Overall, we have it really easy... The better teams are in St. Mary's side of the bracket (Harvard, St. Joes and Washington State) while we start with CSUFullerton and, providing we win, we will play the winner of San Diego State and Sacramento State.
For our sake, it will be best to win and play St. Mary's for the title. They are currently #21 and have a better team than when they beat us two years ago at their band box in the NIT. In that game, Yante had arguably his worst game where he was 6-22 shooting for 12 points. However, this year the Gaels have Jr C Jock Landale who is 6'11" and is a NBA prospect. They also have a very good guard in Emmit Naar who is averaging 9.5 apg this year and 6'6" wing Calvin Hermanson who is averaging 19 ppg. As always, they are very well coached by Randy Bennett who coached circles around Fox in the first matchup when his team had nowhere near the size and length we had.
To get there we must do better than a typical CMF performance in these holiday tournaments. In Fox's second year we got smoked in Orlando and in 2013 went 0-3 in Charleston. We did not play 2 years ago in a holiday tournament.
CSUFullerton lost by 42 to current #10 USC, and by 19 to St. Marys. They did beat some school I never heard of and are currently 1-2. They start 3 guards but there is no size nor any apparent great skill players as only 2 guys average 13ppg and everyone else is under 10. We cannot play down to their level.
It looks like San Diego St is the better of the other matchup, and they returned 3 starters from a 19-win season. Again, we should be much better than either of these two teams.
Other intangibles are playing on the road at CS Fullerton and in Anaheim at the Honda Center. Also starting at 10:30pm ET on Turkey Day... Hope we aren't asleep!
Go Dawgs!
For our sake, it will be best to win and play St. Mary's for the title. They are currently #21 and have a better team than when they beat us two years ago at their band box in the NIT. In that game, Yante had arguably his worst game where he was 6-22 shooting for 12 points. However, this year the Gaels have Jr C Jock Landale who is 6'11" and is a NBA prospect. They also have a very good guard in Emmit Naar who is averaging 9.5 apg this year and 6'6" wing Calvin Hermanson who is averaging 19 ppg. As always, they are very well coached by Randy Bennett who coached circles around Fox in the first matchup when his team had nowhere near the size and length we had.
To get there we must do better than a typical CMF performance in these holiday tournaments. In Fox's second year we got smoked in Orlando and in 2013 went 0-3 in Charleston. We did not play 2 years ago in a holiday tournament.
CSUFullerton lost by 42 to current #10 USC, and by 19 to St. Marys. They did beat some school I never heard of and are currently 1-2. They start 3 guards but there is no size nor any apparent great skill players as only 2 guys average 13ppg and everyone else is under 10. We cannot play down to their level.
It looks like San Diego St is the better of the other matchup, and they returned 3 starters from a 19-win season. Again, we should be much better than either of these two teams.
Other intangibles are playing on the road at CS Fullerton and in Anaheim at the Honda Center. Also starting at 10:30pm ET on Turkey Day... Hope we aren't asleep!
Go Dawgs!
