Buffalo roam

The four best teams in the Pac-12 played amongst themselves last Sunday, though I’m loath to say that doesn’t include Utah. USC 73, UCLA 65 was so critical to the state of our dissolving conference that I watched that game despite knowing the score already.

My takeaway from last weekend’s games — whereas you might’ve already been sold — was Colorado deserved their #5. After the Buffaloes beat the Bay Area teams, they’re worthy of #3, too.

Against the resurgent Cal, and perennial conference kingpin Stanford, Colorado showed up with the chilly confidence of championship teams. The Buffaloes were so good, I put a call into Coach Payne, because I want to ask how she intends to prevent them from peaking too soon.

It’s possible Colorado can’t get too high, with team balance preventing them from flying too close to the sun. For instance, against Cal, Colorado got 19 and 4 from Vonleh, 4-of-7 3FG from Formann, 12 and 12 from Miller. Two days later, 13 and 4 from Sharrod, 12 and 5 from Nolan, 12 and 6 and 5 and 4 from Wetta (plus another double from Miller, while the collective production offsets Formann’s 3-for-14).

Wetta even got their only blocked shot that afternoon. 4-of-5 shooting, 6 rebounds, 5 assists, 4 steals, 1 block. That’s what shows up in the boxscore, while Coach Payne calls her the best defender in the conference.

Colorado brushed Stanford off like cardinal-colored dust. +19 fast break points, +17 points after turnovers, +12 in the paint. Sorta makes you feel for the Oregons, who visit the Bay Area this weekend. Stanford will be loaded for duck Friday. (The Red Cross needs blood, so the Stanford Blood Center offered donors a chance to score tickets to Oregon at Stanford in a drawing tomorrow. I thought: I should do my civic duty here… wait a second, why do I have to ‘win’ tickets, when I’d rather be at Oregon State at Cal, anyway. It is time to give blood again, in any event.)

I said in October that the toughest road trip in the Pac-12 was up the Rocky Mountains and maintaining altitude in Salt Lake. This weekend, it’s the best travel pair in the conference — the southern Californians — coming to visit.

I asked to talk to Coach Gottlieb because USC is running a fearsome gauntlet (but for mistakenly saying I’m not working on a deadline, they seemed to have lost my phone number — not like the old days, when Coach Gottlieb was at UC Santa Barbara and I was the only reporter in the building). Juju Watkins carried the Trojans past UCLA, but their next five opponents are the mountain teams, the Washingtons, and the Cardinal.

USC isn’t in tiptop shape without Rayah Marshall. Will the Trojans win none, one, or two, I shan’t predict (it’s enough to say USC is one of the best teams of the country, and their swagger rivals LSU). Colorado is, at the moment, the class of the Pac-12, while Utah demonstrated hidden depth vs. Cal Sunday.

Dean Oliver’s groundbreaking 2003 “Basketball on Paper” was the first great book about basketball analytics. I’ve read Seth Parnow’s “The Midrange Theory” (2021) twice — it’s an outstanding follow-up to Oliver (basketball analytics has progressed like speculative fiction since 2003), but honest, I still can’t tell what the midrange theory is. I think maybe it’s “if you make enough of them, it doesn’t matter if they’re 2 feet or 12 feet”.

Utah is the best team in college basketball to illustrate the idea that if you’re not making a layup, you’re better off attempting a three. On a good day, the Utes drop 15 threes; on a great day, 20. Against Cal, they made 5, but they won by 37 for +50 in the paint.

Vieira shot 8-for-11. Maybe each of her 5 steals turned into her layup on the other end; it’s reasonable to say she’s over the stomach bug that crippled the Utes a week before.

Pili’s draft stock is rising. She’s now projected around #5 to #7, though I’d prefer she were completely deaf to the buzz. Remember Manute Bol? Sudanese chap, near 8 feet tall and 8 inches wide, one of the finest gentlemen ever to play in the NBA.

Golden State coach Don Nelson didn’t want Bol getting near the ball when the Warriors had possession. He told Bol to go out to a halfline corner, and wait there. Perhaps by accident, a loose ball rolled out to him, and with the shot clock running out, he sank a three.

The crowd went nuts, and it became a thing (to Coach Nelson’s chagrin). When Bol somehow got the ball out there, the Oakland crowds urged him to shoot it, maybe until a mean regression. Which is what I see happening to Alissa Pili — sure, when she was making 55% of her 3FG attempts, all was wonderful. But all wonderful things tend to regress to their mean, and if the Huntsman crowds would stop cheering for her while she’s out there, maybe she’ll resume taking the ball closer to the basket.

I am perhaps going silent for a spell. I have to find a new place to live, and probably a real job. I’m having a hard time concentrating, so some things have to move to a back burner.

What is it?

I contacted Southern Cal’s media department, because holy shit, have you looked at the Trojans’ schedule through the first week of February?!

In three days, USC hosts UCLA, who look like a national finalist.

Next week, USC visits the Rocky Mountains for their hardest in-conference road trip.

End of January, USC hosts the Washingtons, the least predictable travel pair in the Pac-12, I think (and when I say unpredictable, I mean “great” or “just very good”).

Followed by the Bay Bridge swing through Palo Alto and Berkeley, where Cal is suddenly healthy enough to meet expectations.

I called Utah coach Roberts to plead for good news. Since we talked last, the Utes:

  • Lost at Colorado (Roberts said the Buffaloes showed up with playoff intensity while the Utes were still in gear for Weber State);
  • Limped past the Sun Devils at Arizona State (that was a miserable night; I was reminded that if I play chess on Friday nights, I should plan to watch Friday’s basketball games on Saturday);
  • Lost at Arizona, partly to the Wildcats, partly to the officials, and partly to a team-wide stomach flu (one of Roberts’ outstanding Pacific teams was wiped out with food poisoning in Northridge, but the difference there, she said, was that the food poisoning subsided). “We had our chances to win; could’ve put it away in the 3rd”, Roberts said.

Utah’s reward for building character through adversity is hosting Stanford today, and a resurgent Cal Sunday. Next week, visiting southern California.

Last season during Utah’s Bay Area visit, when Stanford came up during conversation, the focus went immediately to the Cardinal’s size. That hasn’t changed, and Roberts and I agreed that Brink benefits for her mediagenic qualities.

Coach said that while Stanford lost Haley Jones (a unicorn, she said), they’ve got more 3-point shooting than before. I’ll say here that Hannah Jump looks relaxed lately, like those gunslingers who shoot between heartbeats.

The thing that is most scary about Stanford is they’re figuring it out. These Cardinal go on sudden, insane runs like they did a few years back. Stanford’s opponents might have been trailing by, say, 8, and feeling within striking distance. Then Stanford would run off a pair of 14-3 runs.

Utah needs help. Last year, we marveled at the Utes’ depth. Since conference play began this year, the bench looks thin.

Surely, all agree that in the absence of Kneepkens and Palmer, two or three or five others have to be more productive. None of the underclassmen looks eager to lead the way. “They kinda plateaud”, Coach said, with some uncertainty.

Coach said “it is what it is” a couple times. She doesn’t know what will happen tonight, or the state of the team’s togetherness in March.

I am sure of one future thing. Years from now, I will say: No one had any idea what would happen after Gianna broke her foot, and look what happened.

It only makes sense for Caitlin Clark to play for WNBA San Francisco in 2025

#14 Indiana hosts #3 Iowa Feb. 22 in a game that’s already sold out. IU’s media department reported that half of Assembly Hall’s 17K seating went to Indianans who want to see what the WNBA Indiana Fever are getting with #1 draft pick Caitlin Clark.

Which strikes me as odd. IU is telling us that 8000 people are scouting Caitlin Clark before they buy Fever tickets?

The Fever are a last-place team with the lowest attendance in the league, around 4000 per game. Say half those 8000 people buy season tickets, doubling Fever attendance to 8000 — they’re still behind the league champion Aces, who average 9200.

I don’t give that a snowball’s chance. If you’re considering Fever tickets, you already know what Caitlin Clark does at the college level. If they don’t know, there’s nothing #22 can do in one game to persuade the uninitated to come out for the Fever, especially since it’s possible Clark will stay in Iowa for another year.

The best case is that Clark stays at Iowa for another year, then announces she won’t play in the WNBA in 2025 unless it’s for the new expansion team in San Francisco.

Seriously, that’s what’s best for everybody, and it makes perfect sense. Who was San Francisco’s best player in the late ’70s? #22 Jack Clark. Who was San Francisco’s best player in the late ’80s? #22 Will Clark. Who shall be WNBA San Francisco’s best player in the late ’20s? #22 Caitlin Clark.

Happy new year?

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.

Dec. 30 happened

During one of northern California’s coldest, wettest spells of the year, I spent Friday night in the garage.

Around midnight, while I was compiling numbers from Stanford at Cal —

Stanford 78
Cal 51

Stanford was better and Cal was worse while Cameron Brink was on the floor. After factoring out the last five minutes of garbage time, the Cardinal shot 16-for-32 with Brink, 13-for-35 without her. The Golden Bears shot 5-of-29 while Brink played, 9-for-30 while she didn’t.

Stanford sophomore guard Talana Lepolo had a career game: 6-of-10 3FG, 6 assists. Cal got a team-lead 12 from Ioanna Krimili, back for the first time since November.

— I went to rummage through the freezer for breakfast, and one of the housemates closed and locked the door behind me.

They’re older — one uses a hearing aid — and pounding on doors and rapping on windows around the house didn’t help. My feet got wet for tramping around the yard, but even so, not the worst night ever.

The comedy peaked in the morning when someone visited the kitchen, and couldn’t hear me at the door. With the sun peeking in and out, I sat outside until someone left the house. With 20 minutes until tipoff in Boulder, which is too bad, because I’d’ve rather missed that game.

Utah 65
Colorado 76

I thought we were terrible, dribbling more than passing (the first thing I look for in a Utah boxscore is ratio of assisted baskets; on Saturday 10 assists on 26 makes), 20 turnovers (how many were more dumb than coerced, I can’t say), inattentive to the ball.

It would’ve been amusing if terrible were enough to steal a road win, but the Buffaloes shot 8-of-11 in the 4th quarter.

Colorado was +11 points after turnovers (and won by 11, how about that), +21 fast break points. The Buffaloes didn’t suffer under much ball pressure — Formann had a woeful game shooting 1-of-9, but that one came while the Utes were running toward people without the ball.

I’d say this was our worst game since Baylor, but non-conference play is ancient history.

USC 64
UCLA 71

Southern Cal looked ordinary, though UCLA will do that to lots of teams as 2024 goes on.

The Oregons are the only conference game Sunday. I need sleep.

Southern Cal looked ordinary, though UCLA will do that to lots of teams as 2024 goes on. I wasn’t paying much attention, really, though the SoCal schools will be in the conference tournament semis (and they’re good enough for the national semis).

The Oregons are the only conference game Sunday. I need sleep.

  • utes

Coach Roberts and media relations

I read the media statement more carefully, and it was that outlet’s opinion that Utah coach Roberts is always quotable, and worthy of its personal award “state sportsperson of the year”.

I think Coach Roberts evolved as “always quotable” around the time UConn visited. Record lot of media attention on that game, and Coach Roberts was as good as Connecticut coach Auriemma with the media relations.

When the news broke about Utah start Gianna Kneepkens’ season-ending foot injury, Roberts said: “No one works harder and competes to win like she does. I know she will attack this like she does everything else, and come back better than ever. While this is adversity for our program, I believe in our players. I know we’ll persevere, and our goals are still achievable.”

These days, I judge coaches by their handling of media. I can’t tell which coaches are getting the most of the players in-game, or how much of a team’s success was won in recruiting and development. But I have some handle on whether a coach is talking to media in a perfunctory manner.

I’ve shared my opinion about what media expects to feed to the audience, and how coaches and student-athletes needn’t give more than that. Sandy Simpson was a master at this — he called media relations an obligation, but he didn’t kill the messengers. He played his part in the “reporter/coach song and dance” with integrity, and if you asked Coach Simpson to go beyond that, then he was really fun.

It’s that integrity I’m watching. Whether the coach is reading lines, or genuinely means it. Coach Roberts’ press statement regarding Gianna — seeing her in crutches, and Issy Palmer in street clothes, was hard on Thursday — was straightforward in that “what else is the coach supposed to say” manner.

What I’ve learned to appreciate about Coach Roberts is that she was talking as much herself as she was Gianna, and meant it sincerely. If Coach said: “Still think this is THE YEAR?”, she’d expect me to be honest, while skeptical if warranted.

I’d say: Kneepkens is a player with an innate ability to help the team achieve “better than the sum of their parts”. I think your task in 2024 is instilling that quality in Utes who don’t have it so naturally. It’s still THE YEAR, with 20-some games to determine the year of what.

I’ll fabricate a quote for Coach here. Call ESPN. “Our young players looked like young players against Weber State.”

It’s reasonable to put those words in Coach Roberts’ mouth, because they’re as true as “it is what it is”, and maybe the audience will take it within context of losing Kneepens. In other words, Gianna’s leadership — and leadership in minutes played — takes more than three months to cultivate.

Invasion (home games, really) of the Mountain People

Andy Kaufman was a performance artist at the turn of the ’80s. Whether you thought Kaufman comedian or anti-comedian, brilliant or ‘what the fuck’, was up to you.

The producers of the classic sitcom “Taxi” so enjoyed Kaufman’s “foreign man” persona, they offered him a role based on the character.

Kaufman never liked the idea, and as he grew bored with “Taxi”, the showrunners let him play a range of weirdos by giving the foreign man a personality disorder. They also cast Carol Kane as a love interest from the foreign man’s fictional home country.

Since an on-screen courtship is nothing without conflict, they wrote the foreign man as bigoted toward “mountain people” in his homeland, while Carol Kane’s character was from the highlands.

This bit of 1980s sitcom culture always comes to my mind when Utah and Colorado play weaker opponents on the same day. I imagine munchkins or oompa loompas standing up to the Rocky Mountain people, then ultimately fleeing in terror like Tokyo residents in science fiction movies.

Northern Colorado 56
Colorado 78

Northern Colorado didn’t get my memo. The Bears scored the first 14 points of the game, 11 by senior Delanie Byrne. UNC’s leading scorer and rebounder averages 17 and 8; she had 21 and 9 in Boulder Thursday.

The host Buffaloes trailed 14-0 early, 21-15 at the end of one, and didn’t get the lead until 0:44 of the second.

When you ask coaches if they’ve devised anything out of the ordinary for some opponent, they invariably say something like: We’ll do what we do, and if circumstances warrant, we might something different. Even if the team truly does have a card up their sleeve, coaches will give that LaLooshian answer.

Colorado seemed to take the rare step of doing the unusual early. They had a plan of overwhelming Northern Colorado with size, but Aaronette Vonleh and Quay Miller shot 0-for-4. Frida Formann didn’t attempt a field goal until 5:33 for the Buffaloes’ first points. Then guard Tameiya Sadler made a couple of assists and a steal, Vonleh made a layup assisted by Jaylyn Sherrod, and the Buffaloes were back to doing what they do.

Colorado scored 48 points in the paint, which was what they had in mind all along, but they got there through conventional means. The early focus on forward play had an odd-though-perhaps-expected effect on the perimeter: Sherrod didn’t get going until the 2nd quarter, though she wound up with the team scoring lead. Formann, who’d scored 68 in their previous three games, ended with 10.

Formann is the most confident-looking 3-point shooter I know. She’s just 15th in the nation in 3FG% (Alissa Pili is first; imagine that), but she’s first in attempts.

Back in 1989, when Eddie Johnson won the NBA sixth man of the year award, he scored 21 ppg, and made more than half his 3-pointers. Eddie Johnson’s first attempt appeared to be critical — if it was good, he was off to an amazing shooting night; if he missed the first one, not so good. A TV person said shooters like Eddie Johnson have a trait that when they make the first one, they approach the second one with great confidence because they know they’re still at 50 percent on a miss.

I don’t see that in Frida Formann. When Formann takes her first 3-point attempt, she looks like she’s already taken one and made it.

If I needed a 3-pointer with everything on the line, I think I’d want Formann shooting it. Or Hannah Jump from beyond the center of the circle. If Alissa Pili were to change my mind, it wouldn’t be the first time for her doing that.

When two giant monsters are in the same Japanese science fiction movie, they fight each other. That’s what we get on Dec. 30 when the Buffaloes and Utes collide to begin conference play. About bloody time.

Weber St. 36
Utah 89

I predicted one of the forwards other than Pili — Dasia Young or Jenna Johnson — would have an outstanding game, based on Oregon St.’s forwards trampling the Weber St. forwards earlier.

Johnson had a double with zero fouls and zero turnovers. If she’d made her last trey, she would’ve led the team in effiency. Young’s 10 points included the 489th point she’s scored as a Ute, to go with 511 at Tennessee-Martin.

Vieira defies physics. When the ballhandler and Ines Vieira approach from opposite directions, and Vieira misses a steal attempt going left, she can turn right and come back around to try for the steal from behind — one, that’s amazing speed, and two, the right turn shouldn’t be possible without drifting away and to the left.

I have to ask Roberts to assess freshman Ross’ feel for the game, particularly on defense. She seems to grasp the ball-you-man principle so well that she fills defensive floor space as though playing zone.

A little barometer of how well a player is shooting is adding 2FG%, 3FG%, and FT%, and 1800 is exceptional. 60% 2FG, 40% 3FG, and 80% FT makes an 1800. For most of last season, Gonzaga’s Brynna Maxwell was in an otherworldly 1950 range. This season, on the other hand:

Pili, Utah 2059
Brink, Stanford 1941
Hare, Marquette 1860
Maxwell, Gonzaga 1787

12/20

Both Washington teams lost today; for the Huskies, it was their first loss. Washington at Louisville was one of the best games I’ve seen. Louisville played more bothersome defense, and effectively attacked the Husky defense (2nd in the nation in FG% allowed before this game).

Auburn 69 Washington St. 62

The fast break when the ball doesn’t touch the floor is a pleasure to watch, at any level of basketball savvy.

Washington St. star Charlisse Leger-Walker was the middleman on one of those a minute ago at Auburn. She pointed acknowledgement at two teammates: Wallack, who finished, and the rebounder, who hit Leger-Walker from the baseline.

It’s a curious sight: Player pointing thanks with both hands toward opposite ends of the floor.

Hockey does it right by awarding assist credit to two passers before the shot. The Cougar rebounder gets credit for a defensive rebound, but no part of the assist, though hers was the more difficult pass.

Dr. Naismith didn’t build dribbling into the game at first. Maybe he envisioned great plays like that one, but the game evolved with dribbling, because opportunities to make those great plays are few.

Washington State is such a good team, but if you put them in middle of the stacked Pac-12 — maybe 5th, or as low as 8th! — no one argues.

Last I looked, NET had them 7th in the league, which is nuts. The Cougars won the conference tournament last season, and NET says: *This* season, you’re behind three California teams, two Mountain teams, and the cross-state Huskies, who kicked your ass last week.

The Pac is that good, but the greedy twats in its administration wanted more than a fair share of a huge effing pie, and next season, there’s no pie.

At the start of the 3rd, Leger-Walker has 4 6 7, on her way to a second straight triple.

In an alternate universe, I’m *at* this game. Married my ex, moved to Auburn, didn’t get killed by an in-law or a redneck, friendly with the Auburn sports information department and WBB program. It’s the “not killed by an in-law or a redneck” part that was going to be most difficult.

  • utes

Utah coach Roberts named the state’s sportsperson of the year

Did the Crimson Coalition give her a new car for that?

If not, the Utah sportsperson of the year award still puts Coach Roberts in the ballpark with TIME magazine’s person of the year Taylor Swift.

A Zone Sports Network broadcaster said Coach Roberts is “always quotable”. That’s fair-weather media for you — that guy never tried talking to Coach after a road loss around the turn of the ’10s.

  • ducks

Utah Tech makes 21 threes, beats Oregon 92-86. That’s Utah *Tech*.

Did you know Utah has a technical university, with about 20 paths of computer science study?

Did you know the Utah Tech Trailblazers reclassified as D1 in 2019, and joined the the Western Athletic Conference?

Did you know UTAH TECH anagrams to HATCHET U? Got you with that one.

In St. George, Utah Tech hosts the Trailblazer Classic, and beat Oregon 92-86 in a first-round game Tuesday.

It was a one-point game at 4:50, and with 30 seconds left, Oregon trailed by 3. The Ducks got two possessions, and as the saying goes, you play for 39 minutes to achieve that position.

Utah Tech was making a barely-acceptable 34.7% of their 3FG for the season, but shot 21-for-31 Tuesday, including 6-for-7 in the fourth quarter.

Oregon gets Oklahoma State Thursday at Utah Tech, in their last game before conference play begins against at Oregon St. As things stand, I’m expecting the Beavers to remain undefeated.

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