Teams are allowed to have up to two total ‘secret’ scrimmages (no fans or media) or exhibition games.
We have two scrimmages schedule @ Oregon St. (this Saturday, 10/23) and @ Oregon (10/30). Hopefully a little news leaks out from these scrimmages.
Here’s the list of WCC scrimmages: WCC BYU – 10/16 at Cal Gonzaga – None Loyola Marymount – 10/30 vs. Washington State; 11/5 vs. UC San Diego Pacific – 10/23 vs. Cal State Northridge; 10/30 vs. Cal Poly Pepperdine – 10/23 at UC Riverside Portland – 10/23 vs. Seattle Saint Mary’s – 10/23 vs. Arizona in Phoenix; 10/30 at Stanford San Diego – 10/23 vs. UC Irvine; 10/29 at Cal Baptist San Francisco – 10/24 vs. Cal Baptist; 10/30 vs. Sacramento State Santa Clara – 10/23 at Oregon State; 10/30 at Oregon
Glad they’re playing quality teams. Gives you more accurate feedback of your strengths/weaknesses and how you stack up against decent teams. Playing crappy teams just masks weaknesses and gives you a false sense of security.
Oregon St. is perfect, comparable to the upper middle of WCC (SMC, USF, LMU). OSU is likely a #60-100 type team (Torvik has them at #99 and predicting a .500 season for them). SMC, USF and LMU all in the 40 to 100 range.
Again, hoping some reports leak out from these scrimmages.
I agree. Good barometers. Thank goodness the Broncos forwent the exhibition games this year. I am excited for the debut against Fullerton and think that with scrimmages against two Pac teams, the team will be prepared for games that count.
This is third hand information, but rumor is we beat Oregon State by double digits in the secret scrimmage. I have no other specific details beyond that, but encouraging news on the win. The Oregon scrimmage is today, and I’m hoping for some more detailed leaks coming out soon.
I heard we lost to Oregon by only 4. Looks like we headed in the right direction. Also, we went deep on the bench and that’s probably why we didn’t beat them but that’s good to get all guys some minutes against a team like that. Good for recruiting overtime especially in a secrete scrimmage.
Probably both teams went deep into their bench. That’s the point of these and why they’re closed to the media. So that coaches can coach and evaluate without worrying about the score.
Without knowing who played and how they played, even the score doesn’t really mean very much. What does is players getting up to speed, learning their roles, getting used to playing with each other, playing for the coaching staff, being pushed by the opponent which I’m sure SCU was in both scrimmages against two good teams.
I think this is right. But that said, I remember a few seasons ago the word from the secret scrimmage was that the Broncos lost by double digits to Air Force, so I’m content to read some hope into this that between the new recruits, the practice facility, and some more day-to-day stability, considerable improvement has been realized.
It does look from the schedule that stability and routine were valued in addition to being tested. 5 non-home games, but 2 are at Cal and SJSU and two are one trip with a hotel stay. Even if they don’t have great home crowds (and hopefully they do, but I’m not holding my breath), playing at home is beneficial bc you get home early, sleep in your own bed, practice time the next day isn’t disrupted…etc. But it is good to do some travel bc you’re going to have to in the conference season.
Speaking of which, at LMU/at Zags is a beast of a week in Feb. Seems like SCU always gets a really tough A/A weekend.
Nice to hear some positive reports. But also agree that you can’t draw any conclusions, positive or negative, form these scrimmages. I’d be more interested in hearing how Pipes and Braun looked and how they’re integrating w/ the rest of the likely rotation guys as well as how the frosh are looking.
On U of O’s side, their top 3 scorers from last season all graduated or moved on, they only return two guys who played significant roles and their most experienced returning big man is recouping from an injury and didn’t play in the scrimmage. Plus they have 8 new players. No question there’s some talent on their squad and they’ll probably end up being a tourney team but I imagine they’re still trying to figure things out as team.
To your point, it still didn’t change the fact that they are ranked as one of the top 15 in the Pre-season poll. I know it’s hard to gauge when you didn’t see but know matter how it was done, you can feel good about only losing by a little to a team that the experts have in the top 15 in the nation. All the preseason experts know who they lost and who they have coming back. I like the positive I see from this…
I think probably the most positive thing is the size that Oregon has and that apparently SCU was able to cope with that. Obviously we don’t know anything more that, could be that we didn’t and we just hit 20 3’s or something. Probably not, but just saying.
What we do know is they have a lot of size, and we did well against it.
Panther- the positive news is certainly preferred over: ‘we looked terrible and lost by 50’. I’m just not going to get overly excited until I see us perform and deliver consistently in some real games against decent teams like Stanford, Nevada, TCU, Fresno St. etc.
In a semi-related note for comparison…Pepperdine lost to DII Point Loma 77-50 in an exhibition game on Saturday. Glad that’s not us. To be fair, Point Loma is probably a Top 20 DII team and program and likely as good or better than most sub-300 DI teams. Plus I noticed that 3 of Pepp’s experienced returners did not play (PG Daryl Polk, and posts Obioha and Jan Zidek)…all starters or rotation guys…so Pepp was left mostly with transfers and freshmen suiting up for Pepp for the 1st time. Is Point Loma truly better than Pepperdine?..probably not, but such is the nature of these early season scrimmages, exhibitions, etc.