Good to get back into the winning ways.
Some thoughts:
- Officiating. Terrible. There were a couple of fouls called on us that were clean blocks as far as I could see. That one on Farris in the second half was one of the worst I’ve seen called in a couple of seasons.
- Come on Woods, only 7-8 from the free throw line? ;-) Kidding, he was unreal today. One huge non-stat part was his play in breaking the press in the second half. Quite a few times that EWU got him deep in the baseline corner and he was able to get away. That kid threw the ball up at the basket 18 times today, and it went in 17 times.
- We were only eight deep on playing time today, which is odd since we’ve been about eleven deep recently. No minutes from Tucker. As a result, a weird twilight zone second half of us running slow tempo and defending against the press, which is opposite of what we usually see. I had an uneasy feeling with us starting to slow it down with about 15-16 minutes to go, but hats off to us for making the shots and the plays to get a double-digit win.
- No North, Canda was cold, and we win. Strickland had a hot hand as well.
- It was an interesting second half offense to watch by EWU. We seemed to lay off of the pressure for the most part, and it was EWU versus our man defense against an undersized defender to drive, dish, with a couple of passes for a three point attempt. If this were flipped, I’d have said that we’d taken too many three pointers. EWU really stepped up their defensive pressure in the second half, which I felt that we were able to deal with pretty well.
This team looked a lot more in step with each other today than in the last couple of games. To be honest, I was a bit concerned with us dropping the Sac State and Idaho games at home that we’d come into the game flat and not have a lot of energy. Perhaps it was the smaller rotation; Who knows. Well, on to the Montana trip. Montana looks like they’re about ready for their first conference loss. Wouldn’t it be very PSU of us to give UM their first conference loss, and then lay an egg in Bozeman for the road split.
