Ouch--LMU loses big time

LMU, next Monday's opponent, was down by 30 at the half 56-26, to Cal St. Bakersfield, another future Pilot opponent. CSUB goes on to win 98-64...

CSUB is not good (now 4-12), and they knock LMU to 3-13. Wow. LMU has lost 6 in a row, and 9 of their last 10... not really on a roll to start conference play. How much longer before Coach Rodney Tention is on the hot seat?

Yeah seriously... I saw that score and just kind of shook my head. I mean, I'm sure it was one of those games where everything just goes wrong (like our game against SMC in the tournament last year) but still... to lose that badly at home to a weak team? Not a good sign at all.

Still - we've got to go down there and pick up the W. Earlier in the year we did a good job of playing on the road (beating Liberty and Idaho State, beating Montana, playing UW really tough) but have slipped since then, dropping to Eastern Washington and now Yale and Army. So I hope we can get back some of that earlier confidence playing away from the Chiles Center.

Anyway... as for Tention... I feel bad for him because he's had some tough luck. The 2005-06 team was one missed lay-up away from the NCAAs and the 2006-07 team started off really well and looked like the Zags' main competition before Worthy's injury derailed the whole season. So I don't really hold his W/L record (especially last year) against him.

But when it comes to recruiting, I think he just hasn't really brought in the players necessary to compete. He's had three classes now, and really only Orlando Johnson and Shawn Deadwiler have shown themselves as possible All-WCC players some day. He does have two pretty good recruits coming in in Wendell Wright and Kwame Brown, but they have no big guys at all (Marko Deric and Max Craig don't really count) other than the freshman Tim Diedrichs.

I don't know... maybe they are in a similary place to where we are in the sense that they are super young with only one senior, but I just kind of get the sense that we are a team that has some upward momentum with our recruiting and style and that LMU is kind of stuck in a morass.