The Iona Gaels will be the Valparaiso Crusader's first round opponent in the CIT tournament this Wednesday night. If you are like me, you've heard of Iona but don't know much about them. My first question was "What in the world is a Gael?" Naturally I went to the most reliable source, Wikipedia, and found that a Gael is a speaker of one of the Goidelic languages: Irish, Scottish, Gaelic, and Manx.
Iona is located in New York and compete in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. The team representing this conference in the NCAA tournament is St. Peter's a 14 seed who will take on Purdue in the opening round. Now on to the important aspects of the Iona Gaels, their team.
Iona defeated two NCAA tournament teams in St. Peters (twice) and Richmond. Iona is a streaking team having won 9 of their last 10 games. Some of the players to watch on the Gaels are Mike Glover (18 ppg, 10 rpg), Scott Machado (13 ppg), and Kyle Smythe (10 ppg, leading 3pt shooter). As a team they rebound well, force a lot of turnovers, and can put up points (79 points per game team average). Head Coach Tim Cluess is in his first year as the Gael head man.
What Valpo needs to do to win, the game preview, and prediction coming up later.
Iona seems to be a tough team, but almost similar to Valpo ranking wise. Their strength of schedule was 123 compared to Valpo's 116. And their RPI was 68 opposed to Valpo's 70. Should be an interesting matchup. Earlier in the year Iona fell to Cleveland St. and played Syracuse real tough. Should be a good game. Any idea if it will be on the Horizon League Network?
ReplyDeleteIt is not going to be on the Horizon league network, all I could see on their live events were baseball games. I believe the network carrying the CIT games is Fox College Sports network, but it looks like you can also see the games online at http://www.b2livetv.com/partner_members.asp?id=379
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