Game 5: Gophers Host Montana State (11-23-19)

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Ignatius L Hoops

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Catamounts, Panthers and Bobcats

Continuing our tour of Felidae, Montana State (3-1) arrives at Williams following last night’s 60-50 lost at South Dakota State. The Bobcats played a competitive first half trailing the Jacks 27-22. The third quarter did the deed as SDSU outscored Montana State 24-7. Postgame, Bobcat head coach Tricia Binford thought her team played impatiently with a rushed offense. She expects a more deliberate, make them guard you, effort against the Gophers.

Last season Montana state finished 16-15 (11-9 Big Sky) good for 5th in the conference. In the Big Sky Tournament, the Bobcats lost to Portland State and failed to make post season play. This season, the Bobcats were projected 1st in the Big Sky. What’s changed? It’s 6’0” senior forward Fallyn Freije. Frije joined the Bobcats after sitting out a year following her transfer from North Dakota. In her final season with the Fighting Hawks Frije averaged 13.2 points per game. It was impressive enough to make Frije, the pre-season Big Sky MVP selection. She joins an upper classman dominated team. Frije was joined on the pre-season All Conference teams by senior guard Oliana Squires. Against South Dakota State, Frije had a bit of a tough shooting night going 4-11 with 11 points.

Another player to watch is sophomore guard Tori Martell who led the Bobcats in scoring through the first three games with 12.7 points per game aided by shooting 9-14 from three. Unfortunately, Martell could not get going against SDSU scoring only 2 points in 25 minutes.

Montana State is coached by Tricia Binford in her 15th season. Binford’s Bobcats won back to back regular season Big Sky championships in 2015-16 and 2016-17. Her only NCAA appearance was in 2016-17 when the Bobcats also captured the Big Sky tournament title. Montana State’s associate head coach, Sunny Smallwood, is familiar to Gopher fans. She was associate head coach at Nebraska for nine seasons before leaving for a couple of years at Boise State. Smallwood then spent two years at Arizona before joining Montana State in June 2018.

Wins: UC Davis 77-65, Carroll College 67-33, MSU Northern 93-34.
Losses: @ South Dakota State 50-60.


Note: This is the Bobcats first meeting with Minnesota.

Minnesota Connection: Senior forward Martha Kuderer (Chanhassen); sophomore forward Gabby Moochi (Champlain); freshman guard Kenzie Stumne (Forest Lake); junior guard Tori Martell (Somerset, Wisconsin).

(Montana State has not updated their stats through last nights game.)

Probable Starters:

F 5’11” Sr Martha Kuderer
G 5’6” Fr Darian White
F 6’0” Sr Fallyn Freije
G 5’8” Sr Oliana Squires
F 6’2” Sr Madeline Smith

Others:

G 5’8” Jr Tori Martell
G 5’9” Fr Madison Jackson
F 6’2” Sr Blaire Braxton
F 6’2” Fr Kola Bad Bear
 



Yikes. Gophers better come up with something quick. Can’t afford to lose this game.
 




Aesop70 said:
But showed heart to fight back for the win.
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The effort was terrible the 1st 25 minutes or so but they really picked up the intensity to pull it out, not pretty but a nice scrappy win.
 

Gopher D turned it up a notch in the second half. Montana State a respectable team. Pitts really got it going offensively in the second half. Powell with a really solid effort. T. Bello great on the boards with 14 today.
 

Horribly outplayed for 2.5 quarters, other than T Bello rebounding continues to be an issue. i thought this would be a tough challenge for the Gophers but wasn’t expecting the Bobcats to have double digit leads. Gritty comeback. Interesting that Charlie Creme has Gophers and Montana State in the same bracket in his latest bracketology. Glad they toughen the non conference schedule.
 



T Bello carried us in first quarter with 9 point and rebounds. Our shooting percentage was not good. Fortunately we got to the free throw line often and finally began to hit those. It seemed like they switched from focusing on stopping Pitts to trying to stop Bello. Pitts only scored 2 in the first quarter but really picked it up after that. Hubbard looked like she needs to knock some rust off again.
 

thought after 5 games would be a decent time to look at the +/-'s for the team..

T. Bello 83
Pitts 53
Powell 52
Brunson 47
Hubbard 34
Scalia 30
Staples 28
Tomancova 17
Klarke 2
Adashchyk 1
K. Bello -22
 

Postgame Quotes - University of Minnesota Athletics

Postgame Quotes
gophersports.com gophersports.com

Minnesota Head Coach Lindsay Whalen On what she said in the third‐quarter timeout that helped turn the game:

“What did I say guys, I don’t even remember. I think at that point it was a now‐or‐never type thing and dictating and imposing our will on the game, and you know we kinda had said, ‘which play is going to turn the tide here?’ And there were two that stick out in my head of our guys diving on the floor getting loose balls and attacking, and just making great plays and working extremely hard. We picked up full‐ court the entire second half, and most of these guys played well into the thirties (minutes), and did that for that long. It just came to the point for us that it was now or never, and these two guys here (Destiny Pitts and Jasmine Powell), really led the way in that aspect on both ends of the floor.”

On Montana State’s size vs. Minnesota’s quickness:

“I think we got to a point where we didn’t want to automatically switch. (Jasmine) Powell was doing such a great job on the ball, that we felt if she could stay on No. 2 or No. 24 ‐‐ those were some of the guys that were hurting us a little bit ‐‐ that we could just stay on so they couldn’t throw it into the post on some of our less tall guards, I won’t say small. They are just so good on the ball that we felt like we were going into it switching, trying to keep things in front, but when these guys really started dictating on the ball we just went to just don’t automatically switch, and they did a tremendous job on the perimeter.”


Minnesota junior Destiny Pitts

On being celebrated at the start of the game for scoring 1,000 career points and what got her going for the second half:

“It was a pretty cool experience to have that moment with my teammates and coaches in front of the fans. I think it got me going. We were down and know how important it is to win games, especially being at home in front of our fans, so that caused us to be more aggressive.”

On playing well for the last half of the game after being down at the end of the first:

“It shows a lot of fight in our team and how well connected we can be, but we have to put it all together for four quarters. We came off of a great Arizona State game, but this game we sank down to Montana State’s level, who is a good team, but not as good of a team as Arizona State. It shows how good our team can be when we connect and play together.”

On Jasmine Powell’s impact on the second half:

“She had a big impact; her on‐body defense and full‐court pressure was great. I think that turned up the tempo for the rest of the game and got all of us going on the defensive end because if you see someone playing that hard on defense, on the ball and leading the way, it’s going to pick everyone else’s intensity up.”
 

Like the Missouri State game, Montana State's ball movement broke down the Gopher defense. The Bobcats, like Tricia Binford promised ran a more patient offense against Minnesota than they did versus South Dakota State and it worked. I see Whalen said the Gophers stopped switching on screens-that seemed to help.

Also like the Missouri State game Minnesota got good shots early and didn't put them down. Then they seemed to stop getting good shots. I wish the players listed in our "who's going to lead the Gophers in scoring" thread would start giving Destiny a challenge.

Powell drew 8 fouls and Pitts 7. They each scored 8 points from the foul line.

The good news was that the Gophers finally sped up the Bobcats offense and got some turnovers. The bench was fairly small today and given the contributions of Staples and Adashchyk it could get smaller. Kehinde Bello has proved competent enough to give her sister a short break. A shout out to the towel guy under the east basket whom spied Kehinde's contact lying in the lane, retrieved it and got it to the bench to be reinstalled during a break. I think I remember Kehinde losing a contact last season.
 



msubobcats.com

Gophers Need Second Half Rally to Escape Bobcat Upset Bid - Montana State University Athletics

For thirty-four minutes the Montana State women's basketball team gave Minnesota all it could handle.
msubobcats.com msubobcats.com

Tricia Binford:


UM junior Destiny Pitts took over down the stretch scoring nine of the Gophers last 16 points to secure the victory.

"I'm proud of the resiliency of the team," Binford said. "They competed hard and came out and put some great quarters together today on both ends of the floor. Minnesota is a very good team and once (Destiny) Pitts got going toward the end of the third quarter the crowd really got going. What a great atmosphere?

"In the end, the game came down to turnovers," Binford added.

MSU committed 23 turnovers to just 13 miscues for the Gophers. UM held a 28-12 advantage in points scored off turnovers
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The staff must think something of Adashchyk's ability,based on when she entered the game today. (And I've heard Whalen say before the season that she was going to be fun to watch.) Adashchyk didn't do much today. Hopefully, she'll be able to contribute. Although the Gophers missed some free throws today, it looks like they are really going to be a good FT shooting team. If they get leads late in games, it's going to be tough to beat them by sending them to the line. Although I view the team's 13 turnovers as too many, I think it's also safe to say that this team will probably not have as many turnovers as last year's team had.
 

Something odd going on with Real Time RPI. Apparently based on the Gophers not winning by enough (against a team Creme thinks will make the tourney), that site's now projecting two more Gopher losses for a total of 13, four in conference. And some of the projected losses are very odd -- American? Penn State? Oh, well. All of this starts to make more sense as more info becomes available.
 





thatjanelpick said:
Something odd going on with Real Time RPI. Apparently based on the Gophers not winning by enough (against a team Creme thinks will make the tourney), that site's now projecting two more Gopher losses for a total of 13, four in conference. And some of the projected losses are very odd -- American? Penn State? Oh, well. All of this starts to make more sense as more info becomes available.
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Currently, RealTimeRPI and Warren Nolan more or less agree about RPI Rankings (with the Gophers at 57 on one and 58 in another). They could differ due to rate of updating. And in a prior year we did notice an error in RealTimeRPI that wasn’t corrected for a period of weeks (so maybe Nolan is more accurate? I dunno).

In one sense I like the Warren Nolan Web site better. Nicer site plus they have a real nice page on the AP Top 25 poll that actually ranks every team that got points.

On the other hand, RealTimeRPI does have its Gamer algorithm that attempts (very badly at times) to guess what games a team will win or lose for the rest of the season, and on that basis tries to project what the Div I RPIs will be at the end of the season by pretending that the season will be played out the way Gamer projects. Lord knows what kind of algorithm it uses for that (maybe it uses horoscopes or divining rods).

And as @thatjanelpick notes, there’s a lot that’s odd about the Gamer projections. Especially this early in the season. In spite of that, and regardless of the fact that its projections are often inaccurate and even bordering on nonsensical, it is somebody’s algorithmic guess about what the rest of the season will look like, and thus at least partially useful. Personally, I guess I have a love/hate relationship with the Gamer projections. I love that they’re making the attempt at projections (cuz nobody or hardly anybody else makes the effort) but I hate that it’s so inaccurate (to the point of sillyness).

Maybe someday, somebody else will do a better job of it. But we do know that Gamer does factor in other things besides current (unprojected) RPI. For all we know, it might factor in current AP Rankings and/or Charlie Creme’s rankings and/or studies of individual team/player capabilities. But whatever it does, I think we can say with some certainty that it’s just not sophisticated enough.

For one thing, I’ve noticed that it very strongly emphasises (too much IMHO) home versus away advantage. To the point where Gamer seems to start with an initial guess based only on home vs road game advantage and then tweaks the initial guessed scores up or down from there based on some strength-of-team and/or RPI factors.

For instance, right now (morning of Tuesday Nov 26), Gamer has predicted the remainder of the Gophers’ schedule strictly based on home/away advantage. It thinks we win all the home games and lose all the away games (both conf and non-conf).

Some of the oddball Gamer guesses follow the example of at George Washington. It thinks we lose because it’s an away game, but only lose by one point 68-69 - presumably because it thinks that Minnesota would be the stronger team of the two on a neutral court, but it doesn’t put enough weight on that strength to go ahead and call it a road-game win for Minnesota. That’s where I think the Gamer algorithm is weak. It puts too much emphasis on home bs away and not enough emphasis on relative strength of teams. I mean, is there any Gopher fan that won’t be a bit disappointed if the Gophers can’t beat George Washington just because it’s a road game? As far as I know, they’re not known as a basketball power-house.

Similarly with the American road game where Gamer has us losing by 4 points (I guess it thinks American is a bit stronger than George Washington). There are examples like at Ohio State and at Illinois that Gamer thinks we lose by one point, and at Wisconsin that it thinks we lose by two points. I know that the Gopher fans in the Barn are an advantage, but seriously, should we give ourselves that much credit that we (like Gamer) should think that the Gopher Ladies lose at Wisconsin without us?

Then, as mentioned, it apparently thinks that Penn State is enough stronger than the above away-game opponents such that they beat us away by 6 points.

The conclusion is that Gamer has a weak algorithm (with it’s main weak point being not enough emphasis on relative strength of teams and too much emphasis on home vs away), but it’s apparently the only projection we’ve got at this point, so it’s better than nothing at this point (albeit barely better this early in the season).

All I want for Christmas is a better RPI projection algorithm than Gamer. There are other ranking systems, most of which are better than RPI, but NCAA still uses RPI. So it would be nice to blend those better ranking approaches into a Gamer-like projection of end-of-season RPI, only doing so more accurately than Gamer currently does.

One other interesting thing to note. The RPI rank of Missouri State is currently #4. This is largely based on RPI’s over-emphasis on Strength of Schedule, and Missouri State has the 6th ranked SOS as of today. Note in passing that their Gamer detail sheet shows Minnesota as a quality win for them. And as far as Gamer’s current end-of-season projections go the, they do have them down for a good record of 24-5 (14-2), but after playing their in-conference opponents drops their projected SOS down to #83, that drops their projected RPI down to #18. That’s compared to Gamer’s current end-of-season projection for Minnesota of a #15 SOS and a bubble-ish #64 RPI.

The low guess by Gamer on where the Gophers are heading RPI-wise is all based on it (hopefully) guessing wrong on a lot of road-game outcomes. Although RPI is mostly based on SOS and it thinks the Gophers will end up with a good #15 SOS, won-loss record does count for something, and we think (and hope) that Gamer is way off base on its projection for the Gopher won-loss record. It better be off, or else it’s Bubble Party time again next Spring.
 
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Montana State has proved to be a canny (or lucky?) bit of scheduling. Although they were no great shakes last season, this season they're 11-1 in conference, a nice RPI boost. (And a good reminder that gaming the RPI is not about scheduling against teams with good RPIs, but about scheduling against teams that will win a lot of games).
 

thatjanelpick said:
Montana State has proved to be a canny (or lucky?) bit of scheduling. Although they were no great shakes last season, this season they're 11-1 in conference, a nice RPI boost. (And a good reminder that gaming the RPI is not about scheduling against teams with good RPIs, but about scheduling against teams that will win a lot of games).
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Montana State was scheduled because they have a lot of Minnesota kids on their roster.
 

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