Brian Fish will be the first to tell you he has a great group of guys on his Montana State men’s basketball team. However, just because his collection of players is a decent group of young men does not mean the team is a talkative bunch.
“You better hope if you have a van full our players, the radio works because if not, you are going to run off the road and hit a tree because no one talks,” Fish joked following the Bobcats’ first Big Sky Conference win of the season on New Year’s Eve. “We will text the hell out of each other, but we won’t talk (laughs). We are trying to get them to talk. Either they are going to win or I’m going to win but tonight, I give the check in my favor because we got them talking a little better.”
Fish, Montana State’s third-year head coach who spent stints as an assistant at Creighton and Oregon before coming to MSU, said he watched Villanova and Creighton play on Saturday hours before his Bobcats hosted Idaho State. He noticed the high level of communication, particularly on the defensive end. He could only hope to see the same thing from his team Saturday afternoon less than 40 hours after a poor defensive performance in a loss to Weber State.
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With a roster that includes just two seniors — forwards Sarp Gobeloglu and Quinton Everett — and cornerstones of the program that includes a freshman point guard in Harald Frey, a tone-setting athlete in junior Zach Green and a sophomore superstar in Tyler Hall, Fish knows his Bobcats are still learning to communicate. Fish saw the best progress of the season yet in an 80-63 win over Idaho State on New Year’s Eve day.
“After reviewing the film and looking at things, I think in our three years here, the other night was the best we have played defensively,” Fish said Tuesday during MSU’s first press conference of 2017. “We locked in for 40 minutes as a cohesive unit, a talking unit. If we can build on that, we have a chance.”
The Bobcats had their losing streak reach seven straight despite a non-conference schedule that included a Big Sky-high eight home games. MSU lost its fourth straight at home thanks to lackluster defensive rotations in an 87-72 home loss to Weber State on Thursday. After the game, Fish held no punches, talking about how his team needed to ramp up it’s defensive communication and effort if it wanted any chance to compete in the Big Sky.
Fish loves the way his team has been practicing. Following Saturday’s win over Idaho State, Fish said the win marked the first time his Bobcats translated their practice efforts to game time.
MSU’s head coach hopes his team can carry the example forward as the Bobcats embark on their first conference road trip on Wednesday morning. But two days after MSU’s 80-63 breakthrough over ISU to earn its first Big Sky Conference victory, Fish didn’t get a chance to see if the lesson carried over. He missed Monday’s practice because of a bout with the flu.
Still, the initial returns from the Idaho State win were good. Fish’s assistants Chris Haslam, Brandon Lincoln and Eric Jackson ran Monday’s practice before a much less voluminous Fish returned on Tuesday. Despite the missed time as MSU prepares for games at Eastern Washington Thursday and Idaho on Saturday, Fish thinks his team turned a corner against the Bengals.
“We’ve been a quiet group all year,” Fish said on Tuesday. “A lot of young teams are. They don’t understand the importance of talking, talking, building trust, builds confidence. We’ve started to buy into that a little better.”
When operating at their full potential, Green, Everett and sophomore Devonte Klines all have the ability to be upper level defenders in the Big Sky. But Klines is only halfway through his first Division I season after transferring from Saddleback Community College. Green and Everett have been plagued by inconsistencies.
With all three at full strength, MSU held Ethan Telfair, the Big Sky’s leading scorer during league play last season (24 ppg), to 16 points on 4-of-15 shooting. Everett and Klines each played 20 minutes and primarily guarded the explosive ISU point guard. The Bengals shot just 37 percent overall.
“It’s uncommon to be more energetic at practice but the biggest reason for that is at practice, we are going against each other and we like to compete against each other,” Green said. “Once we become more competitive to other people, hopefully we can raise our level.”
The MSU roster contains seven new faces this season, a factor as the 6-9 Bobcats try to continue growing with 16 league games remaining.
“I think not knowing each other is a big part of it because we are all trying to prove it to each other in practice like, ‘I can score on you, I can guard you’ every day in practice,” Green said.
Frey played a huge key in Montana State’s break though win. The 6-foot-1 southpaw from Oslo, Norway scored a career-high 20 points on 7-of-8 shooting and held his own on both ends against Telfair and ISU upstart freshman Brandon Boyd. Frey’s 3-point shooting hovered around 35 percent for the first portion of the season but he is 15-of-27 from deep over his last five games.
“I think you are seeing him grow up a little bit,” Fish said on Tuesday. “He’s being more aggressive. He is starting to believe in himself a little more. That’s about the timeframe for new guys, 14, 15 games before they settle in. He was certainly aggressive the other night and I really liked how he played.”
Montana State will get a chance to see if the communication and improvement can carry over Thursday night in Cheney. EWU surged to an 8-2 start before playing guaranteed money games at Northern Xavier and Colorado leading up to conference play. Eastern Washington defeated rival Idaho in Moscow 69-62 on Friday in the lone conference game for both teams. EWU is 7-0 at home this season.
“Winning a game wasn’t just what we needed to do, we needed to win a game the right way and we did that,” Fish said Tuesday. “They knew they did that. The film was really positive.
“Once we focus on defense, once we focus on rebounding, we are good enough we can score on the offensive end.”
[/restrict]Photos by Brooks Nuanez and contributed. All Right Reserved.
