First off, I just gotta say that NAU fans are probably the most classless I have ever encountered. Every cheer was "so and so sucks", "we hate Montana", etc. Two guys in front of me at the end of the game commented, "Did you get a picture of that airball at the end?" and "Hey that was a nice foul by 12 at the end". Really classy guys, I'm proud of you NAU. Oh yeah, and those guys in the courtside seats were terrible. They were constantly yelling just idiotic comments the entire game. I can understand why Mick made that comment.
Points for the game:
1) We did not play with the defensive intensity needed after we took a 16 point lead in the 2nd half. It almost looked like the guys thought that we had the game in the bag and we started missing assignments on D. They had waaaay too many open looks in the 2nd half.
2) The crowd started to get into the game. It was a pretty good crowd as well. It's like the guys didn't realize the lead was getting trimmed. It was 13 and then 11, 10, 8 and finally 5 or 6 and the crowd is going crazy.
3) The refs missed about 3 or 4 calls on the Griz end that should have gotten us to the line. Part of this you have to expect as home court, but we went on a cold streak for about 6 minutes, stuck at 60 points, and the refs were making it extremely difficult for us to get points in the paint. Worst call of the night: Criswell goes to the bucket, NAU defender jumps in the air, Criswell draws contact and they call a charge. A charge while the defender is in the friggin' air!!! Doesn't that automatically mean that there is no possible way for the defender to be set? I mean c'mon, in order to have position, your feet have to be on the ground. Terrible, terrible, terrible.
4) The Griz clawed their way back and really showed a lot of heart at the end of the game. They never once gave up and they damn near put the game into OT. That's something to be proud of right there. It's too bad that we didn't have another timeout at the end, because we couldn't get a good look in those last 9 seconds.
Overall, NAU is a good team, but not great. They are outstanding shooters when open, but they can be outrebounded fairly easily, and their defense is questionable. They did a good job of defending Strait tonight, fronting him and not letting him get touches. We'll have to adjust for that when NAU comes up to Missoula.
The Griz have got to learn how to put teams away when they smell blood. We let teams hang around and it finally got us tonight. They've got to take the opportunities to close the door and end games. Montana should have had this game over with 12 minutes left, but they got complacent and didn't execute when they needed to. A lot of learning left for this team, but when they put together a solid game - Watch out.
