Philly Gym Rat (The Perry “QM” McMullin Story)

[PointGuard]

1. Georgia Tech (24-0)
2. Florida (23-1)
3. Illinois (22-2)
4. Kentucky (18-3)
5. Duke (19-5)
6. Michigan State (18-3)
7. Syracuse (17-3)
8. Indiana (17-5)
9. Kansas (18-2)
10. Mississippi State (20-3)

[CoachC]

When you have a prestige of "2", just the team finding the gym should increase our prestige.

Just HAVING a gym should double it!

[Wayne23]

Aw, pickin' on the little guy.

[PointGuard]

LOL...we have a gym...but it's not a gymnasium...it's too small to get all those letters on the outside of it.

[PointGuard]

Game #21; Jan. 28, 2012; CSU Bakersfield Roadrunners (9-11, 5-2) at North Dakota Fighting Sioux (10-10, 2-5)

We beat North Dakota 94-81 in OT at home earlier this year. North Dakota has won 7 of 8 games at home this year, though.

North Dakota took it to us in the first half, hitting 48% of their shots while holding us to 35% shooting, out-rebounding us 22-13, holding a 9-4 turnover advantage, and being called for just 4 fouls while we were being assessed 12. That resulted in our 49-26 deficit at the half. Andrew Powers hit for 12 first half points.

We narrowed the gap a bit but never were really threatened in the 2nd half.

Final Score: North Dakota-79, CSU Bakersfield-62. CSU Bakersfield season record: 9-12; Great West record: 5-3 (2nd place tie).

Scoring leaders: )Powers-18, Bivins-9, Chase-9.

Rebound leaders: Chase-10, Jones-5.

Assist leaders: Holmes-3, Hill-3.

Player of the Game: North Dakota’s SG Jesse Kennard-13 pts, 5 reb, 3 assists, 1 steal.

Coach’s Pat on the Back Award: PG Andrew Powers-18 pts, 3 reb, 1 steal.

Other notes: Both teams hit 41% of their FG attempts. The big difference in the game was that North Dakota hit 21 of 26 free throws whereas we hit 8 of 9. We also turned the ball over 16 times while North Dakota had just 8 turn overs. We held Jesse Kennard to 13 points (8 under his season average), but he was joined by 4 other Fighting Sioux players scoring in double figures.

[PointGuard]

We got word that Jerell Brown, our only recruit, got an 1110 on his SAT. Great news! I can’t wait to get this kid playing for us.

[PointGuard]

Game #22; Feb. 1, 2012; New Jersey Tech Highlanders (15-6, 6-2) at CSU Bakersfield Roadrunners (9-12, 5-3)

New Jersey Tech has turned out to be the class act of the Great West Conference thus far. They’re coming into this game with a 5-game win streak. They beat us by 20 when we played them on their court earlier. We’d like nothing more than to turn the tables on them.

We fell behind 20-9 in the first 7 minutes of play as New Jersey Tech came out firing and the refs charged us with 7 fouls while not calling a single foul against the Highlanders. We hit 50% of our shots, but New Jersey Tech destroyed us by hitting 53% of theirs and pulling down 23 rebounds to our 13. The refs helped them out by calling 12 fouls against us while whistling the Highlanders for just 4 fouls. New Jersey Tech took a 51-40 lead to the locker room. Our leading scorer was Justin Williams with 8 points.

We made a run early in the 2nd half to cut the lead to 53-50 in the first 4 minutes of the half. We then got sloppy and repeatedly turned the ball over for the next 4 minutes, but the Highlanders were doing the same so we trailed by just 4 at 58-54 with 11:21 to go. We took our first lead at 59-58 with 10-1/2 minutes to play. Greg Bivins and Kevin Hill then began hitting, but the Highlanders didn’t fold.

We led 79-76 with a minute to play. We brought down the ball and Bivins was called for travelling. New Jersey Tech then hit a 3 to tie the game with 50 second to play. We called a time out and set up a pick and roll that Greg Bivins and Andrew Powers executed perfectly with Bivins driving and pulling up to sink a shot putting us ahead 81-79 with 37 seconds on the clock. Bivins picked up a foul and the Highlanders tied the score by hitting both shots. I put in an all guard lineup to try to lessen the chance of turning the ball over so we could attempt the last shot of the game, but Kevin Hill ended up having his pass stolen with 13 seconds on the clock (so much for my coaching strategies). The Highlanders then played for the last shot and John Sullivan took it while being double teamed with 2 seconds remaining and sunk a three. A very disappointing loss.

Final Score: New Jersey Tech-84, CSU Bakersfield-81. CSU Bakersfield season record: 9-13; Great West record: 5-4 (3rd place tie).

Scoring leaders: Bivins-16, Hill-15, Williams-12, Powers-10, Chase-10.

Rebound leaders: Johnson-7, Settles-5.

Assist leaders: Holmes-5, Williams-4, Bivins-3.

Player of the Game: New Jersey Tech’s PG Simon Przybilla-17 pts, 3 reb, 2 assists.

Coach’s Pat on the Back Award: SF Justin Williams-12 pts, 2 reb, 4 assists, 1 steal.

Other notes: We hit 52% of our shots compared to the Highlanders 46%. We were out-rebounded 37-30. But again we were victimized by the refs, having 19 fouls called against us while the Highlanders only had 8 called against them. They didn’t shoot that well from the foul line but they had 11 more attempts and hit 4 more than we did…enough to win the game.

C Mike Settles strained his knee. It’s expected it will take about 11 days for him to recover fully.

[PointGuard]

Game #23; Feb. 4, 2012; CSU Bakersfield Roadrunners (9-13, 5-4) at Seattle Redhawks (11-11, 6-3)

We beat Seattle 71-64 earlier this season but it was a home game for us. They are sitting alone in 2nd place in the Conference.

6 fouls called against us (with 2 starters sent to the bench with 2 fouls each) in the first 4 minutes of play. No fouls against Seattle. Somehow we managed to stick with Seattle, although they slipped ahead at the end of the half when we shot poorly. We trailed 27-23 when the buzzer sounded. Kevin Hill’s 7 points led our scoring.

Our defense allowed us to move ahead of Seattle midway through the 2nd half. The fouls continued to go against us and I picked up a technical with 7-1/2 minutes to play. The fouls continued to pile up against us and Seattle clawed back at the line to narrow our lead to 51-50 with 1:26 to play. Then neither team could score, and we grabbed a rebound with 19 second to go. Seattle had only 1 foul assessed against them so intentional fouls were ineffective. With 3 seconds to go Greg Bivins put up a shot and was fouled. He missed the first but made the second. We applied a full court press to prevent them from being able to get off a last second shot. We escaped with a win that tied us with Seattle for 2nd place in the Conference.

Final Score: CSU Bakersfield-52, Seattle-50. CSU Bakersfield season record: 10-13; Great West record: 6-4 (2nd place tie).

Scoring leaders: Hill-14, Bivins-9.

Rebound leaders: Johnson-7, Holmes-5.

Assist leaders: Bivins-4, Powers-3.

Player of the Game: SG/SF Kevin Hill-14 pts, 2 reb, 1 assist, 2 blocks.

Coach’s Pat on the Back Award: PG Greg Bivins-9 pts, 3 reb, 4 assists, 1 steal.

Other notes: The win was our 10th of the season so we achieved the goal that was established by the athletic director before the start of the season. We shot poorly (39%) but our defense was rock solid and limited Seattle to 30% shooting. That was fortunate since they were awarded 12 more free throws than us and made 10 more points from the line than did we. Seattle completely dominated the boards 43-29, but we forced them to make 17 turnover compared to our 11.

[PointGuard]

Game #24; Feb.8, 2012; Houston Baptist Huskies (10-13, 4-6) at CSU Bakersfield Roadrunners (10-13, 6-4)

We picked up a tough loss (76-70) on the Huskies court about a month ago. David Johnson took that loss hard since it was over his outstretched arms that the Huskies’ center, T. J. Taylor, pushed up a late shot that allowed the Huskies to take the lead and never give it up.

We held the lead for most of the first half due to some solid defense, but in the last 5 minutes we lost our defensive focus and the Huskies took advantage of that to storm back and take a 37-32 halftime advantage. Greg Bivins scored 9 points to lead our scoring. I came down hard on the team during the intermission.

The Huskies came out on fire in the 2nd half. It seemed they were scoring every time they came down the court. They pummeled us to expand their lead to 17 in the first 7 minutes of the half. We began to slowly whittle their lead down and with 3 minutes left were 9 points behind.

We cut that to 66-63 with 2 minutes remaining. We then hit a baseline jumper to make it 66-65 with 1:20 to go. Houston Baptist hit a 3 to put us behind by 4. We called a time out to set up a 3-pointer by Powers, but he missed. The ball bounced far out to the side, but David Johnson corralled it and drove to the hoop to score over T.J. Taylor and draw a foul. He hit the free throw to cut the lead to 69-68 with 40 seconds on the clock. The Huskies missed a 3 with 23 seconds remaining but Bivins threw the ball away after bring it up court. We fouled immediately. The Huskies made the first free throw but missed the second and Johnny Chase grabbed the rebound. We called time with 11 seconds remaining out as soon as we brought it across the line. After checking the defensive set up, we called another time out to isolate Andrew Powers for a jumper. He got the ball and shot from the corner of the key, but missed and the ball bounced out of bounds. We tried fouling but the Huskies were able to run out the last few seconds on the clock. Another devastatingly close loss.

Final Score: Houston Baptist-70, CSU Bakersfield-68. CSU Bakersfield season record: 10-14; Great West record: 6-5 (2nd place tie).

Scoring leaders: Powers-22, Chase-12, Bivins-11, Johnson-10.

Rebound leaders: Bivins-8, Powers-6, Chase-6, Johnson-5.

Assist leaders: Bivins-4.

Player of the Game: Houston Baptist’s SG Roy Landram-22 pts, 4 reb, 3 assists, 1 steal.

Coach’s Pat on the Back Award: SG Andrew Powers-22 pts, 6 reb, 1 assist.

Other notes: We dug just too big of a hole early in the 2nd half. We made a valiant effort to dig ourselves out of it, but couldn’t quite do it. Both teams hit 42%of their shots, but we were miserable from deep, hitting just 1 of 13 three point shots. Hitting just one more of those would have been enough for us to win this game.

[Wayne23]

Exceeding expectations coach. Let's get a couple more wins!