EWU Game Thread

[BLACKnBLUEnGOLD]

In post game press conference, Huse makes the same lame comments about the team being fragile mentally that he has every damn year since he has been at MSU.

And those same lame comments are almost an excuse for the first two or three years. Now? It doesn't absolve him. Who recruited those players? If you picked 'em, shouldn't you have picked players who can miss a shot and not go in the tank? If someone else picked 'em, why aren't you more firmly in charge of your own program?

In trying to look on the bright side about this game, football recruiting is now over, so at least there weren't any potential football recruits to frighten off watching that. Also on the bright side, it wasn't MSU's worst home loss of the year. They also lost to Cal State Fullerton by 29!

We're one loss closer to a coaching change...there might be 30 more to go, but we're one closer!

We'd all like to think so, I'm sure. Of course, if a losing record over seven years isn't enough to convince Fields that this guy is a losing coach, why would it be any different after eight or nine?

[wbtfg]

We broke 50. I dont know what else we can expect.

[Colter_Nuanez]

Post-game quotes. Story coming soon. But I figured I'd give you the full quotes since you're talking about them based on, I assume, my tweet from the presser.

“We didn’t respond. We looked tentative and we are questioning ourselves obviously out there,” said MSU head coach Brad Huse, who fell to 16-38 in his tenure after Feb. 1 in his eight seasons at the helm. “We aren’t stepping into our shots with the same authority as we were a while back. We have to get our swagger back, our confidence back. Once they gave us a little punch, we didn’t respond. We started to look for the magic answer instead of competing the way we need to, consecutively and continuously.

“They executed well,” Huse said. “They went inside on us. They kept balls alive, rebounded well on the offensive end. They have length and size. That’s no secret. When you get them to miss, it’s frustrating when you don’t get the board. They started inside, but they can really shoot the 3 as well. They have a nice combination.”

“Emotionally, we aren’t the same team right now,” Huse said. “Guys are in a little bit of a fragile place. We just have to move forward. It’s up to us to do that. There’s nothing else to be said, really. It’s up to our guys to come ready for the next one. I have to coach better. We have to do things better, period. We’ve proven we can compete with people. This wasn’t representative of that.”

“It’s on us, it’s in that room,” Huse said. “It’s on us as coaches and them as players. It starts there and finishes there. We have to be the ones to find our way out of a situation where we don’t feel very good about ourselves. In league play, you can’t dwell on stuff whether you are up or you are down. It’s a great lesson for our team if we can respond to this. When we respond to this, I should say. That’s the most important piece in this tough situation we find ourselves in in the sense that we are doubting ourselves right now.”

“Disappointment in ourselves,” Calen Coleman said. “We came out really flat from the get. We let the other team get comfortable in our own house. I can’t tell you why we’ve been starting flat. I don’t know what it is. We just have to keep working hard as a team and get back to what we were doing when we were 4-1. I still belive we can recapture the confidence we had at the start of league and make a push toward the conference tournament.”

[MSU01]

Thanks Colter! My commiserations that you actually have to write a story about that game.

[Colter_Nuanez]

Thanks Colter! My commiserations that you actually have to write a story about that game.

It was painful to watch, I knew it was over 10 minutes into the first half. Montana State didn't execute a single offensive possession until nearly 12 minutes into the game. Here's the story. Not much.

Eastern Washington blasts Montana State men, 79-50
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=32684" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[BelgradeBobcat]

Thanks Colter! My commiserations that you actually have to write a story about that game.

It was painful to watch, I knew it was over 10 minutes into the first half. Montana State didn't execute a single offensive possession until nearly 12 minutes into the game. Here's the story. Not much.

Eastern Washington blasts Montana State men, 79-50
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=32684" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Classy comments by EWU's coach. I'm sure he, and the other Big Sky coaches, don't want to see Huse go-playing against him in February is as close to a sure thing as there is in Big Sky basketball.

[TrueCat]

[quote="BelgradeBobcat"]I can't believe we give these players full ride scholarships and pay our coaches all that money to suck this bad at basketball. What a rip-off.[/quote]

Hey Man, leave the kids alone. Not appropriate to call them out

[GoldstoneCat]

I can't believe we give these players full ride scholarships and pay our coaches all that money to suck this bad at basketball. What a rip-off.

Hey Man, leave the kids alone. Not appropriate to call them out

I disagree, he didn't call out any individual players, he called them all out...and he's right. Huse is a horrible coach, I think we can all 100% agree on that, and at least part of his failing is that I believe he has brought in too many players who aren't really division-1 caliber basketball players, even crappy D-1 like the big sky. Seriously, could any of these guys carry a cup of water for Danny Sprinkle, Harold Arceneaux, or even Ross Land from NAU? I don't think so.

[Rich K]

Guys are in a bit of a fragile place right now? Really? WTF does that even mean?

I'll answer that. It means Coach Huse has not prepared them to be mentally prepared for the game. That's part of his job. He's admitting he is not doing a major requirement for his job. I don't know if the players are Division I caliber or not, I think they probably are, based on brief glimpses of that kind of talent. But Huse is not Divison I caliber as a head coach.

[John K]

16-38 after February 1 during Huse's tenure...that's ridiculous!! Do you think we'll even win another game this season, except maybe winless (in conference) SUU at home? How can Fields possibly justify having re-signed him for two more years? Getting blown out by 1st place WSU on the road was one thing, but getting blown out by 29 at home, to a team that was only 4-6 in conference going into the game...

[coachouert]

[ImagineSanta]

MSU RPI 284.
SUU RPI 345.
Is MSU actually the worst team in D1 basketball? Some say yes, most say absolutely.

[Rich K]

MSU RPI 284.
SUU RPI 345.
Is MSU actually the worst team in D1 basketball? Some say yes, most say absolutely.

The first thing I saw was MSU RIP, which made sense to me.

[wbtfg]

Still trying to figure out how a team with so many juniors and seniors is mentally fragile.

[John K]

Still trying to figure out how a team with so many juniors and seniors is mentally fragile.

Yeah, and we actually returned most of our key players from last year. For once, we didn't have to completely rebuild the roster, after a mass exodus during the off-season, which has been SOP during most of Huse's tenure. Maybe that's not good though. Our swoon started even earlier this year, which might mean that the players started tuning him out even earlier than normal. In past seasons, with so many new players on the roster, it probably took a little longer for that to happen.

[rtb]

Still trying to figure out how a team with so many juniors and seniors is mentally fragile.

Maybe EWash didn't hand out participating trophies after the game?

[DicTater]

How can a bunch of players, who have loved playing basketball their entire lives, look so listless? Cats got out rebounded by 18! Cats had all of 7 assists, with the center having 4 of those! I've said it before, and I don't know how he does it, but somehow Huse just sucks the enthusiasm and life out of the players. He's like a vampire coach, sucking all the blood out of his players.

[John K]

I don't believe there's any chance this will actually happen, but at this point the honorable thing would be for Brad Huse to resign at the end of the season. We all know that Fields won't fire him with a year still remaining on his contract, because he'e not going to pay two head coaches next year. But does anyone, including Huse himself probably, really believe there's even a remote possibility that things will be any better next seaason? At this point, I'd be in favor of just forfeiting all our games next year, thus saving most of the associated expenses. We could release all the players from their scholarships, and then our only real expense would be the coach's salaries. Then we could start with a completely clean slate in 2015-16. I'm only half kidding...could things really get much worse than they are now? What do we really have to lose?