It wasn’t the news that Missouri forward Sara-Rose Smith entered the portal that grabbed me as much as the photo.
Missouri’s athletic department reported attendance of UT-Martin at Missouri 11/17/22 as 2107. I’ve never liked the practice of reporting tickets sold as bodies in attendance, but it’s become one of those things nobody thinks about.
I think we can trace its origins to Boston, where rebuilding years for the Red Sox and Celtics didn’t stop their sports information departments from reporting sellout streaks in record number, even though the teams weren’t generating any actual enthusiasm.
If Sara-Rose Smith wound up in Utah, I wouldn’t wave red flags. She’s from Australia — a country that seems to generate talented, hard-nosed players with very agreeable personalities — and she fits the system: a 2/3 who can play 4/5, and shoot it.
Missouri first got my attention in the mid-’00s, when the Tigers had a 6-2 forward named Carlynn Savant who shot threes at a 46% rate as a junior. Missouri had a guard on that team, Blair Hardiek, who wound up an assistant to Joaquin Wallace at San Francisco State, then to Jennifer Azzi at University of San Francisco. Now she and Coach Azzi are married with a couple of children, and it seems like a very long time ago that she and I marveled together at the difficulty Savant posed as a matchup.
I’m always watching Missouri. They run the top feline genetic research facility in the nation, so U. Missouri veterinary science has received almost as much of my money as has University of the Pacific athletics. If you like Abyssinian cats, you become hyper-aware that the breed is most susceptible to feline renal amyloidosis, the research of which is very expensive in terms of money and dead cats.
Speaking of the portal, 6-2 forward Alyssa Blanck drives over from Brigham Young. That kid seems determined not to leave the state — I think she might’ve signed an intent letter with Utah State before going to BYU. Contrary to my politics, I won’t hold that against her — I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else but California for 59 years, but I have begun imagining. 5-10 guard Matyson Wilke transferred from Wisconsin, and joined Utah’s 3×3 team (where Creighton won, and Utah did not — though I’d’ve thought any 3×3 group with Alissa Pili plus a couple of agile wings stood a fair chance; I’m not ready to heap all the blame on Wilke just yet, however).
Kelsey Rees still hasn’t found a home. I’ve been assuming that the door is open for her to come back to Utah, but under the same conditions which she didn’t think favorable when she jumped into the portal.