The Bobcat Nation

The other day I commented in a post that after watching our men and women get blown out by embarrassingly huge margins, that I wished we had a "mid major" division in basketball like the FCS in football. But I take that back. I look at what tiny Saint Peters with an enrollment of 2000 students has accomplished. And even more importantly, look at South Dakota's women now in the Sweet Sixteen. Also I watched the Belmont women last night take Tennessee to the brink. Belmont is a so-called "mid major" like Montana State.

Come on Bobcats and Lady Cats, you can keep improving and compete with top teams. Teams like Saint Peters, South Dakota and Belmont show us that it is indeed possible. Dream big! Go Cats!

aucat wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 22, 2022 8:47 am

The other day I commented in a post that after watching our men and women get blown out by embarrassingly huge margins, that I wished we had a "mid major" division in basketball like the FCS in football. But I take that back. I look at what tiny Saint Peters with an enrollment of 2000 students has accomplished. And even more importantly, look at South Dakota's women now in the Sweet Sixteen. Also I watched the Belmont women last night take Tennessee to the brink. Belmont is a so-called "mid major" like Montana State.

Come on Bobcats and Lady Cats, you can keep improving and compete with top teams. Teams like Saint Peters, South Dakota and Belmont show us that it is indeed possible. Dream big! Go Cats!

The ladies had chances to keep it close. If we could have gotten hot from 3 in the first quarter, they gave us lots of wide-open shots. We didn't hit any so they sagged and completely dominated the paint with their size advantage. We also had lots of very lax passes turning into turnovers. Yes, they are head and shoulders above us athletically but we just mentally weren't ready to take it to them.

Dream big! I really like this! I think we can get there!

Dream big, but as fans remember those are south Dakota first wins. Same for Saint Peter's. Having good matches with that right team this can be done and has year after year. But that is different than consistently getting in and having our conference string so we get better seed and winning multiple years

tetoncat wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 22, 2022 1:05 pm

Dream big, but as fans remember those are south Dakota first wins. Same for Saint Peter's. Having good matches with that right team this can be done and has year after year. But that is different than consistently getting in and having our conference string so we get better seed and winning multiple years

USD's 2019-2020 WBB team would probably have been a #4 seed and likely would have made some noise had that tournament not been cancelled. If you look at SDSU's WBB, they have missed only 2 NCAA tournaments since 2009, have advanced to the second round twice, and the sweet 16 once. Their last sweet 16 was 2019. So if you take the 2 Div 1 WBB teams in South Dakota, that state has sweet 16 teams 2 out of the last 4 tournaments. The fact is public universities in a small population rural state are consistently competitive in the NCAA Tournament. I don't foresee a national championship in their future, but I can say the same for all but about half a dozen teams.

Having a WBB team from the state of South Dakota winning games in the tournament is not an anomaly.

I was in Indianapolis at the St Peter's games. They did not in any way look like the lesser team against Kentucky and Murray St. If you had walked in without knowing anything about the teams you would not have any way to know which was the #15 and which was the #2.

The Big Sky conference is ranked the 22nd strongest D1 conference and the MEAC (St Peters) the 30th of 32 conferences according to teamrankings.com. So why did St Peters compete so well and the 'Cats were handled so easily by Texas Tech?

Heck if I know.

technoCat wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 22, 2022 9:50 am

aucat wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 22, 2022 8:47 am

The other day I commented in a post that after watching our men and women get blown out by embarrassingly huge margins, that I wished we had a "mid major" division in basketball like the FCS in football. But I take that back. I look at what tiny Saint Peters with an enrollment of 2000 students has accomplished. And even more importantly, look at South Dakota's women now in the Sweet Sixteen. Also I watched the Belmont women last night take Tennessee to the brink. Belmont is a so-called "mid major" like Montana State.

Come on Bobcats and Lady Cats, you can keep improving and compete with top teams. Teams like Saint Peters, South Dakota and Belmont show us that it is indeed possible. Dream big! Go Cats!

The ladies had chances to keep it close. If we could have gotten hot from 3 in the first quarter, they gave us lots of wide-open shots. We didn't hit any so they sagged and completely dominated the paint with their size advantage. We also had lots of very lax passes turning into turnovers. Yes, they are head and shoulders above us athletically but we just mentally weren't ready to take it to them.

I wish I could agree with this but I don't. Stanford was so vastly superior to us. There was a reason our threes weren't going down and our passes were bad. Stanford had superior length, strength, and skill. It is very difficult to play against sa team like that when you have never seen athletes like that.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing our ladies. I am immensely proud of Coach Bin and her team. But Stanford is in another universe.

We missed some wide open 3's

Both tournaments depend on matchups. Every once in a while a good mid-major goes up against a power team that has a bad night, or the mid-major excels in their weakness. Other than that it's just happenstance.

tetoncat wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 22, 2022 8:52 pm

We missed some wide open 3's

We were missing a lot more than open threes. I think it’s obvious we need to improve across the board. They shut us down In every area

84CatGrad wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 22, 2022 8:40 pm

I was in Indianapolis at the St Peter's games. They did not in any way look like the lesser team against Kentucky and Murray St. If you had walked in without knowing anything about the teams you would not have any way to know which was the #15 and which was the #2.

The Big Sky conference is ranked the 22nd strongest D1 conference and the MEAC (St Peters) the 30th of 32 conferences according to teamrankings.com. So why did St Peters compete so well and the 'Cats were handled so easily by Texas Tech?

Heck if I know.

It certainly doesn't help that we shot over 5% under our season average and Tech shot around 30% above theirs. Can't remember what I had posted earlier...