Good showing without Reggie

[Quality Is Job 1]

Obviously, Truman isn't Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, Charlotte, or Gonzaga, but I was still impressed by how effectively the Billikens scored without being able to look to Reggie. Dwayne Polk, Anthony Drejaj, and Danny Brown all took turns creating offense for the team. It was my first time seeing Brown play, and I like what I saw. He's athletic and has a good basketball body. When he gets more experience, he'll be somewhat like Vas'shun Newborne: he'll do too many things well to keep him off the floor.

Newborne will probably lead the Billikens in minutes. He doesn't do much to draw attention to himself, but then you look up and see that he's gotten 15 points and 7 boards (generalization, not specific). I think he'll be the second-leading scorer this year.

Polk was fantastic, but he didn't play a perfect game, by any means. He'll still get better. It seemed to me that Polk was switching on picks when on defense. Is that by design? I thought it was Coach Soderberg's policy that players shouldn't switch.

I agree that Izik Ohanon had an unimpressive game. He didn't stand out, at all. He didn't shoot much, and he didn't rebound much, if at all.

Ian Vouyoukas is still a work in progress -- he's just a sophomore, so posters (like Roy) should stop expecting him to play like a senior -- but I thought he played decently today.

In all, for the Bills not to have their best player -- a likely all-conference pick -- they looked good.