TCU Review

I think it’s safe to say at this point that nobody should read too much into any one game the Air Force men’s basketball team plays this year.

The Falcons were blown out at Utah by 21 in their Mountain West Conference opener and boy, oh, boy did it look like it’d be a long league season. Until the next game when they knocked off UNLV – the team picked to finish second in the league in the preseason.

They were rocked by New Mexico at The Pit and the offense looked anemic. Until the next game when the Falcons scored 75 – tied for the second-most they’ve put up all season – in a victory over Colorado State.

They suffered their worst home loss since 2001 to BYU, and it looked like the beginning of the end with a tough stretch ahead. Until today when Air Force defeated TCU, 56-46.

It’s going to be that kind of year – up and down, up and down. That’s what we should expect, especially with an inexperienced team.

TCU Quick Thoughts:

-Overall, just a huge victory considering what’s up next. Even if the Falcons lose at San Diego State on Wednesday – and the Aztecs are very tough to beat at home – they’d be 4-4 halfway through the league season. Not bad, considering this team was picked to finish eighth in a nine-team league.

-I wrote below in my BYU Review/TCU Preview about Tim Anderson’s stellar defense. It was on display again today as he made two steals and, according to stats the Falcons keep, seven deflections.

Anderson again played like a MWC Player of the Year candidate today, lifting his game when it mattered most. After TCU went on a 10-2 run to close within a point late in the game, Anderson calmly drained a 3-pointer. Two possessions later, he drained another, and the lead was back up to seven.

And check out this three-possession sequence early in the second half:

TCU Ball: Anderson blocks shot
AF Ball: Anderson makes no-look touch pass to Keith Maren for a layin.
TCU Ball: Anderson makes steal

BYU’s Lee Cummard might end up taking the POY award, but Anderson’s got to be in the discussion.

-Air Force is very fortunate TCU's Henry Salter did not play.

-Not a great performance by the TCU student section. When your top cheer is "Air Force [rhymes with tux]," that's pretty lame.

-Anwar Johnson’s late-game dunk hopefully gives him some confidence around the rim – especially after being rejected on a dunk attempt earlier in the game and blowing the dunk late in the BYU game.

It was a pretty impressive dunk, though, as jams go. And just as impressive was Andrew Henke’s first-half dunk when he drove the baseline and threw it down with two hands.

BYU Review/Pre-TCU

It’s been an embarrassingly long time since I posted something on this blog.

My bad.

Anyway, I’ll be providing game reviews from here on out, so here’s a mini-BYU Review along with some additional thoughts going into a pivotal stretch for the Falcons.

As David Ramsey pointed out in his column after the BYU game, everything was set up for the Falcons Wednesday night – home crowd, star player of the opposing team under the weather and a week off to prepare.

And Air Force still lost. Disappointing for fans, for sure, but maybe that’s about what should have been expected.

The thing about this Air Force team is that when it’s shooting the lights out – which it’s capable of doing – and playing good defense, it can look very, very good. The problem is shooting is a big-time variable. And you can’t really rely on it to carry you all the time. Last year’s team is a perfect example. Look at the UNLV game in Vegas when the Falcons desperately hoisted 39 3s and lost by 10.

So here’s the point – those top-notch shooting nights that lead to quality wins probably raise expectations to unrealistic levels. No matter how good this team has looked on certain nights, there also have been dismal losses to Northern Illinois and Colorado and the escape (helped by a generous no-call and then call) against Radford.

An 8-8 season still would be a big-time triumph.

Some other quick thoughts:

-Tim Anderson has been scoring in bunches lately, so it’s easy to overlook the best part of his game: His defense.

Anderson’s hands always seem to be in the way or poking a ball out of an opponent’s hands. His feet are deceptively quick. And he has uncanny anticipation that allows him to flash into passing lanes and make steals. A case in point was his theft with just less than 7 minutes to play in the first half of the BYU game. He made an aggressive break, swiped an inbounds pass and went for a layin.

One conference coach told me last year that he voted for Anderson as the defensive player of the year in the league. He might get some more votes this year.

-Anwar Johnson is wonderfully athletic. He has made some jaw-dropping moves to get to the hole this year.

But.

Once he gets there …

Perhaps the ability to finish is an innate gift like having a nose for the ball (like Anderson has on defense). But maybe he can learn it. If he can, Air Force will have an important piece to its offensive puzzle.

-Tomorrow’s game is huge if Air Force wants to have any prayer of staying in the conference race.



Look what’s up after the Falcons face TCU, one of the only teams in the league that’s better this year than it was last year:


at San Diego State (where the Aztecs are tough to beat and last year clobbered Air Force by 21 points)


v. Utah (a team that blew out the Falcons earlier this year)


at UNLV (another team that’s tough to beat at home.

Is tomorrow’s game a must-win? Only if Air Force wants any part of the race for the league title.

New Mexico Review

A couple of hours before Air Force’s game at Wyoming on Wednesday, I told a Wyoming radio station that the Falcons could be very good when they were making shots.

It sounded like an incredibly obvious point – like saying you need to score more than the opponent to win. And one of the hosts of the program called me on it. He said making shots was important to the success of every team.

And he’s right.

But it’s especially important for Air Force.

The Falcons don’t have a 7-footer to whom they can dump the ball and hope for easy post-up buckets. They don’t run much, so they get few baskets in transition. And they don’t have very many players who can create a shot or get to the rim and finish with regularity.

So, more than most teams, Air Force must make shots – outside shots, specifically – to be successful.

Check this out:

In two conference victories …
v. UNLV: 61.8 FG%; 47.4 3-P%
v. Wyoming: 44.0 FG%; 48.1 3-P%

In two conference losses …
v. Utah: 31.4 FG%; 31.6 3-P%
v. New Mexico: 27.5 FG%; 26.1 3-P%

Other thoughts
-One of my questions for coach Jeff Reynolds after Saturday's loss was why he stuck with his regulars until the final horn.

The last 10 or so minutes – with New Mexico comfortably ahead – seemed like the perfect time to get some of the younger players on the floor in a road conference game. Especially considering Reynolds often talks about the need to find another reserve or two who can contribute. And because one of the few criticisms of the coaching of his predecessor, Jeff Bzdelik, was that Bzdelik often left starters in games too long. That could have contributed, critics said, to the late-season collapse last year. And it left many of the players who had to step into major roles this year woefully inexperienced.

When I asked Reynolds about it after the game, he had a very reasonable explanation. He said that while, yes, he had considered emptying his bench, he decided to use the final minutes of the game as a teaching experience. He called two timeouts late – including one with less than a minute to play that elicited boos from the crowd at The Pit – so he could point out what Air Force would do at those times if the game was closer. This is who we would foul, this is when we would foul, this is the play we would run, etc.

“I just felt like we wanted to try to learn even though we were losing,” he said. “I didn’t think our kids gave in. I thought with three minutes to go in the game, I thought we got our legs. We were running our offense harder. And maybe that was the fact that they weren’t playing as hard. I think that’s just the way it went.”

Again, an understandable explanation. And I admire the never-say-die, never-quit attitude that is displayed by fighting hard until the final horn

But if the Falcons happen to lose Tuesday to Colorado State, I don’t want to hear about how it was their third game in seven days. I don’t want to hear about a long road trip. I don’t want to hear about tired legs and fatigue.

There was an opportunity to give some guys who have been playing hefty minutes a chance to rest Saturday – let alone give seldom-used reserves a chance to play. Starter Anwar Johnson, who still is recovering from a bout with pneumonia (they had an oxygen tank on the bench for him at Wyoming), played 36 of 40 minutes Saturday – a team-high.

Now, it might turn out that the lessons learned by the regulars in the waning minutes of the game will pay dividends down the line. Maybe they learned something about the offense, the defense or themselves that will make a big difference Tuesday or later in the season.

But the fatigue excuse is off the table for Tuesday night.

-Through two weeks of conference play, two things stand out.

One: As written earlier this week, the league is wide open. And the eventual champ could have three, four – perhaps five – losses.

Two: Last year’s Air Force team would have dominated this league. Funny how entire leagues go in cycles. Lot of talent gone from last year.

-New Mexico’s J.R. Giddens may or may not make it at the next level. But there’s no doubting he has the tools. The spin move he made to get to the basket in the first half Saturday was stunning.

Aloha, Mr. Rabold

Air Force senior outside linebacker John Rabold recently returned to the academy from Hawaii, where he spent a week preparing for and playing in the Hula Bowl – a senior all-star game that acts in large part as a showcase for NFL scouts.

I spoke to Rabold this afternoon about his experience at the game.

Jake Schaller: What was it like at the Hula Bowl?
John Rabold: It was a great experience. I had a lot of fun out there. In the morning we had football practice and meetings and walk-throughs, but then by lunchtime we were done with the football aspects. We’d do community activities, sign autographs. But we were staying on the beach, so we got the opportunity to go to the beach almost every day.

JS: Where were you, exactly?
JR: We were in Honolulu, the Waikiki area. … It was great. The local people were really nice to us down there. We had all different types of food. But we had rice with about every meal so I’m laying off the rice a little now. We were having it for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day.

JS: How did you feel you measured up to the other players?
JR: I feel I measured up equally with the guys up there. When we first went up there it went through my head that I had been playing at an academy and people were saying that the Mountain West was not one of the top conferences in the country. But after playing up there and playing with some Mountain West people, I felt we were just as good or better than the people at the bigger, known schools.

JS: What was your interaction with pro scouts?
JR: Scouts were out there, and I talked to some of them. … They said they’d keep an eye on me and everything. They said they liked what they saw in me out there. They said I was faster than what they had suspected. And I was faster in practice than they thought I was. Practice was the key part. They looked at you more there than in the actual game. I’ve got a two-year commitment and they all know that, so I have to serve in the Air Force first and hopefully something will come up.

JS: Your teammate, Drew Fowler, will be playing in the East-West Shrine game Saturday. Did you share your experiences with him?
JR: I kept in touch with him. We talked about every day or exchanged text messages. I gave him a heads up, told him what to expect practice-wise and at all the meetings.

JS: Were you more encouraged about your pro prospects after the game?
JR: I was. I felt like I had a pretty good week of practice and played pretty well in the game. I thought I helped myself out there, and hopefully they saw I’m able to play and I’ll be willing to put in the hard work and make it to the next level. I think I did nothing but help myself.

JS: Will you be back to Hawaii?
JR: Most definitely. It was a great trip. I love the beach, so it definitely will be a trip I take in the future to get back there.

Wyoming Review

Just got to watch Eric Kenzik’s game-winning basket this morning on ESPN’s "SportsCenter." It was No. 2 on the show’s Top 10 plays.

As always, I was surprised to see Air Force highlights on the Worldwide Leader. It doesn’t happen too often.

After I got over that shock, I couldn’t help but be impressed by Kenzik’s cut to the basket and even more impressed by the assist Andrew Henke made. Great vision, and there was some heat on that pass.

That was a pretty big victory for the Falcons. On the road. Against a rival. In an arena where Air Force had won just two of its previous 18 games.

For a team that has little experience and had found little success away from Clune Arena prior to Wednesday, it should be a big-time confidence booster.

Quick Thoughts

-Through three games, Tim Anderson is the Mountain West Conference Player of the Year.

He’s averaged 17.7 points in conference play (tied for third in the league) on 53.3 percent shooting from the field (fourth-best in the league). And he’s played outstanding defense. Five charges taken against Wyoming? That has to be some kind of record.

Best of all, he’s shown a knack for knowing when to take control (see his step-back 3-pointer with 4:26 left in regulation when Wyoming was surging) and when to let others make plays (see the game-winning play in overtime).

He’d have his opponents’ vote. When I spoke to Wyoming’s Brad Jones before the game, Jones said he had “the utmost respect for Air Force, especially Tim Anderson."

“I got to hang out with him at media day, and I think he’s a stand-up guy and one of the premier guards in the league.”

-Air Force has to improve its free throw shooting. The Falcons made just 7 of 14 attempts from the line Wednesday night, and it nearly cost them the game.

-The Falcons desperately need some more help from their bench. Anderson played all 45 minutes Wednesday night, and freshman guard Evan Washington played 43. Last year’s late-season collapse probably had something to do with fatigue. I remember Matt McCraw playing every minute of the Falcons’ first four contests.

Wild, Wild Mountain West

Just got finished watching UNLV absolutely pound BYU, 70-41.

That’s UNLV, the team Air Force handled on Saturday, beating the defending conference champs. Badly.

And prior to that, TCU overcame a 13-point halftime deficit to beat New Mexico at the buzzer, 74-72.

Three things jump out:

One, it’s more than cliché this season when coaches talk about the importance of protecting their home courts. UNLV looked like a completely different team in Vegas than it did on Saturday at Clune Arena. More confidence shooting the ball, better defense, better intensity. The conference champ this season will have to be close to perfect at home.

Two, BYU’s Trent Plaisted had better figure out how to shoot free throws. One for 10? No matter how good he is in other facets of the game, that kind of percentage makes him a liability.

And three, this could be one wild year. You can drive yourself crazy by playing the “Team A beat Team B and Team C beat Team A, so Team C should beat Team B” game. But still, a look at scores around the conference seem to make Air Force’s prospects for shocking the league this season a whole lot more promising.

Anderson Named Player of the Week

Air Force senior guard Tim Anderson was named the Mountain West Conference Men’s Basketball Player of the Week today for his performance in the Falcons’ 65-53 victory over UNLV on Saturday.

Anderson scored a game-high 27 points, including 21 in the second half, on 8-of-9 shooting from the floor and 9-of-12 shooting from the free throw line. Anderson, who scored 14 straight points during one stretch of the second half, also had two steals, blocked a shot and drew a charge.

This is Anderson’s second player of the week honor this year. He shared it with San Diego State’s Kyle Spain on Nov. 12.