Whew...

we beat LMU to go 9-3 in conference and hang on to second place in the WCC. This got a little nerve-racking at a very late stage in the second half. At one point, LMU was up by five. But the Pilots did a good job of keeping their composure to fight off an LMU team that played well tonight.

USF beat Santa Clara tonight in OT. You just never know in the WCC, and that's what makes it such a fun conference to follow. It still looks like if we beat Santa Clara next Saturday, we'll get the 2nd seed. I seriously doubt that USD will beat Gonzaga and end up passing Santa Clara, which we don't want. If we lose one of these last two games, we don't want it to be the Santa Clara game. USD has no shot of passing Santa Clara unless they beat Gonzaga and us, which is highly, highly unlikely.

But it would be really sweet if we could sweep this last road series for a lot of reasons: 20 wins, best WCC regular season finish ever at 11-3, finish 5-2 on the road to go along with a 6-1 home record (which are both really impressive), mojo/confidence going into the tournament, and the 2nd seed of course. It's that time of year... the best time of the year in college hoops - the last week in February and March Madness.

Whew! is right... LMU put up one heck of a fight and disrupted us quite well for many stretches of the game. Glad to see our guys recover and gather themselves to take care of the Lions down the stretch.

We won the game!!! Now it's time for my self imposed 12 hr probationary silence period .Portland trip has been great this year,see you next year or in Vegas at WCC tourney time, hopefully.

Mesa - Good thing we won, or we wouldn't have let you back in the Chiles Center... Just kidding of course. Hope to meet you at a game someday.

Whew is right. I didn't like that we let them hang around as long as they did. There was a stretch where we did get frustrated at some quirky calls, but it was nice that they kept it together. Last year, I don't think they had the toughness to pull it out.


As unsettled as we looked some times, there were a lot of positives. Kramer's 19 points is certainly the biggest. It's nice to see we can get an inside pressence from more places to keep the defense honest on the shooters. I think we need to get Mesa up here more often if that's what it takes to get him going.

But there were other things, too

we dominated the paint and rebounds
5 guys in double figures.
Nik gets another double-double.
We're still hitting threes (50%)
55% from the field


And the big one --- 12-2 at home this year. That's better than any conference team.

And you thought the Kennel was tough.

Yikes, that is a tough team for one with a record like that! Yes, there were too many Pilot mistakes and turnovers, but a lot was forced. Both LMU and Pepperdine played mostly frosh and sophs, and look like they could be very tough in a couple years.

With 9 wins, my realistic expectations have been met. Now I'd love to have them exceeded. I don't know what to expect from any teams in this conference now; too many strange results. Go Pilots, win out!

Rev's take (from the Trib:
Reveno wasn’t discouraged by Saturday’s performance. Encouraged, in fact, if only because the Pilots have pretty much won the games they’re supposed to win this season, and then some. “We’re 18-9 and 9-3,” he said. “To go through a season without any slip-ups is pretty good. The sign of a team that can do that is a team that stumbles a little bit but bounces back and wins.”

LINK

up7587 wrote:Rev's take (from the Trib:
Reveno wasn’t discouraged by Saturday’s performance. Encouraged, in fact, if only because the Pilots have pretty much won the games they’re supposed to win this season, and then some. “We’re 18-9 and 9-3,” he said. “To go through a season without any slip-ups is pretty good. The sign of a team that can do that is a team that stumbles a little bit but bounces back and wins.”

LINK

I would argue that there are at least 4 games they should get back. Northern Colorado, Eastern Washington, PSU, and UO. But really I am not going to complain about it. Going into the season I would have been happy with a .500 record both in and out of conference. To me, 9 conference wins was a BEST CASE scenario, the way I see it, they are playing with house money they rest of the season (like the gambling reference, considering the tourney is in Vegas, pretty terrible huh?).

Agree on all counts ^^^...

Sure, there were a few pre-season games I'd like to have back, but as far as the WCC regular season, my expectations have been surpassed. 9 wins was a best case scenario for me as well. I wanted to see the Chiles Center to be a difficult venue for teams to come in and win in the WCC. We went 6-1 with the only loss to Gonzaga. We're 3-2 on the road, with 2 to go. The two losses have been to Gonzaga and St Marys. My best case scenario was to go 4-3 on the road. We're right there to achieve that goal. Our only losses have been to Gonzaga and St Marys. We swept Pepperdine, LMU, and USF, with a chance to do the same to USD and SCU with wins this week. That is unbelievable!! We beat the teams we were supposed to and as Rev said, had no "slip ups", which is a sign of a maturing team.

We are one year ahead of schedule and have no seniors. Everyone is back in 2009-10.

We've waited a long time to be in this position. Enjoy it folks. We deserve to have some fun after all the miserable years since Jack Avina left (sans 94-96 during Chavez's first two years).

Well, that was not the prettiest game, but a good test of the Pilots' character. They were making a concerted effort to get the ball inside on just about every possession. A lot of the turnovers in the second half were from trying to force passes down to the big guys. I'm with Matty--those were four games the Pilots probably win at this point in time.

As Coach Jackson said on the postgame show, the Pilots are making Portland a difficult road trip. Some credit for that goes to the great work the student leaders have done.

Side note: Mesa, I know you were probably disappointed Libbey wasn't there, but the two bald guys seemed to fill in for him quite well.