Cal 4 Washington St. 0 8:33
Were I still using Twitter, this would’ve gone there: Kemery Martin just made two of the best passes of her career.
Friday 2/3
Considering our respective rankings before last night’s chess game, I expected to beat my opponent quickly, leave the chess club early-ish, and save myself from watching basketball at dawn.
That’s as hazardous a manner of thinking for chessplayers as it is for basketball teams (and any competitive entity); our game was next-to-last to finish, and I got home at midnight to find that two of the recorded games went to overtime. In bed at 6 a.m., and my Saturday didn’t start until 2:30 p.m.
Utah 75 Oregon St. 73 OT
Since the turn of the calendar year, Oregon St. has played six games decided by two possessions or fewer, in which the Beavers are 2-4.
It’s easy to say “the Beavers are a young team, still getting to know each other”, but look around. Stanford has one senior. Utah has none. Colorado has one. UCLA has 10 underclassmen. Inexperience is no excuse in the Pac.
Had Coach Roberts said: “In your unusual way of looking at things, what must we do to beat Oregon State?”, the first thing to come to my mind would’ve been: “Make Mitrovic shoot the ball rather than pass it”.
I pondered that for a second, and thought: Good thing Coach didn’t ask you, because that’s crazy talk — why would anyone prefer the 6-foot-7 player to throw the ball away from the basket to her dropping it in the basket?
Because Oregon St. is a better team when they share the basketball, and Mitrovic sees open perimeter shooters as well as you’d expect from a kid who’s usually the tallest player on the court, and she has a rare ability to give them the ball where they can do something with it. In 21 games played, Mitrovic averages slightly fewer than 7 field goal attempts (141 total) per game — when she attempts 7 or more, the Beavers are 5-7. She averages slightly fewer than 2 assists (41 total) per game — when she assists on 3 FG or more, OSU is 5-2.
In Oregon State’s three conference wins, Raegan Beers averaged a ‘Hollinger gamescore’ of 16; in eight losses, 9. It was as close as it was because Beers looked like she’s gained that second wind that freshmen are said to need following tired Januarys. (Speaking of which, Grace VanSlooten — one of the other safe bets for end-of-year all-freshmen honors — recorded a Hollinger 0 against USC and a -6.6 against Oregon St. in January.)
Ines Vieira scored 0 points, and made an uncharacteristic 2-assists-to-2-turnovers-to-2, but annoying defense was instrumental in Utah pissing the host team off (probably a useful habit for the Utes to cultivate). Yeaney: 3 fouls, 4 turnovers. Mannen: 3 fouls, turnovers. Gardiner: 4 fouls, 4 turnovers.
On the other side, Pili: 4 fouls, 3 turnovers, but she made game highs in points and steals. Rees fouled out in 15 minutes (one of those calls was just wrong, another was suspect). The boxscore says Kelsey was near useless (2 FGM, 2 RB), but I was sort of there, and she pretty much wasn’t.
Utah’s reached that desirable state in which nine people can contribute rather significantly, and seven of ’em aren’t annoyed when two of ’em get all the credit. Kneepkens scored 7 points in overtime, Pili made the free throws to break the last time at 73.
Y’know whom Utah could’ve really used last night was Dru Gylten. While Oregon St. was getting close to even in the fourth (after being down by 18), Utah took a couple of offensive possessions off, and looked a little dazed. Gylten’s assured ballhandling, and steadiness befitting a ninth-year senior, would’ve prevented that. (If Utah loses a game during the NCAA tournament, I think they’ll endure a similar stretch in that elimination game.)
At Oregon tomorrow, Utah can demonstrate that the Ducks are nowhere near the same team they were in the Pac-12 tournament semifinal last season, when Utah’s win in that game was their biggest of the year.
Arizona 71 UCLA 66 OT
The Bruins led by 12 with 3:19 left in the 2nd. Wildcats went into half trailing by 6, after a 7-1 run. Bruins built it back up to 11 with 4:49 to go in the game, but they didn’t score again until 3:33 in overtime.
That’s what Arizona’s capable of, and they needed it. The Wildcats have the most difficult schedule remaining: four of their next five are USC, Stanford, and the mountain teams. (If Arizona beats USC tomorrow, then finishes 4th, they can point to this weekend as most critical: beating UCLA when both teams were 6-4, then USC when both were 7-4.)
UCLA was 3-1 in games decided by 5 or fewer, but have lost three in a row (two in overtime) by a total of 9 points. Their schedule gets easier, relatively speaking. Say UCLA goes 6-1 in their last seven; I think 12-6 will suffice for that coveted #4 tournament seed.
Looking further ahead than that, ESPN speculates that Washington St. and Oregon are both NCAA tournament-bound, though they might both finish worse than .500 within league play (easy to see WSU finishing 3-4, 8-10 in total). That’s how good the Pac is.
Stanford 71 Washington St. 38
If you’re hoping for someone other than Stanford to win league and tournament, this game wouldn’t’ve caused you to like your chances. Stanford got their 14th and 15th men off the bench before it was over.
Santa Clara 77 Gonzaga 72
Santa Clara beat Gonzaga 77-72 Thursday at the Leavey Center. It was Gonzaga’s first conference loss of the season, and SCU’s first win over Gonzaga in seven years.
Brynna Maxwell made her first five 3-point attempts, but the last two were both blocked during the game’s final minute.
How cool and warm is this hat?
Given our continued record low temperatures, I wanted a hat with earflaps. Pulling down the cuff of a standard knit beanie used to do — before eyeglasses plus surgical masks. Now I’m set for a trip to the Rocky Mountains, Pacific Northwest, or, well, Berkeley for chess tonight.
Here, Bulldogs
West Coast Conference leader Gonzaga visits San Francisco and Santa Clara this week. I think I should go to at least one of those games, because I’ve never actually seen Brynna Maxwell set a gym on fire.
I’m a little amused that she almost surely wouldn’t know me on sight (same with Kemery Martin at Cal — at Cal’s postgame conference last Friday, not a hint of recognition from Kemery, though there was a practice in Salt Lake last year where I was the only one she had to talk to for a spell).
That’s one thing I miss about Pacific — after three or four years there, I didn’t have to introduce myself to people, because they already knew who I was. Players’ parents, new hires to the coaching staff, gatekeepers — made it easy to get around inside the Spanos Center, and to keep a plate full at booster gatherings. (I mentioned Pacific forward Chris Thompson earlier today? Her boyfriend once recognized me at Moe’s Books on Telegraph Ave., and he was from Stockton. That was just weird.)
Told you
Stanford 62 Oregon 54
I told you Cameron Brink would triple with points, rebounds, and blocks. I didn’t think she’d do it the next day.
I also said Stanford would crush Oregon, because Oregon isn’t such a good basketball team, ranked in the Top 25 earlier because sportswriters like Coach Graves, and don’t like change. The final was 62-54, but it shouldn’t have been that close. Ducks hit a meaningless trey at the buzzer, and the Cardinal were sloppy. Last year’s Cardinal would’ve won that game by 30.
I said in October that the AP ranked Stanford #2 because 1) except for South Carolina, there were no other clearly outstanding teams (considering UConn losing Paige Bueckers); and 2) sportswriters weren’t properly assessing Stanford with the Hulls.
Look at Stanford today. Compared to their 2021 championship team — which was majestic — these Cardinal look clunky and vulnerable (if their freshmen grow up really fast, different story). I dunno if they’d lose to another Pac-12 team because they still have some mystical hold over the other 11, but their first opponent in the NCAA — remember Harvard in 1998? — isn’t bound by sorcery.
Cal 64 Oregon St. 62
I said Oregon St. would crush Cal, but Cal won by 2. I couldn’t stay awake for the end of that game on tape. Close games are supposed to be compelling by definition, but this one just was not.
The Beavers need Raegan Beers to play well, and she coughed up four fouls and three turnovers in 13 minutes (at Stanford on Friday: 1-of-5 shooting, two fouls in14 minutes).
The theory is freshmen get tired near February, because the high school players are mostly done by this time of year (the theory extends to WNBA rookies coming in tired because training camp begins right after the NCAA tournament). I don’t quite buy it in Beers’ case. Beers is a truck.
When Oregon State goes Mitrovic, Beers, Yeaney, Mannen or Marotte, van Oelhoffen, they’re scary. There isn’t a 4 out there who could prevent Beers from getting to her spots and finishing.
If the tournament began today, the first round would match the Oregons against each other, the Washingtons against each other, the Arizonas against each other, and the Californias (southern and northern) against each other. I’m all for that. Let’s begin.
Utah 71 UCLA 69
Alissa Pili scored nine points in the fourth quarter, including five in the last 40 seconds, and the Utes won a game that I, um, thought they were gonna lose. (The clue I have to share with Coach Roberts’ players is that if they look at the bench, and find Coach seated instead of standing, they’d better get it together.)
Am I the only one pondering where USC might be if Pili hadn’t transferred, and were playing like this for the Trojans? USC’s going to win a game 14-12 before they’re done — with Pili, they could be winning games 60-40.
Pili is unlike any crayon Coach Roberts has had in her box before. The closest thing Coach Roberts has had to a scoring threat like Alissa Pili was — you’ve gotta go back a dozen years — a 6-foot forward at Pacific named Christina Thompson.
Thompson was graceful and athletic, and could fill it up, but the other parts of the job — like playing defense and fighting for rebounds — weren’t to her liking. As a senior, Thompson lost the forward job at Pacific to a local (local to Stockton) kid named Kendall Kenyon.
Kenyon made me look smart. After my first visit to Pacific in her freshman year, I named her the chosen one. It took three months for Coach Roberts to get her off the bench, but Kendall rewrote the Pacific record books.
One of the funniest things I’ve ever heard a sportswriter say was in regard to Kenyon and Thompson. Thompson had flu symptoms (‘flu symptoms’ was the official word, but if you were there, you got the feeling Coach asked Thompson to get her uniform dirty, and Thompson began sneezing), and Coach said: “I’m thinking about giving your girl a start”. You can look it up: Against Long Beach State Jan. 12, 2012, Kenyon’s first start resulted in 18, 5, 2 steals, 1 block, 0 turnovers, and the Tigers won by 37.
The Stockton Record beat writer said: “Kendall Kenyon is going to turn Christina Thompson into Wally Pipp”. I laughed at the time because I was Kenyon’s most vocal supporter, and laughed for another three years because it came true.
Scoreboard watching
With the exception of Arizona, every team in the region with a record better than.500 plays another Sunday.
The Big 10 teams host the mountain teams, with tournament seed implications. I’d watch those games, but I’m off to watch two old men voice cartoon laboratory mice.
A long Friday night
UCLA at Colorado: Tied with 2 seconds left in overtime
Oregon St. at Stanford: Tied with 2:10 in the fourth
Oregon at Cal: 1-point game with 1:28 remaining
Southern Cal at Utah: UU’s 20-point lead reduced to 6 with 3:06 to go
As ever, it’s in how you want to look at it. I think: This is why I do this. Others think: There’s no reason to pay attention to basketball for the first 37 minutes. (There’s an old joke about wanting the last two minutes of your life to be the last two minutes of a basketball game. The last minute of Colorado at Stanford last Sunday went on for six minutes, and Stanford led by a dozen.)
Colorado 73 UCLA 70
Kindyll Wetta — my favorite Buffalo, though I rarely remember how to spell her first name — made her only 3-point attempt of the game with 1.5 seconds left in overtime, and the #25 Buffs “upset” the #8 Bruins in Boulder.
That’s hardly an upset. Colorado also beat Arizona and Utah at home while the Cats and Utes were #14 and #8.
Wetta’s 6-for-7 (2-for-2 in overtime) is her best shooting game I can recall, while Colorado’s designated bomber Formann was 3-for-15 (6-for-35 in three games following 14-for-23 in two — that’s how shooters roll). Otherwise it was a humdrum game for Wetta (one rebound, one steal, game-high six assists, four turnovers).
The most difficult road trip in the nation is to the Rocky Mountains. Colorado and Utah are both undefeated at home, and their homes are a zillion miles high. A zillion, or one. Whatever, it feels the same. (I had a subpar weekend playing chess on the Utah campus, and it was also a subpar weekend walking.)
If UCLA coach Close and Utah coach Roberts want to entertain people Sunday, the matchup to watch is UCLA’s Kiki Rice and Utah’s Ines Vieida.
Stanford 63 Oregon State 60
Basketball interests me primarily in its capacity to be analogized with chess. (To me, basketball is an intellectual pursuit. This sets me apart from the typical American sports fan, who likes basketball for men flying through the air and throwing down dunks, but in those cases, I’d rather be at the movies.) At the heart of both games is the alternation of turns: They get a possesssion, we get a possession. I get a move, you get a move.
The sides that make most efficient use of those turns — by executing threats, while perhaps extending the possession through offensive rebounding (at chess, it’s sustaining an initiative) — stands a good chance of winning. This analogy falls flat in one instance: At basketball, one blown possession usually won’t kill you (unless the game is that close), but at chess, one bad move can ruin a game that might’ve been flawless until then. At chess, you can point the finger at one move or two. At basketball, you can’t — even if one turnover results in the losing basket, that possession was (technically speaking) weighted no more heavily than 50 others.
Nevertheless, sports fans and sportswriters find individual plays easy things to hang a talking point on. If you’re an Oregon State backer last night, you’re looking at two possessions until they haunt you. In the fourth quarter of a tied game, Cardinal Fran Belibi tipped a ball loose into the backcourt, where Beaver Bendu Yeaney gave some chase, but pulled her hands back to let it roll. Belibi sprinted after it, and dove for a save try. That is, both players knew it was off Belibi, and Oregon St. would retain possession, but official Brenda Pantoja ruled it Stanford’s ball (Oregon St. coach Rueck wandered far from allowed coaching space for that one). Then there was a second- and third-chance possession converted by Stanford following two offensive rebounds, and Oregon St. would’ve dearly loved to do that over.
The Cardinal got away with another one, while the Beavers are still my pick as a 3-6 team no one wants to face in an elimination game.
Neither team was very good. For OSU, Talia von Oelhoffen had more fouls than field goals. Nicole Mannen produced a line more appropriate to a player getting 7 minutes instead of 37 (Coach Rueck trusts Mannen that much), Raegan Beers had the least impact in any OSU game I’ve seen. If not for freshman Timea Gardiner shooting 7-for-11 in her fourth game all season, it wouldn’t’ve been that close.
Again, Stanford relied on their three seniors, but Hannah Jump shot 2-for-8, while Brink and Jones shot 13-for-29 with 21 rebounds and 7 blocks. Brink will triple with points, rebounds, and blocks later this season — you read it here first.
Also, I have a hunch that Stanford and Oregon St. will crush Oregon and Cal Sunday.
Oregon 78 Cal 73
Oregon isn’t very good. The Ducks were ranked in the Top 25 for months because sportswriters hate change, and they like Coach Graves.
Since last season, the Ducks lost Nyara Sabally to the New York Liberty, Sydney Parrish to Indiana (#5 NET), Kylee Watson to Notre Dame (#6 NET), Taylor Bigby to USC (#31 NET), Chanaya Pinto to Penn St. (#78 NET), and Maddie Scherr to Kentucky (#91 NET). They kept Endiya Rogers and Te-Hina Paopao — whew — got Taya Hanson from Arizona St., and recruited Grace VanSlooten.
They were fortunate to get out of Haas Pavilion Friday with a W. Had Cal played the full 40 instead of 38, it would’ve been different.
The Golden Bears had their last lead 73-72 with 1:52 left, then a Jayda Curry miss at 1:02 plus turnover at 0:38 let it get away. “I didn’t see a travel, That’s a hard call to make at that time of the game”, said Cal coach Smith. “It’s the Pac-12. There’s so little margin for error.”
Oregon freshman Chance Gray hit 10-of-10 from the line, including two with 0:20 left to make it 77-73. Gray missed two free throws in November, and hasn’t missed since. She’s 39-for-41 now, and if 41 is enough attempts, .951 puts her in Brynna Maxwell territory.
Speaking of Brynna Maxwell: Gonzaga beat Pepperdine 67-49 Saturday. Maxwell recovered from her bad game vs. LMU with a game-high 26 points on 8-14, 6-9, 4-4. Following up my piece yesterday about Brynna, her season percentages rose to .488 + .516 + .967 == 1.971. Times 1000 is 1971.
Utah 83 Southern Cal 73
I didn’t expect USC at Utah to be the least tense of the games I watched Friday, but the Trojans were giving up 51 points per conference game, and the Utes had 49 at halftime.
Even after USC got within 6 in the fourth quarter, it didn’t feel like the Trojans were gaining control with defense.
I said some atypical number emerging from this game would bear hugely on the result. Digging through the boxscore, the Utes’ +16 differential in paint points is their second-best total to +22 at Cal. 8 points off turnovers is a season-low in conference games. 6 free throws attempted in the first three quarters? I dunno; nothing stands out hugely, but you might agree it’s not a typical boxscore for them.
If the over-under for USC at Colorado were 100, I’d think the under might be a reasonable wager.
Unlike professionals, I don’t have to venture forecasts or predictions for every pregame
Oregon at Cal
Cal is likely to run into Arizona, Washington St., or Oregon in the first round of the conference tournament.
How good is the Pac? Arizona and Oregon could finish in the top 25 yet have to win four games in the tournament. That’s bad news for #11 Cal and #12 Arizona St.
I considered some best cases for Cal, and if the best cases result in running into Oregon St. in the first round, holy crap.
The Oregons are in Berkeley this weekend. I’m skipping chess to see the Ducks tonight, and to watch the Beavers Sunday, I risk arriving late at the San Francisco Sketchfest program “A Narfy Afternoon” with the “Pinky and the Brain” voice actors.
I hesitate to make any forecasts involving the Ducks. There’s something about that team that isn’t ringing true.
Southern Cal at Utah
The three best defensive teams in the Pac-12 are Southern Cal, Stanford, and Colorado. Utah’s already lost to two of them, while USC visits tonight.
Utah scores 80 points per conference game, and USC allows 50 points to be scored against them. Doesn’t take a genius to call 65 for the Utes, then make some guess at the Trojans’ number, but it’ll probably come down to each team’s success in transition. Then you have to figure in that the 4th-best defensive team in the conference is Utah.
I went on last week about the ‘team that let you leave’ factor, but I suspect it won’t be as useful for USC transfer Alissa Pili than it’ll be for USC conjuring a method for dealing with her. If there’s an algorithm for that, I’d think USC is likelier to bake it successfully than others, though that assertion is based on Coach Gottlieb spending 20 hours per day in the film room, and that’s probably changed since she had a second child.
Used to be that I could just ask Gottlieb for what she thought. When she and Roberts were in the Big West, I was sometimes the only beat writer in the building. Then they moved up to the Pac, where media members place digital recorders on the tables in front of them (I think that’s laughable, since my sense of humor is drawn in ink on cheap paper).
I have a hunch that a number will emerge from tonight’s game in Salt Lake that has great bearing on the result, yet isn’t typical. Irresistible forces meeting immovable objects screws with normal physics.
Brynna Maxwell forms a personal subchapter of the 1800 Club
Among the trivial performance measures to amuse me over the years is the notion that if you sum a player’s FG%, 3FG%, and FT%, then multiply by 1000, and get a result of 1800 or better, you’ve got an excellent shooter.
In other words, a player recording .500, .400, and .900 can shoot it.
If you wanted to be serious about it, the first adjustment you’d have to make is to establish some minimums (easy enough to say whatever the minimum attempts are for league leadership stats). Then weight 3FG% more heavily than FT%. But this is one of those back-of-the-envelope, in-your-head metrics that’s supposed to be taken with a shaker of salt.
The NCAA Division I leader in 3FG% and FT% is Gonzaga guard Brynna Maxwell. She totals .490 + .518 + .981, or 1.989. Times 1000: 1989.
For comparison’s sake: Gianna Kneepkens, Utah: 545 473 830, 1848. Caitlin Clark, Iowa: 460 360 830, 1650. Hannah Jump, Stanford: 473 455 750, 1678. Jump and Clark are outstanding shooters, and they didn’t reach 1700, while Kneepkens is having an outlier season (teammate Alissa Pili: 619, 359, 812, 1790).
I think Steve Kerr flirted with 2000 in an NBA season or two (when Stephen Curry was establishing himself, media asked Coach Kerr if Curry was the best shooter in the NBA, and in reference to himself, Kerr quipped that Curry wasn’t yet the best shooter in the practice gym). Steve Nash was 1830 for his 18-year career. Curry 1810 for 13 years.
In five WNBA seasons, Jennifer Azzi was close to 1860.
Allie Quigley: 1739 in 13 years, and that surprises me. In the 2015 playoffs, Quigley was 590 438 1000, 2028. Between 2015 and 2021, Allie Quigley didn’t miss a free throw during a playoff game. In 2021, the year Chicago won the thing, Quigley was 417 365 1000, 1782 in 10 games.
Elena Delle Donne: 474 392 937, 1803 across nine years.
Kerr, Nash, Curry, Azzi, Quigley, Delle Donne are six of the finest shooters in basketball history, and for 22 games in 2022-3, Brynna Maxwell is smoking them. 1989 is way, way out there. If you’ve watched Brynna, you expect this.
| Year | FG% | 3FG% | FT% | sum |
| 20 | 470 | 472 | 943 | 1886 |
| 21 | 360 | 336 | 924 | 1620 |
| 22 | 397 | 380 | 885 | 1662 |
| 23 | 485 | 509 | 944 | 1938 |
In her sensational freshman season, no one knew who Brynna was, and they left her alone out there. Bad idea. They caught on for the next two years, holding her to merely good percentages. Then she transferred to Gonzaga. 2000 is off the chart for a single game (Quigley did it for an entire postseason), and Maxwell is a hair off that for 21 games.
Would she do this in the Pac-12? Say Coach Roberts made a deal with her that as long as she did this 1800 thing, she’s get 28 minutes per game. How long would that last? The Big 10 road trip to USC and UCLA wouldn’t do anyone’s shooting percentages good.
Brynna had a wretched night in the Bulldogs’ 66-55 win vs. Loyola Marymount Thursday: 3-9 1-2 1-2, dropping her season numbers for the purposes of this entry to 485 509 944,1938.