vs. Stanford

[MikeWaters]

Stayed up late to watch this game. Didn't disappoint.

Cougars were clicking on all cylinders. Matty Basketball was very effective pushing the ball, attacking the rim, and shooting. Haws started relatively slow, then poured it in. And as I predicted after the Alaska game, Collinsworth was in some ways the MVP of the game. Held it together when Carlino got in foul trouble. Distributed the ball. Rebounded. Had a tough defensive assignment, going against 6'10' Powell at times. Mika showed me something. He's still finding his sea legs. Nate Austin didn't embarrass himself, worked hard. Skyler Halford, the 43 year old transfer, showed a lot of energy when he was on the floor. I liked that.

Worthington looks suspect. He shied away from contact. I'm afraid he's going to merely be a foul collector and space filler. Winder put in solid minutes. Bartley hit a 3 (you know it's a good night in that case).

The thing that really concerned me was defensive rebounding, esp. with our bigs. They were not effective at blocking out. Sharp, on on play got manhandled. I was embarrassed for him. He tried to block out, and got pushed 6 feet til he was right under the basket. The Stanford guy went up right over him, and then Sharp fouled him as he shot. Sharp is a squirrely guy who can go in and get offensive rebounds, but he is just too small and weak to defensive rebound effectively. So the big question mark for us remains our post defense.

But this is a great start. Win on the road against a team that had some athletes. Haws showed his thing again tonight, that pull up and turn around jumper. If he can effectively add the three point shot as well as the floater...impossible to guard at this level.

[ChinoCoug]

This is quite exciting.

[Archaea]

A good game. We will experience defensive rebounding problems when we go to the zone. We lack height and the lanes created by zone defense tend to allow athletic rebounders to get rebounds rather easily, even on offense.