In rugby action today...

Stanford defeats USC, 52-46.

This was an old-school game. And by old-school, I mean it was reminiscent of the ancient Maya ball game, in which the players attempted to knock the ball through a vertical hoop (so it had to go through sideways) without using their hands to propel it. The only differences I could see: a. There was slightly more scoring in this game, and b. the losing team was not subsequently "honored" by participating in a blood sacrifice to the gods-- as the victims. Maybe they should have been.

Let's go through the ugliness:

The two teams had a combined assist to turnover ratio of 15:43.

ONE starter had a shooting percentage over 50%. (Taj Gibson, to be exact.)

Stanford shot 14 more times than USC, and made the same number of shots. And USC was not exactly lighting it up either.

Stanford scored 38 points on 63 shots. That's an effective field goal percentage of .302.

As far as I can make out, each team possessed the ball 66 times. USC therefore managed to score an average of .70 points per possession. Just for reference, an average NCAA team might score 1 point per possession. So USC was roughly 30% worse than an average team in this game; Stanford wasn't far behind, at .79 points per possession.

You had to watch this game to see how bad it was. Time and time again, each team would have open looks and simply whiff. Stanford was clearly the worse offender here. They utterly dominated the offensive glass-- pulling down fully half of the rebounds at that end of the floor, while giving up just 8 offensive boards to USC in 34 chances-- and simply could not convert those offensive boards into points. Apparently making point-blank layups was too easy, or something.

USC's problem was less the "lid on the basket" issue and more the "can't sink a shot no matter how open I am" one. SC's guys could have, on several occasions, taken set shots from 3-point range and had plenty of time to load beforehand, and they still clanked off the side of the rim. I can't tell if it was an off night or simply the wrong people taking the shots.

I think both teams would be well served to throw the videotape of this game in the trash bin. They'd be even better served to erase it from the stat sheets.