I just checked something on Osiris Eldridge...feel free to check yourself...
since the ISU site has a game-line play-by-play for every one of their games, I thought I'd check how often Osiris helps his team down the stretch...
I counted all of his shots and scoring in the final 3 minutes of every Valley game...
What I found is quite interesting...
If you're a gamer, a POY candidate, then you want the ball in your hands and you help your team by hitting baskets down the stretch, right.....
Well, in 15 MVC games thus far (and I included their one OT period), Osiris Edridge has made only 4 baskets in the final 3 minutes of games & OT's...
only 4!...and if you expand that search to the final FOUR minutes, then the number jumps all the way to 5 baskets in the final four minutes of Valley games & OT periods..... (he had one bucket recently at the 3:58 mark).
This is where he should shine and be making buckets, instead his shooting pct in the final minutes of games is abysmal...plus there are turnovers, fouls, etc...
PLUS...of the four baskets in the final 3 minutes...three of them came in one game...a bad loss at Drake when ISU trailed at half 35-15!
The game at Drake was where OE was scoreless in the first half then launched a bunch of shots in a losing effort in the 2nd half...(they still lost by 10 and the game was never really that close.)
Those 3 buckets in the final 3 minutes of that game were meaningless, as they were just to pad O's stats, and he was launching against Drakes subs.
The one and only decent 2nd half or late game performance came in a blowout loss...and the only other basket inside the final 3 minutes of any Valley game was when he lauched 5 times in the overtime period at SIU and made only one of them helping his team to the loss down at Carbondale...
(finishing the game 5-21, while his counterparts Dillard, Freeman, & Bocot went off for 44 pts.)
I can't find any examples where OE helped win a game in the late minutes. Has there ever been such a game?