Craig! Welcome to the dark side! Gotta respect you for showing the loyalty you did to the other site, but glad you're here (afterall, they shoulda thought about giving a bit of loyalty BACK). And I'm glad to have another roundball-first fan over here too. Should make the basketball discussions better than they have been.
Oh, Hawk, Craig's referring to the kafuffle when we played them last year, so to be fair to the guy, even Rose didn't know what he'd be going through at the time. Still, I don't know why, but I'd have LOVED to see what'd happen if O'brien TRIED to take a swing at Rose. Something tells me a 6'6" 250lb Rose would be able to make short order of the situation. :evil:
Too bad nobody'll be able to see it on TV. This mtn pissin' contest with BYUTV is getting a little old.
I actually see this as being a good learning experience for our team. ISU may have lost a lot of starters (don't remember), but they're a senior-laden team this year, which should mean they've got some maturity to them. Looking at the box scores from their first two games, it looks like their coach is whittling down their rotation. Their first game, against Iowa State, saw 9 guys on the court with at least 10 minutes of playing time. The second game, against Bradley, put only 7 guys on the court for at least 10 minutes. Their two exhibition games saw 8 apiece. (For comparison, our two exhibitions saw 10 and 11 players with at least 10 minutes, and our Bradley game saw 9.) Too early to tell if the ISU trend will stick, but it may mean their coach isn't a fan of their depth.
Still they're pretty similar to us in that they get most of their offensive productivity from their guards. They also look to play on the small side. They start a 7-footer (Lithuanian kid), but he hasn't gotten more than 23 minutes either of their first two games, and it's not because of foul trouble (3 total fouls in two games). He averaged 2 points, 5 rebounds in the first two. Meh. Their productive post player last game (majority of the minutes, points, etc) is a 6'8" kid, but he didn't see much time in their first game. Interesting. Not sure what to make of it then. Hopefully it'll mean our bigs will get some experience without getting overly exposed or making themselves a liability (read: Miles). They've got a crossover 2/3 at 6'5 who's pretty productive, and they've got 2 small guards (6'0 and 6'2) that get most of the PT, the team high-scorer being the smaller of the two. Hopefully a bigger guard on him will squelch that as well. Mr. Gilchrest, meet the returning MWC defensive player of the year, Jackson Emery. Good luck! :lol:
Good AND bad news is, this won't be a cakewalk. I'm not worried, but they'll not just disappear because we show up. They didn't make the Iowa State game much of a contest, but they played Bradley tight (had the lead under 3 minutes left), on the road. I'd spot 'em a few points for being away, and put them about on par with Bradley. If that's true, and we can improve on last game, we'd probably do just fine to end this in the 15 point range. Couple bounces, couple calls go their way, they get emotional, and we could be looking at a tight game.
I'll say with as many seniors as they play, they'll have learned about as much from their last game as we did, so I'll say another 10 point win.