Jan. 19, 2008
Final Stats
Bozeman, MT --- Idaho State University got another career-high night from Donnie Carson, who scored 15 and continues to impress, but he was basically it for the Bengals are Montana State got 21 from Divaldo Mbunga and 19 from Carlos Taylor as the Bobcats shot 53% from the field and outrebounded ISU by 12 as Montana State breezed past the Bengals 74-53.
The loss drops Idaho State to 6-12 overall and to 3-2 in the conference, while Montana State ends a three-game conference losing streak, bumping themselves up to 2-3 in the conference and 10-8 overall. The conference week ended up eerily similar to last year, when ISU lost to Montana State on the back end of the weekend trip after winning at Montana, a point not lost on head coach Joe O'Brien.
"We said we need to come up here and split and we did that," said O'Brien. "But this is a flashback to our performance in this building last year. That was one of our worst games last year...it was like déjà vu."
Montana State broke open a close 26-25 game over the final 3:49 of the first half, blitzing ISU with a crushing 10-1 run to make it 36-26 at the break. Then in the second half, after ISU opened the scoring with Donnie Carson converting three free throws after being fouled on a three-point attempt, the Bobcats went on another crushing run, this one a 15-4 run highlighted by a pair of Phil Friesen threes, and the Bengals would draw no closer then 15 the rest of the way.
The result was fairly simple to see looking at the stat sheet, as the Bobcats shot .531 from the field, including 10-of-20 from three-point range. Idaho State entered the game having held all four of their previous conference opponents to under 40% shooting. To compound that, the Bengals lost the battle of the boards 34-22, and they shot just .392 themselves.
"We got beat in every category that you keep stats on. We failed to compete, and that was the bottom line. They had lost three in a row, and they had their backs to the wall," said O'Brien. "Our players knew that if Montana State wanted to still compete for conference championship they were going to come out hard, and we just didn't match them."
For the Bengals, the highlight again was the ever-improving Donnie Carson, who set a career-high in scoring for the fourth different time this year, this time with 15 points and a career-high six rebounds as well. Montana State, along with the efforts of Mbunga and Taylor, Branden Johnson added 11 points off the bench. Taylor actually had a double-double with 11 rebounds to go with his 19 points.
With the split, the Bengals return home for a pair of big conference games as ISU starts a stretch of four out of five in Holt Arena starting with a rare Friday night matchup with 7:05 pm against Sacramento State. That will lead up to a showdown with conference front-runner Northern Arizona, who is just one game ahead of ISU in the loss column. The game on Friday however is a game that O'Brien feels will tell a lot about the makeup of his club.
"How we respond from this thumping on Friday night I think will say a lot about this basketball team, and we have bounced back before."
NOTES: The Bengals dropped to 0-12 when getting outrebounded, as they are 6-0 when outrebounding their opponents ... the game marked the 10th time this season that ISU failed to score 60 points ... ISU also dropped to 1-20 under Joe O'Brien when allowing 70 or more, and the converse of that is they are 19-9 when holding their opponents under that mark ... Carson is now averaging 10.8 points per game in conference play, and he earned his first career start.
