The Bobcat Nation

Well, a lot of us probably haven't been paying super close attention to basketball after another deep playoff run by the football team, but conference play begins a week from tomorrow with the women playing at Idaho & EWU and the men hosting the same two teams. The rankings below are from the NCAA's official NET Ratings they use for NCAA selection and seeding, with the men listed first and women second through games of Dec. 20.

127) MSU
161) UM
187) Sac
208) PSU
215) Weber
225) UNCU
231) EWU
246) NAU
256) Idaho
285) ISU

MSU seems to be a pretty strong favorite to repeat as conference champs, and is the only team (7-6) with a record over .500 right now. UM is improving after a bad start and Sac will be interesting to watch with all of their new transfer players. A little surprising to see UNCU ranked only 6th, but one assumes they'll be right in the mix in the conference standings by the end of the year. No surprise to see the two Idaho teams at the bottom as that's where they finished last year and were picked in the preseason polls.

112) MSU
119) Sac
134) UNCU
144) EWU
152) NAU
204) ISU
218) UM
227) Idaho
269) PSU
290) Weber

WOW, I don't think I've ever seen this many Big Sky teams in the Top 150 of any computer rankings. WBB looks stacked this year in the Big Sky if Idaho is in 8th, as Newlee always has them playing good basketball come tournament time. Seems like this could be a year where the regular season champ might end up with 5 or 6 losses. MSU will need to be on their game all the time, not many easy wins on the schedule this year.

MSU's teams stayed good...but several of the other teams got better. League will be interesting. Boise is fun. Y'all should plan to go.

Well, you get in trouble with comparative scores, but Alabama's men had defeated two number one teams before Gonzaga beat them. Then a couple of nights ago UM took Gonzaga right to the end (I think they were behind by a couple with four minutes to go) before losing by 10. And this was on the road. Therefore, I would watch out for the UM men.

As for both of our MSU teams, I think the women are more consistent with their shooting. The women are weak in the post at times. The men are so darn inconsistent with their 3 point shooting and FT shooting. When they shoot good they can be formidable. The guys REALLY miss Xavier Bishop. He was the straw that mixed the drink last year.

Both squads are going to be very solid. It has been a long time since I have said our inside strength on the men's team is the key. They are very impressive; I think we will be able to continually pound the paint against anyone in the Big Sky. Hopefully our guards can find the gear that X always found to give us a little push. A complete team, solid players and a strong coaching staff. I am anxious to see them play live.

The ladies just seem to reload. I think by the end of the regular season they will be very hard to beat. They just need to continue to build depth as it will be needed later in the season.

It is a good time for MSU Basketball!

The conference season starts Thursday night so here goes my annual rant with the arrogance of the Big Sky Conference schedulers.

Whomever sets up these schedules, specifically the tip off times, apparently doesn’t know or could care less that there are fans of both the men’s and women’s college teams. I get that if you are going to have both teams play on the same weeknight (such as Thursdays), there is a small window to stagger the tip off times. But even in their infinite wisdom, with an hour time zone difference, this Thursday night women’s game at Moscow starts at 6 pm local pacific time which will be 7 pm mountain time. So the men and women will play at the exact same time. For games played on Saturday, there is absolutely no excuse for not being able to stagger the tip off times by 2 or 3 hours.

Go Cats and ESBSC!

Not pleased about the timing of games. Would have been my perfect day to watch the mens team play then home to watch the women.
Good luck to both teams. Compete hard!

Big Sky Breakdown - Non-conference hoops roundup + three big things 'Cats & Griz men's & women's teams

Colter Nuanez breaks down all things Big Sky Conference women's & men's basketball with league play opening up on the final weekend of 2022.

Colter gives five interesting things about Big Sky women’s hoops (3:15), the Big Sky women’s hoops players of the week so far (9:26), five interesting facts about Big Sky men’s hoops (11:05), the Big Sky men’s hoops players of the week so far (23:51) and reviews the transfers proliferating everywhere (25:40) throughout the men's league.

Plus, Colter gives three big things about Montana men's hoops (42:00), the Montana State women's team (46:35), the Montana Lady Griz (49:00) and finally three big things about the Montana State men (53:05)

https://skylinesportsmt.com/big-sky-bre ... ens-teams/

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