NSIC Week 4 Pickem Chat

[cat fan]

Augie slides past SMSU tonight in an extremely painful game to watch.

It shouldn't go unnoticed how the "Mustang Way" has evolved with this squad. The three or four redshirts/injured players at the end of the SMSU bench were yelling fake shot clock countdowns when Augie had the ball all game and then howled during every single free throw Augie shot in the final minute. Obviously it had no impact on the game but shows just how culturally unkempt a program that loves to shove a "hard working" mantra in our faces is this season.

Pretty much a repeat on Saturday night, except WSC couldn't quite score enough to get past the Mustangs. Ugliest game I have watched in awhile. Wayne is going to struggle more than expected this year. Janssen can't carry the entire scoring load, and right now he doesn't have enough consistent help from the perimeter.

And yes, you were correct about the Mustang bench. I'm sure they are having fun, but it's not a good look.

[MrAugustana]

Pretty much the only upside about losing to a team you hate losing to and feel like you should've beaten is it makes it easier to stay off the message boards and get real life work done throughout the following week. That was a frustrating loss, for a number of reasons. Hoping we don't see many more like them, whether Cartwright is back anytime soon or not.

Only other comment is that it was weird to watch Chris Johnson aggressively shout in Billeter's face during the flagrant foul conversation with the refs toward the end of the game and then later come back and profusely/repeatedly apologize to him for roughly 30 seconds when it was clear the game was in-hand and the Cougars would come away with a win. Then again, I'm sure USF fans would contend that Billeter did something to deserve it. I'm just going by what I watched transpire from my seats, and I can't imagine it was Johnson's classiest moment on the floor. But, it's a big win for him and the Cougars, so I'm sure emotions were running high either way.

[MStateMaverick]

The night after Coach Hastings wins his 200th hockey game.

I imagine that Coach M has been at the helm as long or longer than any other current coach in the NSIC, though not sure about that. Anyway, congratulations to him and his staff and players.

[Stanger86]

Unkempt? That's a new one.

[Stanger86]

Bigler is setting basketball back 40 years tonight and the fact that it's sort of working is the worst.

We played the weekend with just 7 healthy players. Our rotation consisted of four freshmen (two true) and three juniors. The backcourt starters each played all 80 minutes this weekend.