Odds and Ends

[mslacat]

I know you all are thinking football right now but I thought I would post a few odds and ends about Montana State Men's basketball. None of these I think are worthy of a stand alone post but together they make a little interesting bite of basketball news.

It seems that one of the Montana State Basketball prime target for the early signing period is 6-6 Guard/forward Sam Neumann from Cretin-Derham Hall High School in St Paul, MN. He holds at least 5 D-1 offers and 4-5 other schools showing a strong interest. Coach Fish will be doing an in house visit with his family on September 10th and Neumann will taking an official visit to Bozeman on September 25-26. Neumann has played mainly shooting guard through-out his high school and AAU career but he has under gone a little growth spurt the last 18 months to his current height of 6'-6" (and he could still be growing). I think he primarily a Shooting guard prospect but definitely could swing to small forward. He is a dead eye shooter having hit 9 three pointers in a single game. Sam scored a total 39 points that night but his high game last year was 45 pts. He averaged 19.6 points a game last year. Cretin-Derham Hall High School has traditionally been a power basketball school in the state of Minnesota. Neuman is the first confirmed official visitor for the fall recruiting season generally you like to get your #1 targets in first so you know if you need to move down to the #2 or #3 targets. I have been told Fish's strength as a recruiter ids that he is a great closer of the deal. Let's see what happens.

Billings West senior to be 6-7 PF Jared Samuelson committed to the Griz this Sunday. While had had 3 D-1 and quite a few D-2 at this stage in his recruiting (6 to 7 other D-1 schools were showing interest) Montana State since Fish took over decided not to pursue him in any fashion. I think this is Fish's first mistake as MSU Basketball Coach, even if you consider Samuelson a lock for the Griz. For those who don't know Jared's father Shawn stared for the Griz in the late 80's and are cut from the same mold. Huse and his former assistant Shawn Dirden were very actively recruiting Jared before Huse resigned. During the hiring process for Fish and then again when Fish was hiring his staff, I exchanged messages with the elder Samuelson as he was trying to figure out who the new coaching staff would be. He was very interested in knowing if Bobby Howard would be on the staff.

Speaking of Bobby Howard for those who missed it he was hired by former Bobcat head coach Mick Durham to be an assistant at Alaska Fairbanks. He has been working as an assistant at Western Montana.

During the summer the members of the basketball team who were on campus were put through a series of tests and incoming freshman guard Zach Green tested out as the teams most Athletic player. This is pretty good news for Zach as you may remember missed the majority of his senior high school season with a leg injury. Sounds like he is back on track.

In the conspiracy news portion of this thread. Yesterday Montana State men's basketball tweeted about there great class of 4 (four) new additions to the men's team this year. When you add up MSU's incoming freshman class (including Bigby-Williams) it adds up to 5 (five). Typo? Better get 60 Minutes on this one!

[LTown Cat]

Shawn Samuelson played for the Griz in the early to mid 90's and yes Jared was a lock for UM after they offered. The only thing that would have changed that would have been a PAC-12 or at least bigger than BSC offer for him to consider. I don't fault Fish at all for not wasting resources on Jared. Funny thing is that Shawn wanted to play in Bozeman and Durham wouldn't consider him. I believe he went on to have a multiple all-BSC career at UM, driving past Bozeman several times per year for 4-5 years.

I'll be extremely interested in seeing if we can keep Bigby-Williams. Your post just adds to that mystery.

[CatBlitz]

Well he's still on the roster if that's anything.