Game 1: Cal State - Fullerton

Excited that the start of the season has finally arrived.

Tip-off:: Tuesday, 6pm @ home. TV: WCCNetwork

Line: haven’t seen a line yet, Torvik has the Broncos -11

As discussed in other threads, sounds like our startup lineup is: Pipes, J. Williams, Justice, Vrankic and Braun with maybe an outside chance Bediako gets the starting nod for the 1st game. Lots of seasoned experience in that lineup, two ‘Super Seniors’, two 4th year players (Justice and Braun) plus 3rd year Jalen the most talented of the bunch. Also add experienced returners as some the likely rotation guys and 1st off the bench (Bediako, Giordan, Tomley). This team should hit the ground running as much as can be expected in the 1st full game of a season. We may not be at our peak in the 1st several games, but other teams won’t be either.
It will be interesting to see if any of the frosh contribute right away and get notable minutes…my bet would be on Stewart, with Holt my darkhorse.

Fullerton…tough to get a read on them, will be their 1st game and they have some transfers in the mix. Based on limited info from their exhibition game their starting lineup may look like:

  • Latrell Whitesell - 6-3 2nd year guard (9 pts/game in 2020/21)
  • Tory San Antonio - 6-3 guard (8pts, 4rebs
  • Trey Maddox Jr. - 6-6 wing (best returning player, 16pts/game, 41% 3pt shooter w/ high volume).
  • EJ Anosike - 6-7, 235lb forward (grad transfer - 14pts, 8rebs two season ago for Sacred Heart, didn’t play much at Tennessee last year).
  • Vincent Lee - 6-8, 230lb forward (former Nevada transfer, 10pts, 6rebs for Fullerton last season)

Prediction: Broncos 77-67. Titans have some wide bodies, Broncos need to block out and control the glass defensively.

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Good early test of the rebounding as you said.

Anosike is probably closer to 250 than 235, and two years ago at SHU he averaged 16 and 12, 6th in the nation in rebounds per game.

-11 seems like a lot. CSF has an experienced team back as well. A lot of teams are going to have a lot of experience this year which should mean a lot of closer games nationwide.

92’s game threads are back–my heart sings

With 92, Noob, and betterer all recently forming an alliance of sober minds regarding the reports back from the secret scrimmages, it seems like a good moment for me to temporarily slide back into my erstwhile role as the board’s reality-challenged Pollyanna. And if there’s ever a time for unrealistic expectations, it’s game one, right?

The Broncos team that (secretly) competed hard against the Ducks shows up. 78-60 Broncos. PJ Pipes and Vrankic combine for 40. Tomley hits three treys.

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Has there been any pre-season promotion of the program? Interview with coaches or players? Was there a WCC Media Day? Are we even trying to market the program? All I see is the occasional picture on twitter or Instagram. My local NAIA school does much more. It just seems odd. We spend millions on shiny new facilities but seem to struggle with some of the organic marketing efforts. I doubt most casual SCU fans know the season even starts tomorrow…and the newcomers will just be names on a jersey to these fans as I have not seen anything trying to tell us a little about them. My apologies if this stuff is out there and I missed it.

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Agree Bob. I’ve been disappointed with the lack of pre-season, substantive content put out. Not sure if the SID is short staffed or what. I do know other WCC programs have put out more preseason content…LMU and I believe USF had multiple ‘episode’ video series with interviews with players and/or coaches, etc.
We’ve seen a lot of Twitter and Instagram posts of practice pics but not much info or substance. On the rare occasion in past seasons we’ve seen some preseason bios and brief interviews with players but zilch this year.

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For some reason SCU hasn’t emphasized promoting the program. Even the attempts from the past (DD and KK days) seemed half-hearted and rather last minute. MBB is the one sport at SCU where the possibility of making a profit actually exists, but it seems like the school either doesn’t realize that or doesn’t care.

The sad thing is if they paid a few eager undergrads to do the job it would likely be money well spent.

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Is there a sports marketing major or even a class? I know even D3 schools that have leveraged that kind of thing to improve their program marketing with the students organizing and executing promotions. Might be harder to do in these times, but just an idea.

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To answer my own question, I see on the Twittah that there is a promotion for this week for men’s and women’s basketball. I have no idea if the BBQ in question is any good and the t-shirts don’t exactly look great, but it’s something.

Back to the game and update:
Line on ESPN is Broncos -8, moved from -8.5 yesterday…apparently there lots of betting Titans fans out there.
O/U: 155. ESPN’s Matchup Predictor has 77% probability of Bronco win.

Win the games you’re supposed to win…

Some books have it at 7.5 now. This seems a lot closer to right to me. CSF looks quite a bit better than 2 years ago when SCU won by 15.

They can really shoot the 3, but were poor defensively and on the boards last year. Anosike should help the latter quite a bit.

75% win prob means 1 out of 4 times in a game like this, you lose. Seems about right. 82-75 is in reality a pretty small margin – rim out a 3, miss a front end of 1 and 1, get a bucket wiped out on a bad block/charge call, and there’s your 7 points gone. Or could be a 1 point game that becomes 7 on free throws late.

I expect a very competitive game. Team should learn quite a bit from it. Taylor is a very solid coach.

Looking forward to this coming after Belmont vs. Ohio, which should be a really good mid-major basketball game between two teams that really know what they’re doing.

It is behind a paywall but the SF Chronicle posted an article yesterday with some quotes from Sendek. Pipes, J. Williams, Justice, Vrankic, and Braun will be the starters. Experienced Santa Clara men, led by Josip Vrankic, ready for season

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Broncos 83 Elephants 71

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just about to tip off and it looks like there are still a few good seats in the house… if they say the attendance is over 300 they must be counting by 5’s

Stream reliability is absolutely pathetic. Fortunate to be able to get 5 interrupted minutes during which SCU went on the run to seemingly put the game away. Very stop-start, refresh, repeat.

Now seeing the refs (who have also been horrible) walking around during a time out on repeat. Color balance on the screen changed several times…just a total joke, really. I hope the WCC isn’t paying very much for this, bc they sure aren’t getting much.

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Yes, not only were the camera angles poor, but the feed was pathetic.

Traveling, had to watch on my phone w/ so-so WiFi, thought that was to blame for spotty video, apparently not.

Got beat on the glass, thank god we won the turnover battle +8. Obviously one of Vrankic’s good games, Jalen took over in the 2nd half and looked great. I’ll take the opening game win.

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I think they had some legit feed issues that led to the under the basket camera angle at random times.

As far as the game, boy I wish I hadn’t been so right about the rebounding. It may not be great and Anosike and Lee might be good rebounders but it’s got to get better. Not going to be very often you can go -10 on the glass and win. Braun has to get more than 3 rebounds in 30+ minutes. He should be able to get more than that by accident.

Starting 5 first-shot defense is pretty good. Probably why they’re the starting 5. Bench guys…well, they need to improve defensively if they want to play more. Good active hands and feet led to a lot of turnovers, but against the bench guards, their guys were just raising up and shooting.

The second chances led to high percentage second shots that boosted their shooting numbers. Rebounding just has to get better.

Very similar experience for me with regards to streaming. Terrible. You would never guess the WCC HQ is in the heart of Silicon Valley.

As for the game…thank goodness Vrankic came back this year. Jalen was spectacular in the second half and Pipes really looked comfortable in the final ten minutes. There were some glimpses of a nice two man game with Vrankic/Braun. Justice was solid as usual. He has really transformed his body…appeared very fit.

Interior Defense/Defensive Rebounding are going to be a big problem. Hopefully Coach Sendek can figure something out. Jalen Williams probably has the best combination of length/size/strength to defend the interior but not sure we can risk getting him in foul trouble.

The student section looked relatively full. At some point do we move them back to center court ?

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The D has lots of issues… many of which stem from Sendek having Vrankic and Braun guard their men tight off the ball 20 feet from the rim. They’re not quick enough to be out there and that directly led to lots of easy baskets and second chances.

Josip was the big scorer tonight, but I think he’ll find scoring in similar fashion (3 feet from the rim with finesse scoop shots) rather difficult against better teams. Offense looks good when J Williams, Pipes, Stewart (who saw limited action) get out and attack the rim.

A lot of different personnel, yet Herb plays the exact same way as he has in first 5 seasons at SCU.