hmmmm.....

Looking forward to seeing Whitworth in Tacoma next year! 

o-v-e-r-r-a-t-e-d!   

PLU 32, WW 28. 

Sorry, but after tracking the WW stuff on this board this year I have to do this.

O-V-E-R-R-A-T-E-D

I saw them play, and thought they were pretty good.  I hope they win the tournament.  But there have been several better teams in the NWC in recent years, most of them from Tacoma.   

UPS lost to PLU because it shot barely 50 percent from the FT line, repeating the (roughly) 50 percent performance against WW.  There's something to work on!  Loggers brought pressure like the old days for a few minutes against PLU and nearly stole the game.  Also thought that WW was really bothered by the press.  Keandre is right...crazy whining from the guys in black on Tuesday.  Buck up.  You are winning the right to be crushed at WW again!

Dre, I thought Friedt was good, stronger than the inexperienced guys UPS has onside.  Taylor is the bomb, there with Matt Glynn as the best player I have seen in over 10 years of watching this league.  Overall, I thought WW was just that, good.  There have been much stronger teams in the NWC over the years, just not this year.  I left thinking that the Loggers will be damn good next year.

...whoops, I meant the factors leading to lost second half leads willmhurt UPS.

As much as I dislike saying it, I think Whitman will beat Puget Sound handily next weekend. The UPS backcourt is too inexperienced and turnover prone--over 30 turnovers last night in Salem, and WU isn't WC.  The same problems that lead to all those lost second half leads will hurt Whitman.  WW wins here, too, of course, though I am hoping for some frenied Logger play and a close contest.

Comparisons between the 2008-09 16-0 uPS team and the 2009-10 WW team....I don't know.  Last year WW was the only team in NWC with a winning record overall. WW was great, but the league was unimpressive.   Puget Sound swept the league with WW at 23-6, third place team at 16-10.  I don't know which team was better.  I also thought UPS should have won its third round game.  Sucked that the other guys scored more points that day!   

TMT is obviously right.  Two years ago NWC had two teams capable of going long in the tournament, and LC was very good.  Now?  WW is huge, everybody else is good to ok to bad.

I think that the inconsistency in games is about youth, and the lack of a real identity with all the turnover--this team doesn't have the personnel to play the old pressure system, it's added many new players for the season and two new starters in the past few weeks.   They have frosh and sophs all over the floor, Shelton aside the juniors haven't played, and the one senior on the team is brand new to the conference.  They lost their point guard and have literally just started playing an athletic  6'9" guy who as far as I can tell wasn't on the roster before Christmas, and it'll take time to figure out how to play with him.  It's understandable that this is not a smoothly running machine.  The guys do play hard, they're often fun to watch, and from my perch up high the team looks like it has a good vibe.  All of this is a credit to Coach Lunt.   

I think they will play better than you expect down the stretch.  They should beat PLU and Linfield at home and Pacific, Fox, and Willamette on the road.  WW beats 'em, of course, and I think the backcourt is way too young and inexperienced to handle Whitman.   If this comes to pass, and I think it's plausible, that's 8 wins in conference.  This would be a nice improvement over last season and would mark the way toward 10 or 11 next year. 

Despite the record, the Loggers are a little better than I thought they would be this year, and I think they will be very good next year.  It's been a tough stretch--they had a brief second half lead at PLU and fell apart; they had the Linfield game in hand and fell apart; they nearly blew the game to Fox, and with all due respect to the GFU folks, Fox looked godawful.

UPS is young and has made big changes recently.  The guy who played point for most of the early season isn't in uniform anymore, and while I did not see him as a great UPS system guy (he's a  bit slower and less aggressive than most of the guys who've been great UPS guards in the system) it's tough breaking in a new backcourt in league; Rogers is playing quite a bit now and he didn't see much time at all until a couple of weeks ago.  BTW, that dude can shoot.   UPS added Gittens, an athletic 6'9" guy and are working him in--with him, Borboa, and Shelton this looks like a new kind of Logger team, big and potentially intimidating up front. 

With the exception of the Pirates, the league overall looks weaker now than it has in years.