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Last season, Green Bay almost knocked off Valparaiso in the Horizon League Championship game. A little nudge this way or that might have had the Phoenix dancing instead of the Crusaders.
It was all a look ahead to this season which has been dominated by Green Bay. They face Valparaiso on Wednesday night, but look like they might have a little disadvantage inside.
According to the Green Bay Press Gazette, senior center Alec Brown is questionable for the contest after injuring his shoulder during Sunday's game against Detroit.
"He is getting evaluated by our doctors on a daily basis," Wardle said. "But he is taking today with his rehab and taking it kind of day-by-day. He is going to keep getting evaluated every day to see kind of how it progresses, but the X-rays were all good and it looks like it was just sort of a shoulder sprain."
Big blow? You bet. Brown is a massive presence inside, and he can extend a defense all the way outside. For the year, he is shooting 25-for-53 from 3-point range, a 47.2 percent clip for a guy that is 7-1. Not exactly your prototypical long-range option, but one that has been pretty key for the Phoenix in their conference run.
Add in that Brown has a 9.8 percent block rate, which just sounds ridiculous -- imagine blocking one out of every ten shots that come at you, that is what Brown does.
No one else on the Phoenix can provide all of that in one package, and this would put a lot of pressure on Jordan Fouse and Greg Mays to fill in a seriously unfillable gap. Not that Fouse and Mays aren't very good in their own right, they just can't be themselves and Brown at the same time.