MBB vs. Abilene Christian

[MSU01]

I have no personal grudge whatsoever, I am just stating facts
of what I see. But my opinion is yes I think we should give more of our home state kids a chance. If I wanted to watch a bunch of out of state kids play I will go to another state.
Look back 30 years ago we used to win with our kids.
Currently the MSU women have in state girls that play and have an impact.
Why can the women do it and not the men ?

Fair enough, you're entitled to your opinion. I don't follow Montana high school basketball closely enough to identify specific players MSU has passed over who are good enough to play D-1. I also don't see the need to come on here and try to downplay the accomplishments of the players who are on the team and have helped to win four Big Sky Championship trophies in the last three seasons. Clearly something is working.

[TheBigCat]

What state are you moving to?

Who said anything about moving ?
You can go to another state to watch basketball these days without having to move there.

[Prodigal Cat]

I have no personal grudge whatsoever, I am just stating facts
of what I see. But my opinion is yes I think we should give more of our home state kids a chance. If I wanted to watch a bunch of out of state kids play I will go to another state.
Look back 30 years ago we used to win with our kids.
Currently the MSU women have in state girls that play and have an impact.
Why can the women do it and not the men ?

So can you point to the 2 or 3 kids from Montana that are succeeding at the D1 level elsewhere that MSU passed or missed on?

For the overwhelming majority of Bobcat basketball, Cats have always had to bring in talent as this state just does not produce a ton of men's D1 talent. Never has. Yeah there is the occasional teams like the 95-96 that had Adam Leachman and Danny Sprinkle but those are most certainly the exception, not the rule. It also had Nico Harrison and Quadre Lollis so there's that. The women are a totally different subject.

[Hawks86]

What state are you moving to?

Who said anything about moving ?
You can go to another state to watch basketball these days without having to move there.

Good point. I'm sure the Frontier has some sort of streaming. Seems like you'd enjoy that more.

[Cataholic]

[quote=Cataholic post_id=888681 time=<a href="tel:1732714289">1732714289</a> user_id=21338]
[quote=TheBigCat post_id=888659 time=<a href="tel:1732681397">1732681397</a> user_id=24550]
Bla we beat a bad team - hollow victory any decent NAIA team would beat us at this point unless we made a bunch of 3s
living and dying by the the : point shot does not win championships.
Last year we were scrappy this year we are not.

Every single one of your posts are negative in regards to Logie and this team. Do you have some personal grudge?

Looking back at the post history the original complaint last year was about not having enough Montana players on the team.
[/quote]

Bla we beat a bad team - hollow victory any decent NAIA team would beat us at this point unless we made a bunch of 3s
living and dying by the the : point shot does not win championships.
Last year we were scrappy this year we are not.

Every single one of your posts are negative in regards to Logie and this team. Do you have some personal grudge?

Looking back at the post history the original complaint last year was about not having enough Montana players on the team.

I have no personal grudge whatsoever, I am just stating facts
of what I see. But my opinion is yes I think we should give more of our home state kids a chance. If I wanted to watch a bunch of out of state kids play I will go to another state.
Look back 30 years ago we used to win with our kids.
Currently the MSU women have in state girls that play and have an impact.
Why can the women do it and not the men ?
[/quote]

Your most recent comment about “any NAIA could beat us” is either uneducated or you have a personal agenda. Abilene Christian is from the WAC which is another decent mid-major conference.

And seriously, what Montana kid do you think was D1 level last year? I think any legit D1 prospect in Montana should be heavily pursued by MSU, but there aren’t many. I can’t think of one graduating senior last year that was ready for D1.

[lv2hoop]

There are a handful of very good MT kids playing currently in men’s CBB. Rollie Worster is still at it at the top level playing for the Cornhuskers after stops at Utah and Utah State. He was originally a Griz commit. Sprinkle went hard after him after he and Travis Decuire didn’t see eye to eye on him playing high school football at Hellgate.

Fischer Brown is playing down at Western Carolina now as a prep school recruit originally from Lewiston, MT. You’ve got a bunch of kids doing well in the Frontier and the GNAC and of course all of the MT kids who play at the College of Idaho. Oh and Julius Mims is great at Idaho. Both the Griz and Cats probably missed on Mims somewhere because he’s been great.

Bottom line is that like someone else said, it would be tough to compete at the D1 level with mostly in state kids. Not enough horses in a state of just over a million people to make that happen.

[BelgradeBobcat]

There are a handful of very good MT kids playing currently in men’s CBB. Rollie Worster is still at it at the top level playing for the Cornhuskers after stops at Utah and Utah State. He was originally a Griz commit. Sprinkle went hard after him after he and Travis Decuire didn’t see eye to eye on him playing high school football at Hellgate.

Fischer Brown is playing down at Western Carolina now as a prep school recruit originally from Lewiston, MT. You’ve got a bunch of kids doing well in the Frontier and the GNAC and of course all of the MT kids who play at the College of Idaho. Oh and Julius Mims is great at Idaho. Both the Griz and Cats probably missed on Mims somewhere because he’s been great.

Bottom line is that like someone else said, it would be tough to compete at the D1 level with mostly in state kids. Not enough horses in a state of just over a million people to make that happen.

Mims appears to be a big miss. I don't know what the factors were that caused that.
I think Fisher Brown will prove to be a miss. I think he'd be perfect in Logie's system. Really disappointed we didn't go after him. I hope he has a great career at WCU.
Fish recruited Caleb Bellach from Manhattan Christian. Caleb was down the depth chart a little bit when Sprinkle came in. He went to MT Tech and had a stellar career. He probably could have help us last season, but he was the man at Tech-so good for him.
Sprinkle brought in the Germer kid from Missoula. He, like Bellach, was a little ways down the depth chart so he transferred out. Last season we had the kid from Lewistown as a walk-on. He transferred to Carroll.
I'd love to see more in-state kids, but I have a feeling with the transfer portal-developing young players after a red shirt is going to be increasingly rare. Players want to play and have the freedom to move anywhere to find that playing time. And lets face it-there aren't any kids like Max Agbonkpolo or BJ Kolly coming out of Montana high schools.

[SACCAT]

There are all sorts of reasons you can look at. And maybe good conversations to be had about why there aren't more Montana kids on the two D1 programs in Montana... BUT I would rather look at the team on the court, and root for every one of them that are playing in 2024/25. They are a fun team to watch, and like the women's team, have a lot of explosive tallent. This could be a very special year for both MSU programs, so I hope those that live in the area will come out and support this team every game... Fill The Brick and make it a truly hard place to play for opposing players... If you can't make it, you can always listen to Keaton on the radio...

[lv2hoop]

That’s a great point saccat. I’ve listened to some of these in state complaints for a few years now, while right under our noses we’ve had Raequan Battle, Great Osobor, Jubrile Belo, Xavier Bishop, Abdul Mohammed, Rob Ford, and too many other great players to mention that have helped us go Dancing into March for 3 straight seasons. This year’s team has the ability to make another deep run and continue what these other guys built.

[Cataholic]

There are a handful of very good MT kids playing currently in men’s CBB. Rollie Worster is still at it at the top level playing for the Cornhuskers after stops at Utah and Utah State. He was originally a Griz commit. Sprinkle went hard after him after he and Travis Decuire didn’t see eye to eye on him playing high school football at Hellgate.

Fischer Brown is playing down at Western Carolina now as a prep school recruit originally from Lewiston, MT. You’ve got a bunch of kids doing well in the Frontier and the GNAC and of course all of the MT kids who play at the College of Idaho. Oh and Julius Mims is great at Idaho. Both the Griz and Cats probably missed on Mims somewhere because he’s been great.

Bottom line is that like someone else said, it would be tough to compete at the D1 level with mostly in state kids. Not enough horses in a state of just over a million people to make that happen.

Mims appears to be a big miss. I don't know what the factors were that caused that.
I think Fisher Brown will prove to be a miss. I think he'd be perfect in Logie's system. Really disappointed we didn't go after him. I hope he has a great career at WCU.
Fish recruited Caleb Bellach from Manhattan Christian. Caleb was down the depth chart a little bit when Sprinkle came in. He went to MT Tech and had a stellar career. He probably could have help us last season, but he was the man at Tech-so good for him.
Sprinkle brought in the Germer kid from Missoula. He, like Bellach, was a little ways down the depth chart so he transferred out. Last season we had the kid from Lewistown as a walk-on. He transferred to Carroll.
I'd love to see more in-state kids, but I have a feeling with the transfer portal-developing young players after a red shirt is going to be increasingly rare. Players want to play and have the freedom to move anywhere to find that playing time. And lets face it-there aren't any kids like Max Agbonkpolo or BJ Kolly coming out of Montana high schools.

And please don’t get me wrong. I would love to see more Montana kids on the UM and MSU roster, but they are rare. No question Worster, Brown and Mims would have been great additions. But Worster had G5 offers. Brown and Medium ms are head scratchers why we didn’t pursue, but beyond that, they are only 3 definite D1 guys over the past 6 years. The last two Gatorade Players of the year are with/headed to NAIA College of Idaho. I think the big kid out of Billings West last year had the physical tools to play D1, but he is playing football at MSU.

I do think the next three to four years have D1 prospects in Montana. The Luedtke kid is only a junior, but he has already been All State twice.

[TheBigCat]

I have no personal grudge whatsoever, I am just stating facts
of what I see. But my opinion is yes I think we should give more of our home state kids a chance. If I wanted to watch a bunch of out of state kids play I will go to another state.
Look back 30 years ago we used to win with our kids.
Currently the MSU women have in state girls that play and have an impact.
Why can the women do it and not the men ?

Fair enough, you're entitled to your opinion. I don't follow Montana high school basketball closely enough to identify specific players MSU has passed over who are good enough to play D-1. I also don't see the need to come on here and try to downplay the accomplishments of the players who are on the team and have helped to win four Big Sky Championship trophies in the last three seasons. Clearly something is working.

Is it really a win though? not giving local kids scholarships to play and get a free education? Recruiting from other states and countries isn’t really what I call a win regardless of the score.
It is about pride recruiting from your home state. Winning or losing it was at least with local kids.
(a few anyway)
It was us against them.
It fills the stands with Montana natives with a sense of pride and comrade

[aucat]

I was at the game last night and came away very impressed. We have A LOT of depth, similar to the women's team. Great shooters. I don't agree with the poster above who said the team was not scrappy. I was on the 2nd row and I thought they played very hard. Logie has added some very good players. We have good height. I like this team very much going forward. I think we will be a force in the Big Sky. If you don't like this team then you don't like basketball in my honest opinion.

[aucat]

I have no personal grudge whatsoever, I am just stating facts
of what I see. But my opinion is yes I think we should give more of our home state kids a chance. If I wanted to watch a bunch of out of state kids play I will go to another state.
Look back 30 years ago we used to win with our kids.
Currently the MSU women have in state girls that play and have an impact.
Why can the women do it and not the men ?

Fair enough, you're entitled to your opinion. I don't follow Montana high school basketball closely enough to identify specific players MSU has passed over who are good enough to play D-1. I also don't see the need to come on here and try to downplay the accomplishments of the players who are on the team and have helped to win four Big Sky Championship trophies in the last three seasons. Clearly something is working.

Is it really a win though? not giving local kids scholarships to play and get a free education? Recruiting from other states and countries isn’t really what I call a win regardless of the score.
It is about pride recruiting from your home state. Winning or losing it was at least with local kids.
(a few anyway)
It was us against them.
It fills the stands with Montana natives with a sense of pride and comrade

I think recruiting Montana kids for football works well. For basketball you gotta go beyond the state if you want to win

[MSU01]

I have no personal grudge whatsoever, I am just stating facts
of what I see. But my opinion is yes I think we should give more of our home state kids a chance. If I wanted to watch a bunch of out of state kids play I will go to another state.
Look back 30 years ago we used to win with our kids.
Currently the MSU women have in state girls that play and have an impact.
Why can the women do it and not the men ?

Fair enough, you're entitled to your opinion. I don't follow Montana high school basketball closely enough to identify specific players MSU has passed over who are good enough to play D-1. I also don't see the need to come on here and try to downplay the accomplishments of the players who are on the team and have helped to win four Big Sky Championship trophies in the last three seasons. Clearly something is working.

Is it really a win though? not giving local kids scholarships to play and get a free education? Recruiting from other states and countries isn’t really what I call a win regardless of the score.
It is about pride recruiting from your home state. Winning or losing it was at least with local kids.
(a few anyway)
It was us against them.
It fills the stands with Montana natives with a sense of pride and comrade

Personally I've felt just as much pride watching MSU's recent championship teams as I did watching previous teams that had more representation from Montana players. MSU attracts highly talented students from all over the world and I'm not sure why we should expect the athletic programs to not take the same approach to building their rosters. Seems to me as though many of Montana's best athletes choose football over basketball and that's part of why you see so many Montana players making huge impacts on the football field but not so much the basketball court. Recruiting is also a two-way street and the players MSU want might have other ideas about where they want to play.

[Cataholic]

I have no personal grudge whatsoever, I am just stating facts
of what I see. But my opinion is yes I think we should give more of our home state kids a chance. If I wanted to watch a bunch of out of state kids play I will go to another state.
Look back 30 years ago we used to win with our kids.
Currently the MSU women have in state girls that play and have an impact.
Why can the women do it and not the men ?

Fair enough, you're entitled to your opinion. I don't follow Montana high school basketball closely enough to identify specific players MSU has passed over who are good enough to play D-1. I also don't see the need to come on here and try to downplay the accomplishments of the players who are on the team and have helped to win four Big Sky Championship trophies in the last three seasons. Clearly something is working.

Is it really a win though? not giving local kids scholarships to play and get a free education? Recruiting from other states and countries isn’t really what I call a win regardless of the score.
It is about pride recruiting from your home state. Winning or losing it was at least with local kids.
(a few anyway)
It was us against them.
It fills the stands with Montana natives with a sense of pride and comrade

Winning fills the stands. If you have a roster of kids that can’t win, it doesn’t matter where you are from. Nobody will come watch.

The issue you haven’t addressed is who in Montana? Do you want the Cats to fill the roster with NAIA level talent? Should Germer or Bellach played more just because they were from Montana? Unfortunately, that won’t pay the bills.

[tdub]

I have no personal grudge whatsoever, I am just stating facts
of what I see. But my opinion is yes I think we should give more of our home state kids a chance. If I wanted to watch a bunch of out of state kids play I will go to another state.
Look back 30 years ago we used to win with our kids.
Currently the MSU women have in state girls that play and have an impact.
Why can the women do it and not the men ?

Fair enough, you're entitled to your opinion. I don't follow Montana high school basketball closely enough to identify specific players MSU has passed over who are good enough to play D-1. I also don't see the need to come on here and try to downplay the accomplishments of the players who are on the team and have helped to win four Big Sky Championship trophies in the last three seasons. Clearly something is working.

Is it really a win though? not giving local kids scholarships to play and get a free education? Recruiting from other states and countries isn’t really what I call a win regardless of the score.
It is about pride recruiting from your home state. Winning or losing it was at least with local kids.
(a few anyway)
It was us against them.
It fills the stands with Montana natives with a sense of pride and comrade

Win or lose? Unless you haven’t paid much attention to D1 NCAA sports before, when you fall on the “lose” side of the equation other things unravel as well. Negative coaching turnover (as opposed to a desirable spot for up-and-comers). Enough losing and you don’t get the good in-state players anymore either.
College sports in Montana goes so far beyond D1 that there is a ton of opportunity for Montana kids to get the free education and play ball at a level that fits their talent level. It’s not like Montana kids are missing out. And the beautiful thing is, I can watch both!

[Desert_Bobcat]

I have no personal grudge whatsoever, I am just stating facts
of what I see. But my opinion is yes I think we should give more of our home state kids a chance. If I wanted to watch a bunch of out of state kids play I will go to another state.
Look back 30 years ago we used to win with our kids.
Currently the MSU women have in state girls that play and have an impact.
Why can the women do it and not the men ?

Fair enough, you're entitled to your opinion. I don't follow Montana high school basketball closely enough to identify specific players MSU has passed over who are good enough to play D-1. I also don't see the need to come on here and try to downplay the accomplishments of the players who are on the team and have helped to win four Big Sky Championship trophies in the last three seasons. Clearly something is working.

Is it really a win though? not giving local kids scholarships to play and get a free education? Recruiting from other states and countries isn’t really what I call a win regardless of the score.
It is about pride recruiting from your home state. Winning or losing it was at least with local kids.
(a few anyway)
It was us against them.
It fills the stands with Montana natives with a sense of pride and comrade

Winning fills the stands. If you have a roster of kids that can’t win, it doesn’t matter where you are from. Nobody will come watch.

The issue you haven’t addressed is who in Montana? Do you want the Cats to fill the roster with NAIA level talent? Should Germer or Bellach played more just because they were from Montana? Unfortunately, that won’t pay the bills.

This is the take. Winning is what puts butts in seats. And honestly, not even that is enough to fill the Brick these days.

You’re kidding yourself if you think you’d be actively going to Cats (or Griz games for that matter) if they had >50% of their roster comprised of in-state or “regional” (MT,ID,WY,UT) players. You know why? Because that team wouldn’t come close to winning the amount of games MSU have won in the last 4 years. It’s simply a fact whether you hate it or not.
I consider it a huge victory to still have “regional” players from the PNW, AK, WY, UT, and CO on the roster instead of a bunch of a bunch of Florida boys or East coasters (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

The simple fact is that there just isn’t enough talent in Montana to send out multiple quality D1 bball players annually. And if there are, you look at a guy like Rollie Worster who took his talents to a bigger school (Utah St, Utah, and now Nebraska) because he could play at that level. Just because he’s a Montana boy doesn’t mean his allegiance is to the in-state school. He had offers and chose to play at a higher level, can’t say I blame him it’s worked out well for him.

[canyoncat]

That Alaska kid is a Montana kid. Went to college with his dad at Western who is from Missoula.

[BobcatDel]

That Alaska kid is a Montana kid. Went to college with his dad at Western who is from Missoula.

I may be mistaken but I think “lv2hoop” knows the Alaskan kid well….on quite a personal level!!

[MSU01]

One of those nights where one team hits everything they throw up and the other can't buy one. It was 19-2 to start and kinda stayed there the rest of the way. Great balance all around as most everyone hit at least 2 threes.

Saturday's game against Cal State Northridge will probably be a little tougher. They're 5-1 and beat Denver, who beat us, by 29. The play the griz tomorrow night I think.

The Griz beat Northridge 83-75 last night. Comparing scores can always be misleading but this should at least be somewhat of a measuring stick of how MSU stacks up against other good Big Sky teams.