Hello Followers. Hope you’re having a great week.
As we all know, basketball season is really starting to kick into full gear. Tonight, our upstart Cougies take on the vaunted Bullpups of GU at the Kennel. Then, on Saturday, we head on over to Manhattan, Kansas to take on a very talented Kansas State squad. Win either one of those games and we will be well on our way of securing “just” enough of a resume to make the Dance if we can make it through the conference slate with 10-11 wins. Win both of the games and our Cougies will wake up next Monday morning ranked 16th in the country!
Want some keys to tonight’s game? Then read on….
Followers, my colleagues at the Spokesman Review have made Klay Thompson the focus of their advances. And for good reason. Klay enters the game as the leading scoring in the whole darn U-S-of-A.
That said, while we certainly need Klay to play and shoot well tonight, the real keys to the game come in the form of our two C’s: Casto and Capers—both of whom need to have marquee defensive games for us to stay close.
For Casto, he must match up with Robert Sacre—a 7 foot man child that nearly pounded a pretty nice Michigan State front line into submission on the Spartans’ home court.
Tonight, Casto is going to have to try to alter Sacre’s shots without getting out of rebounding position, and most importantly, without getting into foul trouble. Simply put, if Casto picks up a couple of cheap ones early trying to establish defensive position on the low block, we’re in big, big trouble. For that reason, don’t be surprised to see us play a bit of zone early to try to take pressure off Casto and a VERY overmatched Abe Lodwick—who I expect will get murdered on the weak side block all night long.
Where Marcus Capers is concerned, well, he’s going to have the task of guarding Matt Bouldin—a task that is made nearly impossible if we don’t shoot well. From what I’ve seen of the Zags this year (two games), they are still very much a transition offense. So, if we miss shots, and they get in the open court, then it really is bombs away time. And if we get into that type of game on the defensive side, we’re going to get killed.
So, Capers is going to have to find Bouldin in transition all night—a task that should be made easier by the fact that Bouldin should be guarding him. In addition, Capers is going to have to score from the baseline tonight against a group of Trees that he hasn’t seen this year. So, for us to win, I’m thinking that Capers has to get 8-10 points either in transition or from the baseline.
Finally, I expect us to continue to run our sets where we have two men ball side and three men running motion on the weak side. If Casto stays out of foul trouble, I expect for us to continue to feed Klay on the low block coming off of those weak side screens. IF Klay can get Gray into some foul trouble, and if Reggie Moore can hit some threes, then we’ll keep the game close because both Thompson and Casto will go off in that set. And with our defense, I REALLY like our chances if we can hang around late (MSU won the game late because of defense down the stretch).
Unfortunately, pulling all of this off so early in the season—and on the road—seems like too much of a tall order, especially since we have the Zags’ undivided attention. Zags soundly beat a much improving and exciting Cougar team 89-75.
Enjoy the game–we’ve already doubled with the win total of the football team over the past two seasons!
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