My first real look at the 2008-09 Air Force men’s basketball team felt in many ways like my first real look at last season’s squad.

I’ll explain.

About a year ago, the 2007-08 Falcons played a home exhibition against Brock, some school from Canada that had no scholarship players. It was a team that – on paper – Air Force should have destroyed. But the Falcons lost, 66-63, in part because Brock hit some ridiculous shots from beyond the 3-point arc.

I started thinking about that exhibition game tonight when Western State’s Cameron Burney forced an off-balance, leaning 3-pointer with Andrew Henke in his face to put the Mountaineers up 56-54 with 5:56 to play.

Before I remembered last year’s exhibition, my take on tonight’s game was something along the lines of, “Oh boy, this could be a long season if Air Force is struggling with a Division II team.”

But when I remembered last year’s exhibition, I also remembered that I overacted after that exhibition last season. When Air Force lost, the lede to my game story in the paper the following day was: “If Wednesday night was any indication, the Air Force men’s basketball team has a long, difficult rebuilding year ahead of it.”

Well, Air Force ended up being way better than it looked in that exhibition. And I’m sure Air Force will be better than it appeared tonight. So I’m going to withhold any sweeping judgment for now.

One more note on this. Air Force coach Jeff Reynolds brought up last season’s exhibition – on his own – when I interviewed him after the game.

“Even today in our shootaround, we talked about how (the Mountaineers) were very similar to the Canadian team that we played in the exhibition last year, only they were much bigger and more athletic,” Reynolds said.

Other observations:

-I wrote about this for tomorrow’s paper, but Air Force got huge contributions from freshman Taylor Stewart and junior Avery Merriex, who had played little in his first two seasons. Both looked like they could be key reserves this season.

-An excellent first game for senior guard/forward Andrew Henke. I thought he really played within the offense and let the game come to him for the first 30 minutes. And then in the last 10, with the game close, he asserted himself more and scored half of his team-high 18 points.

Henke got mauled a couple times on drives to the hoop. I think that might be a recurring theme this year as he’ll likely be the focal point of opposing defenses.

-Sophomore guard Evan Washington looked really athletic and strong. He went up strong a bunch of times to grab rebounds (he had a career-high eight). And how about his help-side defense? Washington, who preserved last season’s victory at Colorado State with a block, made a pair of emphatic rejections in the first half.

-Air Force has got to get some more production out of its post players. Junior starter Mike McLain was 1-for-8 with two rebounds in 17 minutes, junior Grant Parker had two points and a board in seven minutes and freshman Trevor Noonan had zero points and rebounds in two minutes.

The Falcons went small for nearly the entire second half. But Reynolds said that had more to do with matching up with Western State (which was going “very small,” Reynolds said, and using a bunch of guard) than going away from his post players.

“I thought Mike and Grant both were solid, they just rushed things – had those jitters,” Reynolds said. “And I thought when Trevor Noonan was in the game, he was solid.”

-Air Force is wearing slightly different uniforms this season. The home unis are white with blue trim. The tops have a tighter collar and slivers of silver on the shoulders. The shorts have lighting bolts down the legs and are looooong – as long as I’ve seen on an Air Force team. These make the ones the Fab 5 used to wear look like stuff you’d find in John Stockton’s closet.

-Nice moment late in the second half. The Jumbotron showed a shot of recently graduated guard Tim Anderson, who now serves as a coach at the prep school. The humble Anderson eventually realized he was caught by the cameras and gave a sheepish wave as the crowd applauded.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.