Pilots vs USD, Thursday at 7PM, Root Sports & ESPN3

Since DD is looking for a sun lamp, I'll start this.  USD comes to town on a 4 game losing streak, is 0-4 in conference, and 5-10 overall.  They were swept at home last week by USF and SCU.  They are a poor shooting team, at 38% overall, 27% from 3P, and 63% on FTs. And 44% of their shots are taken from 3P, so they are only scoring 60 ppg.

Duda Sanadze (6'5" Sr.) is their leading scorer at 12 ppg for the year, but he did not play against USF and only got 3 against SCU in 13 minutes.  6'6" Jr Fwd Brett Bailey got 22 against SCU, and Vasa Pusika (6'5" Jr) got 19 against USF.  So hard to say where their points are going to come from. Their only big man is Jito Kok.

With GU last week, and BYU on Saturday, this is a "gotta win it" game.  Now that I've jinxed them, fortunately for me if the Pilots somehow lose, I'll be too busy celebrating my Powerball win to let it get me down.

Agreed that of all the games in conference play, this is the "have to" win home game.  And maybe the best news is that Johnny Dee finally graduated after last season!!    USD did beat SDSU in an outdoor game, so we know that they have been able to pull it together.

Speaking of Powerball, did you see the interesting concept the Winterhawks are employing for tonight's game?  I think its a clever idea!  O-Live Link

Heck, that's nothing.  I read on Facebook that if we took the $1.3 billion prize and split it among the 300 million people in the country, we'd give each person $4.3 million and end poverty.

  Math, people, math.

up7587 wrote:Since DD is looking for a sun lamp, I'll start this. 

As you can see, I'm not quite done with my sun lamp therapy.....but it's going well.
Good pregame rundown, 7587.  The only thing I can add is KenPom has UP by 9, and Las Vegas is starting with UP favored by 8.5.

This game is going to come down to who controls the tempo.  USD is going to try to slow it down & minimize the number of possessions in the game.  The Pilots need to play the game at their tempo.  Looking at the stats we average 10 more shots per game than USD.  What will help in this is defensive rebounding.  Mentioned above USD does not shoot well.  In order to keep the tempo up we will need to get the defensive rebounds.  We can't let them get an offensive rebound to run 25+ seconds off the clock on back to back possessions.

Both teams like to shoot a lot of 3's with USD averaging 24 attempts per game and UP at 26 attempts per game.  It seems like teams that normally don't shoot the 3 well do shoot it well against us.  I really don't want to see this happen.

Again this is a game the Pilots are predicted to win, which always scare us.  I see the Pilots coming with some great energy and score 45 points in the first half for a 15 point halftime lead and then see the lead fluctuate between 10-20 points in the 2nd half.

All I want for a late Christmas present is for Cameron Neubauer not to go off for about 10 points in three minutes like he did last year!

We did reasonably well during the last home stand . . .btw, enjoyed the humor from both Pilot fans above.

Reveno needs to shoot better second half.

Geezaldinho wrote:Reveno needs to shoot better second half.

Actually he needs to recruit players that can consistently make shots, rebound or play some defense. This is a new low... and that is saying something!

Pilots have been worse, but tonight we appeared to have a lower quality of players compared to our opponent. We are getting virtually nothing from the center position. We need a better inside presence so our shooters can get open looks.

Cue mikemac65

I got nothing.

Regardless of USD's record coming into the game, they were far and away the better team.

Defensively they were a very disciplined team, rarely allowing UP's guards to penetrate, and always bottling up UP's big men.

Offensively USD was very quick to the hoop and they never took the wild and crazy shots that UP was forced to attempt.

USD scored close to 20 points more than their season average by regularly going over and around UP's loose defense.  Yes, they shot 60% from the field, but half of their points (40) came as a result of layups/dunks as they literally blew by the UP defenders.

I was saddened when one of the nice guys in the game, Coach Bill Grier, was fired at the end of last season, but USD is now a much more disciplined and talented team under their new coaching staff.

Lost in the discussion of last night's debacle was the excellent, loud, and organized student section.  

Obviously the UP staff and student leaders have put a lot of effort into getting more student involvement at UP's games....it's just a shame they were not treated to a better on-court performance from their classmates.

DoubleDipper wrote:Lost in the discussion of last night's debacle was the excellent, loud, and organized student section.

They need some basic education on the game of basketball. Many of the students seemed to believe the game ended at halftime.

NoPoNeighbor wrote:

DoubleDipper wrote:Lost in the discussion of last night's debacle was the excellent, loud, and organized student section.

They need some basic education on the game of basketball. Many of the students seemed to believe the game ended at halftime.

Hahaha, my thought at the 12 minute mark was just the opposite, "I wonder why so many students are still here."

Many of us had to stay until the end....after all, we had to pay for our tickets!

There was a dorm competition to win some $s for best attendance.  I assume the prize was awarded at halftime.