Concordia-Irvine @ UP (Exhibition Game) Saturday @ 2PM

The good:
Wintering, Pressley, Todd, Taylor, Marshall. All around great games from that group. Look at those shooting percentages!

Taylor's performance in particular inspired a lot of confidence. He hit two three-pointers, and made a basket driving down the lane. I don't remember seeing either of those moves from him last season. He's going to be a clutch player.

The bad:
Rebounding and interior offense. I disagree with DD here. We just looked bad on the boards, and neither Barreno nor Hartwich posed any kind of offensive threat in the post. Looks like this team will live or die with the three-pointer and the fast break (which is scary if we can't get more defensive rebounds to fuel the fast break offense).

The ugly:
Turnovers.
Inbounds plays (on both offense and defense).

The surprising:
Max Livingston getting the start, playing 20 minutes, and turning in a solid performance.

Jazz Johnson looked in over his head. In general, this isn't unusual for a freshman, but given the hype surrounding Johnson's high school career, I was surprised. This makes me appreciate how difficult it was for Wintering to come in as the starting point guard from day one of his freshman year.

Only 13 minutes from Barreno.

They dominated the offensive boards because we were shooting 81% for a big part of the first half ( finished it at 72%).

Tough to get offensive rebounds when the ball goes in the hoop.

Geezaldinho wrote:They dominated the offensive boards because we were shooting 81% for a big part of the first half ( finished it at 72%).

Tough to get offensive rebounds when the ball goes in the hoop.

I'm worried not about our offensive rebounding, but our defensive rebounding. We can't get out and run on offense if we don't clean up the glass on the defensive end and make a quick outlet pass.

Last season the Pilots pulled down 71% of defensive rebound opportunities, good for 168th in the country. The worst defensive rebounding team in Division 1 last year was Farleigh Dickinson, which was at 60.2%.

Yesterday, against a team that didn't play anyone over 6'8", we pulled down 60.9% of defensive rebound chances.

NoPoNeighbor wrote:
The ugly:
Turnovers.
Inbounds plays (on both offense and defense).

How could I forget: FREE THROWS!

Not too worried about free throws; think that was just an anomaly.  And turnovers should get better as the new players mesh with the returning players, and rotations get more established.  I have no idea why inbounds plays are still a problem; you'd think the staff would focus on them given past issues.

I thought the big guys didn't do a good job of getting rebound position.  But Rev knows how to teach bigs, so hopefully we'll see quick improvements.

up7587 wrote:I am amazed that Livingston has surpassed Tyson as the "shooter" off the bench.

DoubleDipper wrote:Yes, it was a surprise the Max Livingston started….but he proved to be a steadying influence and played very well on both sides of the ball.

NoPoNeighbor wrote:Max Livingston getting the start, playing 20 minutes, and turning in a solid performance.

You talk about X-factors. I'm not going to say that anyone on this board had written off Max Livingston, but he was certainly forgotten about around these parts in preseason chatter. What a wonderful surprise that would be if he could come out of nowhere to be a contributor.

I'm wary of reading too much into Saturday's exhibition, Max's contributions or otherwise. It was just last year that everyone was writing off Oregon State after their exhibition loss to Western Oregon and as we know, the Beavs put together a pretty solid season.

About to get real in a hurry! Pilots aren't likely to look past a good Oregon Tech team in their home opener, but UC Davis on the road two days later will be no joke.

Go Pilots!

I've heard the UP coaches say that the JC transfers are a lot easier to teach and quicker to adapt to the D1 game then those players coming directly from high school, but it can still take them at least a half a season or more to be as productive as they'd like.

Face it, last year's lineup that relied more on the bigs and KB was a hard one for Max to crack.

He's had a red-shirt year, a year of D2 ball, a year of JC ball, and a year of D1 ball prior to this season.....his 5th and final year of collegiate basketball.