Oakland Golden Grizzlies

[sdsurulz08]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

Nagy: Difference is we had 17 turnovers and they had 7. End of first half we have 4 or 5 in a row.
Effort was there. Proud of our kids. Oakland is tough.
Would rather feel this was (pour everything into it and feel so bad) than the regret of losing after not giving good effort (I paraphrase).
...
Thinks we lost it in the first half -- had a chance to really stick it to them.

I agree we could have killed OU's desire in the first half but we let them back into the game...

[filbert]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

I agree we could have killed OU's desire in the first half but we let them back into the game...

Actually, I think it would be pretty darn hard to kill the desire of a team that came into the game undefeated in the conference.

Although, they did seem pretty darn frustrated in the first half. It would have been nice to intensify that frustration rather than letting them sneak back into the game . . .

[90Jackrabbit]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

Good, but disappointing effort.

Question-- Since it was such an important game, why didn't the students get into it more? Seemed better than last year's NDSU game which sounded like a lot of squeaky shoe soles and paled in comparison to a UCM-Northwest Missouri game I saw on TV the next day.

When I attended Oklahoma as a graduate student in the late sixties, their ancient field house was a morgue and was nothing like attending a game at SDSU. Now everything in the Dakotas seems strangely quiet. The Cornell Board was making a lot of fun of USD fans during their game-- of course I assume the Dome doesn't lend itself to basketball and the students were gone.

I guess I just don't understand. What happened to old-timey team spirit on the part of the student body? It certainly exists in more prestigious conferences.

I should add that when I drove up to WIU for a game last year, I had to ask three or four students before anyone could tell me where the field-house was.

Were you listening to the same game I was? I thought the crowd was very much into this game.

[sdsurulz08]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

Actually, I think it would be pretty darn hard to kill the desire of a team that came into the game undefeated in the conference.

Although, they did seem pretty darn frustrated in the first half. It would have been nice to intensify that frustration rather than letting them sneak back into the game . . .

that is true and i think we came out from the half pretty good but ya against a team like you OU you must score about every time we get a chance. there pg Jones is freaky quick!

[filbert]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

that is true and i think we came out from the half pretty good but ya against a team like you OU you must score about every time we get a chance. there pg Jones is freaky quick!

I was very impressed with how well Wolters played against Jones on both ends of the court. Nate is good, and he'll get better. We've got a good one there.

[Grizzled_Jack]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

Were you listening to the same game I was? I thought the crowd was very much into this game.

It certainly sounded better than what I heard last year. To me (using the WNAX feed) it sounded like a bunch of middle aged guys getting into the game-- the kind of crowd feedback that would be great if the students weren't on campus. Just didn't seem like the out of control kind of reaction I remember from many years ago.

[sdsurulz08]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

I was very impressed with how well Wolters played against Jones on both ends of the court. Nate is good, and he'll get better. We've got a good one there.

Nate is Great. seriously you would not think he is a true freshman! whats his free throw % like 90 percent on the year?

[Nidaros]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

Good, but disappointing effort.

Question-- Since it was such an important game, why didn't the students get into it more? Seemed better than last year's NDSU game which sounded like a lot of squeaky shoe soles and paled in comparison to a UCM-Northwest Missouri game I saw on TV the next day.

When I attended Oklahoma as a graduate student in the late sixties, their ancient field house was a morgue and was nothing like attending a game at SDSU. Now everything in the Dakotas seems strangely quiet. The Cornell Board was making a lot of fun of USD fans during their game-- of course I assume the Dome doesn't lend itself to basketball and the students were gone.

I guess I just don't understand. What happened to old-timey team spirit on the part of the student body? It certainly exists in more prestigious conferences.

I should add that when I drove up to WIU for a game last year, I had to ask three or four students before anyone could tell me where the field-house was.

Grizz
Since you left SDSU likemyself in the mid 1960's, there have been a bunch of changes that have cut into that student crowd that was there during our student days such as:

There are more liquor licenses and more than 3.2 beer available for students. Raising the legal age to 21 for comsumption of beverages has given rise to a cottage industry of party houses, that were not around in the 1960's. Plus there are more retail businesses in Brooking now than back in the 1960's that employ student help which takes a bunch of the students away from games and I suppose they are doing the noble thing of working their way through college.

Brookings in my opinion has become another McComb, and the apathy toward athletic events seems to be the same at both instituions. Maybe its because you do have urban students. I once worked with a room of WIU grads and they did not seem to wild about their alma mater, but all had grown up in suburban Chicago. Also SDSU seems to have a bigger continuent of Twin Cites student than what we had back in the 1960's, so building loyality is a project.

As far as the Oakland game, it makes me thing of a saying:, Being close only counts in horse shoes and hand gernades.

[bub94]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

Should have been a Jacks win. The difference in the amount of free throw shots was unbelievable. Oakland is super quick. So quick in fact the refs couldn't notice the extra steps they take :-). Was hoping they would call one or two blocking fouls but I was wrong. AC had a great move on Benson in the second half. Very nice. Mark played a pretty good game. He got put on the bench with a nice touch foul. Kai stepped up in the first half to get the scoring going. The guys shouldn't have any problem believing they can beat Oakland.

[filbert]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

It certainly sounded better than what I heard last year. To me (using the WNAX feed) it sounded like a bunch of middle aged guys getting into the game-- the kind of crowd feedback that would be great if the students weren't on campus. Just didn't seem like the out of control kind of reaction I remember from many years ago.

I dunno. I remember lots of fairly lethargic crowds against conference teams in important games in the 80's and 90's . . .

Basically, the SDSU fan I remember was able to get loud for one, maybe two possessions in a row (usually after I'd stand up and scream GET UP!!! at them, but that's another story), then was content to sit back and see what happened. The only exceptions were the Augie and USD games, and even those games usually fell into that routine after about the first few minutes of the first half.

SD people simply don't seem to want to make noise consistently when their team is on defense, and they really, really don't want to make noise when opponents are shooting free throws. I really don't know why, but if you try to do too much of that you get very, very dirty looks from your fellow fans.

From the games I've been to this year and really since the late '70's, that's been pretty constant. The crowds during the D-I era have been maybe a bit more sedate than the ones during the NCC threepeat championship years of the late 90's, but not hugely so, IMHO.

/end of rooter-rant/

[Grizzled_Jack]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

Last time I visited Brookings was passing through in 03. I went to the football game this year in McComb. McComb is isolated and depressing IMHO. Think Brookings has a lot more going for it.

I think you have some very good points about the differences in the last forty or fifty years, but I see appreciably more student involvement in larger schools. The percentage of students at an Oklahoma or Missouri game and SDSU should be proportional. If nothing else, there should be a higher interest in a smaller school since the students should be more personally involved with the student-athletes (same size squad spread around more students) much as entire towns used to show up for basketball games in small towns (probably don't do that anymore either).

[SUPERBUNNY]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

I thought the crowd was into it better than we have seen for a long time. Is it where it ought to be? Not by a longshot! Of course, like many I remember back in the old days. They're gone and I've moved on.

The more the team plays hard like tonight and continue to improve, the corwd will respond and grow.

Great effort tonight. Should have won it. No way Oakland wants anything to do with us in Sioux Falls!

Great to see Mark get in and play well. IMHO, he got hosed on a couple foul calls. Also, Rader came in and gave some real quality minutes, made a shot or two, and knocked down some free throws.

It just seemed like we were a little tentative the last few minutes. Several players would make a drive and the shot was there but elected to pass it out. Need to stay aggressive and close the deal.

I like where we are headed. You can see the teams confidence growing. Going to be fun the rest of the way!

Go get a couple on the road fellas!

GB, GB, GJ!

SUPERBUNNY

[zooropa]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

Okay. Just read the last page of comments, so I don't know if this has been said yet, but that was the Baylor game all over again.

Regarding crowd noise, let's not turn into cork sniffers and wine tasters about this. The crowd was its usual reactive self--we all could've hounded the Grizzlies more on defense, but that's typical.

Regrettably, I took to calling Eackles "Fake-els" after a particularly egregious bit of acting in which he fouled Callahan (wasn't called) and tried to draw a foul. Serious, the guy looked like Callahan had just broke his leg or something. I also loudly awarded him an Oscar for 'best acting on a basketball court'.

Unless Engen did something with his right hand that was rather inappropriate, Benson fouled Engen on the play where Engen was called for his 4th. He elbowed Engen in the gut and Engen was immediately called for the foul.....

[1stRowFANatic]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

Engen's fourth foul was a bad call, but the one where the called the ball out of bounds on him he got away with one. Benson did reach up for the pass because he couldn't. The refs were bad again. So inconsistent. An immense amount of hand checking all over the court and then all of a sudden the whistle blows. That had to be really frustrating for the players because they could never figure out what they could and couldn't do.

I can't remember what player it was for OU that took three big steps in front of a ref and it didn't get called. We got called for stepping on the end line directly in front of a ref that everyone around me said was horrible, but I missed it and didn't see it.

As for the intentional foul call, that was horrible. Wolters tried to do a reach around to knock the ball away from behind. It sure looked to me like all he got was his shooting arm, and he was clearly going for the ball. The ref that had the best view did not signal an intentional foul right away, that came from one down the court. What was worse was that they huddled up to discuss it and didn't get it right.

Most of the time the bad calls even out, but every now and then a series of bad calls go against one team and it then has an impact on the game that is more than the individual calls. In previous games we have benefitted from this as well as having suffered from it. The one thing that is obvious though, the players compete at one level and the refs at another.

Great game tonight and I sure wish we could have finished it. Effort was not in question all night, just didn't go our way tonight. Can't wait to listen to the next men's game.

[zooropa]

Re: Oakland Golden Grizzlies

What bothered me about the officiating (and what made it so similar to the Baylor game) was that it slowed the tempo enough to mitigate the Grizzlies' fatigue.

It was apparent that the Jacks were wearing down the Grizzlies, but when they continued to call all those penny-ante fouls you've got all these play stoppages and standing around for free throws, and you lose that edge.

The bad officiating at the Baylor game let the short handed Bears keep up with the Jacks and that's the same thing that happened tonight.

(BTW: Oakland did about as good as any team I've ever seen at contesting its own missed free throws)

BTW 2: Jones played all 40 minutes and Nelson played 38, and they barely beat SDSU. Benson played 31 minutes. Sargent & Williams played 34 & 32 minutes, and nobody else on the Jacks played more than 30.

The runnin' rabbits are back--and as long as they don't get women's refs at any more of their games, they'll do fine.