This is the first in a series of four posts on the Bobcat men’s basketball team, discussing the past season and a look ahead to next season. Part 1 Season Wrap up, Part 2 Look ahead: Big men, Part 3 Look Ahead: Wing players and Part 4 Look Ahead: Recruits.


For the Cat’s this year, it seemed that the season that had 2 ½ distinctive parts. The preseason, the conference and the little blurb at the end called the conference tournament. The season started out, as a feeling out process, as this team tried to established individual roles. The team, though, managed to fight through all the bumps of the preseason, and came out with a handful of nice upset wins. When the conference season started, though, the train went off the tracks a little. Losing the Bobcat / Griz game, the first week in January, I think set a bad tone for the rest of the season, and this team just plain struggled. I’ll give the guy’s credit despite the adversity they continued to try to fight though it. If the Bobcat’s struggles started with the Griz it also ended with the Griz, somehow I think that 3rd Bobcat/Griz game of the year, was the best match up they could have asked for in the tournament. Sometimes you just get tired of getting beat and that is even more so when it involves your rivals. What ever the case, the Cat’s decided, that they were not going to simply role over, and went on to take out the #1 and #3 seeds and taking the #2 seed to within 10 seconds of a win. I am told coach Huse took the championship loss very hard, not for the loss itself but because he really felt that this team deserved to win for every thing they went through this season. I have heard from a couple of sources, that the “hard ass” Huse has really fell in love with this team over the last 6 weeks of the season and came to respect the way that team fought through hard times and finished strong. At the end of the season this team was as close as any Bobcat team has been in the past 10-15 years.

We get almost everyone back next year with the major exception of Divaldo, who will be tough to replace. I am hoping the returnees will use the conference tournament to build upon for next season, as some of the really great Bobcat teams have done in the past. I think it is going to be important that player learn how to step up when their team-mates struggle, to be successful next year. From the coaching side I think Huse needs to add some new wrinkles to his offence at the beginning of each swing through the conference to keep the other coaches honest. It appears, that a Brad Huse coached Bobcat teams will always do better than expected in the preseason, on the strength of his coaching, but when conference comes along the Big Sky coaches simply know him too, well and that negates a lot of his coaching advantages. New wrinkles or slight changes in his offense at key times in the Conference, could give him a little of that advantage back.