I was able to see both games this weekend in Tacoma.   Whitman is fun to watch but they're young and not nearly good enough offensively to overcome all of their defensive mistakes and weaknesses.  I suspect they'll be good by the end of this year and very good next season.  At this point, UPS is a stronger team.  It was nice to see the guys shoot reasonably well, as Tglassman noted.  Just a bit more shooting against PLU/Fox and the team is 3-3 or 4-2 and looking at a playoff run while the young team improves, rather than 2-4 and a longshot....on the other hand, there's no reason the Logs can't sweep at Pacific and L&C next week, and 4-4 at the turn would give'em a pulse.

Whitworth is a good team, but I'm not as impressed with this team as I have been with recent Whitworth squads.  They were hugely advantaged up front at UPS, in part because Puget Sound's big freshman is on the bench with a cast on his hand or wrist; his frosh replacement is game, but too thin right now to hang down low with Whitworth's much heavier and stronger big men.  But I didn't think Whitworth's guard play was as good as it's been in the past, and I didn't see them running as smoothly on the offensive end as they have.  Puget Sound let the game get away early, and the team looked down and lost as the shots kept clanking in the first half.  They made a nice run and showed some signs of life late in the second, but too late, obviously.

I think Whitman's going to give Whitworth one heckuva game, and I think that PLU is going to plummet back to the pack quickly.  That's what Lutes do.    

I think PLU will come back to earth, pronto. 

 

It's hard to gauge the Loggers' chances this weekend, though I suppose that in the first time since almost forever they're underdogs at home on Friday and Saturday.  Boyce sat out most of the Willamette game with an ankle injury, and if he's not good to go it might be ugly, particularly against Whitworth's good front line.   

The Loggers were not very good against PLU in the second half, or in the first half for that matter.   I don't think PLU has much talent, but they were tough, more aggressive on the glass and much stronger physically than the Loggers.  It didn't help matters that the big guy who's been playing lots of minutes for UPS was in street clothes with what looked from the cheap seats like a cast on his hand, but that doesn't explain the loss to PLU.   To me this looked eerily like the Fox game—Puget Sound up in the first half with a solid lead but not playing particularly well.  Against Fox they were buoyed by the home team's  shakiness against the press in the first several minutes, and against PLU by some (unusually) good 3 point shooting in the first half.  Once Fox settled down, and once the Loggers returned to form against PLU (UPS is just not a good shooting team this year), the team's basic weaknesses were exposed, big time.   

The team is young, there's not much depth, and they don't shoot well.   They have several guys who can get to the basket, but without any outside shooting to open things up they're finding it crowded in there—PLU was running two and three big guys at every Logger drive to the basket.  Defensively, the press looks ok now and again but I don't know if UPS is deep enough to sustain it or good enough offensively to answer the many easy baskets they give up when the press is faltering.  Heyman and Boyce are good players, Koach is a terrific sixth man, and the young guys up front (Shelton, Yabro, and Barboa) look like they could turn into a nice version of the old Shelton/McVeigh/O'Donnell group that had so much success a few years ago.  But at the moment, the team just isn't very strong.

I think they'll get better as the season rolls on.  I mean, they beat Oshkosh, beat a good Portland Bible team, lost to St. Martin's (which has a great record in DII play) by 2, and played Stevens Point and Warner Pacific tough.  They led Fox by 15 in the second half (I think), and PLU by 10 early in the second half.   A few more decent minutes in those games and they're 2-1.   I thought .500 when the season started, and I will stick by that.  They'll beat PLU there, Fox here, Willamette twice, Pacific twice, Whitman here, and Lewis and Clark here.  Of course, if they drop the game to the Bearcats this weekend....I start attending women's games and haunting that board instead! 

Loggers appear to have been hurt badly by the absence of Heyman for the second straight game--unclear why he's out, but his absence is huge for this particular Loggers team.  He has played extremely well of late, and it's no disrespect to anybody to say that after him there's a big dropoff at the point--Heyman's really good.  I watched the great Fox broadcast of the game, and the Logs were just awful offensively in the second half.  As always they were getting to the rack at will, but couldn't finish.  At the end, they looked like UPS opponents in recent years--no legs left, lots of shots going short.
I don't see how they beat Linfield if Heyman remains out--it'll be a struggle if he's in the game.  The team doesn't shoot well and it doesn't appear to be deep enough to bring the pressure they've thrived on....

One more note about the Northwest/Puget Sound game.   The Loggers did not begin to crawl back into the game until they scrapped the full court pressure several minutes into the second half.  The press was not effective (note that N. only turned it over 13 times, equal to Puget Sound's total)--except that it may have worn down the opposition physically opening the way for the last push.  Levin going nuts with 3s didn't hurt, either!

I agree with Logshock--and just watched hard to follow video of a good win at Northwest up in Kirkland.  Once again the Logs were way down in the second half and managed to yank this one out, taking the lead with under 2 mins to go.
Through the grainy video, while I was doing other things, it looked like Levin went crazy for UPS, a much-needed
breakout for him.  Lunt has done a great job of keeping the team playing hard when they've been way down (it might have been a 17 point deficit five minutes into the second half).   

I am a bit skeptical about this young Loggers team, but I have to say that I think that they're considerably stronger than I (and many of us who have watched UPS basketball for years) expected.  The W/L isn't good, but this team is set to grow--losing to Stevens Point, DII St. Martin's, a pretty good NAIA team in the opener, and to Eau Claire on the day after a brutal game against Oshkosh isn't so bad.  I thought they'd be getting crushed at this point in the year, and they had a shot late against Point, Evergreen, and St. Martin's.... 

Any reads on the Loggers loss v. Eau Claire?  I was a little surprised--wonder if this thin team is going to struggle in the second game in back-to-backs given the style of play.

And for true Logger geeks, check out "Chase Curtiss basketball highlights" on youtube. 
Curtiss was a tremendous player, of course, but it's pretty amazing to see the Curtiss-Cross-McVey-Medved team run the floor.  There is a big gap between the current team--good, scrappy as it is--and that team. 

1.  Nice Logs win at Oshkosh.  I mean, down 14 in the second half and taking it to them at their place is very sweet, nice work for a young team.  They came close to playing the same song at St. Martin's, a nice DII team..you know, I think UPS is going to be just fine.

2. TMT, I didn't say anything about Whitman/Jessup or any other team on Whit's schedule.  I saw Whitworth being super slow, ponderous even.  Whitman kills ponderous. 

Oh, my...were the Pirates really down to the Slugs with 2:30 to play?  Gracious! 
Here's my prediction: Whitman is going to kill Whitworth.  The Pirates looked to me to be
precisely the kind of team that the Bridge system just blows up. 

I saw a bit of the WW/UWSP game and WW looked godawful.  They were slow and, um, bad.  I've been impressed by WW teams the past several years and I'm sure they'll get things together, but let me add to the mini-chorus of people on the board who've been questioning the early chest pounding by Pirates fans.  WW is well-coached and I'm sure they'll be good, but it's a project, my friends. 

Speaking of projects...the Loggers played hard and did hang in there until the very end.  The team hasn't shown much shooting yet and this just killed them in the second half against a sound Point team.  It looked like they auditioned just about everybody on the roster looking for someone who might nail a 3 in the second half, without success; just one or two would have made this a far more interesting game.  Point played well defensively, but there were lots of open shots there that just didn't go.  At times Coach Lunt had three frosh on the floor--and you know what, they did ok.