Pilots vs. San Diego

May as well get a thread going for tonight's game...

San Diego is 1-1 in the WCC and 8-11 overall. They beat USF last week and played the Zags tough up in Spokane on Saturday before eventually losing by 10. They also beat Kentucky at Kentucky this year. So they'll be tough.

Gyno Pomare and Brandon Johnson are one of the best inside-outside combos in the WCC, and honestly I think Johnson is one of the best players in the WCC period. Taishi and Nike will have their hands full trying to keep up with him... he can shoot and attack the basket equally as well. Pomare is a bit of a conundrum - he's got the size and skill to dominate and he does put up good numbers, but I swear he always sleep-walks through games and rarely plays with passion. If he went 100% all-out the whole time every game, his would probably be averaging 20+ points and 10+ rebounds. But instead, he's at 14+ and 7+. And freshman Rob Jones is pretty darn impressive too - I've seen him play a few times on TV, and he's the real deal.

But they don't really have much size other than Pomare, so I really think the Pilot bigs can do some damage tonight. I hope we don't end up settling for a bunch of threes like we did against USF, because I think if we pound it in there to Smeulders, Sikma and Knutson we can get some buckets. They might sag on us defensively and force us to make some outside shots though... and I suppose it would make sense considering how poorly we shot against USF.

Anyway... let's hope Nik can bounce back ok after his worst game of the year and that Taishi can limit Johnson at least a little bit.

Gooooo Pilots!

Oh and one other bit of trivia... USD has a freshman big guy Nathan Lozeau who was high school teammates with Jared Stohl. Lozeau doesn't play a ton, but still... always fun when former teammates go at it!

Listening to the pregame show on the net, coach said they wouldn't go into the set offense and would try to run the ball on usf. Look for stohl to put up 20 three's.

Too bad he pulled stohl and he didn't get some time. 2/7 but one or two were to beat the shot clock. Only one shot and little time in the second half.
Best shooter from the outside, need to get him involved and make him drive to complete his game.

On the other hand Thompson got some time. At least they pulled nik when not hitting shots.

Good to see Ito nail the open shots.

We're down 28-36 at the half.
USD POR
Field goals 15-27 55.6% 10-25 40.0%
3-point FGs 4-8 50.0% 1-8 12.5%
Free throws 2-6 33.3% 7-10 70.0%
Reb (O-D) 15 (5-10) 16 (6-10)
Turnovers 7 10
Last FG 1st-00:29 1st-00:04
Large lead 10 (1st-00:29) 4 (1st-17:10)

Nik's 0-4 on 3's, and 1-5 on other fg's. Smuelders' is doing excellent, I'm impressd with him so far.

Lost with a buzzer 3 by Brandon Johnson. Should have at least gone into overtime!

Live by the three pointer die by the three pointer. Exciting game, tough loss ,, two in a row close ones. If this keeps up these young guys will get discouraged, I would , would'nt you?
Good to see Jason in a little he was eatin up that lane. I can't wait to see him when his skill level catch's up to his body..
Think about that Jason-center, Kramer-Power Fwd, Luke-Small foward, and Robin off the bench to score.
Oh well , that was a competive game against a team Predicted to be the upper part of the WCC Conference.

Hard to win when you are playing 5 vs. 8 for the second half, with the refs also against you.

I liked seeing the guys play with a chip on their shoulder, though... we played well in the 2nd half. We played GREAT defense on that last USD possession and forced the shot we would want them to take... but it just went in.... a fade-away, long 3.

So, if we can ever get our first half and second half together for one game... Our defense was atrocious in the first half, but really tightened up in the 2nd.

All in all, with almost every whistle/call going against us, we were right in the game against a very solid USD team. But this loss really hurts, on top of USF; very frustrating. (If we had played this well vs. USF and LMU, we would be 3-1... What a difference a couple points make).

UGH... talk about a gut punch of a loss. I really got the feeling that we were going to put that one away.

But hey... not much you can do about that shot by Johnson. A twisting, fade away three from the deep corner with a man in his face? You just have to shake your head, tip your hat, and move on.

As the eternal optimist I am, I will try and focus on the positives... loved seeing Kramer looking for his shot - he showed some real nice touch around the basket and was really taking advantage of his height advantage. And I especially loved how he didn't back down when Gyno Pomare was getting in his face and cheap shoting him and all of that. Sucks that he got into foul trouble (some of them BS calls), but I thought he played great when he was in.

I also thought Robin played well, creating his own shots and playing pretty aggressively on defense. This might have been the best I've ever seen him play, and over the past few weeks he has really turned it on.

And I sound like a broken record on this one, but...... Jared Stohl... 8 points in 11 minutes. The kid can score, and I really think we need to start finding a way to get him more minutes, especially against a team like San Diego that was playing a small line-up for much of the game.

And I thought Nik played a good overall game, even though he didn't shoot too well from three.

And, of course, we played tremendous defense against Johnson all night long. He never got going

Really no point in focusing on the bad stuff, but I will mention the one thing that drove me crazy: way too many turnovers in the first half, especially on lazy entry passes into the post. What was with that? I love my boy Luke, but I swear he just lazily tossed two or three passes into the middle that were easily picked off by Jones. (By the way... dang Jones looks like a good player. He's going to be a bear to deal with for the next four years.) We've got to clean that up... in the grand scheme of things, if we could have had points on just one or two of those possesions that we gave away, the final score might have been a totally different story.

But hey... it was a tight game, we had a chance to win it, and if we would have won it would have been a really nice win. So I'm OK with it. But the thing is... we're 1-3 in the WCC now, and we've got to get wins somewhere. So hopefully we can get over the hump here and start putting up some W's.

I feel a little better about the game after a night's sleep... but man, we really need to be pulling these games out; no moral victories allowed! I did catch myself thinking several times last night in the 2nd half that the future is indeed bright... but the current is rough.

We are playing well in halves this year, but havent put together consecutive 1/2 games very often. Knutson had a great game last night as did Smeulders. Agreed with Stonehouse that we need to take better care of the ball; several of those passes he referred to were inexcusable!

We are 1-3 in conference right now, with our next 3 games @ GU, @ SMC and @ SCU. Ouch. We could be 1-6 real fast... We have to hope that we can pull one of these games off.

You know, I just had a revelation about this weekend's games.

In the end, it was late fouls that did us in. Against USF, it was the unnecessary hand-check on Quezada. Against USD, it was the foul on Pomare to give him the bucket and one.

And unfortunately, those are the kind of mistakes a young team makes. Frustrating, but something we can and should overcome.

I mean when you think about it... we were leading with less than a minute to go in both games. We just couldn't close it out. So hopefully they will learn from what happened this weekend and be better able in the future to handle those types of situations when they arise.

It feel bad for the Pilots for losing back to back close games. At least your not like us (LMU) who since we pulled out a close W againts the Pilots, have gotten pounded in the last two games

Well... we're heading down to SMC and SCU in two weeks, so that fate might be in store for us too. That is not an easy road trip.

stonehouse I think you stole my broken record...I was getting pumped up when stohl knocked down a tre and then hit a duece to tie it up. Finally someone is putting the ball in from outside and coach pulls him... I don't think he had enough floor time to be tired.

Tough losses indeed. While I like our players and think there is good potential there, I go back to something from the Coach Sutton comments. Other teams have better athletes. We don't have any player like a Brandon Johnson or Dior Lowhorn who can make his shot whenever he wants. I know how tough it is to get a player like that, and keep him. {I still remember watching Greg Anthony's frosh year on the bluff, then seeing him leave } Hopefully Coach will find a player like that to complement the core he's working with now.