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.