Why are the Pilots 10-0 at home, and miserable on the road?

1) Because Geez,UP,Stoney,Nut, and others carry their good luck charms to the Pilot Games & forget them when they are fortunate enough to attend road games

2) Because of the weak, apathetic student body support, just kidding, cant even make that excuse in this case

3) Because along with the new whiz bang SCORE BOARD Williams and the President of the University installed state of the art homing devices in Nem and Stohls body's so that they could make their shots when they shot the three point goals

4) Because the Pilots leave their Sports Pschiologist in Portland at the security gate and choose to take the student mgr on the road with them (better to have fluids,clean uniforms, and towels than clean minds)

5)Because they miss the food at the student union

6)OR because they leave their shots (literally)& micro-brews, in Portland with the PILOTNATION, END OF DISCUSSION


*** You guys better have the priest say an extra special sermon for the Pilots and FIGHTING IRISH AFTER YESTERDAY terrible defeats in Mens Basketball....***


MesaPilot1

7) because despite hiring a new director of officials,( you know who, MESA) the WCC still has the most creative homer refs in the nation.

Purplegeezer wrote:7) because despite hiring a new director of officials,( you know who, MESA) the WCC still has the most creative homer refs in the nation.

That's GU's story, anyway, and they're sticking to it. I watched both games, and the Pilots have no such complaints. Sure, there was a foul or two that caused a head scratch, but nothing that changed the facts that the Pilots got dominated due to poor shooting and poor defense. No homers needed in our case.

Agreed, officiating had no impact on our results this weekend. We were flat out ineffective.

Our miserable offensive production/execution has killed us in the LMU, @USF and @SCU games... and lets be honest it wasn't great vs. Pepp, either. The long range shots haven't been falling, and we haven't been getting enough clean looks (defenses have figured us out), and we haven't been able to adapt. If we dont figure out the offensive end in a hurry, we are in trouble.

Our defense also faltered this weekend, particularly vs. USF... It's gut check time!

I wouldn't go so far as to say we're miserable on the road.

We beat three good teams on the road this year: Montana (15-5, 1st place in Big Sky at 7-1), Idaho (12-7, 2nd place in WAC at 5-2), and Denver (10-10, 1st place in Sun Belt division at 6-1). And we also beat Portland State, which has a winning record.

So I don't think it's anything about the road per se - I just think the team is struggling right now in general. I mean... we're lucky we're not 1-4 in WCC play right now. It was only by the grace of God we beat LMU, and we didn't look very pretty against Pepperdine either.

I'm not a good enough student or analyst of basketball to put my finger on the problem, but while I understand the harping on defense from the coaches (when do coaches NOT harp on defense?), to me it's our offense that has been the root problem. We just don't get easy points. We're not shooting the ball well at all at this point, and while Luke has been great, we're not getting much from the other bigs. And that's not even getting into the obvious problems at the point.

I'm hopeful that we can return to the team that was scoring effortlessly earlier in the season (remember when we started seemingly every game up 20-5 after five minutes?), but more and more I'm preparing myself for the fact that the WCC season is going to be an absolute dogfight. No easy games, at home or on the road. I'm thankful we have some good senior leadership to help us through it, and I'm glad that guys like Tim and Tanner and Ryan and Riley will get some experience - they'll need it next year.

Guys, remember... heading into this season, we all expected something like this. It was a heck of a lot of fun to go on a roll and get our record up to 12-3 during non-conference play, but a new season started in January and we're going to have to adjust and adapt to it.

One thing I thought about during this road trip... USF and SCU are very young teams. All the players who starred for USF - Doolin, Blackwell, Williams, and Petrovic - are either sophomores or freshmen, and Colario is a junior. For SCU, the senior Dowdell killed us, but beyond that it was Foster (soph.), Roquemore (frosh.), and Trasolini (junior).

My point? My point is that since Portland relies so heavily on its experienced seniors and juniors, that really helped us get off to a good start. But these younger teams - both of whom start true freshmen at the point - are starting to round into shape. It was hubristic of us to think we could waltz down there and collect a few easy W's.

A return to basics is what this team needs. Play smart defensively, set strong picks, get after loose balls and take whatever shots the defense gives you. As good as we have been at the 3 pointer early in the season, unless you are shooting hot just jacking up 3 after 3 really lets the defense off easy and kills your ability to effectively offensive rebound.

It just seems like our game revolves around the long shot or getting the ball down low to Luke, with nothing in between, perhaps that neglected mid-range is the answer to opening up everything else... The WCC teams have clearly figured out how to interrupt our offensive efficiency, and its pretty clear that as long as our shooting woes continue, the coaches will have to look to something different to try and generate something (or it will be a long conference schedule...)

There's the old phrase: live by the 3 pointer, die by the 3 pointer. Many teams go cold in their shooting on the road at every level...in the NBA as well. For a while, I was really advocating for more screen and roll and pick and roll plays for Nem and Stohl. But, honestly both of those guys went into a shooting funk in the last game.

In my opinion, our guys just have to find ways to go inside more often and take higher percentage shots on nights when the 3s aren't dropping. I don't think it's going out on a limb to say that our 2-3 zone hasn't been as effective in the past two games either...

On a more positive note, we play the worst team in the conference at home in our next game. I think we've got a great chance to turn the table against USD.

Someone touched on this, but we havve to remember that the coaches preseason called for us to finish in fifth place. These are the peopke who know us best. They knew who we were bringing in, five frosh and one JC.
we had four and a half experienced players coming back.
None of our frosh are impact players, so they will taake some time but they show potential (hopefully).
If its fidfth place then wait till next year.

upsailor wrote:Someone touched on this, but we havve to remember that the coaches preseason called for us to finish in fifth place. These are the peopke who know us best. They knew who we were bringing in, five frosh and one JC.
we had four and a half experienced players coming back.
None of our frosh are impact players, so they will taake some time but they show potential (hopefully).
If its fidfth place then wait till next year.

That's a good point, but, once we beat a really quality team in Florida Atlantic (and what's turned into a good Montana team on the road as well) and raced off to a 14-4 start, the expectations went up. I disagree that the "experts" know the team best, and I think that most people underestimated the kind of player that Mitrovic would be for us this year. Polls are all about speculation. Did those experts also predict that Gonzaga would lose to SCU and USF this early? No.

It is what it is; there's a lot of parity in the WCC right now...and we ran into to teams that were better than advertized on the road. They proved that by beating both us and Gonzaga.

DaTruRochin wrote:A return to basics is what this team needs. Play smart defensively, set strong picks, get after loose balls and take whatever shots the defense gives you. As good as we have been at the 3 pointer early in the season, unless you are shooting hot just jacking up 3 after 3 really lets the defense off easy and kills your ability to effectively offensive rebound.

It just seems like our game revolves around the long shot or getting the ball down low to Luke, with nothing in between, perhaps that neglected mid-range is the answer to opening up everything else... The WCC teams have clearly figured out how to interrupt our offensive efficiency, and its pretty clear that as long as our shooting woes continue, the coaches will have to look to something different to try and generate something (or it will be a long conference schedule...)

DTR, I think you hit the nail on the head, but of course Mesa let loves the pound it into the high% shot. the Pilots seem to play the best when they staRty the game pounding the ball into Luke, Kramer, BIG Jasonn & BIG Red in the first half, it opens nem, waterford up for shots and gives JARED.01 sec of space that he needs for his "got it" !!!

Inside to outside because besides Timmy & Nem, Jared somewhat are about the only one who can create ala TJ or Nik of recent years....I can't wait for our blue-chipper from hs class of 2011 to get on the bluff next fall


Mesa pilot

Gee, Fla. At. & Montana, are they like Ohio State & Duke ?

upsailor wrote:Gee, Fla. At. & Montana, are they like Ohio State & Duke ?

good one, upsailor!!! lol, gotta maintain our humor during these frustrating stretch of games, right?



MesaPilot1

upsailor wrote:Gee, Fla. At. & Montana, are they like Ohio State & Duke ?

Don't need them:

UP>SMC>St. John's>West VA>Miami >Jacksonville> FLA>FLA St.> Duke

Or

UP>St. Louis> Jacksonville> FLA> FLA St.> Duke



Or, St Johns is up over Duke by 20 at the half. So we might see

UP>SMC>St. Johns>Duke

Are you booking your Final Four trip now?

PilotNut wrote:Are you booking your Final Four trip now?

Are Duke fans?

Purplegeezer wrote:Are Duke fans?

Well, they are getting blasted by SJU right now... so maybe not yet.

The one we will be talking about tomorrow is

UP>Montana>UCLA> BYU

Which would have been a lot better if BYU didn't tank against New Mexico.

I know I'm crazy now, finally I've answered my own question....Because thats just the way the Heavenly Father, Mother Earth,etc, etc ...keeps a smile on a Pilot fans face.....