WBB vs NAU

[BelgradeBobcat]

NAU has an incredible team. They have a terrific point guard. They have shooters all over the place. They have the best center in the league...and they have two losses to the Bobcats! So much to talk about in this one. Esme Morales owns NAU. Taylee Chirrick with her own 6-0 run with two steals in that run. Dagger three by KJ. Incredible defense by Dykstra and Harris and company to hold the conference's leading scorer to 7 points. The Bobcats left a lot on the table. Some silly turnovers and too many blown layups. Don't expect Addy Harris to miss those too many more times. The true freshman is an incredible talent. Love the fire in her eyes when Beattie took her out. She looked like she could spit nails. And yeah-why didn't she get two free throws there?

Great crowd. When Picton hit that three on our big second quarter run the place almost blew up. The Beattie-coach Payne cheering section made some noise for them too. It was a great atmosphere. Everyone please come back on Saturday. Northern Colorado led us at the half in Greeley. Their record isn't great but they can ugly it up and steal one if we're not careful. Hopefully coach Bin can rely on her bench and go a bit deeper.

Football dropped a banner tonight. This team is well on its way to adding to their banner with a regular season title. I think the pressure is off big time after winning this one.

[lutecat]

Man, I really wanted to watch the ladies on Saturday, but it looks like the roads might be sketchy getting to Bozeman,

I was on the roads between Bozeman and Butte Tuesday and they were snowcovered but not horrible. I will caveat that with I saw a truck and a car off in the ditch on the Cardwell hill going towards Butte. But the roads were best in the whole stretch going between Bozeman and Three Forks in the driving lane. No idea what's happened since. I did hear a lot of snow last night.

[lutecat]

NAU has an incredible team. They have a terrific point guard. They have shooters all over the place. They have the best center in the league...and they have two losses to the Bobcats! So much to talk about in this one. Esme Morales owns NAU. Taylee Chirrick with her own 6-0 run with two steals in that run. Dagger three by KJ. Incredible defense by Dykstra and Harris and company to hold the conference's leading scorer to 7 points. The Bobcats left a lot on the table. Some silly turnovers and too many blown layups. Don't expect Addy Harris to miss those too many more times. The true freshman is an incredible talent. Love the fire in her eyes when Beattie took her out. She looked like she could spit nails. And yeah-why didn't she get two free throws there?

Great crowed. When Picton hit that three on our big second quarter run the place almost blew up. The Beattie-coach Payne cheering section made some noise for them too. It was a great atmosphere. Everyone please come back on Saturday. Northern Colorado led us at the half in Greeley. Their record isn't great but they can ugly it up and steal one if we're not careful. Hopefully coach Bin can rely on her bench and go a bit deeper.

Football dropped a banner tonight. This team is well on its way to adding to their banner with a regular season title. I think the pressure is off big time after winning this one.

Additionally look how many of their players we put deep in foul trouble or fouled out.

[aucat]

Not our best game yet we still whipped a very good NAU team. I agree with lutecat about the strange traveling calls on Natalie. I was there and to me that was not traveling. NAU has shooters and they box out and rebound. Numbers 33 and especially number 12 (Clancey) know how to get position and box out. It's one thing to give up a rebound after you miss a shot on offense, but to not be in position to rebound on defense is simply technique. Something to improve on. It just seems like these ladies always step up. Taylee hitting threes tonight. Esme going off. Great defense.

Saturday is definitely a trap game. UNC is better than their record. Looks snowy but it's a Saturday so hopefully we get another good crowd. Really great to see such a big crowd tonight. Keep it up ladies! Go Cats!

[BelgradeBobcat]

Picton's three gave us the lead in the second quarter and just about blew the roof of the Brick:

[BelgradeBobcat]

Listed attendance was 2977. Sure seemed like more than that. I was expecting about 3200 or so. Still a great crowd for a Thursday night game. Biggest crowd of the night in the Big Sky Conference-men or women. Second biggest crowd of the night was the women's game up in Missoula-2300+

[CatRowdy]

It was a great win. Great crowd regardless of #'s. Good job of marketing getting 100 students there. The Cats did a great job defeating a very dedicated Jacks team. A lot of heart in the brick tonight; both in the crowd and from the team. Time to make it a priority to be at the games, maybe throw some donation money to the team; oh and there is NIL money to go too! Get in the game!

[Bobcat4Ever]

I'd love to know what the interaction between Coach Bin and Leia Beattie was after the game considering she had the hard foul on Addison for an intentional and then the shot to the face on TC(which was an accident you could tell) that Caoch Bin asked for the review on.

It wasn’t like Leia limited her damage to Addison and Taylee. Pretty early in the second quarter, KJ went to the left corner as the ‘Cats got into their offense. When a pass came to her, Beattie ran out on her and as KJ passed the ball away, hit her with something (elbow?) that really stood her up. KJ grabbed her face immediately. After a shot was taken the rebound came out short to Beattie on that side and KJ looked to unscrew Beattie’s head and neck. I was afraid she’d get caught on the retaliation but the ref either didn’t see it or ignored it. Unusual for KJ to flash like that, but she was wiping blood from her face at the next timeout. Ghosts of a season past die hard, I guess. Addison and Taylee were just convenient targets.

@SACCAT commented on this one — can you clarify what happened for us?

[lutecat]

I'd love to know what the interaction between Coach Bin and Leia Beattie was after the game considering she had the hard foul on Addison for an intentional and then the shot to the face on TC(which was an accident you could tell) that Caoch Bin asked for the review on.

It wasn’t like Leia limited her damage to Addison and Taylee. Pretty early in the second quarter, KJ went to the left corner as the ‘Cats got into their offense. When a pass came to her, Beattie ran out on her and as KJ passed the ball away, hit her with something (elbow?) that really stood her up. KJ grabbed her face immediately. After a shot was taken the rebound came out short to Beattie on that side and KJ looked to unscrew Beattie’s head and neck. I was afraid she’d get caught on the retaliation but the ref either didn’t see it or ignored it. Unusual for KJ to flash like that, but she was wiping blood from her face at the next timeout. Ghosts of a season past die hard, I guess. Addison and Taylee were just convenient targets.

@SACCAT commented on this one — can you clarify what happened for us?

He did mention something about them getting into a little shoving. You know it always seemed like last year with her there was no bad blood with her and the no love loss was completely on Beasley.

[lutecat]

Another thing we haven't talked about yet, the press. Coach Bin didn't call for it alot of the game. I mean we had a kind of press going where we doubled the girl getting the inbounds pass but then someone else came up to get the ball. Bit when we unleashed it, it definitely helped extend the lead we had and gave us some good momentum in the 3rd quarter. It seemed we were lulling them to sleep not doing it before BAM!

[lutecat]

I didn't notice earlier that Esme's behind the back pass to Taylee was with Beatie guarding her....

[mslacatfan]

21-2!!!!! Super impressive

Go cats!

[MSU01]

Not much change in today's Net Rankings, MSU holds steady at #56 and NAU only drops one spot to #88. Perhaps a single digit MSU win was the "expected result" of the game. The Bobcats had a big jump after they destroyed a bad PSU team last weekend so perhaps margin of victory plays a role.

[Catfanatic84]

Listed attendance was 2977. Sure seemed like more than that. I was expecting about 3200 or so. Still a great crowd for a Thursday night game. Biggest crowd of the night in the Big Sky Conference-men or women. Second biggest crowd of the night was the women's game up in Missoula-2300+

Crowd looked and sounded great on TV. Good to see the support the women's team is getting.....assuming the Cats continuing winning, the Cat/Griz 2.0 is gonna be nuts!

[SACCAT]

I'd love to know what the interaction between Coach Bin and Leia Beattie was after the game considering she had the hard foul on Addison for an intentional and then the shot to the face on TC(which was an accident you could tell) that Caoch Bin asked for the review on.

It wasn’t like Leia limited her damage to Addison and Taylee. Pretty early in the second quarter, KJ went to the left corner as the ‘Cats got into their offense. When a pass came to her, Beattie ran out on her and as KJ passed the ball away, hit her with something (elbow?) that really stood her up. KJ grabbed her face immediately. After a shot was taken the rebound came out short to Beattie on that side and KJ looked to unscrew Beattie’s head and neck. I was afraid she’d get caught on the retaliation but the ref either didn’t see it or ignored it. Unusual for KJ to flash like that, but she was wiping blood from her face at the next timeout. Ghosts of a season past die hard, I guess. Addison and Taylee were just convenient targets.

@SACCAT commented on this one — can you clarify what happened for us?

Here are the answers to all your questions...

1) The foul on Beattie against Harris was called an Intentional Foul. In that case the 2 free throws for that foul can be shot by anyone on the team. You don't get 4 foul shots, just the 2 and the ball.

2) I didn't see what happened between Beattie and KJ, as the coach was right in my site line... BUT I could see Beattie put her arm out and KJ get stood up, looking stunned. As for the "retaliation" that was as close to a great block from behind as you can get... KJ got all ball, but because she was coming from behind, and swiping down, and Leah hit the floor they will call that 90% of the time.

3) Now to the foul on Harris by Beattie... Leah is VERY lucky that she wasn't tossed for that play. She led with her elbow down to the ball (at least from my recollection). That could/should have been a flagrant 1 (they actually don't call them that anymore).

4) Here is the thing that I think is the most troubling... Chirrick also got hit in the face after a rebound, and they reviewed that as well, so all 3 plays that we are talking about have one thing in common... Leah Beattie. She plays very hard and physical, BUT what struck me the most is, the refs alowed her to then complain about the calls right to their faces... That is something that you don't see often, and because they allowed it, she kept putting herself in those positions..

[MSU01]

3) Now to the foul on Harris by Beattie... Leah is VERY lucky that she wasn't tossed for that play. She led with her elbow down to the ball (at least from my recollection). That could/should have been a flagrant 1 (they actually don't call them that anymore).

To me the only thing that saved Beattie on this play was that she did initially make contact with the ball and then hit Harris on the head on the follow through. My favorite thing about that play was how quickly Harris got up and then the look she shot at Beattie before heading to the free throw line. Chirrick and Harris are both TOUGH, they've got plenty of room for improvement and refinement of their games but wow, what talent. They played the 3rd and 4th most minutes last night behind Morales and Dykstra and I suspect we'll continue to see both of them on the court in clutch late game situations.

[BelgradeBobcat]

I didn't notice earlier that Esme's behind the back pass to Taylee was with Beatie guarding her....

You mean this play right here?

[luckyirishguy25]

I didn't notice earlier that Esme's behind the back pass to Taylee was with Beatie guarding her....

You mean this play right here?

Sick play!

[MSU01]

The crazy thing about that play to me is how early Morales sees the cut Chirrick is making and how quickly she reacts to it to make that pass. Totally on another level, MSU is so fortunate that Esme decided to come here over NAU where she also took a visit last year.

[WalkOn79]

Something I don’t understand… Beattie’s hard foul on Harrison. Harrison was in the act of shooting, right? Why didn’t she get to shoot those free throws after the intentional foul free throws. Seemed like they missed that one bad.

I wondered same. Figured she would shoot and Cats get ball.

Apparently in college you can pick your best shooter on an intentional foul? Even if the other player is in the act of shooting? News to me.