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Indy Terry wrote:

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Where have you been? Broekhoff and Kenney are just the additions to the new talent at Valpo next year. Brandon McPherson (Lawrence North) red-shirted and will be playing healthy again. In the one good game he had last season he scored 20 against the Bulldogs at Valpo on a bad leg. Brandon being from Indy wants Butler bad! Cory Johnson is an Iowa State transfer from Duluth, MN who was the best player in practice sessions last season. Johnson sat out last season due to the transfer. Brandon Wood started for Southern Illinois his freshman year but got hurt after 5 games. Last season he played for Highland Community College in northwestern Illinois. Highland finished 7th in the nation in the NJCAA tournament with Wood being a big part of the team. Highland was 11-1 in conference and 30-6 for the season. Wood was their 2nd leading scorer. He played his high school ball at Kokomo. Milos Milosevic from Montenegro (eastern Europe) and Yuba College in California is 6'7" and 235 lbs as a sophomore this coming season. Yuba College won the Bay Valley Conference for the 3rd straight year and had 25 wins finishing in the California Sweet 16. Milosevic was recruited by Hartford, Cal Poly SLO, TCU, Fresno State, Washington State and Seattle. With his 4.0 GPA and Electrical Engineering major Milosevic decided on Valpo. Milos ruptured his appendix last season and only played half the year. Tommy Kurth from Penn HS in Mishawaka and Chris Halvorsen 6' 8" from Minneapolis were also recruited as freshmen.

I have been around long enough to hear you and every other Valpo fan talking about how next year's team will be so good that Butler won't be able to stick with them. Look, I know what these guys all did in their high school/junior college careers and that's all well and good, but it's quite a transition going from there to D-1 college ball. Yes I know Shelvin and Gordon had good seasons last year, but there's no guarantee that it's going to happen for everyone, and there's no guarantee that this team (Butler) won't have a bit of a sophmore slump. Kenney could be something very special this year, or it might take him some time to adjust. I would expect something in the middle. Broekoff is pretty solid, but let's see what happens if and when they do get to play the Americans. Johnson might be a heck of a practice player, but practice players aren't always the best game players, and let's face it, it's not like he was the best practice player on a team that was gunning for the top spot in the Horizon League last year. Brandon Wood was the second best player on a junior college team that finished seventh in the nation? Jeremie Simmons was THE BEST junior college player in the nation a short while ago and only averaged 6.8 ppg and 2.5 apg last year for the Buckeyes, so junior college success (he averaged somewhere in the neighborhood of 23 ppg at JC) does not guarantee D-1 success. Is Milosevic related to that D-Bag that we had to kick out of the Balkans a decade back? If so, let me know when Slobadon will be at the ARC so I can throw eggs at him.

My basic point is, yes, there are some things to be excited about, but after last season, Valpo's got several teams in the league that they'll have to climb over, and just because you've got talented players against high schoolers, junior college players and the 2008 Valpo team with a 9-22 record, does not mean you automatically win. Good luck to you next season, and hopefully these recruits pan out the way you assume they will.