Pilots v. Vikings Series

According to Crawford's Court, the series will resume next season:

Breaking News---After so much concern, begging and hammering of both schools by Crawford's Court, because it is my home town, Portland State and University of Portland have decided to once again resume their crosstown rivalry in men's basketball, after not playing this past season for some unknown reason. I congratulate coaches Eric Reveno and Tyler Geving for getting this going once again. No exact date has been set yet, but this game is a go once again, will be played at the Chiles Center and it never should have disappeared even for one year, but now I can relax. Now Gonzaga and Washington Huskies it is time for you to wake up and start playing each other again, throw the hard feelings out and get it done, the college game out west needs rivalries badly.

UW needs to grow a pair and play GU, I agree.

ShipstadPilot11 wrote:UW needs to grow a pair and play GU, I agree.

There are other teams in this state that could follow suit.

PurpleGeezer wrote:

ShipstadPilot11 wrote:UW needs to grow a pair and play GU, I agree.

There are other teams in this state that could follow suit.

As far as the Ducks/Beavers playing us? For sure.

Why not an early-season, round-robin tournament every year with Oregon's four Division-I programs? That would be a great way to kick off the season, and a great tradition to get going. The location could rotate every year among the four campuses. Or even a three-year rotation: Eugene, Corvallis, Memorial Coliseum.

Washington should do the same, except five teams is a little more tricky.

NoPoNeighbor wrote:Why not an early-season, round-robin tournament every year with Oregon's four Division-I programs? That would be a great way to kick off the season, and a great tradition to get going. The location could rotate every year among the four campuses. Or even a three-year rotation: Eugene, Corvallis, Memorial Coliseum.

Washington should do the same, except five teams is a little more tricky.

I would love it too. Why not? Because UO and OSU won't be into it.

Why shouldn't people be more into an intrastate rivalry between the top-level schools in this state? Don't offer reasons, it is a rhetorical statement.

You would think that after we beat UO at home a couple years ago that people would be more into seeing it or getting revenge at least. In my mind, revenge, or retribution for that matter, does not come in the form of shutting out another school. This state is just about the Ducks/Beavers, but it doesn't have to be. PSU is the only school to make it into the post season recently in basketball (twice, in fact). We offer decent competition to UO and OSU in baseball, too.

I'm going for a low blow here when I say that when you look at it, we are all pretty mediocre schools when it comes to sports. The exceptions are OSU baseball and gymnastics, Oregon XC and track, and UP soccer and XC. We could be so much more spirited. Unless we pull together and show some interest in these games, we might as well keep losing our talented HS players to the Kentucky's, Duke's, UCLA's, etc. I think that the best players that have grown up in Oregon and are playing in Oregon are probably UO's E.J. Singler and Garrett Sim, but I could be wrong.

NoPoNeighbor wrote:Why not an early-season, round-robin tournament every year with Oregon's four Division-I programs? That would be a great way to kick off the season, and a great tradition to get going. The location could rotate every year among the four campuses. Or even a three-year rotation: Eugene, Corvallis, Memorial Coliseum.

Washington should do the same, except five teams is a little more tricky.

Wasn't that essentially the format of the Far West Classic back in the day?

the reason the pilots and vikings did not play last year was larr4y williams. i was told that he told rev that it was better to play a more prestigious team than psu and lose thha take a chancce on losing to psu.confidence ?

upsailor wrote:the reason the pilots and vikings did not play last year was larr4y williams. i was told that he told rev that it was better to play a more prestigious team than psu and lose thha take a chancce on losing to psu.confidence ?

It was a little more complicated than that. The "prestigious team" was KU, and we have to go back again. Part of the deal with playing the Nationally ranked guys is that they own your schedule for two years.

PSU also had previous dates committed that overlapped the periods UP was free.

The two teams just didnt have a window when they could both play

PurpleGeezer wrote:It was a little more complicated than that. The "prestigious team" was KU, and we have to go back again. Part of the deal with playing the Nationally ranked guys is that they own your schedule for two years.

I'm just assuming your "word replacement" (whatever that is) was made in Kansas and it made you write KU instead of UK.

Had the opportunity to talk to a number of our players recently, and one of the topics was playing UK vs. playing some other school such as PSU or Oregon. Everyone I spoke with agreed they would love to play UK every year just to have the chance to play the BEST!

Don't get me wrong, they'd like to play UO and PSU, but not nears as much as UK.

Because they play with and against most of the PSU players in pick-up games during summer, they would very much like to play them to have bragging rights (or not) for the rest of the year. To the players, PSU was more important than UO or OSU. Remember, many/most of our guys are not from Oregon, so those two schools really aren't even on their radar. It's more a fan thing at this point, but that might change if we can get a home-and-home thing going.

With the addition of BYU and Pacific, we will of course be seeing fewer non-league games, making in-state scheduling even more difficult.

I honestly don't know, but my understanding was that it wasn't so much UP didn't want to play PSU or vice versa, but rather that the dates the teams had available just simply didn't mesh. Both teams wanted to space things out properly, and when you're dealing with midterms and finals and Thanksgiving and Christmas and all that - on top of all the games you already have set on your schedule - things just didn't work out last year.

Very glad that it's back on. There's no reason we shouldn't play PSU every year.

Rob's Jacket wrote:Wasn't that essentially the format of the Far West Classic back in the day?

Yes, it was, sort of.

"Back in the day" is of course a relative term, but when I attended the Far West Classics in the late 50's and until the mid-60's, there were always eight teams in the tournament, but they almost always included UP, UO, and OSU.

The tournament was always played immediately after Christmas, often beginning December 26, so it meant being away from home for a lot of staff and players during Christmas. My most vivid recollection is the 1964 Classic because we had a "silver thaw" that year and Portland was literally flooded and very hard to move around in.

The teams that year were UP, OSU, UO, WSU, Northwestern, Purdue, Army, and Tennessee.

We lost our first and third games to Tennessee and Army, but the second game was really something to see. Purdue, with consensus All-America Dave Schellhase (he averaged about 30 points per game), came to town as the odds-on favorites to win the Classic and UP blew them out by 20, 94-74. OSU won the tournament beating Tennessee 48-27 (this was before the shot clock, youngsters), and UO came in third by beating Northwestern.

I don't know much about the "modern" Far West Classic as I was away for 26 years, but I know it was cancelled because of budget and scheduling difficulties, even though the tournament drew a two-session record crowd of over 25,000 in its last year.

Rob's Jacket wrote:

NoPoNeighbor wrote:Why not an early-season, round-robin tournament every year with Oregon's four Division-I programs? That would be a great way to kick off the season, and a great tradition to get going. The location could rotate every year among the four campuses. Or even a three-year rotation: Eugene, Corvallis, Memorial Coliseum.

Washington should do the same, except five teams is a little more tricky.

Wasn't that essentially the format of the Far West Classic back in the day?

Oregon and Oregon State were always in it and Portland would come occasionally. I'm a little too young to remember much from the 8-team version where you could get four games a day for three days. I did go often when it was four teams.

Hearing the bands in the Classic, incidentally, was a big reason I wanted to start playing.

PurpleGeezer wrote:

upsailor wrote:the reason the pilots and vikings did not play last year was larr4y williams. i was told that he told rev that it was better to play a more prestigious team than psu and lose thha take a chancce on losing to psu.confidence ?

It was a little more complicated than that. The "prestigious team" was KU, and we have to go back again. Part of the deal with playing the Nationally ranked guys is that they own your schedule for two years.

PSU also had previous dates committed that overlapped the periods UP was free.

The two teams just didnt have a window when they could both play

Does anyone think that UP will take the financial loss or buy out a few games just not to have such a demanding OOC schedule next year?

oldtimer wrote:Does anyone think that UP will take the financial loss or buy out a few games just not to have such a demanding OOC schedule next year?

Anyone? Hard to say. But from my perspective, NO, absolutely not!

The players and coaches love those games. They dislike the extended travel and short turnaround times at home, but everyone wants to play the better teams; everyone really gets up, gets excited for those.

It is unfortunate the Ohio and Kentucky games won't fit into the same trip from a time and money standpoint, but other than that, the opportunity to play two NCAA Tournament teams on the road is high on their list of things to do next year.

Rev will admit the schedule "got a little out of control" last year, but UP is infrequently in a position to make demands of other schools when it comes to schedule making.

DoubleDipper wrote:

oldtimer wrote:Does anyone think that UP will take the financial loss or buy out a few games just not to have such a demanding OOC schedule next year?

Anyone? Hard to say. But from my perspective, NO, absolutely not!

The players and coaches love those games. They dislike the extended travel and short turnaround times at home, but everyone wants to play the better teams; everyone really gets up, gets excited for those.

It is unfortunate the Ohio and Kentucky games won't fit into the same trip from a time and money standpoint, but other than that, the opportunity to play two NCAA Tournament teams on the road is high on their list of things to do next year.

Rev will admit the schedule "got a little out of control" last year, but UP is infrequently in a position to make demands of other schools when it comes to schedule making.

I know they love those games, heck I would love to play or even attend a game at Rupp Arena. But, at the end of the year no one likes going 6-24. Not the coaches, not the players and from what I read over the year on PN, not the fans.

I should have qualified, I wasnt really meaning the Kentucky game but overall the Pilots played a very tough schedule. UW, WSU, St Louis, Nevada, Boise St, and the list goes on. So perhaps better said, knowing that we are bringing back basically the same team (now minus one point guard), should we really play 14 teams that went to the post season?
Dont get me wrong, Im not asking because I think anyone is "afraid" of doing this again next season, just asking if it might be again a recipe for a similar win loss record

Yes, yes we should. If we're going to be in the top half of the league we need to play a tough OOC schedule to be prepared. Padding our win-loss record with a bunch of easy games won't help us out in the long run.

Could the difficult games have been distributed better throughout the season? Yes, but I doubt we had a lot of choice in dates for many of the games.

From Rev today on his Twitter:

Looking to "buy" 2 home games. Competitive price. Nov 13,14,16,17, Dec 1, 29. Contact Coach Eric Jackson at jacksone@up.edu to discuss.

We know they are trying!

Nov. 13-17 is the very start of the season, right? I wonder if that means we aren't participating in a season-opening "multi-team event" like we have the last couple of years.

NoPoNeighbor wrote:Nov. 13-17 is the very start of the season, right? I wonder if that means we aren't participating in a season-opening "multi-team event" like we have the last couple of years.

Well, I think that's an ad to GET the teams for a season-opening "multi team event", don't you?

DoubleDipper wrote:From Rev today on his Twitter:

Looking to "buy" 2 home games. Competitive price. Nov 13,14,16,17, Dec 1, 29. Contact Coach Eric Jackson at jacksone@up.edu to discuss.

Nothing's in stone, but last I spoke with EJ, they were looking for a total of two games at home on two of the six days listed. Not looking for multiple teams for a tourney.

Nothing's in stone!