Point Loma to play this evening

[northernGNAChoopfan]

PLNU takes on Queen's who were expected to have a rebuilding year after making it to the final 4 last year. They've got a guy that leads the nation in double-doubles, but other than that, I don't know a lot about them. I think it will be important for Point Loma to come out calm and confident, because Queen's has been on this stage recently while PLNU hasn't. I won't be able to watch much of the game, so am hoping you guys will and if there is something exciting to report, post it! Below is the link. You just click it when it lights up red and says "live" to watch.

https://www.ncaa.com/brackets/basketball-men/d2/2019

[schnautza]

Re: Point Loma to play this evening

Any PLNU fans who are on these boards, jump on over to the midwest forum and chat with us about tonight's game.

[KTodd]

Re: Point Loma to play this evening

Watched the whole game, Point Loma took it to Queens and absolutely deserved the win. Final was 87-74, they were up 11 at half. Their motion offense over and over again created opportunities for Hommes and Beverly who each had 22. Team shot 54%, very solid contributions from their core - starters Nelson, Ziggy, Rodriguez, plus Somers and Mackenzie off the bench.

The tourney is in Evansville, IN .. and the game before, the U of Southern Indiana upset #2 seed West Texas A&M .. before 7,330 people (see below from the USI website)

"Tonight's crowd of 7,330 was the second-largest crowd in the history of the NCAA Division II Tournament. The record is 7,763, which was set at the 2013 NCAA Division II championship game between Drury University and Metro State University."

So guess what Point Loma will contend with tonight?

Reminds me of last year when CBU went to South Dakota for the Elite 8. The game before ours, Northern St (from South Dakota) played and the place was nuts. Absolutely jammed packed with Northern St fans (capacity is 3200 at the Sanford Pentagon), and I expect tonight's semi to be twice as loud with a berth to the final on the line.

Point Loma will run their stuff and if somehow they can grab an early lead and shoot like they did last night, they'll be ok. Should be fun to watch, however also tough with these 4 D1 Sweet 16 games going on.

[NWFanatic]

Re: Point Loma to play this evening

Good luck to Pt Loma tonight. The USI crowd will be going bonkers again. Hope the Refs are consistent for both games(which is asking a lot from D2 refs).

[schnautza]

Re: Point Loma to play this evening

I won't say that the officiating was lopsided but it was pretty bad yesterday. Hopefully it's better today. You can bet that the USI crowd will exceed 8000 tonight, even with the D1 games going on. Purdue fans may trickle in after the start (if they've already got tickets reserved) because they play at 6:30 (there's a lot of PU fans around here, because, you know, it's Indiana).

Looking forward to blowing the roof off the Ford Center with another record crowd. This is gonna be a good game.

[northernGNAChoopfan]

Re: Point Loma to play this evening

I was able to see the last 11 minutes of the game last night and was a little surprised to see Point Loma making it look pretty easy. It should be a fantastic game tonight. Heading into regionals, I was critical of Point Loma only in the sense that they did not travel much (if at all) in non-conference play and have only left the state of California once all season prior to this week. It'll be a different role for them tonight to be the "road" team on such a big stage with such a huge crowd. Clearly the travel did not affect their play last night. Should be a good one and from a region perspective, it's always nice to see our regional representative do well on the national stage; clearly the West region is not lacking because quite a few teams can play well with Point Loma!

[schnautza]

Re: Point Loma to play this evening

clearly the West region is not lacking because quite a few teams can play well with Point Loma!

Coming from a strong region is probably one of the most important factors in these tournament games. The Midwest has historically been one of the top regions in D2 basketball and I think that's really helped develop several programs who have made it to the championship round in recent history (Ferris State, Drury, Bellarmine, Findlay, Southern Indiana, Kentucky Wesleyan, Northern Kentucky). It seems like a lot of the teams that make it out of the weaker regions struggle to play against some of the more "seasoned" teams in the stronger regions. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what the West region competition is like tonight.


A bit of background on USI's Cinderella run this year:

USI is coming off of two back-to-back seasons with no NCAA tournament. We've been considered the underdog for pretty much every big game this season, but we've pulled off several key upsets in the 2nd half of the season. After suffering a home loss to Bellarmine, we came back and stunned them at their house to end their 67-game home win streak. Many think that was just because the Knights got hit with the injury bug, and they may be right. But that didn't matter when we met them for the fourth time in the regional championship (they were back to "full health" according to their fans). USI made a come-from-behind run to secure the E8 slot...this was after beating the #1 host Lewis on a buzzer beater. Look through USI's losses this season, and you'll see 4 of the 8 losses are to Bellarmine and Lewis. Pretty much everybody is surprised to see us come this far - but we seem to be peaking at just the right time and the home crowd is fueling their game now.

As for the roster, we've got a trio of local Evansville guys who took Reitz High School to their state championship (they lost), one of them - Alex Stein - being the son of our women's coach. Stein is HUNGRY for a championship, especially in his home town in front of all of his biggest fans. He's been very vocal on the floor in this post-season, carrying the team on his shoulders. If PLNU wants to win, they've got to figure out how to shut down Stein. He's a smart player and knows how to draw fouls - and he's a fantastic free throw shooter. You don't want to put him on the line.

We've got a good lineup of guards besides Stein. Nate Hansen and Kobe Caldwell can be very dangerous from behind the arc when they find their shot. Mateo Rivera is the shortest active player on our roster - he has incredible speed and agility and plays aggressively - he's a very well rounded player on the stat sheet from points to assists to rebounds to steals.

Jacob Norman's influence doesn't always show up on the stat lines, but he's our top defender. He'll likely be assigned your star shooter.

Our big men are finally hitting their stride at the end of the season - Josh Price, Emmanuel Little, and Tyler Dancy. Dancy is very quick-footed for his size and a bit foul prone, but he had a breakout game last night. Watch for him to keep the energy up. As a general rule this season, if the big guys play well, USI plays well. If they don't, it's easy for the top teams to score inside and also force us to shoot from outside.

As a team, 7 guys get the majority of the minutes.

[NWFanatic]

Re: Point Loma to play this evening

Central Region and MO have done well lately....3 of last 4 winners are from Central Region and 3 of last 6 are from MO.

[tsull]

Re: Point Loma to play this evening

Great information, everyone. Should be a great one tonight, and as noted, perhaps a crowd of 8K!

Couple things: Didn't USI win a national title in the last decade?

Interesting that two former GNAC greats, Hommes and Beverly, now lead Point Loma. Amidst the Homes hoopla, almost forgot about Beverly. He was a beast at MSU-B.

[northernGNAChoopfan]

Re: Point Loma to play this evening

I would agree with you both that the midwest and central regions have been strong in recent history and remain so. Just my take on the West; maybe down a touch over the last few years, but a whole lot of parity and many teams able to play head to head with Point Loma this year (they kind of ran away with the PacWest, but the CCAA and GNAC had some teams that could definitely compete with and beat them).

Thanks for the report on the USI team. It really sounds like it could be a great game. I'm eager to see what Point Loma looks like as kind of the underdog, if you will. I don't know much about the majority of guys on the Point Loma team, but two of their top guys (Beverly and Hommes) come from the GNAC and are terrific players, Hommes in particular. Your top defender will probably get to guard him (he's 6'7" and plays on the wing) and is just very hard to stop or slow down. I know more about their coach as he also left the GNAC a few years ago, where he had been at Seattle Pacific for a number of years when they went to the NCAA tourney for a national record number of times in a row. Looney's MO is rebounding, motion offense and dictating the tempo and pace of the game. They will be very deliberate and purposeful. I was surprised Queen's didn't give them more to deal with so am not sure if Point Loma/West is better than I had thought or if Queen's or other teams/regions are down a bit more. I would guess the game tonight will be good and not a blowout either way, but really, have no idea... Have fun cheering for your guys! Not really a fan of Point Loma, but having watched their coach and those old GNAC players is great fun and would be great for the West region if they move on to the championship game. In the end, the better team should win though!

[schnautza]

Re: Point Loma to play this evening

Great information, everyone. Should be a great one tonight, and as noted, perhaps a crowd of 8K!

Couple things: Didn't USI win a national title in the last decade?

I'd say at least 8k.
7,330 last night and the buzz is picking up. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see 9k if not a sellout (10k).

USI won a championship in 1995 and was runner up in 1994 and 2004. This is our 4th appearance in the Elite 8.

Oh, and if you end up at the game, I'll be in the USI band playing tuba. Or maybe mellophone. Depends on who all shows up.

[northernGNAChoopfan]

Re: Point Loma to play this evening

Thought the better team won as Point Loma moves on to the National Championship game; but the overwhelming feeling as this game closed out was that the reffing was awful. Man-o-man. Both teams had to ride out terrible calls and the whistles took the game away from the players. I would have hoped that the reffing at this level could be a bit better. Again, I thought Point Loma just dictated the game tempo for 80% of the game and did what they wanted to do. At the start of the game it did not look like USI had done their homework on Hommes, but they made things more difficult for him in the 2nd half, but the fact that they let him reel off so many easy jumpers early left them in a hole that they never really got out of and it just didn't really matter as the game closed that Hommes wasn't scoring... Excited to see Point Loma into the final and thinking NWMSU will probably be more prepared for Point Loma.

[tsull]

Re: Point Loma to play this evening

Thought the better team won as Point Loma moves on to the National Championship game; but the overwhelming feeling as this game closed out was that the reffing was awful. Man-o-man. Both teams had to ride out terrible calls and the whistles took the game away from the players. I would have hoped that the reffing at this level could be a bit better. Again, I thought Point Loma just dictated the game tempo for 80% of the game and did what they wanted to do. At the start of the game it did not look like USI had done their homework on Hommes, but they made things more difficult for him in the 2nd half, but the fact that they let him reel off so many easy jumpers early left them in a hole that they never really got out of and it just didn't really matter as the game closed that Hommes wasn't scoring... Excited to see Point Loma into the final and thinking NWMSU will probably be more prepared for Point Loma.

Great season by Point Loma, tremendous, great for the West Region, PacWest ... heck, great for the GNAC as St. Martin's handed Point Loma one of their few losses this year. Coach Looney is a great coach, won wherever he's been -- Eastern Oregon, SPU, now Point Loma -- dude can flat-out coach.

NWMSU is a tall order to beat, should be an excellent title game

[NWFanatic]

[tsull]

Re: Point Loma to play this evening

Amazing season for NWMSU, wow, they play great defense. Rugged game, but great 'D' on both ends. Great year for Point Loma.