Utah Women’s Basketball Independent

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.

Mississippi Valley State is where Jerry Rice went to college, which is all I know about it. I was working for the Concord Express, a small newspaper that’s never heard of you, either, in 1985. On NFL draft day, its editor — fellow named Tom Beaudin, I recall — seemed thrilled that the San Francisco 49ers got this guy from Mississippi Valley State in the first round. Wasn’t he right.

MVSU’s women’s basketball team finished #359 among 361 Division I teams in the 2023 NET rankings, and they’re losing 10 kids to the portal.

Which boggles me. Even St. Peter’s — which was 0-30 — is losing just five.

Call me old-fashioned, but thousands of kids are transferring each off-season since the NCAA instituted this thing, which has its pluses, but mostly it’s a reminder that kids are fickle, and usually kinda dumb, and perhaps should’ve given their signing a little more thought, and almost definitely should demonstrate some integrity by sticking with the choice. Especially if nine of your teammates are bailing out — if you watch the majority of the roster pack bags, oughtn’t you take that as a grand opportunity?

Then again, if 88 percent of a team wants out, I think it must be systemic (rather than just dumb kids behaving in dumb kid fashion). If that many kids bail, there ought to be a problem with some staff member or members, else what the hell.

Speaking of the portal, news today said there’s some friction because LSU’s prize transfer Hailey Van Lith has an NIL deal with Adidas, while LSU has a deal with Nike. If this really is a problem, then someone should’ve thought of that before the ink was dry. Lemme say that I’m disappointed in Van Lith — Louisville is an outstanding program, and when she announced her departure, I thought the only good reason was moving closer to home in Washington. (Jayda Curry, who went to Louisville from Cal, never impressed me as much as she did others, but let’s see how that goes.)

I was smug following the NCAA tournament that we’d lose no one. Who’d want to leave?! I said.

The Utes lost two post-season games, to the winner of the Pac-12 tournament, and to the winner of the national championship. No graduation losses (er, Palmer graduated yesterday, but I don’t consider her a flight risk), and a year’s experience tacked on to a very good nucleus, meaning no one could discount Utah for having never been there before.

Smug goeth before the fall, because four forwards — competing with Pili, Johnson, Young, and each other for minutes — entered the transporter room.

Among the four — upperclassmen Kelsey Rees and Peyton McFarland, and sophomores Teya Sidberry and Naya Ojukwu — I’m as disappointed in Rees and McFarland as I was with Brynna Maxwell. (Dru Gylten had the most valid reason in Division I for transfer, while Kemery Martin seems a better cultural fit in Berkeley than in Salt Lake).

Brynna didn’t relish a reserve role, and Gonzaga suited her: Closer to home, with West Coast Conference defenders. She had a remarkable year shooting until the WCC championship game and the NCAA first round, at which she totaled 3-for-18. Brynna was one of my favorite players to watch — I wonder if she’ll continue professionally.

Ojukwu was at the very end of Utah’s bench. She played 15 or 20 minutes all season, and I don’t remember any of them. She, Sidberry, and Lani White got the same message as freshmen: Playing time is to be earned, and it needn’t be said that freshmen become sophomores, who become juniors, and so forth. Gonzaga again benefits from a Ute wanting more playing time elsewhere, and maybe I’ll get to see what Ojukwu is made of when the Bulldogs visit Santa Clara or San Francisco.

Sidberry, who caused chaos on the floor (and I mean that as a positive thing), went to Boston College. Sidberry fell behind White on the depth chart during conference play — White accepted the challenge to earn playing time, Sidberry opted out. I’d express disappointment in Sidberry, but I’m what that idiot Trump would call a radical left-wing liberal, and I respect Utah Miss Basketball’s wish to experience life in Massachusetts (outside Salt Lake for the first time in her life).

Rees and McFarland, on the other hand, TSK.

Rees is from a family of basketball players. Wouldn’t you think she’d have the integrity in her blood to accept any role on a potential Final Four team? Still a free agent, so to speak.

The program stuck with Peyton through injury and rehab, and there she goes to Houston.

Whenever the University of Houston comes up in conversation, I think of Braxton Clark. When the legendary Phi Slamma Jamma unit at Houston was graduating to the NBA, Houston was still a very desirable place for young men. Clark was at junior college DeAnza in Cupertino, Calif. (that is, around the corner from Apple, and where the NWBL San Jose Spiders used to play home games), earning transfer units. Against the local JC opposition, Clark was a monster, recording 40 and 30 per 30 minutes. He was even doing improbable things like hitting a 40-foot heave to end a half during the Ohlone (Fremont, Calif.) Classic. I thought Braxton Clark deserved a high-profile DI place like Houston, though he washed out evidently, either through insufficient play or unsatisfactory grades.

I fully expect Peyton to succeed in Houston. I think she and Rees are quality kids, and I’m sorry to see them go.

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perhaps the couldn’t-miss team didn’t need as much help from the officials as they received. Their decisions to tag Clark and Cinzano with their fourth fouls at 1:0x left the third were,at best questionable.

I said a number of times that I was tired of watching the parade float that is LSU celebrate, so the basketball gods made me do that three more times.

The Utah senior chess championship is next weekend. Were there a season-end booster function with the basketball team, I’d go.

Baseball season. A book I’ve long been hoping to be updated or followed is 1998’s Confessions of a Baseball Purist by broadcaster Jon Miller. I found an update in a library sale for a buck, so that was a no-brainer, but the update came just a few years after the first edition! Miller has to collaborate on another memoir — that media wing Hall of Famer has seen and called just about everything.

I wrote to General Mills to suggest Caitlin Clark be put on the Wheaties box. Clark and the University of Iowa Hawkeyes are on the verge of an NCAA women’s basketball championship — Coach Bluder called them a team of destiny — while Clark is the Naismith national player of the year AND the Academic All-America player of the year (“Me and Caitlin, me and her are in the same class”, said LSU’s Reese).

If the cereal company needs more, Clark’s from the middle of middle America, where she attended a Catholic high school.

Magic Johnson tweets about Clark, and if Taylor Swift is as smart as she usually is, she invited Clark to join her backstage at her shows in Arlington.

In the absence of Paige Bueckers, women’s college basketball got a shot of Caitlin Clark at exactly the right time. She’s captured the nation’s attention when the men’s final gave us San Diego State (I think that’s great for San Diego State, who could use some feel-good after Matt Araiza blew up his generational football talent.), while her anywhere-in-the-building shooting range is appealing to shallow American basketball fans who think a dunk is of greater value than two free throws.

I don’t think it’s hypocritical of me to fume when Utah appears to see their options as Pili high or Pili low, but tell Iowa through my computer screen to ‘give the ball to Clark’. Relying on Clark to produce 60 percent of their offense by field goal or assist is what makes Iowa go, whereas Utah is at their best when it’s one for five, and five for one.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to the team that eliminated your team: You hope for them to lose in humiliating fashion soon, or you hope for them to win the thing. I’m in the second group, so I would’ve been rooting for LSU if Iowa weren’t such a good story. (For the same reason, I was glad Washington State won the Pac-12 tournament, and certainly thought they’d get further in the NCAAs.)

Louisiana State is an intriguing story for Coach Mulkey reaching the finals with them in her second year. And if the Tigers do win today, she joins a small group of coaches who’ve won with more than one school, which is truly something. That accomplishment is so remarkable it redeems what her assistant gives her to wear.

I thought during our round-of-16 game that I’d donate $1000 to the Utah WBB program if Coach Roberts borrowed Coach Mulkey’s fuzzy pink number for a nationally-televised game. I thought Coach might go for that if Utah weren’t flush with all that Huntsman loot.

If I wasn’t clear enough about this on Facebook: Jenna, we love you.

One of them survives to reach the round of 4, in case UCLA can’t keep the conference afloat against South Carolina.

Utah’s reward for knocking out the Princeton Tigers is a round-of-16 game with the Louisiana State University Tigers. Say the Utes lose; what’s the verdict?

Around the turn of the ’10s, two Pacific Tigers (Did I ever imagine there’d come a time when I couldn’t remember exact dates and faces, but I’d still be covering Coach Roberts’ teams? No.) and I were talking about where we stood at the time. I asked what the team had been aiming for since November.

We can’t tell you, said one. We set a team goal at the start of the season, and we keep it a secret. We don’t even tell our families.

“We can’t tell Frisco!?” said the other.

I took a couple steps backward. “If it’s that secret, I don’t wanna know,” I said.

Ever since, I take an annual guess at Roberts’ teams’ start-of-season goals. It’s easier when the teams are good. This season, for instance, there isn’t much room for improvement — the Utes set out to 1) win the Pac-12 tournament, or 2) advance past the round of 32.

All things considered, achieving no. 2 above might’ve been something to shoot for in November, but if they bow out today, it’s a disappointment. The team didn’t advance as far in the conference tournament as they did in 2022, and they spent about two months at #8 or better in the AP poll, so the nation is rather expecting Utah to get past LSU.

Some pundits said Utah’s scrappy win against Princeton suggest they’re capable of taking the next step to greatness, as if winning so uncharacteristically is a foretelling. I’ll buy that, in theory — chessplayers reach new plateaus after learning to win in new ways, and it always looks promising when a team that relies on pitching and defense wins whacks a couple of three-run homers to win 6-1.

Nobody’s giving Colorado much of a chance against Iowa, less for UCLA vs. South Carolina. Colorado has as good a shot against Iowa as anyone — if you think the Hawkeyes go as Caitlin Clark goes, the Buffaloes are well equipped for that, with an abundance of defensive options in the backcourt (while I’m on the subject of Colorado, did Corosdale and Brown leave Oregon State for Duke thinking they’d play more?).

As long as UCLA makes complete stops, they can beat anyone.

The mountain teams, who presented the most difficult road trip in the Pac-12 Conference, are still alive in the round of 16.

What we need now is for someone to knock off the Buffaloes, then lose to the Utes, after which Coach Roberts can say with more than one grain of truth: “That’s how it’s been all year in conference. We wore ’em down for each other”.

If that Taylor kid for Duke played that well in half their games, her name would’ve been engraved on the national defensive player of the year award a month ago.

South Dakota State and Dru Gylten are gone.

Isabel Palmer is on the floor, and this looks like a game Utah could lose. Sure, there are outstanding defensive teams in the Pac-12, but Princeton is a tiger of a different defensive stripe.

Four Princeton points later, they remind me of last year’s Oregon team, or other teams with great defensive anticipation.

I shed two bulky sweaters so an Asian kid at the wellness center could attach the blood pressure cuff, getting down to a Utah women’s basketball T-shirt.

“You’re the basketball guy!” he said, and I thought: “Holy shit, what do these people talk about while patients come and go”.

“Can you help me with my bracket?” he said.

“I didn’t watch boys play this season. Sorry.”

“Aw, snap. I was hoping having you as a patient would help me win.”

“Nah. I’ve only won two of those things myself in 100 years.”

I don’t know crap about women’s basketball, either. In the ESPN Tournament Challenge, where 2 million people submitted brackets for the women’s tournament, I’m behind 1.5 million of them.

Picking Washington State to reach the round of 8 — beating #1 Indiana on the way — didn’t help. The Cougars got bounced in round one by the lower-seeded Florida Gulf Coast, which I think diminishes their Pac-12 tournament win, and by extension, lessened the stature of the remaining Pac-12 teams. Like Stanford, who were given a 7% chance to win by some “expert” *before* Cameron Brink fell ill.

I also had Gonzaga getting past Mississippi, but the Rebels won by 23. In her last game, perhaps, Brynna Maxwell shot 1-for-10. Couple that with her 2-of-8 in the WCC tournament final, and Brynna finished 466 / 481 / 949 , or 1896. Maybe the first time the combination of her FG%, 3FG%, and FT% fell below 1900 all season. After 11 games, that number was an otherworldly 2024 (500 + 554 + 970).