Cameron Rundles will be honest. He’ll tell you Montana’s Feb. 24 72-63 OT win at Idaho State was his best game since Nov. 9, when the Grizzlies beat Colorado State on opening day of the 2007-08 season.
But Rundles’ season has been – until Sunday – on a steady downward arc. After being tabbed as the Big Sky Conference Freshman of the Year for his play in 2007-08, many – including Rundles himself – were expecting big things.
After a stellar debut against the Rams, Rundles’ fortunes on the basketball court have been up and down at best... mostly down. Montana coach Wayne Tinkle finally replaced Rundles at starting point guard, and he has since played mostly as a reserve, sometimes playing fewer than 10 minutes a contest.
The normally cheery player hit a low against Sacramento State, drawing a technical and finally getting benched. But Sunday, Rundles finally got a start... in overtime against the Bengals.
And he made the best of his five minutes, scoring five points, dishing out a critical assist to Ryan Staudacher, and controlling the tempo of the game at point guard.
That all came after Rundles had dished a timely assist to Montana post Andrew Strait and, moments later, nailed a pull-up jumper in the final minutes of regulation.
Rundles doesn’t like the word slump, much less ‘sophomore slump.’ But he admits his play has been below his own high expectations. He agreed to a question and answer interview with Grizzly Journal.
GJ - I don’t really believe in sophomore slumps. But here you are. You’re a sophomore and you’ve had a bad month or two.
RUNDLES – Well, I don’t believe in sophomore slumps either. But if I am in a slump and we win five of six games, what would we be like if I’m not in a slump? We could be dynamite. But I can’t worry about that. The way I look at it, we’re one-and-0 from the last game and we’re going to try and go one-and-0 on Thursday and just take one game at a time.
GJ – Things sort of fell apart against Sac State, didn’t they?
RUNDLES - They fell apart. Yeah. I had been struggling so.... Well, where I’m from I talk a lot. I grew up on a playground. I have six older brothers and they talk, so I talk back. So, I told myself, “I got to do something to get out of my slump,” and I thought Sac State would be the perfect game to do it, because they’re rugged guys that also like to do that. But I kind of got myself into trouble. I think the refs kind of picked on me, but I deserved it. It was my fault because I wasn’t playing like I should.
GJ – What do you do when things don’t go right in a game?
RUNDLES - Well, I get into the gym more. But it was still tough. I worked so hard this past summer. Last summer was the hardest I had ever worked. So, I admit that I thought..... Well, I just decided that I’ve got to keep on working like I did in the off-season. I’m still not shooting all that well yet, but I paid the price, so I think I’m going to come around.
You know, we’ve got great teammates here. I’ve been coming in and working with the coaches and with Jeff (Hays) to get the extra shots up... So hard work has been helping me out.They’ve been helping me to keep my head up, and you know I’ve got great teammates. I admit I’ve been struggling all year, but all the guys on the team they were all the first persons to stay confident in me and tell me that I’m going to come out of this soon.
GJ – A lot of people who I talk to have told me to tell you, “We’re pulling for you.” They say you should relax.
RUNDLES - You know, for me I think I’m past that. Sometimes this year I think I tried to get in there and force things too much... But I think last Sunday helped me because I really do want to get out of that slump. Coach Tinks has a little more confidence in me even though I don’t really think he lost confidence in me. But you know, when I was playing like I was, it was kind of tough for him to play me. I think for me to keep playing the way I did on Sunday where I had to focus on playing good defense and getting my team involved, well then the things like me hitting the shots will come.
GJ – It looked to me that against the Bengals the one thing you really concentrated on at first was defense. Can defense help turn things around for you?
RUNDLES - I talked a lot about that with Coach (Nate) DuChesne where I had to make the transition from being a starter to a bench player. It’s hard to come in and get going right away. But this is college basketball and I’ve learned a lot about every aspect. If you come in off of the bench after 10 minutes, you’ve got to be ready right away. So, against Idaho State I came in and right away decided to get after it on defense and right away that helped to loosen me up.
GJ –It had to feel good to play 24 minutes and walk off of the court with a road win.
RUNDLES - Of course it’s the best feeling ever when you know you played a lot and you win. I only played five or six minutes in the first half, but I was staying in it. When I got my chance, I didn’t want to try to do too much but I just went out there and decided that no matter how many minutes I played I would do it. But to play 24 or 25 mintues is great. It’s fun. That’s college basketball.
GJ – What was it like to walk out off of the floor for the second straight year with a big win at Idaho State?
RUNDLES - Last year when I was a freshman it came down to the wire. And then when we played them here it also turned into overtime so it’s kind of turned into a rivalry. So, to go down there and get a split was big for us... good momentum for us coming home for our last two games.
I thought that one play really sort of opened things up for you when you had the ball toward the end of regulation where Andrew rolled past you and you dribbled off to the left and gave him a nice assist.
We were in the huddle a couple of possessions before that play after I took a bad three-pointer and Tinks told me, Cam, you’ve got to run on-ball screens from here on out. Well, that gave me confidence that he had confidence in me. So I knew I couldn’t settle for a jump shot, even though we were down three at the time. But I came off of the screen and the defenders were hedging, so I knew Drew would be open and it was a nice catch by him and a nice finish. That play really opened things up for me and we went back to that play a couple more times. That helped later when I shot my three, because my guy was (worrying) to not let me drive past him, after I gave him a little move to back him up and he bit on it and I had an open shot and, well the basketball gods helped me out and it dropped for me.
GJ – Every team needs a guy who can not only produce on offense, but who can also say by the way he’s playing, “We’re not going to lose this game,” and Sunday’s game it seemed like you were that guy in overtime.
RUNDLES - I think that was Jordan. Jordan got a big offensive rebound late in regulation and then he hit that big three to tie the game up. And then he had that time-out play. So when we were in the huddle before we started overtime, and I looked at Jordan and said, “If it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t be in this huddle going to overtime right now.” And we all looked at each other and said, “The past Grizzlies where we lost these close games are over and we’re not going to lose these close games.” That win over Idaho State showed that we can play with adversity in close games. Until Sunday I haven’t felt that way since the first game of the year against Colorado State.
GJ – You had another great assist in overtime, this time to Ryan Staudacher.
RUNDLES - It was 68-68 going into overtime and that was the first shot. I haven’t seen the game tape, but when I passed the ball to him, he was so open I was already jumping up and down before he shot it. Because if you give Ryan Staudacher that much room, you know it’s good, no matter what. That play started our overtime game for us and from there on we continued to get defensive stops. And not only that, we really rebounded the ball. But Jordan Hasquet controlled the glass in overtime. That just followed Andrew getting some big offensive boards and Kyle Sharp taking a charge that was one of the biggest defensive plays of the game.
GJ – You may not want to answer this, but a lot of people in Missoula still have
hopes the Grizzlies can do well in the playoffs.
RUNDLES - Well, I can be honest here. We play Northern Colorado and then we play Portland State which is the top of the league. But, no excuses. We’ve got to take care of things first against Northern Colorado. It’s not going to be easy either day. We know that Portland State is the best team in the league, hands down. Their record shows it. They’ve proved it. And they’re going to host.
I really want to win these next two games because I think we’ve got the best crowd in the Big Sky. I love playing with this crowd. Because, now that I’m a little more confident I’m going to be with this crowd, because they really are our sixth man and I want them to raise the roof. I’m looking forward to playing here too. I’d love to play three games here.
I look at the (Lady Griz) and they are dynamite. And they prove it. But I know that all we have to do is win and we’ll have as many fans as they do. We’re going to try hard to win these two games. We know that if we win more people will come, so it would be good to get some momentum going.
