Griz lose. At home. To Portland!
Portland was 2-6 heading into Friday night's game against the Griz. They're now 3-6. The Griz were up two with 35 seconds left—after Cameron Rundles made one of two free throws—but Nik Raivio hit a three to give the Pilots the lead and eventually the win.
It was a bad night. Throughout the game, I never really felt too positive about what was going to happen. On the last possession—one in which Cam fed a driving Hasquet—I had a feeling the shot wasn't going to fall. It was just that type of night. The Griz shot less than 25% in the first half and 35% for the game.
Going off the Missoulian article, it sounds as though players aren't buying into the coaches' gameplan.
“We get great looks out of our offense when we run it all the way through,” Strait said. “We're kind of struggling right now with that.”
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“We give him that shot all day long,” Montana coach Wayne Tinkle said of Raivio, who scored 13 of his game-high 17 points after the break. “I am a little disappointed that we left him. We had a timeout where we said stay with their shooters, make them dribble into our big players - we were ready to take charges - and we left him alone for a split second and that was enough for him to get the shot off and make it.”Tinkle was upset with his team's inability to execute the game plan.
“We took a lot of mediocre shots, to say the least,” Tinkle said. “For whatever reason, we weren't focused on our game plan. We came out and wanted to go 94 feet of pressure. We didn't do it the first four times we scored. Our game plan was to pound it at them, pound it at them, posts take it and finish strong.
“Maybe what happened when we threw it in to them early and we were soft going to the basket, maybe the players said we shouldn't throw it in there anymore. I thought we came out and played very soft on both ends.”
The Griz cannot lose these type of games. In the most recent simulated RPI listings, Portland was over 200. And we lost to them at home! It can't happen. Not when we have a potentially season-defining road trip on tap. I don't know if it's leadership, execution, coaching or the lineups, but it has to change.
Here's my proposal for the lineups, without really factoring in Cam's possible injury: I believe we have to either go big or go small, no more 'tweener lineups that force us to play the other team's game. We can go big with Qvale-Strait-Jordo-Martin-Cam and squash teams while potentially taking our lumps on the defensive end. One thing is for sure, teams will have to live or die by the outside shot because it'll be tough driving on those bigs. If we go small we toss in the slashers and go with a lineup like Strait-Jordo-Cam-Graves-Martin/Elgin-Taylor. Graves, who is potentially the most athletic player on the team needs to get minutes against smaller quick teams. He also needs minutes when we're trying to press. With Cam not starting and Tinks trying to press, it would've made sense to start Graves.
However, I am not laying this on Coach Tinkle. This loss was on the players. A coach can't do anything to make players shoot that poorly. With that, something does need to be done. A leader needs to step up and discipline needs to be laid down because if the Griz go on this road trip with the mentality they've had in the past two games, they'll come back to Missoula as a 5-7 team.
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