Sunday morning, my sister asked about my plans for the day.
“Watching four basketball games”, I said.
“Sounds like your ideal day”, she said.
“When I started doing this as a hobby 17 years ago, I could do four games in a day. Sometimes that included flying and driving, then running back and forth from press conferences. These days, I sit at my computer…”
“And it’s harder”, she said.
“I can’t believe how much harder it is.”
“Everything’s harder”, she said, happily retired for a few months from an industrial ceramics company.
That was 36 hours ago. Washington St. beat Cal because Cal took the third quarter off, Utah won in Oregon for preserving their thin lead throughout the fourth (while the Pac-12 Network spoiled the Stanford-Washington score). Schoolwork kept me busy until 1:30 a.m., after which I watched Arizona and USC play two overtimes. Then I spent Monday in bed.
I’m worn out, and wondering again why I do this. Maybe I’ll remember in a month, when the games move to the Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas.
Arizona 81 Southern Cal 75 2OT
The Wildcats swept the Southern California road trip, both games in overtime. Cate Reese scored 6 of a career-high 33 points in the second overtime Sunday at the Galen Center.
I thought Reese would get the conference player of the week award — for factors that should not matter, but do.
Utah’s Alissa Pili had a monster weekend. Against the Oregons, Pili’s Hollinger scores were 15.2 (vs. Beavers) and 27.7 (Ducks). 30 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists, 0 turnovers in Eugene was big, while 12=for-18 shooting made it huge in the Hollinger calculation.
In comparison, take Cameron Brink’s triple: 16 points, 11 rebounds, 10 blocks, 3 assists merely resulted in a 17.6 Hollinger number because she missed 11 shots. In the same game, Haley Jones had 16 rebounds to go with 8 points and 4 assists, and the Hollinger number in that case was 4.8.
Pili’s 42.9 on the weekend clearly outdid Reese’s 9.4 (vs. UCLA) plus 19.9 (USC), but Reese made her 29.3 in two overtime wins on the 2nd-toughest road trip in the league. Also, Reese played with Shaina Pellington (10.4 + 18.9 makes an equal 29.3). In other words, it’s like Jordan winning all those MVP awards while Stockton and Malone prevented each other.
Then consider: Pili already had a couple of awards, and is likelier to win another. Again using Jordan as an example: Jordan could’ve won the NBA MVP award for 12 years running, but the voters threw a couple to Malone and Barkley for the sake of variety.
I was willing to stay up past my bedtime for Arizona at USC because that was the most critical game on the schedule Sunday in terms of NET impact and seeding determination. The Wildcats and Trojans did not disappoint.
If USC finds one or two reliable offensive threats, they’re gonna be murder in March. Given a little offensive pop, the thing most likely to stop USC from a deep run through the NCAAs would be a crap 7, 8, 9, or 10 seed.
I suspect the selection committee will screw three or four Pac-12 teams with seeds between 7-10, striving to avoid another disaster like 2021. Every Pac team but one was crammed into the same half of the bracket, and Arizona — the one that wasn’t — reached the final. Not good for TV ratings or national morale, you know.
I have more to say, but I’m trying to be a good boy and stay ahead of the schoolwork game. What they don’t tell you about college is that it’s a lot more fun at 60 than it was at 20.
At 60, you don’t care about GPA or how your class schedule fits with your intended career path, which turned out to be bullshit. We think we’re gonna do one thing after we’re done with college, but I’m on my fifth career track. If you’d told me when I was 18 that nothing I was doing then would exist in the 21st century job market, I would’ve burst into flames.