Now blogging from a new location...

I've been having some frustrating issues with the interface on my home computer, and finally got around to posting this at work.

Oregon 71, Stanford 66

There's no worse feeling than losing a close game to a visibly weaker team. There were so many ways Stanford could have won this game-- make ANY three-pointers, shoot better than 50% at the free-throw line, not allow 5'6" guys to get layups, shoot a non-airball on the final meaningful possession...

I mean, Oregon played well given their limitations. They're a great passing team-- that much was obvious from the number of seemingly impossible situations they extricated themselves from when they penetrated inside. They know how to shoot, they know what shots to take, and they make a lot of them.

That being said... basketball is a game of height. Stanford dominated Oregon in height and should have dominated them in the run of play. My comments of the other day were somewhat prescient, in the wrong way. There were pretty much three types of game here-- the parts where both Lopezes were in the game, the parts where only one was, and the parts where neither was. And # of Lopezes was pretty strongly correlated with whether Stanford was winning or losing the game.

I don't want to sound like I'm blaming Trent Johnson for the loss here. Somewhere along the line, your players have to make some shots. But I felt like he didn't appreciate the total dominance that having two Lopezes in allowed Stanford to have on the boards and inside the arc. With them both in, Oregon's only prayer was to bomb away from 3 and hope they hit a bunch.

Let's hope some lessons have been learned for Thursday's game against Arizona. Zona isn't the same as Oregon-- their scorers are really only three deep, to the point where a triangle-and-two defense actually makes quite a bit of sense-- but the same basic premise applies. Dominate the height game, and you'll dominate the entire game.

Bayless and Budinger are going to score. A lot. But if "a lot" is 15 points each instead of 25, Stanford can-- nay, should-- win easily.

This is an absolutely critical weekend for both Bay Area teams. Stanford needs a sweep to stay in the Pac-10 title hunt. Cal needs at least a split to keep their bid hopes on track, and a sweep-- according to Joe Lunardi, ESPN's bracket guru-- would definitely put them into the field. I'm going to be missing tomorrow night's game, unfortunately, and perhaps Saturday's as well... so I'll probably be filling the time by raving a little more about how good Ryan Anderson is.