Montana St. -- Sunday @ 2 PM

As a way of bringing some screaming noise to the Chiles Center on Sunday, and while the UP students are at the beginning of their month long break, all kids 12 years of age and younger will be admitted free to the Montana St. game.

Pass the word....let's have a home-court advantage!

Pilots favoured by 17, but I'm also thinking they'll have no problems getting up for this one considering (a) Montana State pasted them last year, and (b) they'll be free of academic-related stress with finals being over!

Yeah, but Sunday at 2PM?    What a lousy start time. I won't be able to be there, due to other commitments. Will be looking for good reports.

Statistically, UP is definitely the favorite in this game.  But we all recall 13 months ago when the team went to Bozeman with confidence in their favorite role and was literally blown out of the building, losing 83-64.

I’ve heard Coach Wolf mention the Bobcats being dangerous behind the line, and as UP has not been very good at defending the 3-ball, that might be a good way for them to get some points.  MSU is also very good at defensive rebounding, but terrible on the offensive boards....so it would seem defensive pressure on the shooters will be a key to UP success.  On offense, inside-outside!  Pound the ball inside, then "kick" it outside when needed for the open shot will continue to be the Pilots strategy, imo.

MSU is 2-5 in D-1 games with wins over Central Michigan and Cal St. Northridge (five days after losing to CSN on the road).  Strangely, the UP game is sandwiched between Walla Walla College and Southwest Christian College on MSU’s schedule…..so the team should be pretty focused on the Sunday afternoon matchup at the Chiles Center.

Favored by 17 points, it would appear the best strategy for the Pilots is to come out fast and aggressive and never let the Bobcats into the game……let’s hope there’s no repeat of last year.   

DeanMurdoch wrote:Pilots favoured by 17, but I'm also thinking they'll have no problems getting up for this one considering (a) Montana State pasted them last year, and (b) they'll be free of academic-related stress with finals being over!

b) the Pilots haven't been all that sharp in the past coming out of finals.

That is my major concern.

Hopefully with an extra day (playing Sunday, not Saturday), the Pilots can shake off any finals funk and steamroll the Bobcats!

Rev makes the worst subs!! We kill our own momentum. It's gonna be tough playing this way against teams in our conference.

As fun as it is to watch the offense run through Kevin I can't help but think that getting your best player more than two shots in the second half would have helped the cause.

newpilotfan wrote:Rev makes the worst subs!! We kill our own momentum.

  Um, can you expand on that.....?

I didn't find anything wrong with the substitutions this afternoon.  When you only get 8 bench points and 3 of those in the final 5 seconds, I don't see the Pilots winning any games that way.  In the North Texas loss there were only 11 bench points.  No points from Barker or Voldy makes it really tough to pull out wins.  Barker didn't even look to shoot.  He had a 5-6 foot shot off an offense rebound with nobody guarding him and he passed it out.  

We also shot too many three's early in the offense after only 1 or 2 passes and never looking at the bigs.  Then when we did get the ball into the bigs and they passed out from double teams no one shot the ball.

We only had 5 offense rebounds which was a season low. We had been averaging over 10 a game.  Haven't looked at all the stats but I would venture to guess this was a season low in shot attempts.

The Pilots winning is going to be dependent on getting bench scoring.  They need to be getting at least 15-20.

DoubleDipper wrote:

newpilotfan wrote:Rev makes the worst subs!! We kill our own momentum.

  Um, can you expand on that.....?

It's not so much the players he subs but the timing. Up 11 in the 1st half and the Bobcats playing on their heels he pulls 4 of the 5 starters and watches the lead dwindle to 2 before coming back with Kevin and Bryce who, IMO, were playing with a lot of energy and creating problems for the defense. Instead of forcing them to make an adjustment to us we pull back the attack and allow them to gain confidence and momentum that carried into halftime.

So, do you think the players shooting 20% for the first quarter of the game and turning into turnover artists has the teensiest to do with losing?

PurpleGeezer wrote:So, do you think the players shooting 20% for the first quarter of the game and turning into turnover artists has the teensiest to do with losing?

If you check the timestamp you'll notice that I didn't post that after we lost. I posted that observation when we still had an 11 point lead in the 1st half. I was predicting that we'd make the wholesale substitutions and then watch the lead disappear. I figured we'd be tied with 2 mins to go and then we'd go back to the starters who would then have to play catch up. Unfortunately my prediction was incorrect. The tie came around the 4 min mark.

I agree that we didn't play our best and that is the reason we lost the game. However, I do think that, on occasion, our coaches do more to help extinguish our momentum than our opponents game plan does. Just my humble opinion.

You may have a valid point, npf. I'm sure a number of us will be listening on Monday night if you make that point to Coach Reveno on Sport 910 at 7 PM.

Listeners are encouraged to call in with questions and comments at (503) 542-0910.  You can also interact on Twitter using the hashtag #Pilotson910.

I believe Coach has enough confidence in his bench to not expect a significant performance drop-off, and he likes to substitute liberally as a means of wearing down an opposition not so readily able to substitute.....but I'd like to hear Coach Rev's reaction to your comment.

In the pregame chalk talk, Coach Pfaff indicated that Montana State fouls a lot, and that the Pilots should take advantage of that.

We then proceed to shoot 23 threes and only get to the line 12 times. Montana State shot 11 threes and 31 free throws. So much for the game plan.

So much for the same old stories.  Excuses galore, we just came off exam week.  Againsr NTSU we had to play 3 days in a row
 Wow why don' t you just set up excuse central.  When your'e up by double digits, you don't call time out and send  in 4 to 5 subs.  Changed the whole tenor of the game
 Face it Rev is not a very good game coach.  Also, why do the coaches consistantly take over half of the time outs to discuss strategy  between themselves?  
 As bad as the reception in Mexico was, I could see a slow, stand around offense that did not pound  the ball inside
.
Whats with that?  I gave up my 30+ yesrs of season tiickets due to the increasingly disappointing losses against second tier opponents. EIE!

mike65mac wrote:When your'e up by double digits, you don't call time out and send  in 4 to 5 subs.  Changed the whole tenor of the game

Timeline -
- 14:53 left, 1st quarter: first and only Pilots timeout of quarter called. Reveno also makes three subs, the only time in the quarter he makes more than two subs at once.
- 5:50 left, 1st quarter: Pilots take 11-pt lead on van der Mars dunk
- 4:29 left, 1st quarter: Montana State gets an and-one and are now on a 6-0 run. Lead is down to five, and the first subs are made since 6:04. Wintering/Bailey come in, Carr/Riley go out.

I'm not defending the loss - it's the worst loss by a WCC team this season, and losing at home to a lower-tier Big Sky team isn't where any of us wanted the Pilots to be in mid-December. But the version of the events you posted just isn't accurate.