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Bill Spletz Articles on LG and Some Statistics

mthoopsfan

Well-known member
The LG are off to a nice start, at 9-2 and with 2 Big Sky wins.

The LG recently clobbered Seattle U (5-6) and Utah St (5-5), and lost by 13 to a pretty good Utah Valley St team (5-6 but 4-1 over Big Sky teams). The LG played Gonzaga (9-3 ) to within 7 earlier in the season. The LG competition does not necessarily have strong records so far, so the quality of some of the competition may be less than medium. ND is 6-6. NDSU is 5-6. Houston Baptist is 4-6. Nichols St is 2-9. Sac St is 4-7 (0-2 in conference). NC is 4-6.

There is good information in the Spletz articles.

The LG are averaging 71.6 points per game, shooting 45%, shooting 34.6 % from 3 and 70% from the line. 45.3 rebounds per game. Last season, those LG stats were 65.7, 39%, 28%, 78%, and 40. So, all of those basic stats are up considerably this season so far., except for FT line shooting. Defense has picked up too: from 57.4 points per game this year compared to 66.3 per game last year.

The LG starters are all recruits from the Schweyan/Petrino era, now that new recruit Tsineke appears to have been beaten out by frosh Huard. Griz recruit Fatkin is starting, playing well, and was allowed to come back to the team by the new coach. So much for the view by some that the LG didn’t have enough talent to compete in the Big Sky, and needed a new coach to recruit better talent.

Tsineke has 20 minutes per game, is shooting 41% and 20% from 3 (5-25), and 60% from the line, averaging 5.9 points per game. Has 12 assists, 27 TO, and 13 steals (best on team). By comparison, Stiles has 63 assists and 24 TO, and Fatkin 18 to 19. Huard is shooting 54%, 53% from 3, and 75% from the line (with few attempts), and averaging 14 minutes per game.

Gfeller is shooting 45.5% from 3, Fatkin 30%, Stilles 38.5%, and Huard 54%. All of them plus Anderson and Bartsch are having good seasons. Tsineke has played pretty well too.

The two frosh recruits of the new coach have played a total of 35 minutes, scored a total of 4 points, and have shot a combined 1-8 from the field.

Idaho St on the road today will be a good test, but Idaho St has had some issues this year and is only 5-6. Gonzaga and Utah Valley St crushed Idaho St. More on Ida St. from Spletz article.

"The Bengals are still trying to figure things out after starting the season minus standout junior guard Diaba Konate. The preseason all-Big Sky pick returned for last week's home win over Utah Valley, but Idaho State has looked vulnerable in stumbling to a 5-6 record and losing at league foe Northern Arizona in early December.

"We've battled some weird stuff," said Bengals coach Seton Sobolewski, whose squad was picked to win the league in the preseason media and coaches polls. "We finally just got Diaba back for the first full game. She didn't start and she's still not at 100 percent. She's working through the mental part of her knee injury, trying to trust her knee again.

"When we were in Flagstaff and Portland we were without three starters. We've had to play these really tough games early on where we figured we might be more competitive because you have Diaba, this returning group that's pretty good. Then you have these injuries and her being out. We don't feel like we've hit our stride yet."

https://missoulian.com/sports/college/big-sky-conference/university-of-montana/montana-lady-griz-look-to-seize-opportunity-against-defending-big-sky-conference-champs/article_cc2e9d88-edf1-5ec1-851e-c7eece404341.html

https://missoulian.com/sports/college/big-sky-conference/university-of-montana/bill-speltz-confident-cohesive-montana-lady-griz-hit-stride-heading-into-new-year-but-tough/article_394f27aa-e4d9-5f08-b921-20611c1c6622.html

Go LG!
 
Seems like it has been a long time since the LGriz have played. The Bengals' coach seems well spoken and polite, as does Holsinger -- a lot of mutual respect. It will be a hard-fought game: one team coming off of multiple injuries and a conference championship, and the other an up-and-coming team testing it wings and looking to improve with each game. Looking forward to it! I might be able to catch the last quarter but will miss most of it because of prior arrangements.
 
We are bias, but you should check out our deep dive into the Lady Griz early season success. It was posted 12/13 as was our feature on Gfeller on 12/14. While Speltz does a solid job of providing you information on the Lady Griz, we are a platform that provides league wide player, team, league content and analysis.

You can get the full analysis of the Lady Griz deep dive on our website www.bigskybreakdown.com

Here is our film breakdown of the 4 most important pieces to the Lady Griz so far this year.

https://youtu.be/kWXEeG_liqA
 
BigSkyBreakdown said:
We are bias, but you should check out our deep dive into the Lady Griz early season success. It was posted 12/13 as was our feature on Gfeller on 12/14. While Speltz does a solid job of providing you information on the Lady Griz, we are a platform that provides league wide player, team, league content and analysis.

You can get the full analysis of the Lady Griz deep dive on our website www.bigskybreakdown.com

Here is our film breakdown of the 4 most important pieces to the Lady Griz so far this year.

https://youtu.be/kWXEeG_liqA

I just looked at your LG Deep Dive. Very good. Your first two paragraphs were interesting. Three points similar to the OP. Good returning talent and a couple strong recruits. Not much contribution yet by new coach’s recruits. Low SOS for LG.

"Brian Holsinger, one of five new head coaches in the Big Sky Conference is having immediate success. There are lots of reasons new coaches have success, but we feel being the beneficiary of a roster full of returning talent is the primary reason for the early success of the Lady Griz. This is no dig towards coach Holsinger, it is only pointing out the obvious. The Lady Griz return 2 All-League players in Abby Anderson and Carmen Gfeller, the stat-stuffing guard Sophia Stiles as well as the return of Sammy Fatkin who last played for the Lady Griz in 2019-20 season. Having four veteran players return deserved more respect in our opinion from the media and fellow coaches in the Big Sky.”

"Besides the returning four players providing immediate success for the Lady Griz, three other areas stand out to us. The bench play of Dani Bartsch, Hailey Huard, and Nyah Morris Nelson have provided depth, length, and athleticism the Lady Griz have not had in the past. Defensively the Lady Griz allow 53.9 ppg (a league-best) while only committing 12.1 FPG. Lastly, we will look into the strength of schedule (Big Sky Conference 29nd out of 32 teams in SOS this season) where the Lady Griz stands at 313 out of 351 Division 1 teams in the country.”

https://www.bigskybreakdown.com/bsbreakdown-league-analysis
 
Appreciate the words. We strive to continue putting out content that provides BSCWBB fans more insight regarding players, teams and the league.

Will be interesting how league shapes up. ISU with the return of Konate should continue to get better, NAU and SUU are teams that could also make a push for a league title. It appears that Idaho and MSU can't quite figure out a scheme and style of play that provides W's. If the Lady Griz stay healthy and continue to play well they too could be looking at cutting down the nets in Boise. We believe at the moment the top 4 teams are UM, NAU, SUU & ISU.

Of course all of this depends on COVID. NAU beating ID with only 7 players and missing a number of their key pieces shows just how deep they are. Which makes us think...Player development for BSCWBB programs is gonna be huge. Which teams develop players from the starting 5 to the bottom of the roster, because it is gonna get very interesting if COVID does not shut things down completely and we continue to see teams play with depleted rosters.


If you liked our article on the Lady Griz you may like some of our other work. You can always follow us on Twitter and Instagram @bigskybreakdown or at our YouTube page Big Sky Breakdown. We dropped our profile of the EWU games that were supposed to happen this weekend on Tue only to have games canceled. We also dropped our player profile on Jaydia Martin the sensational frosh for EWU last night.

Regards
BSB
 
LG lost to Weber, 66-56. Stiles played.

"We're just not a good team right now. That's the bottom line," said Montana coach Brian Holsinger, whose team suffered a pair of league road losses this week.

"I don't know what happened to us over the break. Whatever happened over Christmas break, we have to figure it out. And us coaches, it's our job to figure it out. But we're not very good. As good as we were early, I'm not sure we win any games the way we're playing."

"We've had some adversity. We went on our first (conference) road trip and just didn't play well either game," Holsinger said.

"We're not executing on offense and I don't know exactly what it is right now," Holsinger said. "We're seeing the same kinds of things we saw against Gonzaga, against NDSU, but we're not executing the way we should.""We've had some adversity. We went on our first (conference) road trip and just didn't play well either game," Holsinger said.

"But I was really proud of the kids' effort there at the end. They played the right way, played with confidence. They played tough with a sense of urgency we didn't have most of the day. I'm the coach and we have a good staff and we'll go back to the drawing board and figure it out. We'll get 'em turned around."

The Lady Griz shot 32.1 percent from the floor (18 for 56) and went 3 for 14 from 3-point range. Starting guards Fatkin, Sophia Stiles and Haley Huard combined to shoot 7 for 29."

https://missoulian.com/sports/college/big-sky-conference/university-of-montana/montana-lady-griz-suffer-rare-loss-to-weber-state-wildcats/article_b08f9203-d15f-515d-b728-a35e033a2cdf.html#tracking-source=home-top-story
 
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