Wasn't in the cards...

for me to see either game last weekend. You see, I am, or at least have been (I've been a bit lax lately) an avid participant in that protean pasteboard pastime, Magic: the Gathering. Many of the readers of approximately my age will recognize the game. Unfortunately my local player group tends to meet on Thursday nights... and I was at a tournament Saturday to inaugurate the release of a new set of cards. So. Not much in the way of firsthand observations to offer here. Instead, I'm forced to resort to flippancies, like noting that Brook Lopez appears to have a facial tic in his photo on the Stanford website. Nothing like a little Bell's Palsy to liven up any photo, eh?

Stanford 56, Arizona 52

Stanford 67, Arizona State 52

In an ironic rejoinder to last Sunday's loss, Stanford won the Arizona game at the free-throw stripe. The Cardinal hit 9 of 11; the Wildcats 6 out of 13. Then Arizona turns around two nights later and ices a no doubt extremely frustrated Cal team at the free-throw stripe. College basketball is weird.

In both games, the Cardinal did an outstanding job of limiting the opposition's scoring through tough defense. ASU's 2-point shooting in the second half was a miserable 2-for-14, and for the game it wasn't much better-- 9 for 33. That's barely over half a point per shot. Arizona was not quite as bad (34 points on 43 2-point attempts). Still, in general, if you can hold your opponents to under a point per 2-point attempt, you're doing good. Keep in mind the general rule of 1-point-per-possession, and the fact that many possessions end in turnovers.

I was a little worried-- OK, I was extremely worried-- about Mitch Johnson getting broken down by Jerryd Bayless all night long. He looked lost at times trying to guard Tajuan Porter last week. But to his significant credit, he hung on and helped hold Bayless to a mere 9 points.

Stanford shot better than the opposition, but not a lot better-- about 44% for each game. I feel like the team is more balanced offensively when they don't try to constantly force the ball in to Brook Lopez. Lawrence Hill and Anthony Goods are basically both in severe slumps at this point, and I think it's because they're hesitant to take shots sometimes.

In other news-- poor Ryan Anderson. The guy is simply playing out of his mind right now, and the team has nothing to show for it. He scored 62 points over the weekend in a pair of losses. I honestly cannot recall any instance of a team with a 30-point scorer in consecutive games losing both of them. It's almost unthinkable in college ball. The problem is that in the ASU game, Cal couldn't defend at all (99 points? To a team that slow?) and in the Arizona game, Patrick Christopher, the other major offensive force, was a complete nonentity. This is just setting me up, I can tell, for a good long late March/early April rant about the inevitable hosing-in-end-of-season-awards crap that routinely happens to good players on bad teams. I'm still not actually convinced that Cal is a bad team, but right now their record is unquestionably bad... so whatever.

Desperation time for the Bears now. They absolutely have to have this weekend's game against Stanford. You cannot go 1-4 at home in conference play and have any aspirations for the NCAA tournament. Realistically, they have little hope in two road games and will be significant underdogs in 3 more. They need wins, now, if they want to have a hope of reaching the 8-10 mark which will be required for plausible at-large consideration.