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.
No comments:
Post a Comment