Game 1

Plus/Minus from last night. Blowouts tend to skew numbers far away from the mean, so take Casto and Koprivica's numbers with a grain of salt. Same with Reggie on the positive side. Klay's just that damn good. The team stalled offensively every time he left the floor.

Thompson	34
Moore	24
Thames	10
Enquist	8
Lodwick	4
Capers	0
Casto	-8
Koprivica	-10
Harthun	-22
Motum	-22
Bjornstad	-28
Allen	-30
Loewen	-36
Brown	-36

Let’s talk about Missed Layups in a Rout!!!

After re-watching this game this morning it is pretty clear that Aron Baynes lacks the necessary skills that an Honorable Mention all-Pac 10 player would have. Going 8-9 from the floor and thoroughly dominating Oregon's inside game, I'm sure it was the missed shot that the voters noticed.

We didn't make a single 3-pointer and won by 22 points.

I remember all 3 of Nik's missed layups last night, but while re-watching this game, I can't believe we missed so many other layups too. As Weak mentioned last night, the only guy on our team who doesn't miss layups is Casto….because he's never taken one.

Random thoughts during the game:

Barry Tompkins facepalm of the 1^st half: "I really think Oregon was a better team when Aaron Brooks was playing." I admire his ability to throw himself out there like that. I'm sure there will be more.

When was the last time Portland State was the last Oregon school standing?

I see that Tulalip Casino has decided to use the tournament to debut their new commercial, entitiled "We no longer rhyme 'fun, fun, fun' with 'fun' anymore!"

Taylor scored 4 points on 1-5 shooting and we won by 22 points.

Taylor and Klay combined for 12 points and we won by 22 points.

Capers hit his first jump shot since the Huskies won the title….in 1953.

Are steals a subjective stat now? The box score shows Nik with zero steals tonight and I just clearly watched him intercept a pass into the post. Must've been a team steal…because you know Nik can't do anything right on his own…

Capers missed his first jump shot since the Huskies won the title…in 2009. And Tompkins called him Marcel.

At the 12 minute mark into the first half, Tajuan Porter now has made more shots with a foot on the Tournament logo at mid court than his shots from realistic ranges.

Wait, wait, wait….the Pac-10 Scholar Athlete of the Year had a 3.37 GPA? Just how far is Master P's kid dragging the curve down?

Whoever the c omedian was who said "Wayne Brady makes Bryant Gumbel look like Malcom X" hasn't seen much of Michael Eaves.

Ryan Bailey is out of his warm-ups with 18 minutes left in the game….

Thoughts and prayers go out to the family of Francis Williams, who apparently was eaten by Todd MacCullough.

Plus/Minus for the Game:

Koprivica	+28
Rochestie	+22
Thompson	+22
Baynes	+18
Forrest	+18
Casto	-10
Capers	-24
Harthun	-24
Lodwick	-24
Enquist	-24
Witherill	-24

Per 40 for the Season

Capers	+7.73
Koprivica	+6.64
Forrest	+4.31
Thompson	+3.49
Rochestie	+0.98
Baynes	+0.94
Casto	-2.08
Harmeling	-8.42

Hide your Daughters, cont'd

So I'm beginning to think that this afternoon might be one of those games that really tries a Coug's soul. For reference, see the 2008 Cougar football season....We have 4 games left....against the four best teams in the Pac-10. I'm trying to find a W in that mix. Kind of a sinking feeling to know we're going to finish 9th in both football and hoops.

Anyway, vs. the Trojans

Koprivica	22
Harthun	10
Capers	8
Lodwick	8
Forrest	2
Baynes	0
Casto	0
Rochestie	-10
Harmeling	-16
Thompson	-24

If we're looking at positives here, it's pretty impressive that we were able to keep it as close as we did when Thompson is having an off night. In the first half, Baynes missed a dunk and two 2-footers. He makes those and we're down 2 instead of 8 going into halftime and it's a completely different ballgame (one we had no business being in). Casto was night and day. In his first 6 quarters against Taj, DC looked lost and Taj was going to continue to do whatever he wanted. However, in that second half, D'Angelo still had some slipups on the defensive end of the floor (but some of those can be attributed to his teammates), he put together some fantastic post moves against one of the better interior defenders in the conference. Where the hell did those come from?

Looking ahead to our carnage at noon, here's how we looked the last time we played the Bruins:

	"+ / -"	minutes
Koprivica	+14	13
Forrest	+10	31
Baynes	+4	34
Lodwick	0	2
Thompson	-4	37
Rochestie	-6	38
Capers	-6	27
Casto	-16	15

We're probably not going to get another superhuman effort from Forrest, yet they're probably not going to get another superhuman effort from Drago either. Klay's gotta be huge this afternoon to keep this close, and Baynes has to take advantage of UCLA's lack of size early.

If I were Coach Sexy, I'd roll out a lineup with Taylor, Marcus and Nik on the wings and Caleb and Baynes down low. I'd have D'Angelo on a very short leash based on his defensive inadequacies against UCLA's ball rotation last time around.

Harmeling can stay on the bench again.

Plus/Minus vs Arizona State

Koprivica +18
Casto +14
Thompson +12
Rochestie +10
Baynes +2
Harmeling  -6
Forrest -8
Harthun -22

Pretty glaring numbers that the game changed in the 2nd half when Casto and Nik were put into the game to guard their shooters.  Also, Harthun's six minutes of fury included two turnovers, an airball and getting dunked on by a dude we weren't sure could actually dunk.  Let's hope we can look back on this performance in 3 years and laugh.

This game gets Casto back to positive numbers for the year...and Baynes and Rochestie are so close to erasing his performance in the UW debacle.

Pac-10 Season to date (per 40)
Capers    +21.9
Harmeling +6.0
Casto +3.1
Koprivica +3.0
Baynes -0.3
Rochestie -1.8
Thompson -2.0
Forrest -5.3
Lodwick -22.3

So just based on how the team collectively does while you're on the court as opposed to when you're off the court, our best lineup is Capers and Koprivica at the guards, Harmeling and Casto at the forwards and Baynes manning the middle.  Would that lineup fare any better than the starting lineup we have now?

Back from Pullman

So after proving that both myself and Paul Wulff are indeed vampires and can't take a decent picture, I headed home, tail between my legs after watching what might have been the worst game since the dawn of competitive hoop.

Watching Casto get absolutely used by Dragovich and then Gibson in back to back games made me wonder if he had switched jerseys with Daven; as amazing as Caleb's shot was falling on Thursday, the catalyst for the comeback was Nik's defense and will forever be unappreciated, and I still continue to ask myself why Tony feels Abe Lodwick is ready for regular minutes.

I've been playing with a full-time job, grad school and a trip to Pullman, so I haven't posted the +/- for the past 3 games; all apologies, here we go:

@ Oregon

Capers +22
Rochestie +16
Thompson +16
Baynes +10
Casto +4
Koprivica -6
Forrest -10
Harmeling -14
Lodwick -20

vs. UCLA
Koprivica +14
Forrest +10
Baynes +4
Lodwick 0
Thompson -4
Rochestie -6
Capers -6
Casto -16

vs. USC
Capers +14
Baynes +8
Harmeling +6
Koprivica +2
Forrest -4
Lodwick -4
Rochestie -6
Thompson -6
Casto -12

Season Totals (per 40 mins)

Capers +21.9
Harmeling +9.5
Baynes -0.7
Casto -1.5
Koprivica -2.9
Rochestie -3.5
Forrest -4.2
Thompson -4.2
Lodwick -22.3

Yes We Can!!!

Well, first the happy +/- totals are in order. We're slowly starting to get back to respectable numbers after the UW debacle

Against OSU:

Harmeling +22
Forrest +8
Capers +6
Rochestie +4
Baynes +2
Enquist -4
Casto -6
Koprivica -12
Thompson -14

And for Pac-10 Play (minimum 3 games):

Capers +8.5
Harmeling +8
Casto +5
Lodwick 0
Forrest -4
Koprivica -4.5
Baynes -7
Rochestie -7
Thompson -8

I've been reading the Coug blogs and message boards, and there's been one huge point that I've been wanting to dispell but have just been too lazy. Here's what I have contention with:

Myth: we weren’t feeding Baynes enough.
Fact: At times, that was all we were doing. Several possessions in the 2nd half were spent with four wings hanging out around the 3 point line waiting for the double team on Baynes to wear off. Do this for me the next time you’re watching a Coug game this year and are asking “Why aren’t we passing it to Baynes?”, try asking “What are the wings doing to get Baynes open?” instead. Baynes doesn’t miss his touches because “we’re not feeding the beast enough”, he misses his touches because we’re trying to hard to be lazy (if that makes sense) by doing nothing BUT “feed the beast”. Now let us please put this argument to rest…

The more and more I watch him, the less and less I want Klay Thompson in the backcourt. He’s a Small Forward, albeit a skinny one. Watching him try to break Oregon State’s (lazy) press was a nightmare, and it was obvious Craig Robinson watched the film from the Gonzaga game over and over. Teams will beat us if they press us when Thompson is the 2-guard.

Speaking of beating the press, while I’m not thrilled with our execution against the half-court trap, I think the Cougs did a much better job of setting up the early offense and getting good looks while OSU was setting up their Defense after the broken press. During the Gonzaga game, we seemed to consider it a victory to get the ball past halfcourt, leading to poor shot selection. When we make the defense pay for pressing, it leads to the 70% FG percentage we had in the first half.

Making the case for Daven: I noted above that Daven had our highest +/- total in a Pac-10 game so far this season with a +22. While Daven has been Coug Nation’s whipping boy (most of it deservedly), Harmeling really matches up well with a team like the Beavs (ie: a team with Forwards that would rather shoot jumpers than put the ball on the floor.) BH (Before Harmeling), we couldn’t pay Deane any amount of money to keep him off the offensive glass. AH, Deane was boxed out every shot, and while Harmeling didn’t get the board, Deane didn’t either. With about 8 minutes left in the first half, Enquist comes in for Harmeling, and the Beavs start dominating the offensive glass again. For all of Daven’s shooting struggles, and for all the crap I’ve given him for getting shook when isolated, I will be the first to point out that Daven’s contributions to this victory will never show up on a stat sheet, but we would not have won last night without him.

Rochestie played 45 minutes last night, and has 39 hours to rest before probably having to run another 38 minutes Saturday morning. This was coming from a Taylor that was already getting routinely beaten off the dribble by Claitt and Wallace, and now gets even quicker guards tomorrow. That doesn’t sit well with me.

Next up are the Ducks, who figure to still be a must-win, as I think we're going to be very lucky to get 2 wins out of the six games that follow. Color me nervous.

Sky Falling, in search of Shami Gil for offense...

Since I didn't see the game, my opinions will be limited, but seems like same-ol-same-ol.... We continue to allow 3 pointers to rain on us to depressing levels, we continue to miss layups, and we continue to lose at home. That's now four in a row (!!!). Bud Namek isn't nearly as unlistenable as he used to be; I'm pretty sure his signature call has always been arguing about a foul that wasn't called at such length, he missed Oregon hitting a game-winning 3 against us.

He seemed to call at least 5 or 6 "3's" from the Cougs, when we actually had a foot on the line. If those were all 3's we may have won? I'm grasping at straws, this is killing me.

Anyway, the Plus/Minus for the game:

Lodwick +5
Capers +2
Baynes -2
Forrest -3
Harmeling -4
Casto -5
Thompson -7
Koprivica -10
Rochestie -12

And so far, for Pac-10 Play:

Lodwick +5
Capers -1.5
Harthun -4
Harmeling -5
Casto -5
Forrest -9
Thompson -10.5
Koprivica -10.5
Baynes -12
Rochestie -15

Take it for what it's worth, but so far in this young Pac-10 season, we'd be at our best (statistically speaking) when Abe Lodwick, Marcus Capers, Mike Harthun, Daven Harmeling and DeAngelo Casto are on the floor....and even then we pretty much suck.

The shots have got to start falling eventually....right?

Meh....

So with all the traffic and the Key Arena parking lot all of a sudden being closed (shows you how often I drive across the bridge), we didn't get to our seats until about 5 minutes into the first half. Then when I came home to watch it on the tivo, turns out those 5 minutes were also missing from the broadcast due to the Beaver game. So those five minutes are lost to me....

Anyway, not much to take out of this game. We were hitting our wide open shots at a higher clip than we had been over the last few games, which was nice to see, regarless of our opponent. If you have the ability to re-watch this game, I'd suggest watching the last 5 minutes or so of the first half and watch Baynes move from the block to the high post and back down, setting 2-3 picks on every possession, and how fluid our offense becomes when it happens. Why he only does this against inferior teams, I'll never know. For those who think we're going to miss Aron next year, I think we'll be ok as long as our new center moves like this on every possession.

Plus/minus for the evening (I'm really looking forward to Pac-10 play when we can start looking at progression rather than snapshots)

Thompson +22
Rochestie +21
Koprivica +15
Baynes +13
Casto +12
Harmeling +7
Forrest +6
Boeke +3
Witherill +3
Lodwick +1
Capers -2
Harthun -2
Enquist -4

Capers and Forrest's numbers are a bit skewed as they were on the court with the rest of the freshmen playing MSU's starters at the end. I think I speak for all of Cougar Nation when I plead to Tony to start Caleb over either Nik or Daven. We're simply a better team with him on the floor. Maybe Tony likes having him bring up the 2nd unit, but I think he deserves a look, maybe against Idaho, where a win is inevitable.

We did some things right, and we were also very lazy as well. Lanes on defense seemed to be open the entire 2nd half, although there were several times both Casto and Harthun were out of position to help, when a starter probably would've made the play. There are a lot of people calling for Harthun to get increased minutes, but I think his off-ball defense is keeping him off the court for the time being.

So did Sterk take a look at our schedule last summer and thank Jesus we have 8 days to prepare for Idaho?

Still Breathing?

All apologies for not getting this up yesterday, I've been out of town on business and from the looks of it, it may have been a good thing. I ended up watching this game in a bar full of Laker fans demanding my one little TV be switched over to the Laker/Sun game because nobody gives a fuck about Wazzu. Well, I gave a fuck about Wazzu and fortunately I had a solid 30 pounds on anyone who was bitching.

Anyway, not a lot to add to what other bloggers have said, but wanted to list a few. Let's start with the plus/minus for the game (it's not pretty)

Capers 8
Lodwick 8
Enquist 4
Harthun 4
Casto 1
Forrest -5
Thompson -22
Baynes -25
Koprivica -25
Harmeling -28
Rochestie -30

I really hate to say it, but I think this is the first time Coach Dreamy really ate a shit sandwich. I frankly can't believe the gameplan all week was "let's go out and trade threes with Gonzaga and just see what the fuck happens".... It seemed there was no effort to curb that when it was going on all throughout the first half. And maybe this one's not Tony's fault, but more of whoever on the staff is doing the scouting, but Austin Daye has had no J to speak of for the past few weeks, but is the Zags' best bet to beat someone off the dribble. So who do we stick on him? You guessed it: Daven. In fact Ehlo's facepalm this evening was "You know I can never remember Harmeling ever getting shook as badly as he did at the end of the first half." I'm going to go ahead and just assume Ehlo does not RSS this blog.

What to say about that 2nd half. Well, Gonzaga is great and all, but we really played like shit. I can't emphasize and bolden the word SHIT strongly enough. I'm seriously flipping off that second half as hard as I can... If you want a little difference that goes a long way from last year to this year is the way we handled Gonzaga's diamond press. It's not an incredibly aggressive press, in fact I don't know why they run it. For years, it's constantly gotten them out of position on defense and it produces few turnovers. Last year we exploited it by making the correct pass, ended up with a 3-on-2 or 4-on-3 and the early offense allowed an easy Baynes/Cowgill/Weaver score.

This year? If we were able to get the ball up the court before 12 seconds ticked off or before we chucked it out of bounds for no particular reason, once we got up the court with numbers we actually HELD ONTO THE FUCKING BALL UNTIL GONZAGA'S DEFENSE GOT BACK AND WAS SET UP! Seriously, either we have the classiest, most polite offense in the country, or we just don't know what the fuck we're doing. When you completely give them back the one disadvantage to running that press on every possession, there's no reason not to press every play. Last year we made them pay enough times that eventually they stopped running it. This year? Shit sandwich.

Everyone's freaking out about Rochestie. You want my solution? Don't play him so damn much. Sit him 8 minutes per game. Other than that, I've got nothing. I don't think he's forcing much, but I do think he might be tired.

Oh and with five minutes left, we had all of our starters pulled (save for Daven). Gonzaga's up by 3o and still has all their starters IN THE GAME still pressing and still jacking three's. So much for that classy Gonzaga/WSU rivalry. Fuck Gonzaga. Fuck them in the fucking ear.

One positive note on the evening: Sloth shaved that damn mustache.

Let the Bears pay the Bear tax, I pay the Homer Tax

What to say.....well, looking at the plus/minus numbers for tonight



Thompson 8
Harmeling 1
Baynes 0
Lodwick -2
Harthun -4
Rochestie -6
Casto -6
Forrest -6
Capers -7
Koprivica -8

So even when Klay's shots aren't falling, he's causing enough distraction that we play much better when he's on the court.

I guess the positive here is it could've been much worse. This game just felt like we should've been down 20 the entire time, particularly in the first half when Klay sat. I spent a good deal of the game watching Baynes on the offensive end, and noticed for last night at least he regressed to some of the laziness that plagued him last season. You have the wings running a motion offense, and while the movers are moving, the blockers are....camping out on the block demanding the ball. I don't have enough fingers to count how many times a wing crossed the court, got within a foot of Baynes and he just stood there without setting a pick because he was concentrating too hard on getting the ball.... Not to mention this was generally with 25 seconds left on the shot clock. In previous games this season, he was setting that pick before camping on the block, often getting up to the high post as well, which opened lanes up and the offense was moving. Against Baylor, we just kept passing around the wings hoping to either dump it into Baynes or taking a last-second three. Taking this into consideration it's no wonder Rochestie missed his last TEN shots.

After every awkward Casto post-move, I couldn't help but notice Caleb sitting on the bench. Forrest didn't play the entire second half. While I was very impressed with Casto's work on Acey in the post and how many shots in the paint were altered when he was down there, it still doesn't take away the fact he's becoming an offensive liability...and that's being kind. Fouling Casto at this point is no better than turning the ball over. You know you're not getting any points out of it. Now he's a freshman, I'm not expecting a ton out of him this year, but I don't think he gives you anything more than Forrest does at this point, and Forrest doesn't cower offensively when posting up someone bigger/stronger than him. Capers was also a no-show in the 2nd half as well, as Rochestie played all 40 minutes (!!!).

No Ehlo Facepalms today, as FSN ponied up the ducats to get Kez Johnson to Pullman. Nothing makes me happier than a Kez-called game. A few gems, one about Capers arms being so long he's able to scrach his knees without bending over, and later talking about the Coug defense will make you feel like Mavin Johnson: no rhythm (Any reference from The Jerk in 2008 deserves mention).

Oh well, I didn't expect this would be a Cougar victory, and after watching the first half, I was happy it was a game with a minute left. So there is something to hang our hat on. As crazy as it sounds, I actually think we match up with Gonzaga better than we did Baylor (still expecting a loss though), more on that later this week.