The Bobcat Nation

Wow...where the hell do I start on this one? First off, I really think that we looked like champions tonight. We didn't necessarily play our best game of the year or the prettiest game of the year, but we overcame a ton of obstacles that would have defeated many other bobcat teams in the past.

The players:

Miller: Wow...what a huge shot at the end to win it. I really didn't like how he was playing the first half, and the start of the 2nd. He was forcing a lot of long jumpers, making lazy passes, and got a Tech' for talking trash. BUT when it came down to the last 4-5 minutes of the game, he made great decisions, and really looked like the floor general.

Jefferson: Had a tough night shooting, but he got to the line, and made most of his shots. Sac was being VERY physical with him and the refs (we'll get to those comedians) were letting them play, and I think that took him out of his game a little. He still played VERY good defense, and all of his shots came within the flow of the offense. I think he still ended up with 17 or so.

Dissly: He had one of the best dunks I have ever seen....very similar to Dan Trammel's against the cats in the tourney a few years ago. Played great defense (3 or 4 blocks), took good shots, passed the ball well, but was a little sloppy with this ball handling.

Moss: I am more impressed with Moss every time I see him play. He is a very good and complete player offensively (he has every move in the book....off the dribble or with his back to the basket...he's very skilled) and defensively. The only thing that could improve is that sometimes when Al is on the floor with him, Marvin looks a little lost. Once we can figure out how to maximize those two together, we will have a dominating inside force.

Al: Played pretty well. The one thing that hurt us was their big guy was on fire from behind the arc. We were trying to trap, and the big guy got a lot of wide open looks with Al protecting the basket and he was knocking them down. Had 2 follow up dunks and had another dunk blocked (apparently the defensive player can block a shot with his hand in the net and through the rim).

Ryan Holmes: What a great game he had. I think he was 3-4 shooting with 8 or so points, as steal and maybe one turnover tops. He was very aggressive taking the ball to the hole and drawing fouls. I was very impressed with what I saw.

Taylor Pratt: He had a very good offensive game with a dunk and a couple nice shots, but was getting killed on the boards. He had inside position on SAC free throws twice in a row, and both times his guy got the rebound and the put back. I don't think he saw the floor after that.

Woodall/Durr: Played a few insignificant minutes

Durham/Towsley: DNP....Towsley wasn't even on the bench, his back much really be in bad shape.

Crowd: 3,932.....Took us a while to get into it, but was VERY loud the last three or so minutes.

Band: When it's a close game like that, would it kill you to play the fight song? WAKEUP!!!!

Scoreboard operators: Wow...we could start and entire new thread about these jackasses. I don't understand how we can get a rebound with 36 seconds on the clock, and then call a time out with 20 seconds on the game clock and 13 seconds on the shot clock. We were getting homered on our own court. I have been to pretty much every bobcat homegame since the 97/98 season, and I don't know if I have ever seen a game where there hasn't been a problem with the clock operators. There obviously isn't an age limit to become a division I scoreboard operator, because all three or four of these jokers look like they are 90 years old.

Refs: Speaking of jokers apparently the three stooges made a stop at the Brick tonight. I've seen better officiating at 5th grade girls basketball games. This is going to be a LONG season. These guys definitely didn't earn their $1,000 for the night. To give them a little credit, I have a feeling that these guys dread officiating Sac games, because it is going to be PHYSICAL.

SAC: Wow...what a physical athletic team. These guys are going to give a lot of teams fits because they play UGLY basketball. The have no tempo, and they don't let the opposing team establish any tempo. I wouldn't be surprised to see these guys knock off Montana, tomorrow. With UM's lack of ball handling, they may be in for a long night.

Misc. I would like to take credit for being the first person who's ideas on gameday atmostphere have been implemented. I noticed that before the game they had a recording of Mick on the big screen saying something to the fans (audio wasn't turned up), and then after they game they had a recording of Dis thanking the crowd for coming to the game and to drive home safely. Check the record, I was the one who came up with that idea....where's my prize???


Oh I almost forgot 4-0, and sitting on top of the conference by ourselves.....congrats men, GREAT WIN.

Great game, sloppy, but entertaining. I don't think the Cats came even close to playing their best game and had Durham and Towsley out and still pulled out a win. I must say I am becoming a believer, now just don't let me down please!

BTW, in response to mslacat's observation that Martrel and Ted Morris were both absent at the Cat/Griz game, they were both on the bench tonight.

The clock operators at MSU do seem to have more than their fair share of issues...

wbtfg: You are right about the fact that it took quite a while for the Bobcat fans to get into the game.... sadly, it usually does. They kind of sit back until the Cats get it going, rather than rooting them on to get it going. Quite a bit of fair weather fans in the fieldhouse on any given night!!

How about commenting on the Bobcat cheerleaders? Oh, I forgot, MSU doesn't have a cheer squad I guess. The Dance Team shows up for games, but no cheer squad. How about that for a school of our size? If you can say anything positive about the Grizzlies, it has to be their cheer squad getting the crowd fired up.... No, I am not a Monte fan, and think that his actions during the Cat/Griz game are pathetic. However, one would think MSU could find some interest in a cheer squad... One final note: this year's non-squad of cheerleaders is better than last year's squad, who spent most of the time giggling with each other, flirting with the crowd, and basically didn't even know what was going on in the game. One time, they even left the game early! How pathetic! I can remember the day when there was a a group that was into the game, and helped with school spirit! Maybe a cheer squad could get the student section a little fired up! They are a little lethargic for a college student section!

On the bright side: GO CATS!!! With Portland losing tonight, look who is ALL ALONE IN FIRST PLACE!!!

I was at the game as well. It was a fun win but the refs were bad.
They had a couple of meetings to discuss a couple of calls. My friend timed the second meeting and he said it was 9 minutes.

Another friend went to the band near the end of the game and asked them why they didn't play the "FIGHT SONG" at one of the time-outs just to really get the crowd into it. The band director said that he didn't know and then a band lady with headphones told her that "THEY" wouldn't let them. My friend asked who "THEY" were and the band lady told her that "THEY" were the people in charge of game management. We've got to check into this because at many games it would help to have 1/2 the fight song instead of some studpid taped music.

GO BOBCATS!!!!!

Great win. We were sure off a tick-especially in the first half. I don't think we really got into any kind of offensive rhythem until the very end when Moss got his baby hook going from the low block. We also missed two break away layups.

I'm a Taylor Pratt fan, and he was really contributing. Then he totally misjudged a couple of long rebounds off free throws, didn't block out and gave up two put backs. It really killed his minutes.

Ryan Holmes is turning out to be a pretty decent little player. He never got rattled in the face of some tough pressure and he asserted himself on offense at the right time. His minutes kept us in it when Miller got bench after the technical.

Great minutes from Beye. He was a little tenative on defense early, but maybe that was by design as he stayed out of foul trouble at the end when the refs are less apt to call the close ones.

I was surprised the listed attendance was only 3900. I guess even that size crowd looks big after what we've been drawing. The fans got into it and I think it made a difference.

We're in first place by ourselves for now-how about that!

In the first five minutes of the game I turned to my friend and said wow the cats actually look like a a good mid major team tonight. Then it fell off for some time. For the rest of the game the cats were very streaky. They pulled through in the end like a good team should though.
This team is the most exciting we had in a long time. There were more dunks tonight then in any game I can remember, there were also a ton of blocked shots. Plus the fact that all the games are going down to the wire. We had a good crowd tonight but we can do better on saturday.

Great game when it was actually being played. Does anybody know what the first big stopage of the game was for?

Somebody around us had guessed the stoppage was for the amount of fouls on one of their players with the head scorekeeper. He had announced that their player had 4 fouls when the scoreboard showed 3 and it never changed at that point. I thought that this had to be the worst officiating I have seen in at least 10 years because the 3 refs couldn't agree on anything.....another poor play was when the official away form the play called us for the out of bounds when the guy right next to it couldn't even make the call.....oh well we got the big W and keep that momentum going....way to go Mick and Co......your crowd is only going to keep getting BIGGER!!!!

I drove over yesterday with a friend, so was also at the game. It was enjoyable, and as usual the Cats never make it easy. Just a couple other thoughts.

Dissly's dunk was absolutely amazing-worth the trip over by itself. I thought it was Sportscenter material. Wow!!! Other than that, I thought no one on the team played up to their potential and yet we still found a way to win. A good sign in my view, but we were fortunate to be playing Sac State. They do have an athletic team-if they ever learn to shoot they could be scary. The first half especially they were hitting some shots that I don't think they do very regularly and it was looking scary.

I take it back-one player that did play really well was Ryan Holmes. he really came up big for us and played exceptionally well. I think he really could be a player for us down the road. I just thought he played with a lot of poise-and this kid can score points. He will be a scorer in time. as he gains experience and more confidence. He did not shoot that much last night, but he really made some nice moves/shots when he did.

Oh-one more thought. Me and my friend were the two old guys in the middle of the student section making more noise that any 30 students combined. Wow-what has happened to the student section??? It was really sad how quiet these kids are-someone needs to light a fuse under them and get some sort of homecourt advantage going.

I've been told that the "fans" in the comfy seats don't like things to get too loud. They like to be able to "chat" during the games.

hohum...back in the day, the student section would fill up an hour before the game just to watch warmups...oh ya, that was when the coach really cared to have huge fan support...not saying Coach doesn't want huge fan support, he just seems to keep it to himself.

Somebody in Bozeman is going to have to take the lead and make the games FUN ALL THE TIME, not just when the rival comes to town. This team has talent that should just be enjoyable to watch, win or lose.

Why not just adapt "Game Day Experience" to hoops? It's hard enough making the Brick loud with 8,000, let alone half that amount.

Woodall/Durr: Played a few insignificant minutes

Oh I almost forgot 4-0, and sitting on top of the conference by ourselves.....congrats men, GREAT WIN.[/quote]

What is the deal with Woodall and Durr? I listened to the game, they got very little minutes. Anyone have any inside on this?......and if I heard right, Pratt did not play in the 2nd half as well. I listened to the game so I might have missed something.

Anybody else kind of afraid to get their hopes up? BTW, wouldn't it be great to see Dissly step in and take over for the coaches nephew?

Cat Grad wrote:Anybody else kind of afraid to get their hopes up? BTW, wouldn't it be great to see Dissly step in and take over for the coaches nephew?

I may seem kind of dumb, but what do you mean by that? Coaches nephew?

i dont get it either. Sorry

is he suggesting that Dissly should play backup PG instead of Durham? I don't get it either...Durham is the coaches son, not nephew.

I'm guessing he's talking football-Dissly replacing Kramer's nephew Blake Wolfe at tightend.

Bleedinbluengold wrote:I've been told that the "fans" in the comfy seats don't like things to get too loud. They like to be able to "chat" during the games.

hohum...back in the day, the student section would fill up an hour before the game just to watch warmups...oh ya, that was when the coach really cared to have huge fan support...not saying Coach doesn't want huge fan support, he just seems to keep it to himself.

Somebody in Bozeman is going to have to take the lead and make the games FUN ALL THE TIME, not just when the rival comes to town. This team has talent that should just be enjoyable to watch, win or lose.

Why not just adapt "Game Day Experience" to hoops? It's hard enough making the Brick loud with 8,000, let alone half that amount.

Sounds a lot like the complaints on E-Griz...what happened to fan support for hoops???

I am still curious about the Woodall, Durr and Pratt situation. Have the Cats settled on a seven-man rotation and these guys are out in the cold.....or will they continue the 11-man style that helped them play so well at Weber St and ISU.

Any "inside" info here on this issue?