Shades of 'The Zoo'
Last night's game sucked but there were a couple positives, one of which was the improvement of the environment inside Dahlbergh Arena. The fans at the game were some of the best I've seen all year and the Montana Kaimin has an article containing a lot of good quotes about the raucous student section.
From PSU head coach Ken Bone:
From PSU head coach Ken Bone:
“It’s hard to win on the road,” he said. “Let alone win on the road here at the University of Montana.”From Anthony Washington:
“First and foremost, they’re good,” Bone said of the Grizzlies. “Second of all, usually there’s a really great crowd here. If the crowd really gets fired up it’s like the sixth man approach.”
“They’re fun,” he said. “There’s some nut up here that yells and screams and thinks he’s funny. They’re fun and they’re great, that’s what college basketball’s about. I wish we had crowds like this.”
“I like the crowd (in Missoula),” said Vikings senior center Anthony Washington. “No offense to our fans at Portland State, but I wish we had more of a presence.”From Juma Kamara:
“I think for the opponents it can make some of them frustrated,” he added. “Especially the freshmen that have never heard anything like that before, but for the most part you block it out.”
“They’re just regular old fans,” he said. For Kamara it was the first time in his career that he had won in Missoula.From Griz head coach Wayne Tinkle:
“It’s a nice environment for basketball,” Kamara said. “Especially in this conference, to me it’s like the best gym in the conference – nice crowd, nice everything.”
“Well it’s great,” he said. “Once we hit some shots and we started showing some hustle, they rewarded us by cheering and making some noise. That’s awesome, but we can’t wait for them to get us going. We need to get ourselves going.”This team really thrives when Dahlberg is loud. The more students that come and make noise, the better this team will do.
“Hopefully we can come out Saturday night and we’ll have even a bigger crowd.”
