Colorado 74
Air Force Academy 58
Long ago, a friend made a quip about Air Force that has stuck with me. I left the office, saying I was off to watch basketball.
“Who’s playing?” Joseph said.
“Air Force at Saint Mary’s”, I said.
He laughed. “Air Force? Air Force has a basketball team?”
“Uh huh.”
“You have to be tall to play basketball, right?”
“No, but it helps.”
“Don’t you have to be below a certain height to fit into an airplane cockpit?”
True enough, the AF Falcons’ roster lists their tallest player at 6 feet even, which means she could be between 5-foot-9 and 5-foot-11 (see following re: Western Kentucky).
Colorado is big, tough, fast. AFA forward Dsaha MacMillan tangled with Buffaloes Aaronette Vonleh and Quay Miller for 25 minutes, making 1 defensive rebound and attempting 1 FG inside the arc.
What I found charming about AFA’s roster page is that the student-athletes are in dress uniform, while noteworthy that, with one exception, they’re all wearing the same ribbon.
Wouldn’t you expect in a group of cadets ranging from 18 to 22 years old that the upperclassmen would’ve garnered additional ribbons?
Western Kentucky 52
Oregon St. 76
Western Kentucky is unusual in that their team leaders are a pair of guards, and more so because junior Alexis Mead and sophomore Acacia Hayes are very short, relatively speaking.
I think the rule of thumb is if the student-athlete is taller than 6-foot-3, the roster reports her as shorter than she truly is, and if the student-athlete is shorter than 5-foot-9, the roster tacks on a few inches. If she’s anywhere in the neighborhood of 6 feet, there you go.
I don’t think Hayes is 5-foot-8 as listed, or Mead 5-foot-5. In any event, they contribute 29 of the Hilltoppers’ 68 ppg, along with 7 rebounds and 6 assists. Mead is somewhere between 5-foot and 5-foot-5, and she leads WKU in offensive rebounds.
They’re the team leaders, and they’re pretty good. I wonder, though, how coincidental is it that WKU brought in Temeka Johnson last year as a coach.Johnson was listed at 5-foot-3, a second team All-American at LSU in 2005. She was drafted in the first round by WNBA Washington, and named rookie of the year.
In 2009, she won a championship ring with Phoenix.
Temeka Johnson even won a community service award in 2009. If there’s a championship role model for very short players, it is she. If there’s any team whose leaders stand to benefit from her experience, it’s Western Kentucky.
In other words, I don’t think her hiring just sorta happened. And in an odd twist, I couldn’t readily find out.
Consult coaches’ career summaries on a team’s roster page. Those summaries are usually too long, padded with the names of notable players who (probably) worked with that coach during practices, plus an associated justification for the hire. For instance, “Coach Shlabotnik was tasked with developing players at this position or that after joining our team in the year such-and-such”.
I expected Temeka Johnson’s biographical notes on Western Kentucky’s roster page to include a suggestion that she was brought in to work with their tiny guards. Without exactly those words, it said Hayes made the Conference USA all-freshmen team, and postseason all-tournament team.
Oregon State beat Western Kentucky 76-52 Saturday.
AJ Marotte had a career best 23 points. When we think of a Beaver guard scoring a bunch of points, it’s Von Oelhoffen, but Saturday she contributed 7 assists and 2 points.
OSU media reported that Raegan Beers has doubled in each game this season, but rebounds come in all kinds of flavors. The boxscore said Beers had 6 offensive rebounds and 7 defensive rebounds. I think the official scorer opted not to count one from an early OSU possession in which Beers rebounded two of her own misses.
Moses Malone used to improve his floor position by bouncing passes to himself off the board. Whether those were counted as FGA and OR, I don’t know.
One of the rules of basketball that frequently irks me is a ball out of bounds going against the side that last touched it.
Which means a player chasing a loose ball over the line might have three options:
1) Without a handle on the ball, the player volleys it back into play and hopes for the best;
2) With a handle on the ball, the player might turn her head to spot an open teammate, and make a pass. Since she’s flying out of bounds, this can result in highlight reel plays.
One of the most spectacular plays I remember was Taurasi chasing a loose ball over the baseline corner, turning her shoulders to fling a pass across the halfline on the opposite sideline, where Jen Derevjanik on the run touchpassed the ball over an opponent’s head to Cappie Pondexter ahead of the play for the fastbreak layup.
In the boxscore, that’s 2 points for Pondexter, but nothing for Taurasi’s incredible leap-turn-pass-to-the-opposite-freaking-halfline or Derevjanik’s bump over the defender and in Pondexter’s stride.
Maybe the scorer credited Derevjanik with an assist. Hockey gets that right by crediting assists to two players.
That stands out as the most memorable highlight in my experience, which leads us to the third option;
3) Flinging the ball hard off an opponent’s feet.
I think this is crap, but there’s no better way to award possession on a ball gone out of play.
It turns basketball into dodgeball. In dodgeball, the ball comes at you, you get out of the way. Unless you can catch it, after which your team has stole possession and initiative.
This came to mind after Kelsey Rees made two such plays on consecutive Oregon State possessions. In the first, Rees tracked a loose ball into the corner, with two WKU defenders coming. Kelsey turned, making contact with no foul call, though that Hilltopper was knocked down over the baseline. Losing her balance and seeing no help on the way, Rees threw the ball off the floored player’s butt to save the possession for the Beavers.
12 points, 9 rebounds, 2 blocks, 0 turnovers. Rees looks happy, and I’m glad she found a place, though I still question her leaving Utah when a deep postseason run is in the cards.
Brigham Young 68
Utah 87
In Utah’s toughest game since Baylor (I still want to ask Coach Roberts about Eastern Kentucky, against whom Utah scored 117, but I maintain they’ve been best on the holiday schedule), the Utes assisted on 26 of 31 made field goals.
That’s always the first thing I look at, getting around to assists-to-turnovers. The boxscore said Utah made 11 turnovers, which gave me the feeling the scorer and I watched different games.
I thought both teams looked a little out of control, which I would’ve ascribed to both teams playing to the crowd.
So I’m opting to hold back until this week’s road trip. I suspect Utah will play South Carolina more than once, with the first serving as a barometer for the non-conference segment.
That we might head east to Philadelphia and Uncasville short-handed weighs very heavy on my mind, which is why I’m writing this 12 hours later than I’d planned.