Doane University Preview

Date: Wednesday, October 30th

Time: 8:00 PM ET/7:00 PM CT

Location: The Vault, Lincoln, NE

TV: None

Online Broadcast: BTN+ (Hope you have a subscription, because you need one for this, and 3 other games this season)
Play-by-play: Dustyn Stortzum
Analyst: Buzzy Caruthers
Radio: Learfield-IMG Husker Sports Network, including 590 AM (Omaha), 1400 AM (Lincoln) and 880 AM (Lexington)
Play-by-play: Kent Pavelka
Analyst: Jake Muhleisen
Online Radio: Available on Huskers.com, Huskers App, TuneIn.com/Huskers and TuneIn App

Head Coach: Ian McKeithen (4th season, 36-59 at Doane)

2018-19 Record: 9-21 (5-15 Great Plains Athletic Conference)
2019-20 Record: 0-3 (Yes, they’re already playing regular season games)

Team Preview

Right off the bat, a few random thoughts about the Doane Tigers:

1. They are former rivals of Nebraska Wesleyan from back when Wesleyan was still in GPAA when my husband went there. So therefore, I hate Doane and want the Huskers to beat them by at least 50. 135-28 would be an ideal and plausibly realistic score to hope for I suppose.
2. That isn’t actually that unrealistic of a score given how bad they look to be.
3. Their home-court floor is really ugly. Not TCU level ugly, but it’s needs a re-do.

Now that I’ve gotten all the hard hitting, quality commentary out of the way that you all enjoy so much, onto the actually relevant preview information.

The most important takeaway you should garner from this preview is the fact that last season Doane lost to reigning national champion Nebraska Wesleyan! So, take that thirteen point loss and still continue to stew in your own pity and woeful inadequacy a year later Tigers!

Gone from last season’s roster is the team’s leading scorer, Nick Kornieck, who averaged 17 points per game. Also gone is the team’s second leading scorer, Koh Flippin. However, returning for the Tigers are ten other players from their 9-21 squad. They were picked 10th in the Great Plains Athletics Conference preseason poll, feature 13 Nebraskans on their roster, and 3 of those are from Lincoln.

The key returners for the Tigers are Anthony Laravie and Trace Tupper. Anthony averaged 12.6 points a game on 37.9% shooting from deep. He also averaged 1.9 assists per game, 0.6 steals, and 1.5 turnovers. Trace Tupper shot 74% from inside the arc to average a team fourth best 11.4 points per game. However, he did this while only shooting an average of 6 field goals per game and no attempts from deep. Trace also averaged 3.7 turnovers per game and 2.4 fouls, while fouling out twice. Finally, another notable returner is Zach Witters who averaged 1.6 assists per game, 1.33 turnovers, 5.6 points, and 1 steal.

Thus far this season, as of writing this piece, I only have stats for two of the three games Doane has played. On October 22nd, Doane lost at home to York College, 65-70. They also played in a tournament down in Charlotte Amalie in the US Virgin Islands hosted by the University of the US Virgin Islands. Doane lost both games in the tournament, including to 21st ranked Warner University 82-68 on Saturday, October 26th, and to the University of the VI 75-67 on Sunday, October 27th.

As I mentioned, I only have stats so far for the York and Warner games. In both, Anthony Laravie led the teams in points, scoring 27 against York and 21 against Warner. Second leading scorer was Isiah Sykes with 11 points against York and Miguel Lopez’s 11 points against Warner. Overall, Doane averaged 18.5 turnovers between the two games compared to only 4.5 steals and 9 assists. However, Doane did average a whopping 40.5 rebounds per game. This includes out-rebounding Warner on the offensive glass 15-6, and total rebounding besting York by 7 and Warner by 11.

Prediction

While I was mostly joking about 135-28 as a final score earlier, the fact is this should be a 50+ point win tomorrow night. Doane is a not particularly good DIII program right now. Even with what will likely be a lot of lineup trials and missed executions in schemes, the talent differential is huge here. Doane offers a nice scrimmage style arrangement for trying a lot of line-ups and testing fundamentals of the offensive and defensive schemes. This game should never be competitive at any point (except maybe on the glass, and we should be concerned if that ends up the case), especially with the Tigers flying home from the Lesser Antilles over the weekend and facing their fourth game against the Huskers in nine days. Let’s call the final 103-56.