The thrill of OT victory...

and the agony of OT defeat.

ASU 72, Stanford 68

Well, there you have it, opposing NCAA tournament teams. Watch this film to find out how to beat Stanford-- outrebound them (at least relative to the average opponent; I'm not sure whether they technically ended up ahead or not, but it was very close), outhustle them to loose balls, make them miss free throws (not actually that hard) and pay off the referees.

Seriously, this was an atrociously officiated game, starting with the fact that the refs couldn't seem to find their whistles in the first 15 minutes of the game, with the result that virtually no one was called for a foul for ANYTHING. Since Stanford has... oh, about five times as many post players as ASU (I approximate here), this clearly ended up favoring the Sun Devils.

Another particularly galling example of incompetence was when a ball which clearly, visibly to the TV eye, deflected off an ASU player trying to make a steal and bounced out the Stanford end was inexplicably given to ASU. Given that the game went to overtime, it's very possible that that play decided the game. I forget if ASU scored on that possession, but even if they didn't Stanford might have on the other end. So call it a 75% chance of being a game-changing play.

Also deciding the game was Stanford's clutch free-throw shooting, which quite frankly wasn't. On FIVE consecutive trips to the foul line stretching from regulation into OT, the Cardinal missed the front end of the free-throw attempt. (This is worse than missing the back end, because you can't rebound the miss.) This is not good enough.

It really irritates me when that strategy works, for a whole variety of reasons. First off, it's not basketball. It's like deciding the end of a hockey game by shooting penalty shots. (Oh. Wait. The NHL does that now, too. Well, let me put it on record that it's a pretty retarded way to end a pro hockey game.) Secondly, it arbitrarily rewards one skill (foul shooting) at the expense of others-- why should that particular skill be de rigeur for closing out tough games? And perhaps most importantly, it makes games drag on FOREVER in an endless succession of free throws and timeouts. It's like the basketball strategy equivalent of the Special Olympics. Even when it works, it's still retarded. And usually, it doesn't work.

Well, anyway, Stanford needed to be able to win an OT game with no Pendergraph on the floor (he fouled out as part of the end-game hackorama) and simply whiffed on the opportunity. I cannot figure out why they had so much trouble defending James Harden. Everybody in the building knew that he was going to take the shot for ASU every single time down the floor. I mean, box-and-one? Constant double-team? Something? Please?

Aargh. I don't expect them to win every game, certainly not every road game, but this was a really crummy way to lose to a team which once again (like Oregon) was visibly not as good.

Cal was taken apart by Arizona, marking the first time this year that both teams have gone down on the same day. As good as the wins over the Washington schools felt, these games feel equally bad.