Some love (and hate) for Portland

Just a few things I saw this morning. ESPN has three references to our beloved Pilots this week.

The first comes from the weekly look at the Mid-Major Scene from writer Mark Adams of ESPN. In the "Others to watch" section we lead the way with these comments:

Others to watch

Portland (7-2): The Pilots' two losses are to Kentucky and Washington State. Everyone picked Gonzaga in the WCC with a nod here and there to Loyola Marymount and Saint Mary's, but coach Eric Reveno's team looks like a contender. Jared Stohl is one of the best long-range marksmen in the country. He's draining 53 percent of his 3-point attempts while averaging 15 points per game.

If you ask me, this won't change because of last nights result. A lot of people who don't watch the game and see the score will think it was a blowout but most media accounts of the game give credit to Portland. That goes a long way. While none of our losses are "bad" it would be nice to get a marquee win against a top team. I guess we will have to wait for that opportunity.

Also, there is a recap of the game that calls our team "Pesky" here's the link: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/recap?gameId=303400264

Third: Diamond Leung writes a blurb about the Stohl billboard mentioned in the other topic along with video of Jared. The link is here: http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/19373/portland-promotes-long-distance-shooting

just a note on the final mention, There was a Saint Mary's fan who was hatin' on the billboard, but an extremely hansom Pilot fan pointed out his errors in a response. Who could that have been????

One more quick note about things. It's nice to be in a "rebuilding year" with optimism. I'm one of the lucky ones who has only been a fan since '06 when I was a freshman, so I only know the Reveno era but I can understand how disheartening things once were. It's awesome to love a team with quality players and citizens who get into the headlines for their actions on the court, not off them, and to love a coach who cares about building a program the right way.

Some other devoted Pilot fan just helped to correct our wayward Gael fan...

Believe it or not, there was also a lot of respect to the team shown by the UW commentators. I'm not sure if it was Kevin Calabro or Bob Rondo or someone else, but, one of them mentioned that we had recently beat Montana who took down UCLA at Pauley Pavilion:

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-1207-ucla-basketball-20101207,0,4809371.story