Game Preview: Home Opener vs. Holy Cross College

The Crusaders return to Valparaiso to welcome Holy Cross College in their 2011-2012 home opener.  The Saints come in having lost their first two games (they play another between the time of this post and the game on Monday) to Bethel College and Andrews University.  Game time is 7:05pm on Monday night.

Get to know your opponent
The Saints have had a rough go of it early on falling to Bethel by a point and Andrews U. by 25.  A couple guys worth watching for Holy Cross are Yama Kader (6'1'' Junior Guard) and Tayler Williams (6'8'' Senior Forward).  Kader went off for 23 points (4-7 from 3pt range) while Williams posted a double double scoring 18 points and collecting 11 rebounds in the same game.  Other then these two there doesn't appear to be much scoring on the roster for the Saints.

Holy Cross College is quite young.  Founded in 1966, Wikipedia lists only four famous alumni.  Skip Holtz the son of Lou Holtz and head football coach at USF, Jeff Smoke an Olympic kayak racer, and Rudy Ruettiger from the movie Rudy were all listed.  One more interesting note about Holy Cross is that they require all Bachelor of Arts students go on a global immersion experience.

The Game
The Crusaders should find it pretty easy going in their home opener.  I suspect we will see a pretty one sided affair by early in the second half.  Some things I will be watching for include: will Will Bogan's solid play from GSU carry over, can the team hit a higher percentage of their 3 point shots, and has the second unit continued their gelling process?  Only three weeks left until the HL opener at Butler (who lost at Evansville by 3 in OT earlier today)!


Prediction
With the way the guys played Friday night in a 90 point effort, I will throw out a score of 79-55 as my prediction with Valpo coming out the victors.  I think the entire roster is going to see plenty of playing time.