they quickly zapped that momentum by letting the Leathernecks right back into the game.

In fairness to ORU, it's going to be difficult to play a superb 20 minutes when Billbury is in foul trouble and Emegano is behind the bench being examined by Joslin.

**It's a message that Sutton has reiterated all season long.

“This team – I’ve told you guys and I’ve told them all year – ‘we’re not a very good basketball team if we don’t play with tremendous effort and energy,’” Sutton said. “We’re pretty good when we do. I think we can compete, and I think we’re one of the best teams in this league if we play that way. Without it, you saw it tonight; we weren’t very good.”

By the time you reach mid February, you have to wonder if the message will ever sink in.

**The ball is in the hands of Henderson, Emegano and Billbury a lot, so some turnovers are going to happen. But against Western Illinois, the trio had 10 of ORU's 14 turnovers.

Sutton said he won't stand for it.

"This is a team that doesn't force — I think their opponents in conference were averaging less than 10 turnovers a game — so...," Sutton said, emphasizing his team's lackadaisical ball handling against the Leathernecks.

Since giving the ball away six times at South Dakota, here's how ORU's turnover numbers have looked: at IUPUI (16), at IPFW (13), vs. Western Illinois (14).

Have to clean that up — and quickly. 

The reality: Brett Olson tried to do ORU a solid. After all, he did knock down a halfcourt shot at the end of regulation to send his Denver club to overtime against North Dakota State. Problem was that Denver opted not to show up in overtime, giving North Dakota State a Mile High victory, the same kind of win ORU should have had in Denver if not for a disastrous final seven minutes.

It was a great chance to bring North Dakota State back to the pack, but instead the Bison are still in first place in the Summit League at 10-2. ORU is 2 1/2 games behind NDSU with five to play; that's a tough hill to climb during the home stretch of the regular season.

With everyone in the Summit League off today, things will ramp back up on Saturday. Here's a look at Saturday's slate:

- Western Illinois at Omaha, 1 p.m.

- North Dakota State at South Dakota State, 4 p.m.

- IUPUI at Denver, 5 p.m.

- South Dakota at Oral Roberts, 7 p.m.

Ideal scenario for ORU on Saturday would be to win, obviously. Then having SDSU beat North Dakota State would be preferable, mainly because it moves the Golden Eagles only one game behind SDSU and NDSU both in the loss column.

Just to finish it off, here's what the top five teams in the league have left the rest of the way until the scene shifts to Sioux Falls:

North Dakota State (18-7, 10-2 Summit) - 4 games left (at South Dakota State; vs. IUPUI; vs. IPFW; at Oral Roberts).

South Dakota State (18-8, 9-3) - 4 games left (vs. North Dakota State; at Western Illinois; vs. Oral Roberts; at South Dakota).

ORU (14-11, 7-4) - 5 games left (vs. South Dakota; at Omaha; at South Dakota State; vs. North Dakota State; vs. Denver).

IPFW (14-11, 7-5) - 4 games left (at Denver; at North Dakota State; vs. Omaha; vs. Western Illinois).

South Dakota (12-14, 6-6) - 4 conference games left (at ORU; vs. IUPUI; vs. Denver; vs. South Dakota State).

Denver (10-14, 4-7)

IUPUI (8-17, 4-7)

Western Illinois (8-14, 3-8)

Omaha (8-16, 2-10)

Three weeks from Saturday night, the Summit League tournament will commence. Let the madness begin.

ORU at IUPUI — the good, the bad and the reality

Bobby Word hit one of the biggest shots of ORU's season back on Jan. 7, a 3-pointer that very easily could have altered the course of the Golden Eagles' season. ORU, in a matter of seconds, went from a deflating home loss to IUPUI to extending the game to overtime, where it handled its business in extra time and got the victory.

An early home loss in Summit League play would have been crushing. The magnitude of Word's trey may be greater than any of us realize. That could have been the tipping point that sent the Golden Eagles to a disastrous conference run.

No such scenario was necessary when ORU and IUPUI rekindled their season series on Thursday in Indy.

The Jaguars asserted their customary muck-it-up style early in the first half, jumping out to a six-point lead only five minutes into the game. ORU, through, worked its way back and took a one-point lead into the locker room at halftime.

Then the Golden Eagles took off. Eleven straight points to start the second half provided ORU a 12-point lead, an edge that the Golden Eagles would not relinquish.

https://twitter.com/ORUMBB/status/563728937134485505

(The #NextDayNumbers by Blake Freeland and the ORU media relations department are fantastic. Always worth a look following each ORU game.)

In terms of road victories this season, I'd probably classify it as ORU's second-best. To rally at South Dakota and prevail in the final seconds was huge, so I'd rank that No. 1. But to thoroughly dismantle IUPUI at the Fairgrounds Coliseum — a feat that really no one had accomplished this year — is massively impressive.

It doesn't get any easier Saturday when the Golden Eagles head to northeast Indiana to take on IPFW, a team that's playing its best basketball of the season right now.

The good: Have to start with Scott Sutton. In his 16th season as ORU's coach, Sutton has now posted 300 wins in 503 games. That's a winning percentage of 59.6 percent — not bad for a coach that routinely puts together a gauntlet of a schedule for his teams during non-conference play.

After churning out the most impressive performance by a road team at the Indianapolis Fairgrounds, Sutton was calm, collected and more grateful for a road win than anything else.

"A road win, those are sweet," he said. "Told our guys after the game and they had all congratulated me — and they seemed more excited than I was — but because of how important this game was ... I'll remember this win for a long time."

And he should. There were plenty of positives to draw from it...

- Korey Billbury. Not sure the junior from Booker T. Washington can play much better — outside of the shooting department. Billbury finished with 20 points, but credit most of that to his 8-of-9 display from the free throw line. He was 6 of 17 from the field and 0 of 2 from beyond the arc.

His ability to put the ball through the hoop could have been better, but when he's grabbing 10 rebounds and dishing out six assists, it's hard to nitpick, really. Outside of a two-rebound showing at Denver on Jan. 21, Billbury has hauled in at least seven rebounds since starting Summit League play on Jan. 2.

An all-around performance like that from Billbury every night would make the Golden Eagles that much harder to beat.

- Denell Henderson is becoming a legitimate rim protector. Since blocking two shots in the closing seconds of the win at South Dakota, the senior from Demascus, Ark., has developed a knack for swatting shots. He turned back a career high six blocks against IUPUI.

Henderson is also becoming a consistent offensive weapon. Providing a secondary option outside of Obi Emegano and Billbury, Henderson has posted double-digit scoring efforts in his last three contests and four of his last five.

Having someone be a last line of defense around the rim who can also provide a basket on offense is a coveted commodity at any level of basketball.

Nice to see Henderson really turning it on as he enters the home stretch of his collegiate career.

- Hey, a Brandon Conley sighting. A welcome sight, indeed.

Touted as the team's potential breakout player of the year, Conley has struggled offensively while finding himself in constant foul trouble.

He bucked those trends against IUPUI.

He played a season high 30 minutes. He scored 12 points. He grabbed six rebounds. He was 5 of 6 from the field. He was 2 of 2 at the foul line.

If Conley is going to provided numbers like that every night, the rest of the Summit League will need a lifeline. When Conley and Henderson combine for 24 points, ORU is likely to win about 97 percent of its game. Mark it down.

- The Golden Eagles owned most of the final 20 minutes against IUPUI. Even Sutton acknowledged that.

"I thought the second half was about as complete of a game — or a half — as we've played in quite some time," Sutton said. "You shoot the heck out of the basketball. [And] I thought our defense was outstanding in spurts."

Making 66.7 percent (16 of 24) from the field is always a plus. IUPUI shot 48.1 percent (13 of 27) from the floor, but it wasn't nearly enough to keep pace with ORU.

The bad: The turnover total for ORU against IUPUI was far from superb. Sixteen giveaways marked the Golden Eagles' highest total in a Summit League game this year, exceeding the 15 turnovers at Denver.

The Golden Eagles cleaned up their act a little bit in the second half — seven turnovers, instead of nine in the first half — but better ball control is key to winning games the remainder of the regular season.

- Word played hero the first time around against IUPUI. He opted for a role reversal the second time around.

He checked in early on in the first half, and he immediately helped IUPUI gain its largest lead of the game. It all started at the 14:58 mark of the first half.

First, Word missed a dunk. Second, he hung on the rim after the failed dunk attempt. Third, he was slapped with a technical foul for hanging on the iron. Fourth, Marcellus Barksdale made both free throws, via the technical foul.

Certainly a four-pronged sequence that Word can't be pleased with.

He ended up playing 10 minutes with three points and an assist.

- The Word technical contributed to an already slow start for ORU. The Golden Eagles didn't score their 10th point until the 9:10 mark of the first half.

Slow starts have become rather alarming for ORU. Have to erase those sooner rather than later.

The reality: ORU is still in third place by itself in the Summit League standings, but the race for the regular-season crown go tighter on Thursday. Thanks to IPFW, South Dakota State fell out of first place, and North Dakota State reclaimed its spot atop the standings, thanks to a win over Omaha.

It appears that it'll be a three-team race to the title, with ORU still trying to play a little bit of catch-up. 

If the Golden Eagles want to continue mounting their comeback in the Summit League standings, they'll have to tackle a tough IPFW team on Saturday. It certainly won't be easy.

The Mastodons watched South Dakota State put together a decent offensive performance, while still blowing out the Jackrabbits by 10 points.

A win of any kind at IPFW on Saturday could surpass ORU's win at South Dakota as the best road victory of the year for the Golden Eagles.

Plus, it'd kickstart Sutton's pursuit of win No. 400.