Bad Sports Metaphors 101

Is Trent Johnson a pizza chef?

A sushi guru?

Or perhaps the guy behind the counter at Baskin Robbins?

Stanford 66, Oregon State 46

I ask the question because so far, he seems to be pretty good at mixing up the flavor of the day to stop a given opponent. I observe the bad metaphor because, frankly, I like quality writing, and food metaphors are, pretty much by definition, excluded from that category.

The inimitable and unreplicable baseball blog FJM has an entire category of howlers related to the misuse (perhaps I should just say "use") of food metaphors in bad sports journalism. I'm just doing my small part to keep them in business.

In any event, tonight Robin Lopez came off the bench for the first time in his collegiate career so that Stanford could run a quicker, smaller lineup out for the first couple of minutes. It worked like a charm. The Cardinal rung up most of the final margin of victory by the first TV timeout (I use the term loosely, because the game wasn't televised) and at that point, the game was essentially over. Lawrence Hill finally broke out of his inexplicable (the word is the Chronicle's) 3-pointer slump by hitting 3 of 4. The rest of the team basically got their minutes, racked up some decent numbers, and got out of the building with a solid whomping of a clearly inferior opponent.

Again some props have to go to Stanford's defense, which frequently has opponents simply looking befuddled at how they're supposed to score the basketball. OSU shot a miserable 17-for-56 and racked up a mere 6 assists. Their only double-figure scorer, Omari Johnson, accomplished the feat by attempting 15 shots.

The question at hand now is: what lineup is best suited to stop Oregon on Sunday? Does Stanford go big and try to simply play above Oregon's heads? (The Ducks are virtually big-man free once again this year, something that Ernie Kent has worked hard to address with next year's massive incoming class.) Or do they play small and try to run with Oregon? I'm inclined to say "go big," myself. Oregon is not, despite the guard-heaviness, a particularly aggressive defensive team. It's more "roughly 20 minutes of heck" than "40 minutes of hell". I think Stanford can dictate the flow of the game to Oregon, force them to deploy bench players that really shouldn't be playing in games this important, and foul out Maarty Leunen by using the Lopez twins copiously. We'll see if Trent Johnson agrees.