Portland's in for a long season, but there's no such thing as a bad road win. Was a little worried when we got down five, but we finished the half strong and carried it over. Good to see Smith contribute.
Portland is really young. They only have two seniors on the team and only one plays (Nemanja Mitrovic). The announcer touched on it but he's having a terrible season. Last year he hit on more than 46% of this 3s but he's only hitting 30% this year. They have one junior in Derrick Rodgers who is more or less a cypher. The rest of the team is all freshmen and sophomores. Their biggest problem in my opinion other than the obvious complete lack of athleticism is they don't have a single guard that can create from what I saw.
Big shout out for what I hope was the coming out party of Jon Smith. He was active from the get-go and looked confident for once. Keep it going big Jon. I guess big white stiffs agree with him.
Another big up was our rebounding. The Pilots got two offensive rebounds and I don't remember either of them.
Ricardo Johnson continues to improve. I thought he was the key to a couple of runs yesterday because he brought energy to the court that was lacking. It was like their style had us sleepwalking for a while but Johnson helped wake us up.
Lastly, we need Armon Bassett to come in and give a clinic on how to draw a foul. I complained loudly about the officiating in the Louisville and Marshall games but a lot of that is on us. We just don't seek out the contact on drives, which means we don't get to the line and they don't get in foul trouble. Only DJ and Offutt seem to know how to do it. Keely actually does a good job of it but he never, ever, ever gets the call. I guess it's because he's so big his body doesn't show the contact.