Three lackluster games

I said Arizona 72 Oregon St. 69 on Jan. 6 figured to be one of the best games I’d see all year, but that had to be crazy. It was the first game of the season for me, and this is the mighty Pacific-12, where an instant classic is born every two hours.

The games I’ve seen this weekend have stunk by comparison.

Colorado 72 Arizona 65 wasn’t that close. The Buffaloes surely break into the Top 25 after beating Utah while the Utes were #8, and the WIldcats at #10.

Then the Cardinal asserted themselves. Brink blocked UCLA’s first four shots quarter while Lepolo and Emma-Nnopu made threes. Stanford scored the first 15 points of the quarter.

2 Stanford 72 #8 UCLA 59 was closer than that, tied at half and the Bruins within two to begin the 4th quarter.

Brink affects enemy shooters. If she doesn’t block the shots, she alters them — ballhandling opponents in the paint hurry themselves into mistakes just from the thought that Brink might be coming.

I saw St. Marys-Moraga several times in 2011, the year Louella Tomlinson led the nation in blocks, while setting a new NCAA record for career blocks (which Griner broke two years later). Lou got lots of chances when opponents followed instructions by taking it right at her.

Same is true of 6-9 Jelena Mitrovic at Oregon State — Arizona’s Cate Reese attacked the goal repeatedly while Mitrovic was beneath it, and Reese just won those skirmishes (while the Phoenix Suns will gleefully show you video of Thunder Dan Majerle dunking over 7-7 Manute Bol).

This not true of Brink, from whom pponents shy away (though I expect Utah to attack Brink early to perhaps bench her with fouls.)

I said we’d have a better idea about who UCLA and their gaudy #8 ranking really are after this game. What they are is very young, and a proverbial ‘team to watch’. (But UCLA and USC are heading to the Big 10, and for what?! They are charter members of the Pac-8. If you asked people outside the region to name the teams within the Pac, who gets named most often, UCLA and USC.)

How often does that actually pan out? The teams that look so promising while stuffed with talented freshmen, how often are they truly successful three years later?

For instance, Pacific.

In 2010, the Tigers had three talented freshmen, one of whom earned all-freshman team recognition (if Pacific hadn’t finished last, the voters probably would’ve elected two or all three). In three years, they won the Big West championship with two of that trio still on the roster and serving as captains. That’s what you expect.

Last year, Pacific put two freshmen on the all-freshman team in the West Coast Conference, and the future should look bright. Though perhaps they’re still a year or two away, because they lost badly Saturday at Santa Clara, 80-66.

It didn’t look terrible with the score 14-11 at 3:51 in the first, but Santa Clara scored twice in nine seconds with a layup, a steal of the inbounds pass, then another layup. Encouraged, the Broncos built a 43-20 lead midway through the second.

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Which ranking best describes UCLA?

How would you prefer to think of UCLA? RealTimeRPI and the Associated Press put the Bruins in the top 10, whereas NET ranks UCLA #26.

Larry Sheppard — NCAA official of the year (1994) in women’s basketball — was always quick to tell me that sportswriters don’t know anything. Maybe you can’t trust the AP. And the NCAA deprecated RPI itself, when it implemented the NCAA Evaluation Tool.

The UCLA that came back from -11 in the 4th quarter to win at Southern Cal last Sunday limited the Trojans to four offensive rebounds and two second chance points all afternoon.

The proverb “A man with one watch knows what time it is, but the man with two watches is never sure” sort of applies to three manners of assessing a basketball team.

We’d rather rely on ourselves, so I regret drifting in and out of sleep during the USC game. It doesn’t reflect on the quality of play as much as it does my lifestyle.

We’ll have a clearer picture of the Bruins after the Bay Area teams pass through.

UC Santa Barbara 63 Cal State Bakersfield 62

News: Junior guard Alyssa Marin made four free throws in the last eight seconds to pull UC Santa Barbara ahead of Cal State Bakersfield 63-62 Wed. at the Thunderdome. Marin also completed the Gauchos’ last defensive stop with the rebound.

Opinion: The UC Santa Barbara Thunderdome isn’t my favorite venue. I’ve received four parking tickets in my basketball travels, one at the Thunderdome (media parking should be clearly defined, or the cops informed). Every inch of that building has some donor’s name pasted onto it — you’d think Stanford would lead the nation in that regard, but Maples Pavilion has a few feet of unadorned wallspace.

Their boosters put their names on everything, and undue pressure on coach Lindsay Gottlieb, who was in the unenviable position of following coach Mark French, whose teams were locks to win the Big West every year.

Their students can look like nitwits. One night against UC Davis, the UCSB student section thought to taunt the Aggies with “We live at the beach / You live on a farm”, which is what today’s social media users might call a “self own”. Who contributes more: veterinarians and agriculturists or beach dwellers?

I don’t like the name of their athletics podcast: Talk’n Gauchos. Why is that apostrophe there?

I’d prefer rooting against UCSB, but that’s where Arroyo Grande HS guard Kathleen Hutchens landed. Go Gauchos!

Sheryl Swoopes was a contestant on Name That Tune

Bloody hell. Arizona St. called in sick, and their visit to the Huntsman Center Friday is canceled. I wanted that game to happen. One, I had a quip about Utah’s pregame preparation for the Sun Devils (I might still think it’s funny before the Utes visit the Desert Financial Arena in Tempe Feb. 19). Two, we just lost, and that L1 in the streak column persists until Sunday. Three, I’ve got nothing else to talk about but a television game show.

Sheryl Swoopes — Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame member, five-time Olympic gold medalist, three-time WNBA most valuable player, among the two or three best players ever at her position — just got shutout on the TV game show Name That Tune.

Host Jane Krakowski, evidently slumming since 30 Rock ended, described one of the contestants as ‘basketball legend [whose name I couldn’t hear across the room]’.

“Did she just say ‘Sheryl Swoopes’!?” I said.

I’ve never seen her in street clothes or eyeglasses, never would’ve recognized her unless I got a Jeopardy!-style clue like: “The player who made the most remarkable play you’ve ever seen in a NWBL game”.

I don’t remember which team Swoopes was playing on, which hints at the NWBL always on the brink of folding (it did, in 2007). Her team was visiting the San Jose Spiders at DeAnza College (nice gym for a two-year school, but no place for a pro league), and the Spiders were grabbing too many rebounds for Swoopes’ liking.

“Y’all have to hit the boards!”, she screamed at her teammates, but she had to do it herself, as great players often do. There were only white jerseys close to a ball coming off the rim, when Swoopes crashed in from the top of the circle, split the entire San Jose team to steal the rebound, and *somehow* turned toward her own goal to take it in for a layup. With her momentum carrying her away, she managed to reverse direction, and beat nine other players to the rim.

I remember nothing else from that game.

Swoopes has sometimes been likened to Jordan, a 2/3 with off-the-chart skills and defensive tenacity, capable of carrying 11 teammates on her back. The difference between Swoopes and Jordan is that you’ve seen Michael on TV in other than Name That Tune (she and Michael both illustrated the notion that the most outstanding players are not necessarily the best coaches or front office dealers).

The NWBL was ahead of its time, really. If you wanted to organize a professional basketball league for women during the winter, the time to do it is now, when Americans are leery of playing overseas.

NWBL games drew fewer paid attendees than colleges that schedule games between Christmas and New Year. The upside of that was being able to listen to team huddles from the seats.

Colorado Chill coach Kelly Packard has a voice that doesn’t seem suitable for basketball coaches, who have to be heard over crowds screaming and bands playing.

The San Francisco Legacy played home games in a community center about a mile from the Oakland Arena. It wasn’t a basketball arena or gymnasium, but a multi-purpose community building with baskets. The visiting Chill, who lost one game that year while the Legacy won zero, ran into Bay Area traffic, and their driver got lost.

The Chill arrived after the scheduled tipoff time, and just took the floor like they got dressed in the bus. Road-weary, and not warmed up, the Chill fell behind early and looked terrible. (Coach Packard said getting lost before playing poorly was easy at that place. I laughed.)

Colorado called time, and Coach said in that voice: “If you don’t get it together, I’m leaving”.

Becky Hammon — maybe you’ve heard of Coach Hammon — said about Packard: “She isn’t loud, but when she says something, she means it”. The Chill, led by WNBA all-stars Hammon and Ruth Riley, straightened up and won by a zillion, probably.

Hammon was coach of the year in the W for Las Vegas last year. When I saw her on TV, she was as vocal as you’d expect of coaches, but I thought it would’ve been so cool if she addressed the Aces like Coach Packard.

Oregon St. 69 Arizona St. 59

The middle of January is too soon to name the conference freshman of the year, but barring injury, I think the frosting on the cake reads ‘Oregon St.’s Raegan Beers’.

Beers recorded her 10th double (20 pt, 12 rb, two blocked shots of remarkable prescience) in the Beavers’ 79-69 win at Tempe Sunday. She won her third straight Pac-12 freshman of the week award.

Jelena Mitrovic is 6-9, which presents a matchup problem. Beers is 6-5 and built like a truck — when she’s on the floor with Mitrovic, the theory is that the opposing four has to guard Beers, which isn’t possible. Sending an additional defender to help when they’re both listed at 6-0 isn’t much better — Beers can shoot over two as well as one.

I look forward to seeing how other teams prepare for Oregon St.

I talked about roster depth yesterday as a sort of dumb topic for breathless broadcasters to talk about, because the idea has no meaning in the coachspeak lexicon. Every coach says the team has nine or 10 players worthy of minutes, but they play seven.

Oregon St. is built more shallowly than that: Forwards Mitrovic, Beers, plus a guard rotation Talia Von Oelhoffen, Noelle Mannen, Bendu Yeaney, AJ Marotte. Count that as 180 minutes; then they need 20 minutes from Shalexxus Aaron and Martha Pietsch, and as the boxscore were designed to support my theory, those two played 21 minutes Sunday.

The Oregon St. forwards might bring to mind the original ‘twin towers’ in Houston: The very tall and skinny Ralph Sampson, and the merely tall and powerful Hakeem Olajuwon. The experiment wasn’t a great success because Sampson, who was 7-4 or 7-5, was a 6-3 guard at heart.

Oregon St.
jersey no. 		Player Hollinger ‘gamescore’
22 von Oelhoffen,Talia 5.1
04 Mannen,Noelle 2.1
01 Yeaney,Bendu 2.3
00 Aaron,Shalexxus 1
12 Mitrovic,Jelena 3.9
15 Beers,Raegan 21.6
11 Marotte,AJ 6.2
31 Pietsch,Martha 3.7
02 Hansford,Lily 1.7
24 Blacklock,Adlee -0.8
Arizona St.
jersey no. 		Player Hollinger ‘gamescore’
03 Skinner,Tyi4.9
02 Simmons,Jaddan 9.4
12 Hunt,Treasure 1.2
22 Thompson,Journey 6.7
42 Newman,Meg 0.9
04 Crisp,Trayanna 3.7
24 Mokwuah,Kayla 1.5
11 Erikstrup,Sydney 0

We love having Kathleen Hutchens in our program, said UC Santa Barbara coach

I was so impressed with Arroyo Grande HS (Arroyo Grande, Calif.) freshman guard Kathleen Hutchens that I committed to my suggestion that she be scouted, even though I could only see her highlight clips for four years.

I heard UC Irvine sent someone to see her.

Hutchens hired an agency that seems to be in the business of creating college opportunities for high school players, but maybe that didn’t help.

She’s on UC Santa Barbara’s roster as a sophomore, and UCSB coach Bonnie Henrickson said they love having her. In 15 total minutes, zero turnovers, 2-of-3 shooting threes.

It gives me a reason to resume watching the Big West Conference.

Stanford 60 Cal 56

Stanford beat Cal 60-56 Sunday at Haas, after trailing 56-53 with 4:08 left.

The Golden Bears’ last six possessions resulted in three missed field goals, two missed free throws, and two turnovers.

One of those field goal misses was open from the elbow, and late free throws are late free throws. Make those, and they could still be playing now at midnight.

The Cardinal swept the Battle of the Bay — media wants you to think that Stanford and Cal are proximate neighbors, but Haas-to-Maples is a one-hour drive, whereas AT&T Park-to-Oakland-Coliseum less than a half-hour — to go 4-0 in Pac-12 play.

I planned to focus on Cal’s shooting when Cameron Brink influenced the play, but she killed it on the offensive end, too, scoring 25 points (10 of which were in reply to 10 of Cal’s).

By my tally, Cal shot 4-of-19 when Brink aided a defensive stop by clearly altering or blocking the shot, or completed the stop with one of her 14 defensive rebounds. At least twice you could make a case that the Cal shooter was hurried by Brink’s presence.

Cal played a couple of possessions with five out, none in, leaving Brink alone in the paint. Maybe it was accidental, but I agree it’s worth a try.

Brink sat out most of the first quarter, giving the ESPN team an opportunity to marvel at the depth of Stanford’s bench — maybe their deepest ever, one asked Coach VanDerveer.

Eleven Cardinal were in the boxscore, but seniors Haley Jones and Hannah Jump played 40 minutes. That suggests against depth, though I agree Stanford is an exception to the “seven best players, five nicest girls” rule of thumb — there are always one or two Cardinal at the end of the bench who’d get 30+ minutes per game elsewhere, but opted for the Stanford education.

I think you’d have to ask a coach a more specific question than “do you think you have a deep bench?”, because they’ll only say yes to that. I’d ask in three parts: “Do you trust your #9 and #10 in vital minutes?”.

Yes, of course, say the coaches.

“How many minutes might you expect to get from them, and let’s imagine your starters in those spots are much out of whack.”

That depends on whether they were getting the job done, coaches would say.

“How many minutes of nothing would you accept before putting your ineffective starter back in?”

They’d have to think about that, and the correct answer is “it depends”, but you see what I’m implying: Rosters are only as deep as their in-game trust for #9 or #10, even if they get off to bad or slow starts.

Utah had that kind of depth last year. I would’ve said senior Andrea Torres was around #10, and would Coach Roberts stick with her near the end of the game, score close, while Andy weren’t at her sharpest? Yes, I think, because Andy had senior experience (not just the senior label, but clutch experience), and I reckon she would’ve been more visible if Utah’s freshmen didn’t so exceed expectations.

This season, I think it’s junior forward Peyton McFarland at the end of the Utah bench, for whom I was a fan in her freshman year (though Kelsey Rees’ improvement last year as a sophomore was greater). Would Roberts go with McFarland for long? I’d reckon not.

Gonzaga senior Brynna Maxwell was a sixth or seventh man for Utah had she chosen to stay, but that role apparently didn’t suit her. She would’ve had to noticeably improve defensively except in any role but the microwave who can show a hot hand immediately.

Cal senior guard Kemery Martin played 30 minutes, and she led the Golden Bears in assists and in rebounds. She might never pull eight rebounds again, but it’s good to see Kemery play well. If you asked me if I thought she’d have that kind of game again for Utah, I would’ve said the change of scenery was in order.

Arizona 72 Oregon State 69

I thought Arizona 72 Oregon State 69 will be remembered as one of the best games I’d see this season, despite 2.5 months remaining, and having seen none yet for comparison’s sake.

In Tucson, the Wildcats and Ducks were tied at 53 with 8:04 to go. Oregon State ran 12-0 to restore the their long-standing lead. Then Arizona went 15-0 in a demonstration of defense-fuels-offense-fuels-defense-fuels-offense, turning defensive pressure into six favorable transitions, and hit all six.

Brilliant game by both teams, really.

Oregon St. freshman Raegan Beers is quite unique. She’s very big, but a sideline interview implied that she’s much smaller than her brothers. Hence, she looks comfortable amidst heavy traffic or against help defense, and has tools like a fallaway jumper cultivated by creating better angles over bigger defenders.

Beers has nine double-doubles to lead Division I freshman, and that’s reported with an air of no one else is close. She’s the clearest example I’ve seen of a female deriving more benefit from practicing against men than against other women.

It feels like several years ago that I said OSU’s 6-foot-7 forward Jelena Mitrovic intrigues me for her passing ability. She puts her height to good use by seeing open teammates that most players can’t, then making good passes. “Mitrovic is a really good passer for that length”, said Pac-12 Network play-by-play woman Ann Schatz said.

Astute observation that, but the second thing Schatz said in the pregame chat is that the teams were heading into a chess match. You never, ever hear anyone who understands chess make those analogies, because they’re not in the ballpark.

Colorado 77 Utah 67

In Boulder, unranked Colorado beat undefeated #8 Utah 77-67. Utah welcomed me back by starting over themselves.

The Utes didn’t fall apart as much as arrive in pieces, and that’s not said much about championship teams. That team is rooted in togetherness — if one of 12 is out of whack, the system breaks.

The most accurate chessplayer of the 20th century would go undefeated for months or years. He said he’d begin to feel invincible, until receiving “a sound thrashing”, calling it therapeutic.

Utah looked like that, and I’m glad. At 14-1, they’re in the position of recovering from an embarrassing setback for the first time, so I arrived just in time for the second act.

Utah at Colorado, 7 p.m. Mountain Time

I thought the Pac-12 mountain teams would feel the transfer loss of three seniors from Utah and one from Colorado (whose best player graduated, to boot), but the Utes and Buffaloes are a combined 26-3,  with +47 in scoring differential.

Utah won 85-58 in Salt Lake on Dec. 14,  with 42 points, 10 rebounds, 7 assists,  4 blocks, 1 assist, and 2 turnovers by their conference freshmen of the year, forward Alissa Pili (2020) and Gianna Kneepkens (2022).  Colorado’s other loss was to Tennessee when the Volunteers were ranked #21.

Were Dre’Una Edwards (2019), Dru Gylten, and Breanna Maxwell still in Utah, that would make six members of the four most recent conference all-freshmen teams, which is the sort of thing about which I like to imagine.

Colorado’s Kindyll Wetta, my favorite Buffalo, joined Kneepkens and Jenna Johnson in the 2022 all-freshmen group. The numbers that greatly stood out for Wetta in 2022 were 152 assists-plus-steals to 43 turnovers. In 2023, 77-to-30 suggests a little less care or luck, but still supports my theory that coaches’ kids are smarter than the average bears.

 Edwards is in some sort of limbo — she wanted to make another transfer to Baylor (the new rules make it too easy for teenagers to act on their whims), but thinks Kentucky kept her in place. The South Dakota State Jackrabbits figure to win another Summit League championship with Gylten, and Maxwell just won a player of the week award for Gonzaga, owners of the West Coast Conference.

Gylten had a good reason to transfer — going home to get married. It seems Maxwell departed because she didn’t like her changing role with Kneepkens’ emergence, and I think a little less of her for that. Kemery Martin was one of the Pac-12’s outstanding players in 2021, and she went to Cal — in her case, I suspect she didn’t like her prospects of getting out of Coach Roberts’ doghouse.

Whether Utah would be any better with those three still in the picture, who can say. (With Gylten, yes, absolutely. She’s one of those players whose floor presence makes a team better. I’m glad she landed at SDSU, where the Frost Arena fans are insanely supportive of the Jackrabbits.)

I hate the idea of a $20/week television package that includes Pac-12 Network, but I’d better complete signing up for such.

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All aboard the bandwagon

It takes a kind of someone to launch a blog when the team it purports to cover is 14-0 and ranked #8 in the nation.

The same people in the SF Bay Area didn’t own any Giants baseball or Warriors basketball gear until those teams collected championships. Some folks can’t help it — when they’re introduced to the games while the home teams are killing it — but others name their favorite teams according to that day’s standings.

I look down my nose at them, and stand on an elevated platform while doing so, but here I am hastily assembling this blog before the #8 Utah Utes tip off in Colorado tonight.

I never thought of writing basketball as an expensive pastime until I ran out of money. In 2006, I attended the WNBA finals in Sacramento and Detroit, the NWBL finals in Fort Collins, Colo., and the preseason Junkanoo Jam on the Grand Bahama Island without a care. And during the winter, drove to three or four games per week wherever the teams interested me.

Those days are a very long time ago, and this year I found that I couldn’t easily afford to maintain the domain and hosting for pac12wbb.blog, so I let it die. I thought I might’ve been done watching basketball entirely — writing basketball takes lots of travel, while writing basketball well takes lots of homework (to watch games on the Pac-12 Network requires taking on 100+ unwanted TV channels). But there’s an unforeseen cost to that: Instead of receiving treatment afforded media — backstage passes, folding chairs, laptop space, and sometimes food! — buying tickets is a serious drag. I thought to get back to work.

It looks like I’m new in town, but I swear I’m not, honest.

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