Montana State Men’s Basketball Preview (part 1)

Now that all of the players are on campus, I am going to get started previewing the four Montana State and Montana basketball programs players. First up is the Montana State Bobcat men’s program player. Part 1 will cover the Back Court and for the purposes of these posts that will include the point guard (1), shooting guard (2) and the small forward (3) positions.

Back Court (guards and wings)

In Huse’s system the shooting guard and small forwards are simply considered wings. The bigger player (height or physically) for defensive and rebounding purposes could be considered the small forward while the player with the better ball skills could be considered to shooting guard. Huse is also not averse to playing two point guards at the same time. As a result a lot of players at the 1, 2 and 3 are interchangeable

Erik Rush 6-5 SR (PG, SG, SF)
Put quite simply the most versatile player on the team. He can play all three back court positions and play them well. He has great combination size strength, athleticism, ball skills and the ability to score any where on the court that creates match up problems for opposing teams no matter where he plays. From what I hear he has had a great off season and looks like a beast this season. He will have a great season, but I think the key to having great statistical season that will earn him Big Sky honors may be narrowing his scope. I think if he has jump around between all three positions all season, he may not have the sparkling stats as other players but he will still be the team MVP.

Danny Piepoli 6-6 SR (SG, SF)
It is finally time for Danny to shine. Piepoli has been a terrific role player for the Bobcats the past 3 years, but this year should start, play 30-35 minutes a game, and be one of the important offensive cogs for the Bobcats. Much like Rush I am hearing Piepoli really had a great summer. He should the Bobcat’s dedicated zone buster, and look for him to feast off assists from Rush when teams double team him.

Bobcats track Victor Bermudez

This is a post about a possible Bobcat recruit but, it is also post about how today’s late blooming basketball players are trying to make their way to increase their recruiting profile.

I have heard that the Bobcat Basketball coaches are tracking the progress of a team mate of a current Bobcat player. Victor Bermudez is a 6-2 (although I have seen him listed any where from 6-1 to 6-3) combo guard who is currently attending University Park Academy a prep school located in Houston TX. Last season Bermudez played with current Bobcat freshman guard Chris McCall at Cheyenne high school in Las Vegas Nevada.

Last season at Cheyenne, Bermudez averaged 9 points and 2 rebounds while shooting 50% from the field 48% from the three point arc and 88% from the free-throw line. He played some of his best ball in the last half of the season.

After completing his senior year at Cheyenne, Bermudez along with Cheyenne teammate J’Quon Wrotten was invited attend the Houston prep school, in what I will assume is an effort to generate more interest from D-1 schools. I had heard last year both players were receiving a lot of interest from D-2 and junior college programs.

Cheyenne was really loaded last year with 3 players earning college scholarships it will be interesting to see where Bermudez or Wrotten end up. Here are the other Cheyenne players and where they ended up.

Early look at the 2010-11 Bobcat Men

With summer approaching and recruiting for 2010 over , with the possible exception of walk-on, I thought I would take a preliminary look at the next years Bobcat men’s team. Below I will break it down who I think, as of now are projected starters, major rotation guys as well as bench players, and finally I will give you my depth chart as of the first week in June. As always I reserve the right to change my mind come this fall.

Favorites for Starting positions

Bobby Howard combo forward– Howard really came on strong for the Bobcats in conference season last year earning First Team All Conference. He averaged 15 points and 7 rebounds a game during conference and the coaches will be looking to matching or bettering those numbers especially the rebounding next season. I think Howard will be the guy who will be facing pressure to be the leader on and off the court, but he should be up to the challenge. Look for the Bobcats to look to play Howard at the small forward some next year also.

Eric Rush point shooting and wing guard – Like Howard, Rush is going to looked at to be a leader for this team. Rush was also a double digit scorer for the Bobcat, but his biggest asset is flexibility to play any where from the point to the small forward. I see him starting at the shooting guard, but he could start at the point or wing if another player emerges at the shooting guard. Where ever he starts he will play all 3 perimeter spots for the Bobcats and they will need to get 30-35 minutes a game from Rush.

Danny Piepoli shooting guard / small forward – After spending the past two years as a key reserve, Piepoli will be looked to hold down the other wing position along side Rush. Danny has steadily improved his game over the last two years and his emergence as the leading contender for an open starting position, led to Austin Brown to transfer looking for a place he could start. The Bobcats will be very young next year as with Rush the Coaches will be looking for Piepoli to give them a solid 30-35 minutes a game.

Rod Singleton point guard – Singleton was recruited to be the Bobcats starting point guard for 2010, so at this point you have to pencil him as the starting point guard. Singleton is a pure point guard but can also score the ball so he may get some looks as a shooting guard if Trujeque becomes a viable option at the point. Of the four player in this Singleton is the one player I could see possibly moved out of the starting line up. If a player like Allou or McCall make a strong argument for a starting role, do not be surprised if Huse move Rush to the starting point guard to make room in the starting five, but it would take a very strong effort by one of these players to move Singleton out.

Rating Bobcat 2010 Basketball Class (Part 1)

This blog has is mainly a basketball recruiting blog so I really wanted to try to do an in-depth look at the Montana State men’s basketball 2010 recruiting class. I also wanted to try not to cover ground that has already been covered a half dozen times here and else where. I wanted to be able to rate this class in my own way but also give anyone else who may be reading this post the ability to rate it themselves. You may not have your own blog but in your own mind you can hopefully read this and come up with your own mental grade. The first part of this post will be the looking at the individual player who make up the 2010 class. Part two will putting it all together and grading out the different aspects of the class and an over all grade.

You do not have to agree with me, I would prefer you make up your own mind.

Talent:

This clearly is the best recruiting class Brad Huse has put together since coming to Montana State. I am not going to rate the athletes 1-7, but instead talk about them in tiers. If you want an excellent article on ranking the prospects check out Will Holden’s great article here. I helped Will with this article and would have to agree with how he ranked the athletes. I would, though, like to point out that in my opinion there are very little difference between #1-3. I also think come next September and the recruits have had a chance to work on their game and body’s over the summer, this ranking could have significant changes. I have seen recruits shoot up the depth chart significantly by working their butts off over the summer and others who dropped because they did not.

Signing Day Preview: Bobcat Men

This Wednesday will be the start of the spring signing day which will go until mid May and I wanted to update on various rumors and as well as my opinion (guess) on what the four programs are doing and who they could sign during the late period.

The current trend that all four programs have been following the past 3-4 years is to primarily sign high school kids in the early period and JC transfers in the late period, and this year they look to no different.

Bobcat Men:

Signed in the Fall:

Blake Brumwell 6-7 240 Center – Big Sandy, MT
Chris McCall 6-4 175 Shooting Guard – Las Vegas, MT
Casey Trujeque 5-7 165 Point Guard – Los Angeles, CA
Shawn Reid 6-5 195 Forward / Guard– Post Falls, CA

Commits

Jordan Salley 6-7 230 – Forward /Center – Los Angeles, CA

Salley looks to be on board and ready to sign. Considering one of his social networking pages has the Bobcat logo plastered all over it, it looks like a pretty safe bet. His rehab for his knee injury last June seems to be coming around well, he is working out and should be ready to go by this summer.

Tre Johnson 6-7 215 – Combo Forward – Reno NV

Johnson seems to be on board to sign with the Bobcats. There 2-3 newspaper articles last week about his commit to MSU some with short interviews. Still I will feel better after Wednesday. Johnson was also recruited by Boise State and Santa Clara, these were the two schools involved in poaching former Bobcat commit Tre Nichols. I am still a little nervous.

Update on future Bobcat: Chris McCall

Chris McCall 6-4 Cheyenne high school Las Vegas Nevada

As I understand the story when the Bobcats started recruiting McCall they were not sure if they would really have a chance with him, but they had good relations with his AAU coach and the coaches seemed to have a nice connection. McCall showed an interest in Montana State so they invited him up to Bozeman last October. He tripped with Casey Trejuque who had already committed to the Bobcat 5-6 months earlier and the two hit it off, they really enjoyed playing together in some pick up ball, and they really liked Montana State. About 24 hours after returning home McCall committed to the Bobcats making the coaches extremely happy.

McCall was considered to be the jewel in a very strong Novemebr signing period. Talking to Huse in December he called McCall the best guard he has signed at MSU. He did have some qualifiers on that stament when pushed. There are a few player he has signed he considers wing/forwards as opposed to guards so it gets complicated understanding coach speak. In any event the coaches are very excited about McCalls potential in the Blue and Gold.

McCall started off the season on fire averaging 20+ points a game for the first half of the season. He cooled off some the second half of the season to finally average about 17 points, 3 assits 2 steals and 4 rebounds, while shooting 47% from the field 50% from beyond the three point line and 87% from the charity strip. I had heard from someone that he may sprained his foot in January but I can not confirm this.

Cheyenne has three players who have committed to college program already. Along with McCall , 6-7 Jaylen Henry (13 points 11 rebounds) to Eastern Washington and Paul Gentle to a D-2 school. Two – three other players may also end playing college ball.

Odds and Ends: Prospects

Hi folks I have a handful of interesting and some sad, odds and ends about some of the Griz and Bobcat basketball signees / commits that I thought I might share. Some might be a little older than others, but I hope it is something you find interesting.

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• Danny Little from Billings Skyview and Montana State 2011 commit was featured in a Q. and A. article today by the Billing Gazette. Little talks about Skyview’s current season as well as why he choose to commit to the Bobcat program. You should check it out here.

• Chris McCall from Cheyenne high school in Nevada and a Bobcat 2010 signee was scheduled to play his first game of the post season this past Wednesday, but that did not happen. The Sunset Region boy’s basketball playoffs were postponed this week when Western high school filed in court complaint and motion for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction was granted until the matter could be heard. At issue Western was forced to forfeit 4 games because a player was ruled ineligible. The court handed down a ruling earlier today giving Western 2 games back. The Sunset Region is now scrambling to reschedule the tourney.

Odds and Ends 12/30/09

It has been quite a while since I have done an Odds and Ends post but I have a handful of thing that are worth mentioning but maybe not in a full post by themselves.

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• In the in case you missed it category Helena Capital’s Matt Miller committed to Boise State a couple day’s ago. Sorry nothing from me at the time but I had a few balls in the air, but this sounds like a great choice by Mr. Miller. As a matter of fact I think Arizona State and Stanford would also have been great choices as well. Here is a quote Miller gave to Rick Kimbrel of Blue-Turf.com (part of the Rivals.com network).

“When I went down to Boise State for my visit,” Miller said. “I just felt so comfortable and thinking about it I felt that at Boise I would be the most happy for the next couple of years of my life.

“Boise State is a great football team,” Miller said. “They are a top 10 football team year in and year out. That is very enticing to me.

“The school as well is on the rise academically,” Miller said. “I kind of want to get into wildlife biology and ultimately become a college coach so I felt at Boise State, I could accomplish all those goals.

Prospect Update: Bobcat Men

Bobcat 2011 commit - Danny Little

I am going to update the signed and committed players to the Montana and Montana State programs as best I can periodically through out the year. A lot of the info and stats that I quoted here can be found on the individual pages for each prospect. You can access these pages through the “Commitment Page”.

This is the first of the four updates and will feature the Montana State men’s commits / signees.

Some of the prospects I have been able to find a lot of information about their season so far, other not so much. I will continue to try to find as much as I can and post that info on the commitment page.

2010 Signees

• Casey Trujeque 5-9 PG, Price HS. Price is well into its season with a 9-0 record, but I have not been able to find is a little bit more than the game scores. Price won the season opening Pasadena Tournament. They were the lowest division school in the tourney. Guard Allen Crabbe (California bound) was selected the tournament MVP and Bobcat signee, Casey Trujeque made the all tourney first team. Trujeque’s other star team mate center Richard Solomon was named to the second team all tourney.
• Chris McCall 6-3 SG, Cheyenne HS– McCall has only three games in so far this season but is leading his team with a 20 point and 5 rebounds a game, average. He is also shooting an impressive 55% from the field, 60% from three point range and 75% from the charity stripe. McCall’s teammate and Eastern Washington signee Jaylen Henry is averaging 11 points 10 rebounds a game. Two other players from Cheyenne are also expected to play college ball.

Future players start their season

The high school basketball season across the United State is just starting to get into high gear, and most of the 18 recruits signed or committed to the four Montana D-1 prospects have already started their season with most of the rest getting under way this coming week-end.

Around Montana a few players started their season last weekend with Carly Selvig’s (Glendive), Lexi Nelson (Butte), Kellie Cole (Bozeman) and Blake Brumwell (Big Sandy) getting a game. The remainder of the Montana players and teams kicking in the next couple of day’s.

From out of the state of Montana, Bobcat women’s signee Ausha Cole leads the pack in games already played with 9 games under her belt. Bobcat men’s signee Chris McCall is the only player to yet kick off his season, but his Cheyenne high school team starts it season tonight.

Montana State’s two Australian recruits Kate Webb and Emily Nelson are a whole different ball game. These two women have already finished their high school career and the whole Australian under 18 basketball system is so different than the here in the United States.