Tagged: Momir Gataric

Discussions: POWs of Non-Conference

Here’s a list of the Player-of-the-Week nominees we’ve had so far this year:

UAF: Bangaly Kaba, Travante Williams
UAA: Suki Wiggs, Diante Mitchell, Corey Hammell
SFU: JJ Pankratz
WWU: Kyle Impero
SPU: Bryce Leavitt, Mitch Penner, Gilles Dierickx
SMU: —
MSUB: Jordan Perry
CWU: Gary Jacobs
NNU: Bouna N’Diaye
CU-P: —
WOU: Devon Alexander, Andy Avgi, Alex Roth

Last year we questioned that guys that were having really good games week in and week out weren’t getting nominated because their teammates are having better games. This year, that’s not a problem and it’s making us ask a different question: Are our standards too ridiculous? Do they not work for the GNAC? We’re leaning on the side of “no,” but will look into it as we go into conference play.

Our winners have put up really standard numbers in terms of what we saw last year, so… totally possible, it’s not too hard to achieve, it’s that no one’s getting it consistently with the exception of Andy and Bryce. Our formula actually does take defense into account, so it’s not simply a matter of scoring.

Player-of-the-Week Winners, thus far:

UAA: Corey Hammell
SPU: Bryce Leavitt
NNU: Bouna N’Diaye
WOU: Andy Avgi

We’ve given the award out five times; Bryce has won twice, while Cory, Bouna, and Andy have won once each. We like the numbers they’ve put up; the fact that Bouna did in fact play two games during the week he won makes it even better because he hit numbers that put him right in the thick of the other POW winners, so it’s a true win by all accounts.

While we’re proud of those guys, we feel like that list is lacking.

Almir Hadzisehovic (UAF) is still playing a lot, just not playing particularly well. We get that Bangaly Kaba and Travante Williams are good, but that doesn’t inherently make Almir bad, so hopefully he’ll step up more now that conference play is starting.

Brian McGill (UAA) is no longer playing as far as we know. He remains on their roster, but isn’t in their team picture, can’t find anything about injury status, nothing saying “he’s coming back soon,” he’s just gone. We assume if he was participating in an extra curricular program it would be advertised as a GNAC athlete being more than a basketball player. Fact is -he’s a 5th year senior, so as much as we like him: Sometimes you’ve gotta just get a life and ideally that’s what he’s done. We’re hoping that he’s not MIA to deal with his own illness or the illness of a sick family member -if he is, in that case we hope he comes back really soon and everything works out.

Michael Harper (SFU) has a bad case of the turnovers, but is still around.

Mac Johnson (WWU) we have no idea what’s wrong with -he still plays a lot, he’s still 6’8 and 240lbs, but we have no idea where the Mac of the end of last year went and we keep thinking the old him is going to resurface and then it doesn’t.

Mitch Penner (SPU) isn’t taking the step up that we kind of anticipated and yet he’s kinda screwed because every team is just like “Let’s go after Mitch!” because it’s hard to go after Gilles, no one needs to go after Will Parker (he’s the new Lew Thomas), Bryce Leavitt is a point guard -he’s good whether he’s assisting, defending, or scoring; and people just bounce right off of 5th starter Garrett, so what are you going to do? Answer: Go after the ginger.

Trey Ingram (SMU) was our favorite frosh last year and he’s gone into a sophomore slump, so hopefully he’ll bounce back. Not too concerned with this one -it happens, he’ll get through it.

Momir Gataric (MSUB) is redshirting due to injury, which sort of sucks, and sort of is just as well. We’ll be glad to get him back next year and wish him the best in his rehabbing efforts.

Joe Stroud (CWU) is still playing but apparently it’s much harder when you actually have to shoot the ball and are being relied upon -he’s responded poorly so far, granted he’s played somewhere between four and six D2 games, so still plenty of season left.

Mike Wright (NNU) lost all of the people that made him look somewhat decent and so now he just looks like a mess. Yes, he could have stepped up, this theoretically was his team because Bouna was generally the 6th man last year, but… Mike needs to do more. Much more. Maybe during conference play.

Tyler Gutierrez (CU-P) is basically the only returning piece for CU-P and we know we named him as a POW nominee, but he’s not on the list above because he wouldn’t have been nominated if he were on any other team -it was us trying to include the Cavs, and now we’re kind of done. With that: Be adequate.

Julian Nichols (WOU) we really, really don’t know and it’s kind of making us mad to be perfectly honest. Dude is still playing, he’s just not playing well. He was one of our picks for potential player of the year because he had an amazing junior season and not much has really changed and yet he’s not playing well.

—

With some of that… We feel like writing it off until conference play is kind of weak, considering our conference looked so weak during non-conference. There are good teams, but we feel downright uncomfortable with UAA, WWU, and CWU because non-conference was such a wash and we feel like they’re good teams but they didn’t prove it during non-con and so we’re not sure what it’ll mean during conference play if/when they do win? It seems like it’ll be easy to give them hype and yet what’s the real substance behind that hype?

UAF there’s not as much expectation because they’ve been off for a few years, they’ve got what’s essentially a brand new team, low-pressure; SMU same thing; MSUB and NNU we’re just hoping they don’t drown. CU-Portland and SFU, we hope things remain somewhat humane.

WOU and SPU there’s some concern about upsets and we’ve said this repeatedly: Upsets aren’t a good thing for ANYONE including the teams upsetting them. The better SPU and WOU look the better for our conference as a whole, because they barely proved themselves in non-conference. Our non-con collectively looks much better because of how SPU schedules, never forget that.

When we look at the individual play of guys on other teams… It may just be a more down year on the west coast. Admittedly we really loved last year’s GNAC (shout-outs in particular to non-returners Kevin Rima, Anye Turner, Riley Stockton, Matt Borton, and Alex & Kalidou [no one blames you two for leaving] for helping make our first year of blogging ridiculously fun) and we know that those guys are all super amazing, but… There are amazing guys this year too -Bouna was an irrational favorite last year that’s become legitimate this year; Kyle Impero turned it up at the end of last year and is dominating this year; Bryce Leavitt came out of nowhere and we’re beyond thrilled with his play; Bangaly and Travante are both super fun; Andy we should constantly be in awe of Andy, but still kind of hold a grudge against him because of the second game against SPU last year -we’ll just be honest- even though we know it was Brendan’s fault that the Falcons lost, so… Irrationalities, but we can admit it. We love you Andy, we really do, promise.

So there are plenty of good guys, but there may be far fewer great guys than normal, and that could be making some of the would-be great guys merely look good. We wondered that regularly about Riley Carel’s stats -if they were in fact lower because he’d pass the ball and then the guy he was passing to would turn it over, so he’d skip passing and try and force something and it didn’t work out very well because while they had promising underclassmen, there’s a big difference between promising underclassmen and seasoned upperclassmen. Then again, with Riley -that was his own fault; could have stayed at SPU and been the starting SG on a team with Riley S. and Matt and Mitch, and Cory’s hook shot (Cory and his hook shot we’ve determined to be separate entities) but he decided he wanted to be the star. And that decision proves even more juxtaposed this year with Alex and Kalidou both having transferred to CBU.

Riley got to score a lot of points and be the go-to guy, but never even made the conference tournament. Alex and Kalidou are now playing on a team favored to win the Pac-West and that’s 100% in control of their own destiny regarding an at-large berth in the regional tournament, much less conference tournament.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go as a group.

In an hour we’ll check in with some of our favorite GNAC alums/former players now playing on non-GNAC teams.

Tomorrow and Wednesday we’ll be taking a look at what we currently know vs. want to know about each team/group of guys in our conference currently.

Pre-Season All-Conference Teams

On the list of things we hate, which includes the Oregon Ducks, slow drivers, and peas -there’s a special spot of loathing for writing out pre-season lists. It sucks. Or, at least it sucks this year. It wouldn’t suck nearly as much if we hadn’t lost half the guys we intended to put on this list in the first place, but oh well. Here we go.

1st Team

G Julian Nichols -Western Oregon, Sr.
F Joe Stroud -Central Washington, Sr.
F Andy Avgi -Western Oregon, Sr.
W Mitch Penner -Seattle Pacific, Sr.
?? Transfer -Your favorite GNAC School

2nd Team

G Joe Slocum, Alaska Fairbanks, Sr.
G Brian McGill, Alaska Anchorage, Sr.
F Momir Gataric -MSU-Billings, Sr.
C Mac Johnson -Western Washington, Sr.
?? Transfer -Your favorite GNAC School

Again: We’re not going to touch transfers because of what is now dubbed the “Jake Ehlers Rule.” For those not familiar with Jake: He was the Oregon 5a Player of the Year two years in a row before going to Portland State and playing terribly then transferring to Seattle Pacific, playing terribly, and endangering the career of one of his teammates.

Here’s the list of other returning guys that we’re also very intrigued by:

UAF: Almir Hadzisehovic
UAA: Sjur Berg
SFU: Michael Harper
WWU: Ricardo Maxwell
SPU: Garrett Swanson
SMU: Tyler Copp, Trey Ingram
MSUB: Kendall Denham
CWU: Terry Dawn, Joey Roppo
NNU: Mike Wright,
CU-PDX: Tyler Gutierrez?
WOU: Devon Alexander, Jordan Wiley, Buster Souza (yes, it’s because of his name; so what?)

Plus all of the incoming transfers that could knock our socks off. The league is something of 65%+ new this year so we really don’t know what we’re dealing with but we can’t wait to find out!

Discussions: Returning Players By Position.

It’s a little odd to make this Discussions post this early, but… Why not? Someone asked us about why we would have any faith in Garrett Swanson, and shockingly… Because he’s one of the few returning forwards, rather than stretch guards, that actually saw playing time in the GNAC last year.

With this… Husky-isms. One of Don James’s biggest philosophies was that often times the biggest battle of the week occurred in practice against the Scout Team. This means that we’re going to take bench players from SPU, WWU, WOU, those sorts of schools, more seriously because they face better competition in practice.

It’s been said before: if SFU finishes last in conference and all of their starters leave, that means the guys that remain couldn’t beat the team that finished last in conference. Which means that for this list they’re not gonna get any consideration because SFU is going to be relying on dynamite transfers. Dynamite transfers are a real and very awesome thing in the GNAC -this isn’t the post for them, but we will say that we did specifically reserve them spots on our pre-season all conference teams.

With that, RETURNING PLAYERS of note:

Guards:
Joe Slocum (UAF) -redshirted last year, started the year before that, surrounded by modest talent.
Brian McGill (UAA) -not a great returning cast, but with good transfers anything is possible.
Ricardo Maxwell/Harris Javier (WWU) -both started a lot, both had good moments, tend to veer on the side of Ricardo Maxwell but both saw a lot of minutes considering WWU only went seven deep.
Kyle Impero (WWU) -largely served as the 6th man last year but really played well late as he got comfortable at D2.
Trey Ingram (SMU) -young, but incredibly promising; love this kid.
Kendall Denham (MSUB) -again, young but very, very, promising, has great chemistry with Momir.
Gary Jacobs/Joey Roppo/Terry Dawn (CWU) -all had a number of good moments, CWU it’s about the whole team, their chemistry was just fantastic.
Julian Nichols (WOU) -our favorite returning guard in the conference.
Devon Alexander (WOU) -had a really great non-conference and then was comparatively silent in conference play.

Noticeably absent: SPU -no. No. No. NO. NNU -Mike Wright is a poor man’s Brendan Carroll and Brendan Carroll is nowhere to be found on this list. SFU -Michael Harper is middle of the pack and until we know what the Clan bring in to support him, it just doesn’t seem like he’ll have a very easy time showing his abilities. CU-PDX -??? Graduated everybody.

Forwards:
Garrett Swanson (SPU) -this is almost 100% because of his body. 6’6/230lbs of rock hard muscle. He is the opposite of the power
forward SPU had last year, and we don’t think he’ll be as good, but he still should be effective.
Mitch Penner (SPU) -Kid can play 1-4 competently, but is definitely best at small forward; can the Falcons keep him there?
Victor Ieronymides (SMU) -Ish. This may be us giving SMU the benefit of the doubt. Had good moments.
Momir Gataric (MSUB) -good chemistry with Kendall, good weight, 6’5/210ish? Very solid last year.
JOE STROUD (CWU) -our favorite returning power forward, cancer is gone, elite teamwork, let’s see it. Can’t wait.
Jordan Wiley (WOU) -had moments of quality.
ANDY AVGI (WOU) -our favorite returning small forward.

Noticeably absent: UAA -Christian Leckbend & Sjur Berg; just because Kalidou is gone doesn’t mean they get spots on this list. SFU -no one. WWU -no one. NNU; no one. CU-PDX; ???.

We were asked about why were looking forward to Andy & Garrett matching up and honestly it’s because they’re two of the biggest forwards on two of the most “known” teams (aside from WWU), and WWU merely returns a guard sized forward (6’6/200lb Jeff Parker) and then brings in a 6’8/220 frosh. It seems likely that WWU’s inevitably gonna end up sticking (C) Mac Johnson on Andy, which those two match up really, really, really well, but we’re not sure what Blake Bowen is gonna be able to do in the paint, so… could be very exploitable if WOU brings in a good supporting cast.

Why we’re curious about SPU using Garrett is that he’s one of the only forwards (and the only returning forward) that will actually be dealing with Andy because Andy is such a banger and most other teams will likely be sending in their respective centers. It’ll be interesting to see what the JuCo guys do and how the teams try and neutralize him. While every coach will tell you “We don’t game plan for one particular player, we play our game and they play theirs,” we have to call BS. If you don’t game plan to try and neutralize Andy, you’re asking for trouble; if you see Andy positively crushing a team, remember: the team didn’t plan to fail, they likely failed to plan.

Centers
Mac Johnson
Almir Hadzisehovic

D2 centers can be rare creatures and we actually really like both of those two a lot. Mac has decent footwork, has been proven to shoot the three, and should have a good supporting cast of guards if not forwards. Breaking in a couple of forwards could actually really work in making him a huge focal of the WWU offense, so if he can take the mantle things could look fantastic. Almir is another of our favorite guys and it really is going to depend on his supporting cast in a sense, because he can’t do it all himself. He had a number of super good games and we can’t wait to see his progress this year.

That’s pretty much who/what’s returning. Can’t wait to see what the transfers bring in. And remember returners: Ask not what your transfers can do for you, but what you can do for your transfers -we transferred into the GNAC once upon a time and the cultural adjustment was rough, so be nice.

The September Prognostication

We’re like the Joe Lunardi of GNAC prognostication, and to an extent West Region bracketology. So many guesses, so much BS, but all in good fun. Our “official” pre-season poll will go up in October.

We finally looked at what CU-Portland brings back: zilch. We also lost even more guys than the already insane number we knew we were losing in June. The June prognostication looks ridiculous from where we stand now. Similarly -these are gonna change again next month. And the month after that. And we’ll do a final “SPIT IS GETTING REAL NOW, LET’S GO!!!!!!!!” ranking just before conference play gets cereal in January, because these things are stupid and stupid fun is good fun.

1. Western Washington. They bring back Harris Javier, Mac Johnson, Kyle Impero, Ricardo Maxwell, Jeff Parker, and more. And those are all actual recognizable names that saw some good minutes! They also bring back carpetbagger Brett Kingma, who is the Riley Carel of Mill Creek. He’s a Falcon by blood, the fact that he didn’t end up at SPU speaks volumes.

2. Western Oregon. We won’t know Andy’s status for a while, but… Devon Alexander had some good early season games, Julian Nichols is great and amazing and almost won player of the year, Jordan Wiley picked up some POW noms, new coaching staff, we love Jim Shaw. If we ever list their coach as ‘Brad Shaw’ sorry in advance -Jim’s son, Brad, was in the same class year of WesCo Basketball that we were and so… we go back.

3. Seattle Pacific. HOOOOOMER pick. Sort of. Thing is, they’ve got Mitch, they’ve got Gilles (good for twice as much homerism), they’ve got Brendan Carroll, Bryce Leavitt, and Garrett Swanson, all of whom started multiple games last year, plus they have plenty of guys that have been in the program for multiple years and have never seen more than an ounce of playing time. Good distribution of height, proven coaching staff, and the rest of the GNAC -what are we gonna do? That’s the real thing here.

4. Central Washington. Never underestimate a good power forward and elite teamwork. They probably should actually get the nod over SPU because Joey Roppo is good, Gary Jacobs wasn’t bad, and Prairie, er, Terry Dawn is legit. Guess we’re sticking them at fourth because we usually give the SPU guys too little credit, and so this kind of balances things out. We know the numbers for the CWU guys, but have no clue what the SPU ones are because we never cared. Whoops.

5. Alaska-Fairbanks. They lost a lot: Ruben, Kyle, Adam, BUT they return Joe Slocum, Almir, and Isaac Ladines. Now, do we think it’ll be successful? No. Do we think it’ll be embarrassingly bad? No. They’re lucky in the fact that the GNAC suffered massive skills drain almost everywhere.

6. Alaska-Anchorage. It’s completely unknown, they return Brian McGill and Sjur Berg as for recognizable names, and hmmm… But it’s still always difficult to play in Anchorage and we feel like their recruiting pitch is pretty quality. Still, they go on too many dates… but they can’t make ’em stay… That’s just what we say-ay-ay mmm, and so they’re just gonna shake it off, shake it off.

7. Saint Martin’s. Admittedly, we’re really sad that Brent is gone and Cameron [happily] is on his Mission. Still: Tyler Copp, Trey Ingram, Isaac Bianchini, Victor Ieronymides, new and very promising coaching staff, good things are on the horizon.

8. Concordia-Portland. This is honestly just a shot in the dark, because they’ve got a bunch of transfers coming in and they’re not going to be expected to do much, so expect the unexpected if they can gel and acclimate quickly.

9. MSU-Billings. Yikes. Momir Gataric and Kendall Denham make-up the most quality pair returned from the bottom three teams + proven coaching staff = potential.

10. Simon Fraser. They no longer have Sango, they no longer have Patrick Simon II, they do have Michael Harper, Adam Westfall, Hidde Vos, and JJ Pankratz which are all recognizable names, but… only Michael Harper received a POW nom, and it’s still Simon Fraser. Another team we’d love to see improve, but we’re a little heartbroken after the major psych-out of last year.

11. Northwest Nazarene. The thing is, this team would be like if SPU’s best returning player was Brendan Carroll; the projected reality would be more turnovers than a bake sale. That’s Mike Wright, without nearly the talent that Brendan would still likely be surrounded with if put into that scenario.

One thing that is going to happen this year that we’re REALLLY excited for (okay, at this point everything’s exciting ’cause we just want basketball) is conference power rankings. Not sure how often we’re gonna post them, but we’ll take the teams we’re projecting to make the conference tourney and throw them up with the reasoning. Depending, we’ll also give you the bottom five and the reasons they’re not, ’cause otherwise there’ll be people going “But UAF beat WWU by five!” Um, yeah: “Mac Johnson was out with the flu THAT DOESN’T COUNT.”

Speaking of which: Get your flu shot early and wash your hands often. The GNAC Basketball Plague makes the rounds every year, so do what you can to prevent it and help keep GNAC basketball great.

Wednesday Discussions: Disappearing Acts.

There have been a number of guys in our conference that have seemingly disappeared as of late, and so today we’re going to finally address them. Players to be discussed: Ruben Silvas, Kalidou Diouf, Patrick Simon II, Michael Harper, Jaamon Echols, Matt Borton, Momir Gataric, Jordan Russell, and Tyler Copp. If there’s someone or something we’re forgetting: speak up and we’ll update the post.

Ruben Silvas (UAF): Out due to academics, back next year. Case closed.

Kalidou Diouf (UAA): Got injured a few games back, didn’t play against MSUB nor SPU… In fact, the last game he played in was against Central Washington, way back on January 22. Guessing that it’s mostly a thing where they for the most part can win without him and so on a lingering injury there’s no use in wasting a frosh’s body that way if you can avoid it. Good on the Seawolves. They’re in great position, so if it’s not also the result of an academic issue or anything really severe, then expect to hopefully see him back in the next two weeks of conference play OR the conference tournament. If you have better info, let us know.

Patrick Simon II & Michael Harper (SFU): Still playing -growing pains.

Jaamon Echols (WWU): Off the team due to a violation of team rules. We love and believe in every player holistically, but this is seen as a net positive, because we got that cancer-y feeling from him and WWU’s been much better without.

Matt Borton (SPU): Got injured, but… who knows. He’s still starting. It’s something we’ve kind of been tracking because he was a dark horse player of the year candidate, so we’ll see. We keep saying “this’ll be the week” and tentatively this will be the week, but eh. Lurking variables.

Momir Gataric (MSUB): Didn’t play against the Alaska schools, possibly got injured against WWU, feel like there was something, so again: they may be resting him or deciding it’s not worth it because he still has another year and considering this year is essentially a lost cause, there’s no use in pushing him when he doesn’t need to be. However, he may very well play against SPU -it wouldn’t be surprising, because odd as it is: there’s a bit of a rivalry developing, so undoubtedly that game’ll be prioritized.

Jordan Russell (CWU): Violated team rules apparently while in Alaska. How do you violate team rules in Alaska? Was it for smoking rancid whale blubber? If it was, pretty sure that’s not in the NCAA handbook and we consider it worth it by all accounts -CWU is hella deep anyway; they’ll live and it’s a great story.

Tyler Copp (SMU): Assuming growing pains -he’s still been playing in games, just very silent.

Usual game day previews’ll be up at 11am PST tomorrow.

 

Sunday Funday: ‘Bout That Praise.

For a Sunday Funday post, it seems appropriate to talk about some of the favorites in our conference and basically just have some good old fashioned praise. The season is getting more and more intense and difficult and you kind of just need those moments to sit back and go “Hey, these guys are awesome. It’s such a blessing to watch them, even when they’re making poor on-court decisions.”

It’s been well documented that “pets” definitely exist, so… We’ll just go with the usual order.

UAF: Almir. This isn’t really basketball related; he’s a decent player heading toward good, but the fact that he’s from the Balkans is amazing and as much as they’re not happy with each other, the FYR on the whole are awesome and have such a great culture and it’s great that we get to have a piece of it in our conference. Also love the fact that we have Ruben -he is Native American, which is so cool and yet another blessing. He’s out right now due to academics, but we look forward to getting him back next year; temporarily gone but definitely not forgotten and if he finds this: We still believe in you!

UAA: Brian McGill does so much for his team. Love his game, love his facial expressions as he’s running down the court, his mindset seems fantastic. He does everything in his power to procure a win and that means playing unselfishly. He’s awesome on the whole. Travis Thompson isn’t having the year that he wanted to have, but he’s still so valuable and after going through the mid-season all conference teams and looking at and comparing his stats this year and last and beginning to understand all of that… So proud of the kid. Derrick Fain should be mentioned because we give him crap all the time, but he’s starting to deserve less and less of it and we couldn’t be happier.

SFU: Sango -impossible not to love Sango. Does so much for his team, plays so unselfishly even though he’s got relatively little to work with. He’s in it. He’s another guy that we went back and compared his stuff from last year to this year to see where he’s at and they have made him even more useful and again: Just a good guy that’s easy to root for. Rod Evans-Taylor is becoming a pet with his awesome play and effort, but that’s as of late. Still love Michael Harper although he hasn’t been doing as much lately; same with Patrick Simon II -that kid has so much room for growth and can’t wait to see it over the coming few years.

WWU: ANYE. Anye is probably the biggest pet in the conference at this point, although Alex of NNU is starting to make a run for it. Anye graduates this year and it’s happy but sad. He’ll be moving onto better things and it’ll be good to keep an eye on him in Europe. His mindset is great, he smiles all the time, he works for his teammates, he gets the boards, he picks up fouls, and when knocks a guy down he picks them right back up. Such a blessing to watch. Love Mac, really excited for another year of him. He’s improving by the game and it’s great. He’s a massively different player than he was earlier this year and that’s awesome. Kyle Impero and Joey Schreiber are young and promising and are another couple of great guys to watch their development in. Been watching Joey for years now, even when he was at EC, and it’s exciting. It’s cool to see the development and he landed with such a great program in terms of top-notch D2.

SPU: Riley Stockton. It’s been amazing to watch him make the switch to point guard this year and watch him near the triple doubles and his fundamental understanding of the game is great. Matt Borton -another great forward, has aggression issues (meant in the best way possible), he does what it takes for his team, and between him and Anye… that is how basketball is supposed to be played. Mitch Penner. Psycho P. It’s been a growing process this year, but we have full faith that he’ll break out next year. Cory Hutsen, he’s right up with Austin Hudson and Mac Johnson in terms of favorite centers, and his play has finally been getting better lately, can’t wait for it to go further.

MSUB: Austin. Austin will not be forgotten. He was SO great and still a valuable part of our conference. MSUB is starting to be another program that has a zillion blog pets so-to-speak. Jace Anderson is improving, Antoine Hosley has his moments, MOMIR GATARIC; his game is getting better and better and he’s another FYR player! Those guys are bad to the bone.

CWU: Caleb is great. Will be interested to see what he does with his body; it needs major, major work on his part and not so much in the gym as in the kitchen, but the gym could be of some help too. Full faith that he’ll be one of our conference’s top centers by the time he’s done. Joe Stroud is great and getting better by the game and love his rebounding and his blocked shots are awesome and again -this is another guy that smiles while he does it, very approachable, just fun. Gary Jacobs is another guy that’s gonna be interesting to watch develop -he already does so much and will undoubtedly get better and better. Dom Williams is finally starting to be liked around here -it’s taken a lot, but very proud of Dom and his improving shot selection.

NNU: The entire team? It’s not even a matter of if they do anything during post season, just love their camaraderie. Alex is so great, even in his widdle frosh status, and it’s such a blessing that we’ll get to watch him for another few years, hopefully. Kevin -great attitude, team first mentality, gets the boards, smiles while he does it. He epitomizes the idea that you can be both aggressive and happy simultaneously; accidentally knocks you down, immediately reaches to pick you back up too. He plays a hard game of basketball, but jolly giant. Erik Kinney -needs some help and improvement, but another guy that’s awesome and we’re excited to see for another year. Bouna is one of those “there’s not necessarily any reason for this in terms of his game, he’s just great” and he’s a favorite. He’s smiley. NNU has lots of smiley people.

SMU: Trey Adams. He’s going through some growing pains, but can’t wait to see what he does next year. Tyler Idowu -sucker for smiley people and Tyler is that and does some good board work. Riley Carel, of course, bad decision maker in chief, but much as we give him crap all the time he’s a good baller. Tyler Copp -no clue where he’s disappeared to, but he’s been another favorite all year. Rising stars. Honestly, SMU is like NNU; that whole team is just fantastic. If only they could put it together. Ryan Rogers, Cameron Chatwin, Victor Ieronymides, Brent Counts, all are great.

WOU: JULIAN NICHOLS!! Favorite point guard, love his game, love his attitude, he’s come into our conference by storm, made WOU even better than expected and really elevated them -it’s been phenomenal. Lew Thomas -this is a weird one; he just is a favorite. He’s not that good, takes a lot of poor shots, turns the ball over more than any forward should, but he’s still a favorite, no clue why. Andy Avgi, he’s oddly enough not really a favorite, but maybe just because he’s so good that he’s hard to appreciate because you feel like you don’t have to; he’s just Andy, he does what he does, and he always does it. And that’s why even though he’s not a favorite we really should realize he is a favorite because just because someone’s consistent and does what they want, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be appreciated for it. Andy is awesome. Not sure what his speed and strength metrics are, but before heading for Europe, he might consider working out for a few NFL teams -at 6’6/260 you can’t teach size and he’s so good at shoving his way through -TE or DE may hold promise.

At times this blog is tough on guys and teams, but there’s no vindictiveness behind any of what gets written. All of these guys are such a blessing to get to watch so closely and that’s why it was important to cover the whole conference. It’s just not something that really happens on a D2 level; we mostly see school publications giving the highlights, and so when critiques get thrown out it can feel like a major affront when it’s not; it just happens rarely because writing a blog is a big commitment and we don’t really see that fan/community commitment on a D2 level.

Just because we don’t see it, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be there. These guys are great; they absolutely get down night in and night out; they deserve attention; they deserve praise; and they deserve that fan and community commitment on a level to match D1. Engage the culture, change the world; a blog isn’t much, but it definitely is a way to engage the culture, and hopefully on some minute level change the world of at least someone. There’s the whole thing that “I Chose Division II” and yet for many it’s not that easy. There’s a feeling of failure that you ended up D2 and [potentially] unable to succeed on a D1 level; maybe if more people cared, some of that burden could be relieved.

Have a fantastic week, a NightLights post that should’ve gone up last night will go up tonight at about 11pm, usual POW stuff tomorrow.

Discussions: 1st Half Play & 2nd Half Finishes

To get it out of the way, we’ll do the projected second half finishes and then go through and discuss each team’s first half play/second half projections.

10. Simon Fraser -they just haven’t shown anything in conference besides a win against WWU that six other teams have.
9. Saint Martin’s -they haven’t been able to put it together and to finish and the loss against SFU looked bad.
7. MSU-Billings -they’re putting it together, but it’s a growing process.
7. Alaska-Fairbanks -also putting it together, but again a growing process.
6. Alaska-Anchorage -see: putting it together; nice win against a better-than-normal NNU team.
5. Western Washington -would love to be wrong on this, but right now NNU looks hotter; a lot can change though.
4. Northwest Nazarene -so hot right now.
3. Seattle Pacific -CWU has more heart; they just do.
2. Central Washington -epitomizes the idea of teamwork.
1. Western Oregon -beat down of SFU, won the battle at WWU, great guard play.

A reminder: UAF is ineligible for the conference tournament, and thus by this prediction every team is in the conference tourney except SFU.

Simon Fraser: They had some wins in non-conference that now looked like a fluke. Sango can’t do it all and the lack of depth is showing -greatly. Patrick Simon II showed promise early on, but is now dealing with growing pains, which are normal. Sango graduates, but perhaps next year they’ll go back to a more traditional style and be able to build on this year’s experience. That seems like best case scenario.

Saint Martin’s: The most frustrating team in the conference. If CWU has the most heart, SMU has the least. This has been talked about a bit -Riley Carel needs to trust his teammates; true, but he chose a terrible team to do it against, showing a frighteningly low basketball IQ -SFU’s entire offense is based around getting steals, so that’s the game you decide to pass a bunch? Terrifying. The outcome would likely have been better even trying it against WOU or SPU of all teams. Zoinks. Again -still believe that this team is good and their underclassmen will be great, but they’re not getting it done right now.

MSU-Billings: Losing Austin was huge, but Momir Gataric has stepped up in big ways. They didn’t lose to the Falcons by much, comparatively speaking, and they were right in it for huge stretches of that game. Hopefully they’ll use it as an experience builder, they play WOU on Thursday, which if they could learn from the loss could look like a really respectable game, not quite upset potential, but figure keeping it within five or ten the whole time. SMU will be a great chance to flex their muscles, be in it the whole time, and hopefully pull out a W.

Alaska-Fairbanks: If they have Ruben back, they have the potential to finish higher; if they don’t, this is probably their reality. They came so insanely close to upsetting CWU and beating NNU but just couldn’t do it. Build on the experience -the second half of the season they’ll be facing SPU, MSUB, SMU, and WOU in the Patty Center, which spells four rational victories -SPU and WOU upsets, and SMU/MSUB they should be able to handle. The question always is: will they.

Alaska-Anchorage: Good win against a rising NNU team, proving that if someone wants to win they have to find a way to take Brian McGill out of the game be it literally or merely in terms of production. Anchorage also will receive visits from SMU/WOU and MSUB/SPU and thus they’ll have a chance for some good games at home and some wholly winnable games at home. Their visiting road to hoe is going to be more difficult and they’re going to have dig in and get it done, if nothing else for Travis -he deserves to go out in a good year.

Western Washington: Still no clue what to think about this Vikings team, and I’ve watched them play five times in person plus a bunch of times on the computer. There’s just no making heads or tails of it. They’ve lost every road game, won every home game, with the exception of WOU at the last second. Speaking of last seconds -every game with the exception of MSUB has been won or lost with a point differential averaging around three. What are they doing? Does anyone know? Pretty sure not even they do. They know what they’re doing as it comes to basketball itself, so theoretically they’ll turn it around in the second half of conference play.

Northwest Nazarene: I want to believe. This Crusaders team got blown out by 30 against SPU way back in early December, but a lot has changed since then. They got it done in Fairbanks, although that was a close one after being up by 15, almost got it done in Anchorage, got it done at Central, kept it relatively close at WOU. They’ve played as many close games as Western has and have five games at home to look forward to in the second half. This could be huge -they’re on the rise, that gym can get pretty loud; if people buy in, they could gain a pretty solid home court advantage and life could be really good.

Seattle Pacific: Who’d a ever thunk that SPU and NNU would be right by each other in predicted finish? SPU is underachieving, NNU is overachieving, and life is good. SPU is getting picked third here because while they’re skilled they just don’t care enough. It’s like they’ve gotten complacent because WWU is being so weird, so they’re kind of slacking. The losses they’ve had for the talent they have is inexcusable. The wins -SFU wasn’t impressive, MSUB wasn’t impressive. The only statement win they have is WOU and that was at home. Who knows?

Central Washington: I love this team and doing the grading out of conference players oddly enough only made me love the Wildcats more. Their players don’t grade out well, but as a team they’re fantastic and isn’t that what basketball is all about? What are we gonna be? T-E-A-M, TEAM! They have some difficult road games to get through in the second half of the season, but the more cohesive they get the better they’re gonna be and naturally cohesion tends to get tighter as the season goes on. They had some good wins against SPU and WWU, and then what now is a very excusable loss to NNU, so… be excited for this Central team.

Western Oregon: Another incredibly cohesive team, except one whose players grade out very, very well. When Andy Avgi grades out as the second best player, life is gonna be really good; both Andy AND Julian are juniors, with Jordan (their third best guy) also getting better every day. They play cohesively, they play smart, they only have one conference loss and that’s at Seattle Pacific, so the rest of the season should be totally doable. It wouldn’t be surprising if they walked. This could be really, really good for the rest of the conference too, because they’re making a strong enough argument that they deserve to be in the tourney no-matter-what, meaning that if a different team wins the conference tournament… a team in another conference will get boned.

There’s a new tag ‘discussions’ so if you’re feeling the need for long winded ways, check it out.

Up next will be a discussions post specifically about individual players in the conference, including but not limited to: Travis Thompson, Cory Hutsen, Julian Nichols, and Dom Williams. Should go up around 7pm PST.

 

Mid-Season Superlatives

Updated from pre-season:

Most Likely to Succeed: CWU.
Biggest Drama King: SMU or WWU.
Life of the Party: WOU -defense or offense, pick your poison and they’ll do it better.
Night Owl: UAA/UAF.
Early Bird: MSUB/NNU.
Overachiever: NNU.
Underachiever: SFU -non-conference got peoples’ hopes up.
Teacher’s Pet: SFU -everyone wanted to believe, now no one wants to doubt for fear of being called a jerk.
Best Dressed: SPU, which is a miracle because when Adidas posted this year’s D1 uniforms they were ugly; really ugly.
Biggest Gossip: CWU -someone’s always talking.
Best Smile: NNU -they’re happy to be here.
Biggest Prankster: WWU -everyone’s still on their toes at all times and no one has figured out what they’re doing yet.
Best Couple: Cenazar, shockingly -they have the best record out of any pair, winning 76% of their games.

New stuff:

Player-of-the-half way mark: Julian Nichols, as noted.
Team of the half way mark: Northwest Nazarene. Dropped a game at UAA but has come on super strong with nice wins at CWU, UAF, and SMU.
Most unexpected team: WWU for being bad, NNU for being good.
Most unexpected player: Travis Thompson (UAA) for being relatively bad, Alex Birketoft (NNU) for being a rockstar frosh.
Best 6th man: Sjur Berg, Shawn Reid, Gary Jacobs, Brent Counts.
Best team performance: WOU vs. SFU. Straight domination. SPU is second with their win against NNU.
Best player performance: Matt Borton against CWU -full house and a double-double with great shot selection.
Best team road trip (thus far): CWU @ UAA & UAF. Got the wins in a Alaska -that’s huge.
Best player back-to-back: Riley Stockton -had a double-double against the Alaska schools, on the prowl for a triple-double.
Teams on the rise: NNU, CWU, MSUB.
Teams at par: SPU, WOU, UAF
Teams that will get their spit together NOW: WWU, UAA, SMU, SFU.
Best coaching staff so far: MSUB & NNU -Central is impressive, but people want to go to Central which is not an advantage the other two schools have.
Coaching staff that needs to start believing in themselves again: WWU & UAA.
Coaching staff that needs to stop slacking in their mediocrity: SPU. Cory Hutsen looks lost on the court -the projected best center in the conference looks like he has no idea what he’s doing and has gotten worse as the season’s gone on.
MVPs thus far: Sango Niang, Momir Gataric, Ruben Silvas, Brian McGill –if SFU/MSUB/UAF/UAA loses that guy, their chances of recovery are about zero.
Could-be MVPs: Travis Thompson, Cory Hutsen, Riley Carel. Travis will be featured in our general discussion post tomorrow; Cory may end up getting tag-teamed with it.

Up next: Second half of the season predicted finishes and other musings on conference play and/or bracketology.

Halfway Mark: All Conference Teams.

There are 15 players that are a cut above the rest and so we’ll be naming three all-conference teams. These were done using the same formula used for player-of-the-week, and they’re listed in order from highest to high.

1st Team:

  • G Julian Nichols -Junior, Western Oregon University.
  • G Brian McGill -Junior, University of Alaska-Anchorage.
  • F Anye Turner -Senior, Western Washington University.
  • P Kevin Rima -Senior, Northwest Nazarene University.
  • W Riley Stockton -Senior, Seattle Pacific University.

2nd Team:

  • G Ruben Silvas -Junior, University of Alaska-Fairbanks.
  • F Matt Borton -Senior, Seattle Pacific University.
  • G Erik Kinney -Junior, Northwest Nazarene University.
  • W Mitch Penner -Junior, Seattle Pacific University.
  • G Travis Thompson -Senior, University of Alaska-Anchorage.

3rd Team:

  • G Sango Niang -Senior, Simon Fraser University.
  • G Jaamon Echols -Junior, Western Washington University.
  • G Ricardo Maxwell -Junior, Western Washington University.
  • W Alex Birketoft -Freshman, Northwest Nazarene University.
  • F Andy Avgi -Junior, Western Oregon University.

Honorable Mentions: F Joe Stroud, Central Washington; G Trey Ingram, Saint Martin’s; W Momir Gataric, MSU-Billings.

All-Conference Underclassmen:

  • W Alex Berketoft, Freshman, Northwest Nazarene.
  • G Trey Ingram, Freshman, Saint Martin’s.
  • F Jeff Parker -Sophomore, Western Washington.
  • G Terry Dawn -Sophomore, Central Washington.
  • G Kendall Denham -Freshman, MSU-Billings.

Conference player of the half: Julian Nichols.

Congrats to all, keep up the good work.

There’s one more post that’ll go up today, that being mid-season superlatives.

Discussions: Player-of-the-Week.

Now that we’ve gone through half of the conference season and we’ve been using a specific formula for POW for the entirety of said half, we wanted to take a bit to see if we could answer the questions posed when the new format came about, as well as address new questions, and make any changes.

Here is the introduction of the formula used.

Here are the questions asked in the original post:

Trends -will the same guys win/get nominated all the time? By team, to a degree. Even in terms of the whole conference, to a degree.

Does it matter if they do? It’s called having good players and not-as-good-yet players. Each team has guys that are their go-to for various designations and shockingly they get nominated more often and then win more often.

Does it take into account stylistic differences among teams? Inconclusive. It takes into account SFU and makes it easy to compare against them -we put them in context with how they want to run their offense vs. how they have been as of late. It’s been interesting to see their stats suffer as they lose games; they still score so many points (generally speaking) that without the modifications, they’d look like a top team.

With the defensively strong teams, it’s hard to say. There haven’t been a ton of real defensive games -poorly shot games, yes; stifling defense like we saw during SPU @ WWU and WOU @ SFU, not so much.

Do teams that go deeper inevitably suffer because things are more spread out? Not particularly -each team gets a nominee or two every week. Also, it’s been interesting to watch the parity -often times there are two or three guys on the same team all within a minute distance from each other when the math is done, and then they’re also at the top of the conference. Playing with good guys definitely doesn’t stop you from winning. Sango’s only won once and he basically is that team. And usually when it comes down to it, he loses the battle in the same games.

Good teams are good teams and much as winning doesn’t affect our formula too much, the winning teams do have guys that win more often, likely because they play against better competition in practice.

New questions:

How many players have been nominated? 47 different players out of approximately 100 different guys have been nominated thus far. That’s assuming every team goes about 10 deep, which obviously every team does not. In fact, it’s pretty much only CWU that could get any one of those 10 guys nominated in any given week.

In terms of conference play specifically: 32 different guys have been nominated.

Which guys have been nominated the most? G Ruben Silvas (3), C Almir Hadzisehovic (3), G Sango Niang (6), F Anye Turner (3), W Riley Stockton (3), G Julian Nichols (4), P Kevin Rima (4), F Andy Avgi (5), W Momir Gataric (4), G Erik Kinney (4), G Travis Thompson (4), G Jordan Wiley (3), PF Matt Borton (3), G Dom Williams (3), and PF Joe Stroud (3).

The guys that have been nominated the absolute most are guys that anyone in our conference could name in terms of being a focal point of their team: Sango with SFU, Kevin and Erik for NNU, Andy for WOU, and Travis T. for UAA.

How many players have won so far? The award has been given nine times and eight different guys have won, including during non-conference play. During conference play, five guys have won and the award has been given out six times. Basically Matt Borton is a POW whore -he’s won twice.

Does playing power forward make it easier to get nominated/win? It was starting to be a concern that our stats were skewed toward the power forward position, but out of 15 guys nominated at least three times: six play guard, two play wing, four play forward, one plays post, and another plays straight-up center. In a conference lacking in centers, that’s really good balance.

What positions have the winners played? It’s been a mixed bag: Julian Nichols, Sango Niang, and Jordan Wiley are all guards; Riley Stockton and Mitch Penner both are wings; Matt Borton (2) is definitively a forward; and Kevin Rima as noted is a post.

Changes:

For the second half, player-of-the-week isn’t going to be a participation award. As of today, it’ll be the top 10 guys regardless of team affiliation.

We reserve the right to revoke this change and go back to nominating someone from each team at any time.

We’ve now seen where we are and what guys are doing in conference. Now, things are serious. Time to get it together and get it done.

The first half all conference teams will be posted later today.