I’ve been questioning how much heart I want to put into this basketball season — I’ve not yet attended a game — but after chess class Tuesday, I watched the second quarter at Baylor in the school’s parking lot, then raced around at halftime looking for a sports bar (unsuccessfully). That sounds typical, at least.
After brushing off three cupcakes by an average score of 112-44, Utah met a Top 25 team, and lost 84-77 at Baylor.
When they’re on, Utah’s one of those teams that anyone likes to watch — the Utes move the ball, and shoot the ball.
At Baylor, not so much. You can usually form a picture of how well Utah played by holding their assists total up to their field goals made, and to their turnovers.
I saw Utah make fewer passes in sum, and some passes that were just wishful. If there were an algorithmic way to apportion Utah’s sub-par ball movement between their execution and Baylor’s defense, I’d apply it.
Baylor led by 5 with 2:15 remaining, and it got out of reach partly due to four Utah turnovers. Two of those turnovers were offensive fouls by Utah ballhandlers. The boxscore said two, but I’d swear I saw three — and two of those calls were close in the manner that causes skepticism about the officials.
Baylor guard Jana Van Gytenbeek committed one foul in three minutes, else it would’ve been a “3 billion” (decades ago, Dallas 11th man Steve Farmer coined the term ‘billion’ for his usual boxscore line: 1 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0, which I still think so funny that I could kill it with overuse). I can’t imagine Baylor is better than Stanford at anything academically — three minutes surely can’t be why she left Silicon Valley for Waco, Texas.
Just 30 more games left, with the Great Alaska Shootout next. I thought about going, for four games in a weekend, but it’s effing Alaska. One of my best friends had a goal of playing in a chess tournament in every state — he got 49 in fair time, but he didn’t want to go to Alaska, either.