PSU @ #25 Portland, Wednesday 12/2/09, 7pm

15-25 was the stat of the game. Many of the shots were decently defended, many were far too open. But anyone who makes 15 3's is going to win most games. (The highlight of the game, however, had to be TJ's flying block of a 3 shot late in the game... he was waaaayyyy up there).

Watching the game, we just looked tired and flat... no spark whatsoever. Lethargic on both ends of the floor.

I hadn't really done the math on this, or else I would have been much more concerned going into the game... we played games last Thursday, Friday and Sunday, then flew home Monday, with this game Tuesday night... that's 4 games in 6 days. We barely had 24 hours at home before playing PSU; combine being tired, maybe less than fully prepared (?), maybe looking past them a bit, maybe a little too confident and 15-25... a recipe for the disaster that occurred.

The team was flat, the crowd was flat (although a pretty good turnout), it was a completely off night.

And yes, I am controlling myself right now, because I would much prefer to be typing explitives and yelling.

VillaGorilla wrote: Well that was certainly a big time disappointment. Offensively I think we played like we should have, and we really weren't so bad from behind the arc. 82 points at home on not that many turnovers doesn't worry me too much. Portland State had a good game plan defensively and really tightened up over the last 10 minutes of the game. On our side, our defense wasn't terrible, but we were collapsing and allowing them a good number of uncontested three-point shots - many of which they made. All I could do was throw my hands up every time one went down. Argh, I thought I might have a season where I didn't have to witness this type of loss at home.

I thought maybe I would be able to as well, but eh, it's the Pilots. I had to tell the students next to me in the band that this is far from the end of the world. It sucks, but I've followed the Pilots since 94 so I've seen worse.

I kind of had a feeling about this game after the two big wins last weekend. Oh well...

PilotNut wrote:And yes, I am controlling myself right now, because I would much prefer to be typing explitives and yelling.

As would we all.

PilotNut wrote:I hadn't really done the math on this, or else I would have been much more concerned going into the game... we played games last Thursday, Friday and Sunday, then flew home Monday, with this game Tuesday night... that's 4 games in 6 days. We barely had 24 hours at home before playing PSU; combine being tired, maybe less than fully prepared (?), maybe looking past them a bit, maybe a little too confident and 15-25... a recipe for the disaster that occurred.

Isn't today actually Wednesday?

See i'm so mad I didnt do my math right...

If I had Pliny in my system, there would have been a lot of yelling...now it's just really salty muttering to myself...

MesaPilot1 wrote: , I'll be better by the Idaho game, I think.....

Congrats to the Vikings, you played out of your minds .... and won....



Vikings 3-4 against marginal competion...Pilot's 5-2 against competion---ugh how did we lose???

Sorry, but PSU was 1-4, not 3-4, and they had neutral court losses to Belmont and Wright State. If Minn was a "good" win, this was a worse "bad" loss, and could come back to haunt us at year end. Home court loss to a bad team, double bad.

Wow. How'd that happen? The Pilots have a great team this year. I would have never guessed that we would beat our cross-town rivals for the fourth straight year. And at the Chiles Center! I gotta say that it is a sweet victory not only because it is against the Pilots but also because we have looked horrible so far this year. We have talent but it just hasn't gelled with the new coach.

The Pilots will be fine. There is great chemistry on this team and Pilot fans may not want to hear it but this loss may be the best thing in the long run for the Pilots.

I'll be rooting for you guys the rest of the way. Go Pilots. Humble Gonzaga, please.

"Offensively I think we played like we should have, and we really weren't so bad from behind the arc."--VillaGorilla

"you played out of your minds .... and won...."--MesaPilot1

I have to disagree with both of these statements. Our free throw shooting was horrible. We got into the bonus before they did, but, lost our lead instead of extending it. That's not how a veteran team plays.
If we hit our free throws and defend their perimeter shooters better, we win the game. We played poorly offensively and defensively and shot ourselves in the foot.

I really don't see how you could consider scoring 82 points poor offense...

It wasn't poor offense, but, we weren't clutch or timely either. There's not much excuse for missed free throws when you're ahead and in the bonus.

Note that Portland State also beat Gonzaga last year and they did quite well afterwards. Maybe a good omen for the Pilots?

Sleep didn't take off the edge. This sucks. This is the game where we say stuff about a "young team" and "folding under the pressure of expectations" but we can't say any of that. This is the most veteran team we can ever hope to have. Hopefully this loss is something the guys can remember to motivate themselves down the road. There is a lot of good ball left to be played and the season is far from over.

One game does not a season make. One game does not a season make.

onetouchfutbol wrote:I have to disagree with both of these statements. Our free throw shooting was horrible. We got into the bonus before they did, but, lost our lead instead of extending it. That's not how a veteran team plays.
If we hit our free throws and defend their perimeter shooters better, we win the game. We played poorly offensively and defensively and shot ourselves in the foot.

Right on the money on a number of things. If we cut down on that gaudy 15-25 stat, we pull away easily. We got into the bonus early on in the second half (10:36 left), but failed to adequately take advantage. We should have extended our lead after that time. We only shot seven foul shots after that. But we made five of them (71.4%) and were overall 69.6% from the foul line for the game, which was above our season average last year. So I don't think I can really classify that, or our offense overall (82 points on 48.4% shooting), as either horrible or poor. The Pilots were lacking defensively, though, and the Vikings made us pay dearly.

DaTruRochin wrote:I really don't see how you could consider scoring 82 points poor offense...

Well, I guess you could say good offense in the first half (51 points), and poor offense in the second half (31 points).

OK I'd buy that, but the lapse in perimeter defense and decline in the 2nd half has mental/physical fatigue written all over it... Not something we normally see from Rev's teams

I was really excited when I woke up to fire up the 'ole 'puter and see how much we ran it up on the Vikings. Apparently we didn't, and I chiked on my Corn Pops. Very disappointed right now, and I didn't even watch/listen to the game.

mattywizz wrote:I was really excited when I woke up to fire up the 'ole 'puter and see how much we ran it up on the Vikings. Apparently we didn't, and I chiked on my Corn Pops. Very disappointed right now, and I didn't even watch/listen to the game.

Agreed - not good news to wake up to.

I don't know about the rest of you but I was disgusted with the student section and the crowd overall... We definitely had the fans but the only ones who could be heard were the PSU fans. That was even before PSU took the lead. Is the best the student section could do when coming down the final stretch of the game up by a couple to chant oooOOOOoooo. Get a defense pilots chant going. Make some noise. Then all I heard when WE had the ball was DEFENSE...DEFENSE...DEFENSE... do we really need the cheerleaders to get back there to help lead this student section. We were always able to come up with something often times going over the cheerleaders...PATHETIC for a team that was ranked 25th in the country.

So much for prosperity. Our team has got to pull itself out of where it was hiding last night. I thought Rev's substitutions in the first half was strange. Nem and Jasonn in when we could have stretched our lead. You may disagree with me, but I think it was that kind of strategy that backfired and allowed PSU to climb back into the game and win. 31 points in the second half ought to tell you something as well.

does anyone else think its sad that even when our basketball team is ranked for the first time in 50 some years and is playing the cross town rival, they can only draw 2,400 fans???
i know its a wednesday...but seriously?
i guess UP will always be a soccer school...

Rev quoted in the O:

"I knew this would be a big test," Pilots coach Eric Reveno said. "This early, records don't mean a lot. I knew it would be a tough challenge, so I'm not really surprised.

"Our guys being fatigued perhaps? Yeah, I would think that could be a factor, but (the Vikings) were making shots."

The offense for sure had less motion in the second half. And missing two reserves doesn't help when it's the fourth game in seven nights.

OK, PSU, prove it now by winning your conference.

unfortunately, PSU doesn't really have anything to prove. they just won their biggest game of the year. even if they don't win their conference, they beat #25 portland in our house

golaso wrote:does anyone else think its sad that even when our basketball team is ranked for the first time in 50 some years and is playing the cross town rival, they can only draw 2,400 fans???

No. I think 2400 fans for a Wednesday night game against a Big Sky school is just fine. We have been bad for a really, really long time - we have three winning seasons since 1982. Changing perceptions takes time. It takes even more time when you choke like we did last night.

PSU was clearly more fired up for this game than we were, and that was a problem from the start. I thought that overall we played okay until the last five minutes of the game, when we started walking the ball up the court instead of pushing it. PSU has a tough time with transition defense, and we allowed them to get into their sets. We also failed to realize that Waters had four fouls for something like the last eight minutes of the game. TJ should have been taking the ball at him every play from there on out. Instead, it seemed like we almost forgot about him, and he came back to bite us. Big time.

Talking with my dad (class of '74) after the Anaheim tourney, I was super excited about this year's team and being ranked. He just shook his head and said, "Don't do it - you know they'll break your heart."

golaso wrote:unfortunately, PSU doesn't really have anything to prove. they just won their biggest game of the year. even if they don't win their conference, they beat #25 portland in our house

Negative. Our season starts Saturday when we have our first conference game.

OK... here's my take on this. We were incredible on offense in the first half. Truly. We scored 52 points, shot 65% from the field, 60% from three, out-rebounded them, had a 9-5 edge in turnovers, could score seemingly at will... and only led by 6 points. I honestly don't know if I've ever seen us play better offense than we did in that first half. Amazingly efficient.

But Portland State was just out of this world from three in the first half, and that kept them in it. 10-14 in the first half. Unreal. They miss two or three of those, and we're up by 10+ at the half, and when we went on our run in the second half, we're up by 20 or so instead of just 12.

It felt like the "expected" rhythm of that game (beat them solidly in the first half, build a comfortable lead in the second, withstand a run and take home the win) was disrupted and you could see the frustration on everyone's faces as the game got closer and closer as it went on. It's like no one could believe the Vikings were still hanging around. And then when Waters hit that three with 3 minutes to go to finally give them a lead, you just knew we were in for trouble. We froze up and couldn't make a shot down the stretch. Don't know if it was nerves, fatigue, pressure, or what... but credit Portland State, they made plays at the end while we didn't.

I don't think you can blame this on our offense or our FT shooting... 70% from the line isn't great, but it's not back-breaking. Really it was the defense that let us down, though we did limit their outside shooting a little bit better in the second half, I'm disappointed that we didn't do an even better job since the only guy in the paint who could do anything was Jamie Jones and it's not like he was killing us down there. We've really got to be able to defend the three ball better, because if we are going to be the type of team we want to be we're going to have to expect that teams who aren't as good will just jack up threes all game and hope for the best... we should now, we do it every year against Gonzaga.

I'm not too too discouraged though... disappointed, of course, and I still can't really believe it, but it's hardly the end of the season. We are still a good team. We are still talented. We still have the opportunity to pick up lots of great wins. All is not lost... we just have to hope our experience will lead to this being a learning moment and not allow it to develop into a pattern. Playing with a target on your back isn't easy, but it's something we're going to have to adjust to if we want to achieve our goals.

But I'm sure Reveno and the staff will do what needs to be done. I have complete faith in that. Let's just hope the guys can bounce back and pick up a solid win at Idaho this weekend.