Man, that was quick

Friday morning, I'm writing confidently about the Cardinal's chances to win against Texas.

Monday evening, or about 80 hours later if you're keeping score, the Trees have been embarrassed by Texas, which was in turn embarrassed by Memphis, and the season is over. Oh, and the best two players, not to mention collectively over half the team's offense, are skipping town.

That, friends, is a crummy weekend. 

Although my disciplined failure to pick Stanford over Texas in that game might end up earning me the big bucks in the office pool if Kansas wins the whole thing. I actually aced that region, which is nice since I blew five picks in each of the other three, for a solidly mediocre 75% prediction rate. From this point on, I promise that I will not refer to anything office-pool-related until next spring, because rule #1 of office pools is that absolutely no one but you cares about your success or failure in them.

Looking back at the Texas game, I'm wondering where my analysis broke down. I'm not sure it did, other than that Texas shot a whole lot better than Stanford did. The Cardinal were, trying to remember here, something like 10 of 55 on the game on jump shots, which is utterly horrific. Virtually all of their points came on layups and tip-ins. Good teams simply won't give you enough of those to win a game in which you give up more than about 50 points (I include the caveat so as not to be disproven by the UCLA-Texas A&M game from last weekend).

One thing I definitely remember-- both teams had an identical number of shots from the field. Texas made 10 more of them. That's really bad, particularly when you consider that Texas is not a particularly hot-shooting team in its own right. For one night, anyway, Stanford was just ice cold. Brook Lopez tried to carry the team, but he fatigued down the stretch under the pressure of designated fatso Dexter Pittman, and no one, his brother included (Robin was a -20 in points for this game when he was on the floor) picked him up.

Now comes the news that Robin Lopez is declaring for the NBA along with his brother. The loss of Brook was as much of a lock as anything in college ball, so I can't really be despondent about it, but I feel like Robin is making a mistake here. His stats for this year are significantly depressed by the fact that Brook played so many minutes and took up such a high percentage of the team's offense. His offensive rating was actually not much lower than his brother's, although ratings do tend to go down with greater possession usage, so take that with a grain of salt.

But imagine the kinds of numbers he could put up playing 30 minutes a game as the primary inside scorer, rebounder and shot-blocker. Probably not equal to Brook's this year on the offensive end, but it's hardly a stretch to envision 15 points, 10 boards and 4 blocks a game from Robin at this level, and those are absolutely lottery-pick numbers from a 7-footer who's only 21. As it is, his much less impressive stat line from this season will not impress NBA GMs, most of whom probably have not absorbed the full range of analysis that Mssrs. Pomeroy et al have developed over the last couple of years. To be sure, he had a good NCAA tournament (and looked good on semi-national TV) and can still impress people in workouts (and he will), but I don't see him rising higher than a late first-round pick... although that does create the odd potential scenario of both him and Brook being drafted by the same height-challenged lottery team. Perhaps that's the notion they have, but I don't think it's terribly likely.

In any event, I suspect that by declaring early, he's cost himself somewhere around $3-4 million in guaranteed money when all is said and done (obviously a rough estimate, and we'll see how much it turns out to be when the draft actually rolls around). He can still play his way into the NBA-- but it's a lot easier for him to play his way out of it.

I watched the Stanford women's game tonight, which was pretty fun-- they were insanely hot shooting the ball (what, 67 percent from 3?), and Candace Wiggins, who I've decided is pretty much the most awesome athlete ever, dropped 41 points on a very good Maryland team. The team as a whole scored 98, which is near-ridiculous for a high-level women's game (for perspective, the other regional today was 56-50). It's going to take a near-repeat effort AND better defense to beat UConn, which already beat the Stanford women on a neutral court earlier in the year. So, uh, go Rutgers, I guess.

Still, it's nice to see her break through to the Final Four. She deserves the chance to be honored on that kind of stage. I might post a wrap of that game once it's over, or perhaps a mixed Final Four Saturday/Stanford women wrapup on Sunday. I'd better write as much as I can in the next 8 days, because after that it's a prolonged college hoops wasteland until next fall (and given how the roster looks right now, probably more like fall of 2009... although perhaps that's a good thing considering that I'll be in law school next fall and probably pretty busy). We'll see whether the muse takes me.

Breaking Down the Horns

Let's go position by position to analyze this matchup.

PG: D.J. Augustin-- Alright, if you care at all about college basketball, you know who this guy is. Close to 20 points a game, deadly range, and great passing ability. An underrated part of his game, and of Texas's game in general, is that on offense they virtually never turn the ball over. (This is actually true in reverse for them defensively-- they don't turn people over much. I'd expect a pretty clean game tonight.) He's not an excessively efficient scorer (1.34 points per shot) but Texas's strong offensive rebounding game helps this out somewhat. He's unquestionably a great assist man-- 5.8 assists a game. Texas clearly has the edge here matchup-wise, and I'd expect to see Anthony Goods given Augustin as a defensive assignment.

SG: A.J. Abrams-- For a guy with as pure a stroke as this guy, you would expect him to post better than 1.20 points per shot. That's efficient enough, I guess, but it doesn't really seem to warrant the hype around him. He's not a slasher (60% of his field goal attempts are 3s) which will make him much easier for Stanford to defend than Jerel McNeal. Still, they can't give him open looks. This position is an edge for Texas, but not as much of one as one might think. Johnson, who lacks quickness but is otherwise a good defender, will probably man up with him.

SF/Wing: Damion James-- Justin Mason typically plays most of the minutes as the #3 guard. I don't think he'll be seeing a lot of action today, though, because Texas will have to put bigs on the floor to stop the Lopez twins. James is a dynamic rebounder, averaging a double-double. He's also a knockdown 3-point threat, making it the more odd that he can't shoot free throws. He's just 56% on the season. At 6-7, he'll have a height edge over Fred Washington, meaning that Fred's goal will be to push him to the perimeter rather than allow him to post up and collect misses. Definite edge to Texas here.

PF: Connor Atchley-- A guy who kind of came out of nowhere this year, Atchley is an efficient big who doesn't score or rebound a ton (9 points, 5 rebounds a game) but avoids turning the ball over. He's an excellent spot-up jump shooter, so he can probably pull one Lopez out of the paint if Augustin needs to drive the ball. Nonetheless, he doesn't have remotely close to Brook Lopez's scoring power and ability to take over the game. Huge edge for Stanford here.

C: By committee-- A group of guys including the big, big, big Dexter Pittman, the lanky but undersized Alexis Wangmene, and Gary Johnson (OK, some of these are not literally going to be playing the 5, but it's the best way to conceptualize the group). It's hard to characterize this bunch-- let's just say that they combine for about 10 points and 8 rebounds, which is decent, but are undersized. Big edge to Robin Lopez, who's developed his offensive game to go along with what should be a major defensive edge at this position.

Overall I actually like this game better from a matchup standpoint for Stanford than I did Marquette. Texas plays a lot of zone defense and doesn't force turnovers, meaning that Stanford should be able to get post entries to the Lopezes and rack up offensive rebounds, not to mention move the ball on the perimeter so that they can get open shots there. Texas is good at challenging shots but not particularly great at other aspects of defense, and since Stanford can't shoot anyway, their offense may not be overly affected by this.

On the defensive end, Texas has a lot more spot-up shooting than Marquette does-- Augustin is a great guard in all respects, of course, but Abrams is an outside guy and Justin Mason, their usual third guard, probably won't play as much as usual due to matchup issues. Atchley is hugely outclassed athletically by the Lopezes, so most of their frontcourt production is going to have to come from James. Overall I think the smaller number of threats enables Stanford to create pseudo-double teams (a guard and a Lopez) on inside shots without as much fear of Texas exploiting a mismatch somewhere else. Texas is not an up-tempo team, which really plays into Stanford's hands-- while not as slow as Stanford, Texas was below average in possessions per game this year.

However, let's not kid ourselves. Texas is a very good team and they're playing a semi-home game. The latter, plus the generally higher quality of Texas's players, certainly makes this game no easier to win than the Marquette game and probably a bit harder. Stanford is the underdog here, but not by as much, perhaps, as one might think.

Pac-10 note: Washington State fell yesterday; they were simply outclassed by North Carolina's scoring ability. I'd like to recognize just how good their senior class was this year. That program had nothing-- but nothing-- when Low, Weaver and Cowgill showed up. Their steady improvement and the great coaching of the Bennetts turned that program completely around. My hat is off to them.

Match Point

Meaning:

1. The final point in a tennis, volleyball, or other volley sport which, if won by the leading side, will result in a victory for that side,
2. A somewhat clever and ironically appropriate Woody Allen film which includes Scarlett Johannsen (who I still cannot believe is not at least 30 years old by now, and no, that's not a comment on her looks, obviously) and several musings on the role of luck in human affairs, viewed by the author a week or so ago,
3. The new Official March Madness Certified Greatest Shot in Stanford History (eclipsing the absurd Nick Robinson runner to beat Arizona and keep the unbeaten season alive in February 2004).

Stanford 82, Marquette 81 (OT)

I don't know how much more there is to say about the game. Obviously, I was both right (that these teams were a razor's edge apart talent-wise) and wrong (in thinking mid-game that the game would fall on the other side of said razor's edge). Perhaps if I keep at the writing thing long enough, I can learn to contain my neuroses a bit better-- or perhaps not; it may be unavoidable. I still have no idea whatsoever who would win a seven game series between the two teams. I do know that there's no possible way such a series could have been this gut-wrenching, thrilling and historic unless it went to game seven, which is why March Madness is unbelievably awesome and the NBA playoffs, frankly, suck.

I'm sure there will be more pseudo-mystical musings on the nature of luck and its long-term effects once the season is over, but right now there are still more games to play. I'll be back in the next day or two with a full breakdown of Texas and a matchup analysis. My first glance take is that Texas may actually be a better matchup, because they're more dependent on stationary shooters than penetrators, and because their depth sucks, particularly in the frontcourt. Augustin is still a huge problem, though.

Incidentally, the Pomeroy Ratings see this game as a literal coin flip-- 50% for each team. It's going to be mighty fun, and unlike the agonizing runup to last Saturday, at this point the Cardinal are playing with house money-- they've gotten over the second-round hump, they've gotten as far as their seed indicates they ought to and they're playing a higher-seeded opponent. There's nothing to lose-- and no talking head can ever take away the glorious reality of Saturday's finish.

What was that about the nightmare scenario again?

Halftime, Marquette up by 6 points. Stanford can't hit outside shots (Anthony Goods had, I think, one point in the half), Brook Lopez is in foul trouble, and the defense has completely fallen apart over the last 10 minutes or so, as Marquette scores at will on penetration and kickouts.

Oh, and Trent Johnson, who had been changing up defenses on the fly to try to keep Marquette contained, just got tossed from the game on consecutive technicals (following, I might add, a truly atrocious call in which a Marquette player who tripped trying to split a double team inexplicably received a foul against Lawrence Hill). This handed Marquette four points, by the way, and they promptly proceeded to reel off a bunch more before Stanford finally got things under control to end the half down only six.

This is one of those "Cassandra moments" where you predict the worst, no one else apparently seems to notice, and then it happens exactly like you expected it to. At least it will probably all be over in an hour. Unfortunately, so will the college career of Brook Lopez, and quite possibly that of his brother as well. What a shitty way to go out.

Feel free to panic now

Yes, the nightmare scenario for Cardinal fans has come to pass-- despite getting a 3-seed in the Tournament, the team is matched up in the second round with an opponent which is a. guard-dominated, creating a mismatch (upsets happen far more in mismatches than in situations where teams play similar styles), b. faster and press-happy (we saw how well that worked out last season), and c. severely underseeded (Marquette ranks 12th in the Pomeroy rankings at last count).

Stanford 77, Cornell 53

Some quick thoughts on this game before I move on to the real heart of the matter, the Marquette breakdown/panic attack:

Ivy League quick is nothing like Pac-10 quick. Stanford's players were sticking like glue to virtually every Cornell player, with the result that until the scrubs came in at about the 30-minute mark, Cornell barely got off an open shot of any kind. Louis Dale, the Ivy League player of the year, went approximately 0-for-50 in the first half, and their other shooters weren't doing a heck of a lot better.

If Stanford can bottle some of their outside shooting from this game and sprinkle it over the court before Saturday's throwdown, they should win easily. It's been a while since the team looked like a genuinely good shooting club from beyond about 10 feet, but all three of the major outside threats (Anthony Goods, Landry Fields, and Kenny Brown) knocked down a couple of 3s.

The team continues to suffer some rebounding lapses at times on the defensive end, which I find kind of inexplicable. For the first, eh, 10 minutes or so, Cornell was hanging around on the glass. Eventually the team exerted themselves, but given how well Marquette rebounded against Kentucky, they're going to need to avoid lapses like that or risk finding themselves on the short end of scoring runs. Both of the last two losses (UCLA in the Pac-10 tourney, USC the week before) were at least partly the result of being severely outworked in rebounding by smaller teams.

Now, the panic-mongering:

Granted, Stanford has played and beaten guard-happy pressing teams before, but none of this caliber. Dominic James is healthy and looks as explosive as ever, on top of which he's shooting well from outside. Jerel McNeal is like a sped-up arcade version of Louis Dale, the guy Stanford disposed of yesterday. And while none of their players is very tall, they have some Joevan Catron-type long-armed guys to at least confuse the issue on the glass and allow for gang-rebounding.

The keys to the game are very simple-- shoot well, avoid turnovers against what will inevitably be a strong press, and find a way to stop guard penetration. These are the three things that this Stanford team, otherwise an extremely strong squad, is the absolute worst at doing. They'll get some easy buckets for the Lopez twins, but I'm not even sure they're going to be able to put both of them on the floor at once. Perhaps a station-to-station approach could beat the press, using the Lopezes as "bases" for the smaller guys to work around to move the ball upcourt? As far as I know, this has never really been tried.

In the halfcourt defense, I think the team is going to have to use a zone. It sucks that Marquette is going to get open 3s off of it, but the alternative-- tons of layups and fouls on the Lopez twins-- is that much worse.

Let me put this in as blunt of terms as possible. I think Marquette is the favorite in this game. Not by a huge amount, mind you-- it's basically a coin flip. But the favorite nonetheless. It's hard to believe that Stanford could have the bad luck to be paired with what's not only the most underseeded team in the entire tournament, but also a stylistic nightmare. Then again, bad luck-- in one form or another-- is pretty much the story of the NCAA tournament for Stanford since the last Elite 8 run in 2001. It's going to take real skill to play around this. Let's hope the Cards exhibit it, because I don't think I can bear to see another round of we-told-you-so finger-wagging from self-righteous media types who don't bother to look under the surface and realize that Marquette is, you know, actually frigging good at basketball.

Big Red, or Big Red 11?

That's the question that tomorrow's game will answer. (In case the reference is opaque, here's a hint. One of the Stanford players is number 11. I'll let you guess which one.)

OK, so Cornell really shouldn't be able to hang in this game. That doesn't mean they won't, of course. This is March Madness. Here's the deal on Cornell-- they're a highly balanced offensive team whose offense stems from the play of their point guard. He averages about 13 points a game, shoots 90 percent on his free throws (and gets quite a number of them) and dishes to the team's leading scorer, a 6-6 sharpshooting wing of the species forwardus midmajorus. Translation-- he's a knockdown shooter but no threat off the bounce.

So you've got your defensive matchups. Anthony Goods needs to play good perimeter D on Cornell's point, while Freddy Washington and Lawrence Hill dog the small forward position to prevent any open looks from the outside. Sounds simple enough. Cornell also deploys a 7-footer, kind of a project player but one who's put together a pretty nice season despite having spent his first 2.5 seasons of athletic eligibility on the bench at two separate colleges. Somewhere about December, the coach called him up and he responded. I think Stanford can pretty much shut off penetration from Cornell's exterior, meaning the game will hinge on their ability to pressure the 3-point arc.

The key Stanford offensive player? I'm going to say Robin Lopez, who's going to be guarded by a man who is several inches shorter than he is. If Robin can make Cornell pay for double-teaming his brother, Stanford should have a pretty easy time scoring in the paint. There's little reason for Stanford to go extensively to the outside shooting game in this one. I like the concept of shooting high-arc midrange shots which will bounce high off the rim if they don't go down-- Mitch Johnson is pretty good at this-- and letting the Lopezes play volleyball on the interior.

Overall this is a strong matchup for the Cardinal, but no game in the tournament is easy. Meanwhile, all Stanford fans need to dig out their rabbits' feet for the first game of the Anaheim set, in which Marquette (very good team, horrible matchup) plays Kentucky (mediocre team, near autowin). Somehow Kentucky has clawed their way into the picture this season after being essentially left for dead at the side of the road in early January. Can they claw one more win out of this season? Best hope so. Marquette's perimeter quickness is going to shred Stanford's defense. If the team has a bad shooting game in that putative matchup, or Marquette puts on a lot of full-court pressure, it could get ugly.

Speaking of big, red and the numeral 1, the Big Red One is the longest serving divisional combat unit in the U.S. Army and served a major role in World War II, fighting in North Africa, Sicily and at Omaha Beach during the Normandy landings. This is apropos of absolutely nothing, but at least you can say you learned something.

Bracket Thoughts

Some general notes on the bracket before I dive into the Stanford-Cornell pairing:

1. As some have noted, the committee did a really, really bad job of creating interesting mid-major vs. high-major matchups. Consider this: in the bracket, there are seven teams seeded 8 or better that are not from a Big Six conference.

Guess how many of those are playing major-conference opponents. Answer: two. One of those is the bizarre Xavier-Georgia matchup which came about because of an automatic bid. The other one is an 8-9 game.

Quite frankly, this bugs me. It seriously limits the number of predicted mid-over-high wins in the tournament. It's very possible-- depending on the matchups-- that there may not be a single game in the tournament where a non-BCS team other than Memphis or Xavier is actually a favorite over a BCS team.

It took me literally a minute to figure out a scenario where Drake plays Villanova instead of Western Kentucky. (Switch those two, then switch UConn and Vandy.) Butler-South Alabama could have been fixed (and another anomaly avoided, see below) by simply flipping Arizona and USA! Arkansas and Kent State can then be flipped to eliminate another needless mid-mid pairing.

I don't have much of a problem with treating Xavier and Memphis like high-majors, since they basically are. Ditto Gonzaga, which would easily be Davidson's biggest scalp in recent memory. But seriously... Drake-WKU? I thought BracketBusters was a month ago.

2. Someone please pass a rule exempting West Coast schools from the 9:30 AM time slot. Saint Mary's and Gonzaga are massively disadvantaged in their first-round games by this factor. (Gonzaga gets to play a semi-away game to boot... see below.) So is Portland State, if anyone cares. There's just no reason why those games have to be put in those time slots.

3. What looked like an anomaly last year (Louisville getting Texas A&M in Kentucky) now appears to be a full-blown, ugly trend. Far too many lower seeds are gaining advantages by receiving cushy draws close to home. It's not quite as bad as the women's tournament, where if you're lucky enough to host you get home games even if you're a 12 seed, but it's getting there. There are, depending on how you reckon it, between 4 and 6 "semi-home" games in the first round. 2-4 of those are #1 seeds. The others are a pair of #10 seeds, which is ludicrous.

Ultimately, these gaffes give the bracket an air of rushed carelessness, which is exactly what you'd expect. The committee had to create eight contingency plans for games on the last day. Is it any surprise that these weren't exactly well thought out?

It just makes no sense to me that the selection show has to immediately follow as soon as the last game is done. Seriously, CBS, would it kill you to give them a frigging hour to look things over and tweak the bracket to produce better matchups? I spent, max, 5 minutes figuring out a small number of bracket tweaks that would have made a far more interesting bracket (IMHO, of course). I understand that this year the conference tournaments were a perfect storm of nightmare scenarios (literally a perfect storm, in the SEC case), so I don't really blame the committee. I do blame CBS. Do they have such contempt for their viewers that they think an hour of pre-selection debate and discussion would destroy the show's audience? I just can't see that happening. People will tune in because they want to see where their team is playing, whether it's on at 3 pm, 4 pm or 4 am. (The latter not suggested for other reasons.)

Oh well. At least it makes my 7-10 upset picks easy.

Better lucky than good?

That's got to be what UCLA is telling themselves at this point.

UCLA 67, Stanford 64

Somehow or other, UCLA again defeated Stanford despite Kevin Love doing his best (injury-induced, to be sure) Daven Harmeling imitation-- all jump shots, no post play-- and the team shooting free throws like they were at those carny stalls with the heavy balls and the 18-foot rims. Somehow they managed to get by on an assortment of H.O.R.S.E. shots from Darren Collison, who seems to have taken his Angel of Stanford Death role somewhat seriously of late.

There's something about UCLA that just provokes panic in opponents. I'm not really sure what does it, but every game it seems like the opposing team goes through a stretch of about 5 minutes where they make every possible wrong decision, and for Stanford, that stretch came between about 7 and 2 minutes to go in this one. UCLA hit a couple of buckets to go up 55-48, and then the wheels suddenly fell off of the Stanford offense. Instead of pounding it into the post or moving the ball around the perimeter, the "offense" suddenly became off-balance 12-foot prayers from the middle of the lane and turnovers. Lots of turnovers. The team sort of recovered its composure after a while, but a pretty spirited comeback in the last couple of minutes ended with a halfcourt heave clanking off the side iron. It didn't have to be that way.

Trent Johnson needs to use this game as a lesson for the team. Something like "Look, guys. We have a good defense. We know we can shut down the opposition's offense to give us a chance to get back into games. But the only way that's going to happen is if we run OUR offense, because quite frankly we suck at 'panic offense.'" Which is true; as I said, in a sloppy game, Stanford's advantages are largely nullified.

More to come soon, once Stanford's NCAA fate (seemingly, a 3-seed in the Anaheim subregional... but which regional, and which other 3 teams standing between them and the Sweet 16, TBD) is known.

Championship Saturday

I love this day. Teams, bids, great matchups. Just finished watching a pair of great finishes in the UNC-Va. Tech and Wisconsin-Michigan State games. I still don't understand how Wisconsin wins basketball games, but they appear to be good enough at it that I'll give them the benefit of the doubt...

Meanwhile, another excellently played game in the Pac-10 ends up with a Stanford victory.

Stanford 75, Washington State 68

It's remarkable to note that this was actually something of a blowout. Washington State did not ever appear to have an answer for the Lopez twins. Their bigs got in foul trouble and were totally ineffective offensively, and Stanford rebounded missed shots seemingly at will on the offensive end. Brook Lopez was simply a force of nature, with 30 points. Even he couldn't seem to believe how much he was scoring.

Washington State was able to stay in the game on the scoreboard mostly with unconscious three-point shooting. While I grant you that a bunch of the ones that went in were open looks, a bunch of them weren't, either (notably the shot on which Daven Harmeling picked up a four-point play). Kyle Weaver did everything he could, including making a number of threes himself (his scoring tends to come around the rim, not on outside shots). But Washington State simply lacked the skill and height to hang with Stanford in this one. I wish them well in the tournament-- they're such a fun team to watch, with their great offensive ball movement, passion for the game and veteran players. They're one of the smartest teams in all of college ball. But Stanford is pretty smart too, and they have a lottery pick. It makes a difference.

It'll be interesting to see how this afternoon's final goes. UCLA is missing Mbah a Moute, which is going to mean a lot of time for relatively crude bigs Lorenzo Mata-Real and Alfred Aboya. Still, I can't see Stanford having a great chance of winning. It's essentially a road game, the team has to be tired with 3 games in 2 1/2 days, and their defense is really dependent on high-energy ball pressure, while the offense is going to need crisp execution to avoid turnovers. In a sloppy game, UCLA has every advantage, and conference tournament finals-- thanks to the ridiculously compressed schedules-- are almost always sloppy games.

It's been a fun year in the Pac-10; let's hope the final game is equally fun-- and that it's not really the final game. UCLA-Stanford IV in the national semis? Not likely, but stranger things have happened.

See, that was a good game

Every time I periodically get depressed about this Stanford team, they have a way of showing me something that reenergizes my hope for them to make a deep NCAA tournament run.

Stanford 71, Arizona 56

The score was not that bad ultimately, but the score really doesn't reflect how much of a blowout this one became in the second half (after an even first half). Whenever a team that was way down suddenly comes roaring back in the second half, announcers will talk about "a tale of two halves." Well, this one was like that without the first-half deficit. The game went from a nailbiter to a snooze in the space of about 5 minutes of clock time, 5 minutes in which Stanford's anaconda-like play style squeezed the life out of Arizona on both ends of the floor.

First, the defense-- Arizona was able to generate some pretty easy points in the first half by getting helpers to leave Jordan Hill alone. He had four or five dunks in this one, but that was about the extent of 'Zona's easy buckets. Once Stanford shifted to a bigger lineup with multiple shotblockers, this became far less of an issue. Arizona could penetrate, but if they went up for a shot it would be blocked, and the only big man, Hill, was still covered by a Lopez.

The big lineup was also crucial for the team's offense. There wasn't a lot of subtlety to it-- throw the ball up there and let guys crash for easy layups. Arizona's blockouts were terrible in this game, allowing Fred Washington to sneak in and collect a bunch of garbage. And obviously it's not easy to block someone out when he's seven feet tall and can just reach over your head to grab balls. Arizona's short lineup really crippled them on the glass in the second half.

I've talked before about the importance of dictating matchups to your opponent. As soon as you take out your center because your opponent has put 4 guards on the floor, you've agreed to play by his rules. There's a reason he wants to play by those rules-- his team is better at it! Arizona tried to dictate that the game be played mid-major style-- lots of guards, slow tempo, one shot per possession-- because they lacked frontcourt (indeed, any) depth, and they did so by overwhelmingly using 3 guards plus Chase Budinger, who's a shooting guard masquerading as a college forward.

Trent Johnson was having none of that. There was pretty much no point in the game at which at least two of the Lopezes, Hill and Finger-- all standout rebounders-- were not on the floor. He recognized that even though Budinger and McClellan can take Brook Lopez and Mitch Johnson off the dribble in theory, it just doesn't matter when they'll never get to the rim to finish. He wasn't forced to trade defensive mismatches for offensive mismatches the way, say, Duke does all the time. Net result-- Arizona gets annihilated on the offensive glass, and Stanford walks away with a remarkably easy victory, while Kevin O'Neill licks his wounds and (if he's a reflective man) wonders how he was so soundly beaten by Trent Johnson in the coaching war.

Cal's disappointing season comes to an end with a thrashing at the hands of UCLA, setting up two genuine neutral-court semifinals. Weird, I know. Isn't this the Pac-10 tournament? USC and UCLA square off for the rubber match, while Stanford and Wazoo get fundamental with each other (not in that way... get your mind out of the gutter) for the third time this year. The first two were great basketball, albeit of the "not crazy-running-up-and-down" variety, so there's reason to believe this will be more of the same.

Ugh

Saturday's games left a distinctly foul taste in my mouth.

USC 77, Stanford 64

Let's start with the Stanford game. No one-- I mean NO one-- showed up for this game wearing crimson except for Kenny Brown. The entire rest of the team looked apathetic, disinterested, bored. Even Taj Finger wasn't diving for loose balls. Look, I understand the UCLA game was irritating. I understand this game wasn't going to affect the final conference standings. I understand it was early in the morning and the players were worn out after Thursday. But come on. USC had at least four or five dunks off of offensive rebounds. The Cardinal were outrebounded by 16 by the worst rebounding team in the conference. Defense seemed to be optional; Trent Johnson eventually had to go to a zone because no one was bothering to mark their man. And the team took a whole bunch of astoundingly poor shots. It was an absolutely pathetic performance which did a ton to erase whatever goodwill the media community had toward the team after they were robbed on Thursday.

Next, the UCLA-Cal game. From a conference standpoint, it's probably as well that UCLA won it. From the standpoint of "wanting to watch basketball, not pro wrestling," it was about as bad as it gets. At least the Thursday travesty was only a single bad call. Here's the full sequence of events that had to happen for Cal to lose this game:

1. Kevin Love makes a miracle double-clutch three, making the score 80-79 Cal.
2. Cal inbounds to Ryan Anderson, who is obviously hacked by the defense. The ball goes out of bounds. No foul is called.
3. Despite the ball clearly going out off of two UCLA players, the referees give the ball to UCLA.
4. UCLA's next shot is blocked out of bounds with 6 seconds left.
5. Ball is inbounded to Josh Shipp, who is cut off on the baseline by great defense from Eric Viernesal and hoists a prayer over the backboard. Despite this being every bit as illegal as taking a jumper from a sideline inbounds and having it go through the net, the officials count the basket with 1.5 seconds to go.
6. Cal throws the ball into the frontcourt, where Shipp punches it into the stands. Although punching the ball is a violation-- which should cause the clock to stop as soon as it occurs, like a kicked ball-- the officials run 8 tenths of a second off the clock, eliminating Cal's ability to catch and take a dribble or pump fake. Predictably, given that the team can only catch-and-shoot, the final shot falls short.

I don't believe I've ever seen a team up by 4 with 20 seconds to go lose a game without doing a single thing wrong before. No missed free throws, no turnovers, nothing. Cal played a perfect end of the game and was hosed by a combination of freakish UCLA luck and one of the worst officiating sequences since the 1972 Olympic final.

Next, the ASU-OSU and WSU-Washington games. These were not televised. FSN's decision to show random non-live programming instead of Pac-10 basketball irritated me on numerous occasions this year, although at least this time most of the time was taken up by the ACC women's tournament. Couldn't the Pac-10 games have gone to FSN+?

Finally, the Oregon-Arizona game. Jerryd Bayless is called at a key point for a double foul, after being essentially mugged by a ringer off the Oregon bench. It's his third foul of the first half, and from that point onward, Oregon is never challenged (although their unbelievable shooting-- I don't recall perfectly, but they may not have missed a 3-pointer in the entire second half-- might have made the result inevitable anyway). The final game of the season perfectly symbolizes the whole year for Pac-10 officiating-- not merely anal-retentive and asinine, but incompetent as well.

Aren't we all looking forward to the Pac-10 tournament now?

Wednesday, Cal faces off with Washington for the "designated Cinderella hopeful" spot, while Oregon State gets creamed by Arizona again and finally stops doing everything in its power to lower the conference's RPI. Quarterfinals are Thursday, with Stanford facing Arizona and Cal-- if it survives Washington-- facing UCLA again. In LA. Again. Thank you, powers that be, for beneficently granting UCLA and USC multiple extra home games every season. It's not quite as retarded as Memphis getting the C-USA tournament on its actual home floor every year, but it's close. Considering the fact that EVERY SINGLE OTHER MAJOR MARKET IN THE PAC-10 HAS AN NBA FRANCHISE, one would think that perhaps the tournament could be rotated around the five "nexi". One would apparently think incorrectly.

That's enough griping for one day, I think. Hopefully I'll have time soon to break down the all-conference selections (which, except for the curious choice of OJ Mayo over Jerryd Bayless for First Team, were actually pretty well put together).

Speechless

Utterly speechless.

UCLA 77, Stanford 67 (OT)

I'm not even going to attempt to analyze this game. I don't have the stomach for it. Suffice it to say that a well-played, hard-fought Stanford road victory at a national powerhouse was negated-- utterly negated-- by one of the worst calls I have ever seen in my life. Lawrence Hill plays textbook perfect defense to block a Darren Collison drive with 2 seconds left-- and gets called for a foul. On the fucking best free throw shooter in the entire Pac-10 conference. Regardless of the number of replays you look at-- and there were at least two, one of them on the X-mo slow motion camera-- Hill's arms did not so much as graze Collison's. If there was any body contact whatsoever, and I'm not convinced there was, it was incidental lower-body contact initiated by Collison. Even at full speed, it was one of the most obvious clean blocks I've ever seen.

The officiating throughout this game was as godawful as Pac-10 officiating usually is, but that call was something else. You thought the Villanova foul-90-feet-from-the-basket call was wrong? (And it was...) This was worse. Not only was it the officials deciding the game instead of the play on the court, which has to happen sometimes, it was simply a flagrantly bad call. It would have been a flagrantly bad call in the first minute of a game. And it decided both a. a top-10 matchup, and b. the Pac-10 conference title. You think that might have been a time to let them play, refs?

The overtime at that point was a foregone conclusion. There's no way you recover from that. Just despicable.

Happy belated win...

You may have heard something about this around these parts, but Brook Lopez is good at basketball.

Stanford 60, Washington State 53

I have to be honest with you-- I was not enamored of Stanford's chances of winning this game from the get-go (I thought it was basically a toss-up with how well WSU has played on the road) and seeing the team shut out for 5 minutes and down 13 in the first half didn't exactly assuage my concerns.

Then came a gift Robin Lopez slam on an inbounds play to end the half, and a quick run to start the second half and put the Cardinal back in it. The key to that run was unquestionably Brook Lopez. His signature play for me as a Cardinal will probably remain the play on which he was double teamed, drew a foul on a contested fadeaway 12-footer, and somehow made the shot.

WSU had no answers. Baynes could body him but had no chance to stop him from taking a shot other than by fouling; Cowgill couldn't hold post position. WSU Hoops notes that Stanford has generated two of the three highest Free Throw Rates (the ratio of made free throws to attempted field goals) on the season against WSU, normally a highly disciplined defensive team.

We also got to see a little bit of that big-man chemistry that occasionally shows up when the Lopezes are on the floor together. It makes a lot of sense, really-- they're both taller than everyone else out there, so why not just pass the ball where the defense can't reach it? Robin Lopez had a couple of assists, and both of them were on essentially effortless baskets by Brook.

Taj Finger, as usual, was the unsung hero. 8 points and 3 rebounds doesn't really tell the tale-- he made the biggest shot of the game (a 3-pointer-- normally he has a mediocre outside shot, but somehow he has a knack for hitting them at the right moments) to tie the game for the first time since it was 0-0, and if I recall rightly, WSU had exactly two points from there until the end of the game.

The defense, as usual, put the other team through an involuntary clinic on Contested 15-foot Fadeaways, and although WSU is good enough that they came away with 11 assists, the team only made 6 baskets overall in the second half. A remarkable job to shut down one of the most efficient offenses in the country.

Honestly, I kind of hope these teams meet up again in the Pac-10 tournament (maybe in a 2 vs. 3 semifinal game). It's just good basketball. One word of advice to WSU though: don't break out the bright red uniforms against Stanford. Stick to maroon. It's bad form to yoink the other team's colors, and I have no doubt, in the inevitable Gregg Easterbrook paraphrase, that the Basketball Gods were displeased by that display of sartorial hubris.

Up next? Only UCLA on the road. I don't want to say it's for all the marbles-- it strikes me as eminently possible that Stanford could move into a conference tie by beating UCLA, then lose an exhausted follow-up to USC and end up second in the league anyway. But it's sort of a prerequisite for even getting to the point of playing for all the marbles. Or half of the marbles. Or something.

The annoyingly quick turnaround time (Saturday's game is at 11 AM) does mean that if the team gets down by a bunch, it might be better to capitulate and regroup than to expend a ton of energy on a comeback. It sucks, but sometimes these tradeoffs need to be made. Let's hope the game stays close and entertaining throughout so that these perverse incentives don't come into play.

Cal ended any hopes by gacking up a game to Washington in which Joe Wolfinger (no, I haven't heard of him either) scored 17 points, and is essentially playing for an NIT bid at this point.

I'm hoping I'll be able to see tomorrow night's game, but I may not. With luck I'll be able to slip out the door of the George Washington "admitted-student reception" around 7:30 after the food and before the heavy-duty schmoozing, and then dash home to only miss the first couple of minutes. We'll see.