Pilots vs. CalSt. Northridge, Wednesday 12/4, 7:00pm

Another home game, against another struggling opponent. CSUN is 1-7 against a challenging schedule. They lost 5 road games and 2 home games, before beating Fresno St. by 1 point in their last outing. KenPom has them at #232, just behind UP's #225.

The Matador's key player is 5'8" guard Terrell Gomez, averaging 22 ppg. He got 31 against Fresno, making 7-14 3Pts and 6-6 on FTs. He also got 5 RBs, so he'll probably dominate us on the boards.

CSUN plays mostly guards and wings, with a 6'9" center from China averaging less than 14 min/game. Their leading rebounder is a 6'4" G. They don't block a lot of shots (2.0/game), but their leading shot blocker is Ron Artest III. They shoot decently from 3P range, 37.8%.

If the Pilots look only at CSUN's record, and don't get their scorers going early, they could be in trouble. CSUN's strength of schedule is 44th, while UP's 330th.

I thought before the season this was going to be the Pilots' toughest home game of the year.

That was before Lamine Diane (Big West Player of the Year) was ruled ineligible for this semester, but as up7587 said they've played one of the tougher schedules in the nation up to this point and appear to have turned a corner in the last week. Not only the win over Fresno, but also a couple of tight neutral-court losses to competent Green Bay and Colgate teams.

Definitely not your standard 1-7 team over there. Go Pilots.

Now we know what happens when the 3P shots aren't falling. They shot 20% tonight, when shooting even 5 points less than average would have resulted in a win.
Coach Johnson's post-game comments were that the team played out of character, a little too selfish. Definitely saw a couple shots jacked up that made no sense.

Well... that Northridge game was real disappointing. I guess our offense has been pretty dependent on the lights-out three point shooting. And when there was an off night shooting from beyond the arc, we had no plan b.