LU vs Colorado State

[LUSportsFan]

It's a little early since the game is this Saturday (December 28) at 3:00pm CST in Fort Collins. I'm in Colorado and am hoping to make the game so I have been looking at CSU. Below is some information.

 

1. Elevation could be a factor.

 

I hope Coach Knight gets the team here early in order to acclimate to the elevation. Fort Collins is at 5,003 ft. This is a nice place for the holidays. Old Town Fort Collins is very nice.

 

2. The Rams should be familiar with Moby arena.

The Rams have only played two away games so far this year. Both away games were losses. One was in Spokane against Sagarin #24 Gonzaga (61-93). The other was in El Paso against the Sagarin #110 UTEP Miners (74-82). Their game against Lamar will be the ninth game in a 10 game home stand.

 

3. Overall record 8-4...............Sagarin #137

 

The Rams are 8-4 this year. Two of the wins were against DII opposition (UC-Colorado Springs and Southwestern Oklahoma State). Other wins were as follows:

 

Prairie View (95-68).......................Sagarin #332

Bethune-Cookman (66-52)............Sagarin #342

Northern Colorado (72-65)............Sagarin #188

Weber State (88-67).....................Sagarin #195

New Mexico State (85-83).............Sagarin #165

 

They also defeated Sagarin #263 University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) yesterday (74-61).

 

Losses other than Gonzaga and UTEP were to Sagarin #25 Colorado (62-67) and Sagarin #156 Denver (70-80).

 

3. Players to watch (Only home court stats):

 

Daniel Bejarano - 6' 4" 202 Guard. He has been the leading rebounder in 6 home games (16, 9, 10, 15, 12, 15). He has also been high point shooter in 2 games with 17 points each.

 

J. J. Avila - 6' 7" 246 Forward. He has been leading rebounder in 2 home games with 11 each. He has also been high scorer in 6 home games (30, 28, 21, 29, 16, 27)

 

4. Players with most time (only home court stats):

 

Name Size Position Playing Time Scoring Avg 3Pt Prcnt 3Pt Attempt Reb Total

J. J. Avila 6' 7" 246 Forward 317 minutes 20 .375 24 64

Daniel Bejarano 6' 4" 202 Guard 356 minutes 13.3 .158 38 95

Jon Octeus 6' 4" 170 Guard 314 minutes 12.2 .389 18 37

Gerson Santo 6' 9" 238 Forward 242 minutes 9.3 .000 42

Joe De Ciman 6' 4" 178 Guard 219 minutes 8.4 .387 31 21

David Cohn 6' 2" 170 Guard 179 minutes 6.8 .556 18 21

Marcus Holt 6' 10"200 Fwd/Cntr 156 minutes 6.2 .000 40

Carlton Hurst 6' 3" 170 Guard 156 minutes 3.7 .000 31

Dwight Smith 6' 4" 178 Guard 155 minutes 3.0 .000 2

[badndn]

10 points down at halftime. Serious lack of depth really hurts at 5,000 feet in the second half and Cards get whooped by 30+. But they are getting better and will compete in the SLC! LOL

[LUSportsFan]

Possible Streaming Site: The game is scheduled for the Mountain West Network. Below is a link to to the Mountain West Conference streaming site. Our game is on the schedule, but I don't know if there are restrictions on seeing it live.

 

Might be able to see a replay at any rate. CSU's last game is available now.

 

http://www.themw.com/#!/watch-live

[CoachPace]

Good luck to the cardinals tonight.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[coachacola]

10 points down at halftime. Serious lack of depth really hurts at 5,000 feet in the second half and Cards get whooped by 30+. But they are getting better and will compete in the SLC! LOL

 

LU down by 11 with about 3 minutes left in the first half. Do you have a crystal ball?

[coachacola]

Halftime score: 43-33 CSU

[coachacola]

86-71 final

[Cardinalrule]

Loss loss loss loss loss loss lose lose lose lose lose

 

But don't worry, we will dominate conference....NOT NOT NOT NOT

 

[LUSportsFan]

The wife and I made the game. There were some good plays and some poor plays. We didn't defend very well. I saw too many instances where we did a great job on one player only to let another player backdoor us for an easy layup. Our shot selection was decent, but too many shots rimmed out.

 

CSU's hot shots had what seemed like a career day. Avila, their leading scorer had a career high 33. It seemed like everything he threw up went in. Their leading rebounder, Dejarano, got a Moby Arena season high with 18 rebounds. He also finished with 19 points.

 

On offense, we hit some good threes and were able to work the ball in well. I didn't see too many bad passes. Like any game, there were some shots and and passes I wish we hadn't tried, but I saw those as the exception. Our players fought for rebounds and got some on both sides. We got some good steals and some good shot blocks.

 

One thing is clear. We can't get into a running game. We tried running with CSU and the result was points for CSU and none for us. That's about the time CSU really removed any doubt. I love run and gun basketball, but we are not that kind of team and need to do everything we can to force the other team to play at our pace. We did that most of the time. It looked like Coach Knight got the team to get back under control in that BAD stretch.

 

The final score doesn't reflect it, but we stayed within or close to 10 most of the game. I had no expectation that we would win against CSU. We're not talented enough to do that this year. CSU was 24-9, an NCAA tournament team, and had a 20 rpi (according to Warren Nolan) last year. Contrast that with a team that needs to learn how to win.

 

We may not win any more games this year, but CSU should be a lot better than anything we will see in the SLC. I don't like to lose, but I left the arena feeling that we could at least improve on last year.

 

One last observation. WE SHOULD BE VERY PROUD OF MONTAGNE CENTER. Moby was nice, but we were way too high and we paid "the big bucks" for some of the best seats. I've been at the top of the Montagne in some games and had a better view of the game there and more into the game...and the Montagne has a larger capacity. Moby reminded me of G Rollie White Coliseum during my days at A&M. (It no longer exists.) Seating was very steep at Moby. I knew that having attended a couple of my daughter's graduation ceremonies, but I had never attended a CSU game until today.

 

Moby did have a nice video board.

 

Sent from my Android device using Tapatalk 2

 

[LAZEEK]

JJ Avila was a player that LU was heavily recruiting last year. Wish he was in a Cardinal uniform.

[LUSportsFan]

JJ Avila was a player that LU was heavily recruiting last year. Wish he was in a Cardinal uniform.

 

I agree about wishing he was in a Cardinal uniform. I'm just a fan with nothing other than loving the game and having been able to see some really good basketball over the years. Keeping that in mind, it seemed like the two players I noted (Avila and Dejarano) were the main difference in CSU and us.

 

Seems to me like we may be one or two players away from having the team everyone wants. I liked the effort the Cards had. They just need some help. I didn't come away from today' s game thinking we need to start over. It was more of some more support. Although we never had the lead, we kept the game in striking distance until the last five minutes.

 

Hopefully Coach Knight can get some good recruits to finish the rebuilding job.

 

Sent from my Android device using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[bigredfan2]

Quote from: LAZEEK on Today at 08:20:56 PM

JJ Avila was a player that LU was heavily recruiting last year. Wish he was in a Cardinal uniform.

 

I agree about wishing he was in a Cardinal uniform. I'm just a fan with nothing other than loving the game and having been able to see some really good basketball over the years. Keeping that in mind, it seemed like the two players I noted (Avila and Dejarano) were the main difference in CSU and us.

 

Seems to me like we may be one or two players away from having the team everyone wants. I liked the effort the Cards had. They just need some help. I didn't come away from today' s game thinking we need to start over. It was more of some more support. Although we never had the lead, we kept the game in striking distance until the last five minutes.

 

Hopefully Coach Knight can get some good recruits to finish the rebuilding job.

 

Sent from my Android device using Tapatalk 2

 

 

Interesting comments.

I too don't believe a need to start over again. There is talk that PK needs to go, but I am not ready to see that again, yet.

[coachacola]

SHSU was down by 10 to LUI brooklyn at home but came back to win by 4. Lamar lost to them by 3 on the road. I think Lamar will win more conference games than people expect because the SLC is really down this year.

[Bruce]

Agreed, Coach. While this team obviously isn't very good: 1-11 doesn't lie, after all--I think there's a great deal of underestimating what this team is capable of doing in conference. The Southland is *awful*. Let's face it--if we had been playing our typical 1998-2010 out-of-conference schedule with its five NAIA or D-2 schools, we're 6-6 and, yes, worried that we hadn't beat anyone any good, but the record would look better--not that the team would actually *be* better.

 

Look at the Southland's results so far this year, aside from our issues:

 

McNeese has two wins: close (less than 10 point) home wins over sub D-1 competition. A loss at Rhode Island by 5 is their only loss by less than 10.

 

Central Arkansas has one win over a D-1 team: Troy by 7. They lost by 43 to Arkansas State.

 

A&M-Corpus has two D-1 wins, including one over the UTPA team that beat us. But the UTPA effort was by far our worst of the season. They're hard to figure out: they were competitive with a lot of teams in defeat, but lost to UT-Permian Basin, so obviously they've got serious issues.

 

Nicholls has two D-1 wins.

 

UNO does have that upset against UTEP, but has only two other wins against garbage competition and hasn't been competitive in any other game.

 

ACU has no D-1 wins, and a loss to D-2 West Alabama.

 

Incarnate Word has beaten a lot of lower-conference teams, but not all were impressive (7 point margin of victory against Huston-Tillotson?), and has one 17-point loss against the only D-1 team they've faced.

 

Even some of the better teams in conference have had their problems: Sam barely beat the same LIU-Brooklyn team at home that beat us at the buzzer at their place; Northwestern State has played a tough schedule but has some bad (30+ point) losses. Only SFA and Oral Roberts really look like they're any good at all (SFA should *roll* through this conference this year, if OOC play is any indicator at all). Southeastern might be decent as well; their performance out-of-conference has been OK.

 

I'm not predicting any great things from this squad, but I do think they're quite a bit better than last year and will show it in conference play. The Southland is so bad this year that anything less than 8 conference wins is not acceptable, and should certainly call into question Coach Knight's future. This conference sucks, and since I do believe that Knight can coach, he should be able to get home wins against Nicholls, UNO, HBU, McNeese, and A&M-Corpus at the minimum, and road wins against Incarnate Word and Abilene Christian. One more win against anyone else gets us to 8, and there are ample opportunities to get this done, both at home and on the road.

 

It's not good that basically we're relying on the unbelievably weak quality of the Southland as our hope to go .500. I don't blame the coach for everything--he clearly had a recruiting issue last year and that sort of mess doesn't rectify itself quickly--we also have to deal with an ever-weakening Southland, the hangover from so many academic issues (we were close to APR issues this year), and some other annoyances (the deLebeaudattiere situation, for example). I also think that one decent rebounder would make a huge difference for this team--while the lack of such is on the Coach, it gives me some hope that one or two decent additions would make a world of difference for the team.

 

 

[Knightman]

I liked the way Sebastin Norman came in and played a solid game for us!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Go Cards!!!!!!!!

 

Knightman

[LUSportsFan]

I liked the way Sebastin Norman came in and played a solid game for us!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Go Cards!!!!!!!!

 

Knightman

 

Thanks for mentioning him. I agree. We actually got to the game a few minutes late. Based on the play by play we got to our seats around the 14:12 remaining in the 1st half mark. We were finishing up grand daughter duty while the daughter and son in law went to the movie. (Grand daughter duty is a tough job, but someone has to do it.) :)

 

The first play I saw was a free throw attempt. Norman made the defensive rebound. In less than three minutes he had that rebound, a steal, and an assisted layup.