I thought Arizona 72 Oregon State 69 will be remembered as one of the best games I’d see this season, despite 2.5 months remaining, and having seen none yet for comparison’s sake.
In Tucson, the Wildcats and Ducks were tied at 53 with 8:04 to go. Oregon State ran 12-0 to restore the their long-standing lead. Then Arizona went 15-0 in a demonstration of defense-fuels-offense-fuels-defense-fuels-offense, turning defensive pressure into six favorable transitions, and hit all six.
Brilliant game by both teams, really.
Oregon St. freshman Raegan Beers is quite unique. She’s very big, but a sideline interview implied that she’s much smaller than her brothers. Hence, she looks comfortable amidst heavy traffic or against help defense, and has tools like a fallaway jumper cultivated by creating better angles over bigger defenders.
Beers has nine double-doubles to lead Division I freshman, and that’s reported with an air of no one else is close. She’s the clearest example I’ve seen of a female deriving more benefit from practicing against men than against other women.
It feels like several years ago that I said OSU’s 6-foot-7 forward Jelena Mitrovic intrigues me for her passing ability. She puts her height to good use by seeing open teammates that most players can’t, then making good passes. “Mitrovic is a really good passer for that length”, said Pac-12 Network play-by-play woman Ann Schatz said.
Astute observation that, but the second thing Schatz said in the pregame chat is that the teams were heading into a chess match. You never, ever hear anyone who understands chess make those analogies, because they’re not in the ballpark.
Colorado 77 Utah 67
In Boulder, unranked Colorado beat undefeated #8 Utah 77-67. Utah welcomed me back by starting over themselves.
The Utes didn’t fall apart as much as arrive in pieces, and that’s not said much about championship teams. That team is rooted in togetherness — if one of 12 is out of whack, the system breaks.
The most accurate chessplayer of the 20th century would go undefeated for months or years. He said he’d begin to feel invincible, until receiving “a sound thrashing”, calling it therapeutic.
Utah looked like that, and I’m glad. At 14-1, they’re in the position of recovering from an embarrassing setback for the first time, so I arrived just in time for the second act.