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.