Pilots @ USD Saturday @ 6

As every PilotNation regular knows, the Pilots are expected to lose the first 3 WCC games of the season beginning at San Diego tonight.

But if there is to be a win during the next 7 days, tonight's game would seem the most likely as BYU is virtually unbeatable at home (although that theory will be tested when they play GU this afternoon) and GU is at a whole different level this season.

True, the Pilots are 9-3, but the Toreros, 7-5, played a more difficult non-conference schedule that included notable losses to San Diego State, UCLA, Xavier, and Boise State.  USD comes into today's game with three straight double-digit wins over UC Santa Barbara, New Orleans and San Diego Christian.  

It's hard to say who will be given the task of guarding former walk-on and prolific scorer, Senior G Johnny Dee, but the Pilots will have their work cut out for them as he has led his team in scoring all four seasons and currently averages 19.5 points per game. Dee is the fourth active leading scorer in the NCAA with 1,738 career points.

Probably just as dangerous in many ways is Senior point guard Christopher Anderson, who set the USD single season record for assists with 216 last year and also became the program's all-time leader in career dishes with 560. Through 12 games this season he has improved his school record to 651 (3rd NCAA career active). And he can steal the ball.....now with 212 career steals, he needs 29 more this season to move into USD's all-time No. 1 spot.

And the guy who has given UP's big men problems in the past is  junior center Jito Kok, who last year set the single season record for blocked shots with 63. Now with 150 career blocks (3rd all-time at USD) 12 games into his junior season, he will be gunning for the Torero all-time mark of 183 before he graduates.

The Las Vegas line on the game currently favors USD by 5.5 with a 134 o/u.

Our friend Ken Pomeroy ranks USD quite high at #80, while the Pilots are at #134.  Toreros are favored by 7, 70-63.

The game will be streamed live at the Lloyd Center Buffalo Wild Wings, or you can see it here:
Live Video

Pilots up 2 at half, after taking 8 minutes to get their 3rd point. Chris Anderson cannot be stopped, but UP is doing a good job on everyone else. Bryce and Thomas need to play better, and Alec has two fouls driving to the basket, needs to play smarter. Tyson is showing no fear, with 4 3's. Voldy got a tough rebound basket after getting stripped earlier under the rim.

Play tough down low, stop the turnovers and run-outs, and hit some more 3's. Go Pilots!

WCC, meet D'Marques Tyson.

ALEC WINTERING!

Hoe Lee Cr@p. How did they win that game? I thought USD outhustled the Pilots, took advantage of many sloppy turnovers, and got to the rim for easy layups way too often. But hitting 8 of 14 3's solves a lot of problems.

Here's Alec's three on a continuous loop, if you're into that kind of thing.  

bit.ly/alecw  

Nice to see us steal one at the last second!

I can't say that we deserved to win... but we won! Pretty nice to open conference play with a victory on the road, especially when we played such a sub-par game on many levels (VDM? Pressley? What is going on with these guys!? USD w/ 16 offensive rebounds? 6 assists vs 19 turnovers?). On to Provo!

https://gfycat.com/AgileObeseGoat#

Nice bull rush by Voldy.

Stonehouse wrote:Here's Alec's three on a continuous loop, if you're into that kind of thing.  

bit.ly/alecw  

I was wondering where the final shot was going to come from. Watching that gif, Rev looked pretty cool watching the play, and seemed unsurprised at the shot.  Maybe that was the call.

That's a potentially huge road win for seeding purposes... Nice!  I couldn't catch the first half, but it did seem that USD was a step faster... The 3-ball finally won us a game this year!  Keeping Dee in check was huge.

Did anyone listen to the radio broadcast?  Any update on Bailey?

Some stats: USD had 16 Off. rebounds vs. UP's 12. USD had 8 assists, UP had 6. USD had 10! steals, UP had 5. USD had 10 TOs, UP had 19!

But in addition to the 3's, UP was 13-17 on FTs, USD was 5-7. UP had 29 D rebs vs. USD's 26. And 5 blocks to USD's 3.  Only 12 PFs to USD's 18. Gerun dominated rebounding, something Coach Grier mentioned post-game.

Thomas only had 2 points, but Kok only had 3. Bryce was only 3 of 12, but Johnny Dee was only 5 of 15.

Lots of mistakes by the Pilots, but most of them are correctable.  Fixing mistakes after a win has to be more fun than after a loss.

Geezaldinho wrote:https://gfycat.com/AgileObeseGoat#

Nice bull rush by Voldy.

Haha, saw that. Also saw Bobby blocking out down low as D'Marques ran the baseline, and Bobby trying to signal him to cut back into the key. Which was cleared out with Riley and Voldy up high.

USD had far too many easy tip ins. And we had the now typical late second half let down to gift USD a 6 point lead. However, we also had something new. After the second half let down we closed out the game by holding USD scoreless the rest of the way!

Pilots win!

Hopefully we can shoot the three more consistently from here on although we won't have many nights as good as this one. The rest of the conference shoots the 3 well also so we'll need to hit some just to keep up in most games.

The 9-0 run at the end of game was the difference, not only was it was a reversal of what we saw against OSU and UNLV, it came at the right time....the WCC opening game.

Yes, there was plenty of ugly play, but a few players stood out as very solid...Gerun, Tyson, and Sharp.  Bobby hit a couple of important 3's, and his defense is so much better than last year, that it actually made a difference in the game.  Jason Todd probably doesn't have any numbers to show for it, but he always seemed to be in the right place at the right time on defense.

IMO, UP does not get to the line as often as they could or should, but tonight the Pilots outscored USD by 8 on 13-17 shooting vs. only 5-7 by the Toreros....and in the final tally, that was the difference.

USD outscored the Pilots 42-21 in the paint, but outscoring Johnny Dee and the Toreros 24-3 from behind the arc made up for a lot ugliness when it was all over.

Well, since we're commenting on everything in the GIF of the last play... most notable reaction to me is K. Bailey on the end of the bench: zero reaction. Wonder what's going on there.

How about Bill Johnson, trying to see the play around Rev. That's got to be a challenge some times for him.

Once we get to conference play all criticism regarding the quality of wins goes out the window. The boys did what they needed to do to get the W. That's all that matters. Sharp and Tyson were huge. The confidence they're gaining is going to pay dividends in Vegas. If I can make one criticism... our bigs continue to disappoint. They just don't exhibit the toughness necessary to play in this conference. With 3 almost 7 footers on the court we should dominate the boards. Except for one play when Thomas hit the floor for a loose ball, we come up short on all of the hustle plays and 50/50 balls. That's gonna hurt us against the top half of the conference. Ending on a high note... It appears that Bryce Pressley is back. He's shooting the ball with confidence.

Here's the video of the final shot. Via @PortlandPilots.


BTW, only 1442 attendance tonight at USD. For a conference game?

NoPoNeighbor wrote:Well, since we're commenting on everything in the GIF of the last play... most notable reaction to me is K. Bailey on the end of the bench: zero reaction. Wonder what's going on there.

Rev was cool as a cucumber too.

up7587 wrote:

BTW, only 1442 attendance tonight at USD. For a conference game?

Our first WCC home game last season, on December 28, we drew 1486. No students and right after Christmas is not a great combination for most any school.

PurplePrideTrumpet wrote:

up7587 wrote:

BTW, only 1442 attendance tonight at USD. For a conference game?

Our first WCC home game last season, on December 28, we drew 1486. No students and right after Christmas is not a great combination for most any school.

OK, good comparison. I had looked at the Montana State attendance this year, which was also no students and close to Christmas, and it was over 1,600. But yours is fairer. I think we'll have a better turn-out for our first home conference game.

newpilotfan wrote:It appears that Bryce Pressley is back. He's shooting the ball with confidence.

Did you watch the game, or look at the box score? Pressley was 3-12 shooting, including several missed lay-ups, and was 1-4 on three-pointers (including one miss that didn't even hit the rim). Despite his good performance against Montana State last week, he definitely does not seem to be "back."

That's the good news. A conference road win, and Bryce and Thomas can play a lot better.

Did Gabe Taylor get hurt? I thought I saw him being treated on the bench... And he only played 2 minutes. I was thinking we could have used his shooting touch out there when all of our big guys were missing shots.