The Bobcat Nation

What's with the Girls BBallTeam? I'm beginning to wonder why I waste the gas to drive to the games. This group of girls for the most part play like they don't have a clue about how the game is supposed to be played. Stupid turnovers, terrible shots, dunb fouls, poor defense.Their fundamentals are poor to say the least. That in a nutshell is coaching to a large degree.They don't know how to run the fast break, screen out on rebounds, follow their shots, etc. Never more evident than when we played the Griz. Lost a game we should have won by 15 or more. I hate loosing but especially to the Griz at home.

Some of the girls (even one of the starters) playing quite a bit shouldn't be playing at all. Can't shoot, won't shoot, don't know how to get good shots, or play defense.

MSU is a great university and offers a quality education. Why can't we get better players? Or, do we have good players who need better coaching on fundamentals?
Someone said last night that what we need is 2.5 GPA girls that can play instead of 3.5 GPA girls that can't. Not sure I totally agree with this but, who knows, maybe it's true.

Kindly don't take this post the wrong way. I'm a loyal Cat Fan. I'm just tired pretty much of being near 500 or losing more than we win every year.We never seem to improve. It's frustrating to say the least.

bobcats35 wrote:
Someone said last night that what we need is 2.5 GPA girls that can play instead of 3.5 GPA girls that can't. Not sure I totally agree with this but, who knows, maybe it's true.

i won't comment about this womens team specifically as i have only seen them play once. however, for my money, i'd rather we had nothing but 4.0 girls that never won a game rather than 2.5 girls that won every game they played. it's a game. the rest is life.

Would your approach be the same for the football team or men's basketball? I am not looking to start an argument, just interested to see what people's opinion is.

Football Team is probably already at 2.5. Men's Team may also fit category. It wasn't me that made the comment.

TrueCat wrote:Would your approach be the same for the football team or men's basketball? I am not looking to start an argument, just interested to see what people's opinion is.

only speaking for myself, my approach is the same for all sports. i love sports as much as anyone, but i put it all in perspective. these kids aren't going to play pro ball. especially not at schools like montana state. why not get the kids who are going to make the most of their education. don't get me wrong...i'm a realist. i'm not saying that every kid with a 2.5 or less should get the boot. hell, i had less than that my first 2 years in school. my point was for someone to come out and actually say that he'd rather have kids better at basketball then school is a stretch in my opinion. i want to get the best kids we can on the court and in the class. but i don't think sacrificing those that excel in the classroom is the way to go for the sake of a winning womens basketball team. sure it goes on all over. and without my job being on the line it's easy for me to sit here and say. but come on...it's womens basketball at montana state. do we really care THAT much about that sport and the others that we'd like to see our university lower their academic standards?

whitetrashgriz wrote:

TrueCat wrote:Would your approach be the same for the football team or men's basketball? I am not looking to start an argument, just interested to see what people's opinion is.

only speaking for myself, my approach is the same for all sports. i love sports as much as anyone, but i put it all in perspective. these kids aren't going to play pro ball. especially not at schools like montana state. why not get the kids who are going to make the most of their education. don't get me wrong...i'm a realist. i'm not saying that every kid with a 2.5 or less should get the boot. hell, i had less than that my first 2 years in school. my point was for someone to come out and actually say that he'd rather have kids better at basketball then school is a stretch in my opinion. i want to get the best kids we can on the court and in the class. but i don't think sacrificing those that excel in the classroom is the way to go for the sake of a winning womens basketball team. sure it goes on all over. and without my job being on the line it's easy for me to sit here and say. but come on...it's womens basketball at montana state. do we really care THAT much about that sport and the others that we'd like to see our university lower their academic standards?

Wow.

The first thread in this post is pretty harsh. Personally, I've seen continued improvement in the MSU Women's program. True, they are probably not at Montana's level. But if you're going to use that as a measuring stick, you're going to have a great deal of disappointment. The Griz have been the class of the Big Sky since....well, long before it was even the Big Sky. MSU's program is on the rise and that's something to be appreciative of.

And whomever said there is a correlation between winning and GPA obviously had a low GPA themselves. Looking back to 2004 (the earliest I could find records) the lowest team GPA for the Lady Griz was a 3.11.

Good answers, thanks for replying to my question...I was not looking to stir the pot, just wanted some insight...and I agree with you.

It has certainly been a perplexing season for WBB after a promising start to the year, but the program has actually been one of the stronger ones MSU has had over the past 20 years or so. Since the last NCAA appearance in '93, the team has played in at least 5 or 6 BSC championship games. In the '90s and again in 2008, MSU always had to play UM in Missoula and was never able to win, which certainly isn't anything to be ashamed of. In '02 and '03, they tied Weber for the regular season title but got unlucky with tiebreakers and had to play the tournament in Ogden, again losing in the championship both times after beating UM in the semis. The WBB team has certainly had some very bad years, but overall I think they have certainly been consistently better than the MBB team over that time period. This seems to be a bit of an unexpected down year, which is definitely frustrating - I'm sure 100 times more so for the team and coaching staff than for us fans!

I think that overall Coach Binford has really elevated the wbb team from when she took over.

There are several factors going in this years struggles with the team.

1) While MSU has improved a lot to play on the Lady Griz level so has Portland State and NAU and they run the same up tempo offense as the Cats, meaning it is a matchup of who is hot that night as all teams are basically equal.

1b) Parity - This years conference is stacked from top to bottom with only Eastern Washington returning all their starters from last year ( and look they were leading the conference)

2) Post Play - Let me qualify this first by saying Sarah Strand is playing like a beast and may be the best all around player I have seen play for the cats in a decade. I think that Semansky, Albert, and Banis have a great future with the cats and can become dominant. What the Cats have been missing is a player like the Griz's Sarah Ena, or Idaho State's Iacovita (dominant rebounder that can score and run). I just think that this year that Semansky and Albert will be great just not there yet, Bak is still struggling adjusting to offense etc, Jaime is coming back from injury and trying to get back to where she should be (she will play a big factor for the rest of the season success)

3) Leadership/Confidence/Consistency - There has been that moment in every game where the Lady Cats let a little bit of doubt creep into how they are playing the game and they go into a funk for a few minutes. I think a lot of it is that the lady cats are playing a lot of new players a lot of minutes and some of our veterans may be pressing and getting frustrated and down on themselves. If you could take the how the men played against UM (steady attacking play never get flustered) and transfer it to the women they may never lose a game.

If the Lady Cats can string together enough wins to get into the tournament then it is anybody's championship to have. The Cats have enough talent to win and they are playing hard every game, just need to get their confidence back and do it.

bpcats wrote:I think that overall Coach Binford has really elevated the wbb team from when she took over.

There are several factors going in this years struggles with the team.

1) While MSU has improved a lot to play on the Lady Griz level so has Portland State and NAU and they run the same up tempo offense as the Cats, meaning it is a matchup of who is hot that night as all teams are basically equal.

1b) Parity - This years conference is stacked from top to bottom with only Eastern Washington returning all their starters from last year ( and look they were leading the conference)

2) Post Play - Let me qualify this first by saying Sarah Strand is playing like a beast and may be the best all around player I have seen play for the cats in a decade. I think that Semansky, Albert, and Banis have a great future with the cats and can become dominant. What the Cats have been missing is a player like the Griz's Sarah Ena, or Idaho State's Iacovita (dominant rebounder that can score and run). I just think that this year that Semansky and Albert will be great just not there yet, Bak is still struggling adjusting to offense etc, Jaime is coming back from injury and trying to get back to where she should be (she will play a big factor for the rest of the season success)

3) Leadership/Confidence/Consistency - There has been that moment in every game where the Lady Cats let a little bit of doubt creep into how they are playing the game and they go into a funk for a few minutes. I think a lot of it is that the lady cats are playing a lot of new players a lot of minutes and some of our veterans may be pressing and getting frustrated and down on themselves. If you could take the how the men played against UM (steady attacking play never get flustered) and transfer it to the women they may never lose a game.

If the Lady Cats can string together enough wins to get into the tournament then it is anybody's championship to have. The Cats have enough talent to win and they are playing hard every game, just need to get their confidence back and do it.

Everything you said is very true and I couldn't have said it better