Griz Johnson Sets New Standard

Wow. That's about all I can say about the play of Montana's Anthony Johnson (right), who set a new standard for excellence in the Big Sky Conference tournament championship in Ogden last night.

Johnson set a conference tournament record by pouring in 42 points -- 34 in the second half -- to lead the Grizzlies to a 66-65 win after they trailed by 20 points at halftime. Johnson's performance was truly epic, one of those efforts that Big Sky fans will be talking about for the rest of their lives. Consider the circumstancs:

• Montana looked absolutely dead in the water at half time, flat and lifeless. Weber was getting every loose ball, making every hustle play and totally dominating the game, while the Griz turned the ball over 14 times in the first 20 minutes.


• This was in Weber's house, where the Wildcats have won 86 percent of their games under coach Randy Rahe, in front of a largely hostile crowd that didn't want to see their team squander home court advantage in the conference tournament for the second year in a row.


• The stage was huge and brightly lit -- on national television (ESPN-2), with an NCAA tournament berth on the line.


• By the middle of the second half, everyone knew Johnson was the guy -- he was making every play, taking every important shot, and Weber was doing everything it could to keep the ball out of hands.

In the end, none of that mattered. Johnson scored 25 of Montana's last 26 points, including a two-pointer that gave the Griz their ultimate lead with 15 seconds left. "It's hard when somebody's unconscious like that," said Pocatello High graduate Nick Hansen, who got to witness history up close and personal as the Wildcats' shooting guard. "Even when you have a hand in his face and he's still making it. I don't really think we let down defensively, I think that he just played out of this world."

In my 30-plus years of watching Big Sky Conference basketball, I would have to say only the 36-point effort by Weber State's Harold "The Show" Arceneaux in the Wildcats' win over North Carolina compares with Johnson's effort last night. Sure, Idaho's Orlando Lightfoot had a few of those "unconscious" nights when nobody in the building could stop him, but not with an NCAA tournament berth on the line on national television. Johnson, who was just about everyone's pre-season pick for Big Sky Player of the Year, had the added satisfaction of putting on his show in front of Weber's Damian Lillard, who actually won the POY honor when the Wildcats captured the regular season title again.

So Johnson, the senior out of Tacoma, and his teammates head to the "Big Dance," where they will likely be a 15 or 14 seed. The Wildcats will have to settle for an NIT berth, and Northern Colorado will wait in the wings to see if the CBI or CIT tournaments call. But all three Big Sky teams will be hard-pressed to follow the performance that Anthony Johnson provided Wednesday night in Ogden. It's a night Big Sky basketball fans will never forget.

--Brad B.

Three Factors Sank Bengals

We've all had plenty of time to ponder the demise of Idaho State's men's basketball team, whose season mercifully came to a conclusion Saturday in Cheney, Wash. The Bengals, who were picked to finish third in the conference by the coaches and fourth in the media pre-season poll, whimpered to an eighth-place conclusion, finishing ahead of only perennial cellar-dweller Sac State. To make matters worse, the Hornets swept the season series with ISU.

Quick and dirty, these are my three keys to the Bengals' melt-down this year:

• Defense -- or lack thereof. Basketball stathead Ken Pomeroy publishes numbers in key areas such as defensive efficiency (points allowed per 100 defensive possessions); effective field goal percentage (which factors in three-point defense); turnover percentage; offensive rebound percentage; three-point shooting percentage defense; and two-point shooting percentage.

The long and short of it is that Idaho State was terrible in all these key defensive departments. There are 347 Division I basketball teams. Idaho State finished 341 in effective defense, 337 in effective field goal percentage defense, 331 in turnover percentage, 301 in defending against offensive rebounds, 315 in three-point field goal percentage, and 331 in two-point field goal percentage.

If you look at last season's numbers, you'll see Idaho State was in the low 200s to the high 100s in just about every major category. In fact, if you look at ISU's three previous seasons under Joe O'Brien, their defense has never been close to ranking this poorly in those key factors. We've had Joe and both his assistants, Geoff Alexander and Tim Walsh, on our coaches' show this year, and every time you ask them to pinpoint a reason why the team has struggled this year, they all say the same thing: lousy defense.

Why was the defense so bad? That's the $100,000 question. Lack of effort and heart? No true big man to clog the middle? The loss of Matt Stucki who, at 6-6, could guard every position on the floor, which is key to the Bengals' switching man-to-man? I don't pretend to have an easy answer to the question, but my eyes told me ISU was bad on defense and, in this case, the statistics tell me my eyes didn't deceive.

• Lack of Development Among the Seniors: All of us -- coaches, fans, analysts -- all of us have a tendency to look at young players and mentally project where they will be when they are seniors. I know when I looked at Amorrow Morgan, Donnie Carson, Demetrius Monroe, Austin Kilpatrick and Chron Tatum after their sophomore seasons, I saw the potential for a great team by the time this campaign rolled around. But it didn't happen, and one reason is that Morgan was the only one of those young players to develop into an all-conference quality player over his four years here.

Amorrow increased his productivity significantly every season, from 1.5 points and 1.1 rebounds as a freshman, to 9.7-2.9, 13.6-3.3 and 16.9-3.7. Only a significant ankle injury late in his senior year kept him from having one of the best seasons of any Bengal in the last decade.

Other than Row, however, only Monroe got significantly better over his four-year career: from 2.2-1.6 as a freshman to 9.3-7.2 as a senior. And Monroe's lack of physical strength meant that most of his productivity came in the non-conference portion of his senior season. He had five double-doubles by the first of January -- and two thereafter.

The other veterans finished their ISU careers consistently inconsistent. Here are their numbers from their first to their senior years: Kilpatrick: 5.3-1.5, 7.3-2.5, 4.2-1.8, 7.0-3.3; Carson: 1.4-.5, 6.2-2.5, 6.4-3.6, 4.7-3.0; Tatum (came to ISU as a sophomore): 4.8-2.4, 6.6-3.5, 5.8-4.0.

Why the lack of development? Again, you can offer up any number of potential answers, including acknowledging that maybe we just over-estimated their ability. I won't pretend to know the answer, but it's plain the growth many of us expected and hoped for simply wasn't there.

• The Failure of the 2008 Recruiting Class: When O'Brien finished his second year on the job at ISU, he started feeling the pressure. He had one year left on his contract, the guy that hired him was gone, and he knew he had to make strides to keep his job. So he took a calculated gamble and brought in four junior college players to join with five returning juniors in a no-holds-barred bid to win the league by 2010.

For a whole host of reasons, the gamble failed. Of the five players O'Brien signed in the spring of 2008, two played only one season and left the program (Kal Bay and Felix Caspari), two played one year and were unavailable for most or all of this past season (Phyllip Taylor and Deividas Busma), and one (Sherrod Baldwin) has proven to be nothing more than a role player to this point in his career.

The Bay-Caspari duo from Eastern Utah were particularly big mistakes. O'Brien was looking for a fulltime point guard and decided to take Bay, who began his career at Colorado, as his primary point guard candidate. Bay turned out to be more of an under-sized shooting guard with limited point guard skills, played only 24 games because of injury, and left the program by the end of his first season. His good friend, Caspari, who was a serviceable back-up forward and energy guy, then waited until right before the start of this season to decide he was no longer interested in playing basketball -- far too late to allow O'Brien to recruit a replacement.

Busma, the 7-foot center, played only seven games this season before being sidelined by a stress fracture in his foot. O'Brien expects him to return next year, but there's something about bad feet and big guys that makes me nervous (Bill Walton, anybody?). And Busma, who has shown fleeting glimpses of athletic ability that both excite you and perplex, has yet to provide any kind of consistent production during his time at ISU. He averaged 4.2 points and 3.1 rebounds as a junior, 3.4 and 2.4 in his brief stint this season.

Taylor, meanwhile, was academically ineligible this year. The coaches have talked consistently about how he has improved offensively during practice, and we saw glimpses of that when he put up 23 points in the pre-season scrimmage. But none of that ability was available this past season, when the Bengals definitely could have used a third or fourth offensive weapon.

In summary, ISU has gotten very little production from that recruiting class, and passed on a good three-point shooter and potential local favorite in Pocatello High graduate Nick Hansen, who wound up at Weber State.

If you wanted to add a fourth factor to this year's disappointment, you could certainly talk about injuries. The Bengals lost both Morgan and point guard Broderick Gilchrest, their two "money producers," to significant injuries during conference play, Busma was out from the end of November on, and backup big man Rolando Little missed several weeks after he passed out while jogging on Christmas Eve.

But as much as those injuries hurt the Bengals, I'm not convinced they would have made the post-season tournament even if everybody had been largely healthy. This was one of those teams that, for whatever reasons, just never seemed destined for success.

--Brad B.

EXCEL-lent

So one of the unexpected perks of not having a men's basketball team playing anymore is I got to really look at the women's basketball standings....and boy are they a mess. It reminded me of a few years ago when entering the final weekend of the regular season, Eastern Washington was in first place, and then there were six teams at 6-7, with Portland State at 5-8 ... crazy, crazy stuff. Well, everyone is asking poor Katie Zigars what the scenarios are...can ISU finish second? Can they get a bye? Who will they play? Where will they play?

Well, that's where my morning went....back to high school math. I'm guessing a lot of folks don't remember much of their high school math stuff, but I was fairly proficient at it (obviously based on what I do for a living), so I busted out the tried and true EXCEL spreadsheet and went to work.

Basically, the standings are as such...

EWU 11-4
SAC 9-5
ISU 9-6
PSU 9-6
UM 8-6
MSU 8-6
UNC 5-9
NAU 3-11
WSU 3-12

and basically, there are seven games left

UM @ NAU (Thursday)
MSU @ UNC (Thursday)
SAC @ ISU (Friday)
PSU @ EWU (Saturday)
MSU @ NAU (Saturday)
UM @ UNC (Saturday)
SAC @ WSU (Saturday)

Now, there are 128 different possible outcomes of those seven games...so what I did was map out all 128 (once you know the number it's easy...for the UM/NAU game, I listed UM as a winner the first 64 slots, and then NAU as the winner the last 64, then on the next ro, MSU as the winner the first 32, then UNC the next 32, and then repeat. I did that all the way to the last game, SAC at WSU, which just alternated SAC and WSU on the line, giving me 128 different seven-game outcomes.

Now, no matter what happens in those seven games, someone somewhere will be tied (my favorite was the EWU winning the title at 11-5 and then SAC, PSU, ISU, UM, and MSU all finishing 10-6), and there is one scenario where there is a tie for 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 8th...crazy stuff.

This much is known. EWU will host with a win over PSU or a SAC loss to either ISU or WSU. If SAC sweeps and PSU beats EWU, than SAC is 1st, EWU is 2nd, and PSU is 3rd. EWU has clinched a bye.

SAC can finish from first through sixth, PSU, MSU, ISU, UM all can finish anywhere from second to sixth.

If ISU is the 3 seed, they can play PSU, UM, MSU, or SAC
If ISU is the 4 seed, they can play PSU, UM, MSU, or SAC
If ISU is the 5 seed, they can play PSU, UM, MSU, or SAC
If ISU is the 6 seed, they can play PSU, UM, MSU, or SAC

To get the #2 seed, ISU must have at a minimum a win over SAC and an EWU win over PSU...then it's various combinations of other things. The good thing is after the two games on Thursday, ISU will have a shot at second, no matter what.

Anyways, the spreadsheet is in two places...one is hanging in Seton's office, and the other is spanning the length of Katie's shelf above her desk, along with the tiebreaker key. If the Big Sky agrees with everything I'll post that sucker here, because it's kind of awesome in it's own demented sad (but social) way...Here is what it looks like (sorry these are a little craptastic...took them on my phone)





that's all of it taped together









a blurry closeup of the names









five feet worth of scenario goodness


Senior Night
Brad Bugger touched on it, but a great chance to see a game on Friday night at Reed and honor Oana Iocavita, Devin Diehl, and Andrea Vidabeck, who have all been great to have around.

I'm gonna get to finally see a women's game, and I'm excited to see the league's biggest surprise in Sacramento State, who were 0-4 and are now 9-5, and just putting up points like crazy. They came back from an 18-point deficit at Northern Colorado by putting up 63 ... 63(!!?!?!?!) points in the second half against the Bears. Geez.

Softball Up to 3-4
ISU's softball team rock and rolled over the weekend against the College of Idaho, winning 10-1 and 11-3, with Brittany Olsin going nuts, going 5-for-7 in two games with three doubles, a home run, and 6 RBI, including five in game two.

Idaho State's 3-4 record is the best in the PCSC Mountain Division...

Idaho State	0-0	0.000	3-4	0.429	W2
Utah Valley	0-0	0.000	3-5	0.375	L3
Portland State	0-0	0.000	4-8	0.333	L1
Northern Colo.	0-0	0.000	3-9	0.250	W1
Seattle	0-0	0.000	1-8	0.111	L1
Weber State	0-0	0.000	0-10	0.000	L10

...so that's always good.

Also, I want to touch on something, and I'm only doing this because I'm gonna guess the same pinhead who posted some serious misinformation on the Bengal Den message board contacted Kelvin at the Idaho State Journal trying to stir up some controversy. This past weekend assistant coach Shelly Prochaska handled the team, and she will do the same for the Arizona State tournament this weekend, because we granted head coach Andrea Wilson some time off to tend to a personal family matter.

Of course, the phone call I got from Kelvin was that he got a tip that we placed Andrea on administrative leave. I can confirm and end all those rumors right here....Andrea Wilson is dealing with a personal issue and will be back with the team shortly. What sucks is I even had to put that out there, but I know how rumors get started...

Good Hearts...
One last thing....having traveled with the men's basketball team all year, I can tell you that it was fun to see the team busting their butts all the way through the final whistle on Saturday with nothing to play for. I credit that to the kinds of people that Joe O'Brien has recruited, and all six guys should get their degrees either this year or next, which is really what it is all about for those guys.