The Bobcat Nation

So the Bobcats travel to Cheney this Saturday to take on the Eagles of Eastern Washington in the first conference game of the year. My question: does anyone know why this first conference game is coming so early in the season. Typically, our conference play doesn't begin until after our Holiday Tournament in Bozeman has been played. In fact, this season, our next conference game won't be until January 3rd. It just seems real odd, and I am assuming it could be a sloppy game as neither team has had any real time to gel this early in the season.

Also, any thought on this game? I know EWU was picked by both the media and the coaches to finish near the bottom of the conference along with the Cats (I think the coaches had us at 8 and EWU at 7 versus the media flip-flopping those predictions). But EWU had a nice win on the road last night against Portland, and will be coming into Saturday night's contest sporting a 5-2 record. So maybe neither team will be as down as the experts predict? Should be a good game, and it will be played on Big Sky TV. The Cats have been road warriors so far; I see us picking up a win in a close contest and starting conference play at 1-0!!!

GO CATS!!!

I think it is due to the fact that we are participating in the bracket buster later in the year so we had to move the conference game up to make room in the schedule for that later date.

WYCAT wrote:I think it is due to the fact that we are participating in the bracket buster later in the year so we had to move the conference game up to make room in the schedule for that later date.

Yep, the Cat's Bracket Buster game is Feb. 21 which would typically be a conference game date so one game had to be moved ahead.

About playing our first conference game on December 6th. The official word on why relates to the bracket-buster game we play in February. The unofficial but more correct reason is that Doug Fullerton is an idiot! He and his staff could not put together a decent conference schedule if there life depended on it.

Here is another question. Why is our first Bobcat Griz game for the second year in a row the first week in January, when no students are around! It can not be that tough to schedule the conference rivalry games on or near the last week of every 1/2 of the conference season ..... like it was done for close to 20 years before Foolerton became commish.

Now about the EWU and MSU game: EWU has to be one of the hottest teams right now in the conference (along with Portland State). After losing to Carrol College in a exhibition game, they rattled off 5 wins to only 2 loses. Eastern holds two wins over Cal. State Irvine (Home and away) Home wins against Idaho, Texas Arlington, and road wins verses Portland last night. There only losses are against Illinois, and Minnesota. In the RPI right now they are actually the top rated team in the Big Sky. This is going to be a very tough game for the Cats on the road. I think we can take EWU, but it will take our best game of this short season to do so.

BTW did you know of all the Big Sky conference teams MSU has played the fewest games so far this season. Additionally MSU leads the conference in rebound margin with +3.0. and is second in game attendance with 3192 average

GOKATS wrote:

WYCAT wrote:I think it is due to the fact that we are participating in the bracket buster later in the year so we had to move the conference game up to make room in the schedule for that later date.

Yep, the Cat's Bracket Buster game is Feb. 21 which would typically be a conference game date so one game had to be moved ahead.

That seems logical to me...we play the Bracket Buster on February 21, as already said. By looking at the schedule, it looks like the game with Weber State got displaced by that one, to March 3. Another anomaly is that we play the earliest and the latest conference game on the schedule. The conference scheduling people have never figured out how to incorporate Northern Colorado into the schedule...this is their third conference season. I do remember hearing about a Thursday-Saturday/Saturday-Monday arrangement, but that never happened. The position of the Cat-Griz game doesn't make a lot of sense either. Idaho State and Weber State get it worse...they play one of the games on a Thursday, travel, and play the other game at the other team's place on Saturday. It doesn't make any sense.

Part of it is also that first round of the tournament and its position. When the Big Sky had 9 teams before 2001, the conference tournament was in the last available weekend, Thursday-Saturday. Later, ESPN dictated that it should be earlier for TV purposes. The conference moved the tournament to Tuesday and Wednesday, with the first round at the host sites the Saturday before. There goes one week of conference scheduling. Adding Northern Colorado added two more weeks to the schedule, but we started with one less available week. So now, with Bracket Busters involved, there goes the whole conference scheduling. The women's conference schedule doesn't have one less week and Bracket Busters to deal with, so it seems to work right. But there has to be a better solution than playing a conference game a full month before the rest of the conference season.

Something needs to be done, but at this point, I'm not quite sure what. Maybe moving the conference tournament back to the last available Friday and Saturday, with playing the first-round games on Tuesday might work. That would give another week on the conference schedule, fixing those problems.

bozbobcat wrote:

GOKATS wrote:

WYCAT wrote:I think it is due to the fact that we are participating in the bracket buster later in the year so we had to move the conference game up to make room in the schedule for that later date.

Yep, the Cat's Bracket Buster game is Feb. 21 which would typically be a conference game date so one game had to be moved ahead.

That seems logical to me...we play the Bracket Buster on February 21, as already said. By looking at the schedule, it looks like the game with Weber State got displaced by that one, to March 3. Another anomaly is that we play the earliest and the latest conference game on the schedule. The conference scheduling people have never figured out how to incorporate Northern Colorado into the schedule...this is their third conference season. I do remember hearing about a Thursday-Saturday/Saturday-Monday arrangement, but that never happened. The position of the Cat-Griz game doesn't make a lot of sense either. Idaho State and Weber State get it worse...they play one of the games on a Thursday, travel, and play the other game at the other team's place on Saturday. It doesn't make any sense.

Part of it is also that first round of the tournament and its position. When the Big Sky had 9 teams before 2001, the conference tournament was in the last available weekend, Thursday-Saturday. Later, ESPN dictated that it should be earlier for TV purposes. The conference moved the tournament to Tuesday and Wednesday, with the first round at the host sites the Saturday before. There goes one week of conference scheduling. Adding Northern Colorado added two more weeks to the schedule, but we started with one less available week. So now, with Bracket Busters involved, there goes the whole conference scheduling. The women's conference schedule doesn't have one less week and Bracket Busters to deal with, so it seems to work right. But there has to be a better solution than playing a conference game a full month before the rest of the conference season.

Something needs to be done, but at this point, I'm not quite sure what. Maybe moving the conference tournament back to the last available Friday and Saturday, with playing the first-round games on Tuesday might work. That would give another week on the conference schedule, fixing those problems.

When I listened to Fields a couple hours ago on the radio and he was talking about scheduling he said that the BSC office feeds the teams and dates into the computer and the computer spits out the Big Sky schedule. Specifically talking about FB he said the Cats & griz then work with other teams to schedule Cat/griz the last game.

mslacat, you said "About playing our first conference game on December 6th. The official word on why relates to the bracket-buster game we play in February. The unofficial but more correct reason is that Doug Fullerton is an idiot! He and his staff could not put together a decent conference schedule if there life depended on it."...you are right on! This is way to early and don't you guys have like four new starters?