All 12 teams in the terminal Pac-12 are playing another this weekend.
The mountain teams should skunk the Arizonas in Arizona. The southern California teams should handle the Oregons more handily than that, at home.
The Washingtons at the Bay Bridge schools are toughest to call. If I didn’t want to get off to a good start in the first Berkeley Chess Club tournament of the year tonight, I would’ve attended Huskies at Golden Bears.
The Huskies are an outstanding defensive team. They play defense with a seamlessness in any sense of the word — they make it look easy, and with few tears for an offense to exploit.
Stanford’s reputation for defense rather depends on Brink as a goalie, and Cal was empirically better while Brink sat. Washington isn’t like-minded, while Cal strikes me as streaky — if Cal falls into the same sort of hole as Washington St. did against Washington, the Huskies could win tonight 75-45.
With some days to simmer down, I’m less cross with Utah, though Coach Roberts passes on my phone calls. If I were she, I wouldn’t want to talk to me, either.
Alissa Pili recorded 27, 10, and 5 in Boulder. Am I the only one who’s annoyed with her? Coach Roberts doesn’t want the Utes to play the singular hero, and I think Pili did just that in the fourth quarter.
I’m also miffed with Kennady McQueen, who looked lost while Colorado had the ball. It’s especially glaring in her case, because she’s so quiet — relatively speaking — when she’s as good as typical.
Neither was it unnoticed that the contact Jenna Johnson for which usually draws an offensive foul was called against her. And I’ve been saying since Issy Palmer went on the IL that Ines Vieira erased all doubt I had about her. Dasia Young had as many fouls plus turnovers as made baskets plus rebounds.
Come on, was Colorado so good that they threw Utah’s whole starting five into reverse?!
These days, the chess world is so vigilant about cheating that being caught with a powered-on mobile device is grounds for forfeit. It might not deter a determined cheater from foul play, but it does keep me from scoreboard-watching between moves.