Robbed Again in Seattle

What's the deal with Seattle? Why does every Arizona Wildcat team that goes up there to compete end up having to play against the Huskies and the refs?

Lest ye have forgotten the Arizona football team was defeated this year in Seattle on the "shoe deflection" game (Please see previous ASD posts for incontrovertible evidence that it was an incomplete pass). Now the Cats go up to Seattle and the refs decide that they want a 3 hour game and begin the game by calling 3 fouls in the first minute. Our freshmen struggle to make the adjustment and the result: Derek Williams (our leading scorer) plays 7 minutes.

The game, particularly in the first half, lacked anything resembling a flow. It really didn't seem like a basketball game, it was more likely a free throw contest. A contest that we were winning until the final 4 minutes of the game when Overton began to ice it from the stripe.

You have to give credit to our bench which carried the Cats to a 6 point halftime lead and waited patiently for Wise to get out of his funk (do you think I have some responsibility for Wise's poor shooting because of my effusive praise earlier in the week?). But eventually the consequences of playing 5 on 8 caught up with us and we were beaten.

There is no way that we lose to Washington in a real game of basketball. I look forward to seeing them in the Pac-10 tourney.

In other news, I was struck by the tone of the play of Momo and Parrom. Our New York boys bring an edge that few Arizona players have had. They are genuinely frightening and I would imagine that other teams are going to hate those guys and call them thugs in the same way that we have villanized Sun Devils and Bruins in the past. I wouldn't be surprised if Parrom is suspended for his foul in this past game. Is this a trend that everyone is excited about or are we concerned that we will lose our clean image of the Olson teams?

56 Fouls in a 40 minute game

The person in the striped shirt with the wrinkly neck and male patterned baldness is an A-hole Moron from the farthest reaches of the verse. He and his two symbiotic sidekicks arrived at Bank of America Arena last night with the intention of getting as much TV air time as they possibly could. Unfortunately they were being paid to referee a Mens college basketball game. You know the kind of game where there is contact between opposing teams. Apparently these three dim witted want to be's were under the impression that the sell out crowd and the TV audience showed up to see them toot their little whistle and sachet to the scorers table to gesticulate wildly. In fact what they did was turn the game into a free throw contest. Seventy one free throws were attempted. See because if they are shooting free throws all the time that means that the ref has to handle the ball, signal the number of shots remaining and pass the ball to the shooter i.e. more time for striped shirted losers to be on TV.

By the way the officials names are: Scott Thornley, Michael Reed and Michael Greenstein.

WARNING: If you ever see these three about to referee a game stop, drop and roll to the TV and put in a DVD. Any DVD it doesn't matter anything is better than enduring these three whistle happy camera muggers.

The Great Nic Wise

Last week the Wildcats reached their full potential for this season. I know that in the future our foundation of freshmen that will produce much better teams, but for this season, last weekend's performances against Stanford and Cal were the best we can play.

In my eagerness to praise our young Cats, particularly Derek Williams, I began to take Nic Wise for granted. In the closing minutes of the game against Cal, after Horne (who clearly fouled Robertson) forced the turnover, I texted something to the effect of: "Great, we got the ball but our most clutch player is 5'10"." I doubted the effectiveness of our diminutive point guard, despite the ample evidence to the contrary. Just this season he has made back to back game winning shots. Yet in the intensity of the Arizona/Cal game I questioned his ability to take over like Aaron Brooks used to for Oregon.

As we all know, I was proved wrong on the next play when Wise dribbled, juked, shimmied and collided his way to the rim for an amazing "and 1." Wise's poise at the end of that crucial game means that we must all pay him the reverence that he is due. He is our last second option, and though he is not the conventional size, we must have full confidence that he is a winner.

His dramatic final shot even warmed the cockels of Joe Lunardi's frosty heart as he allowed Arizona into braketology for the first time this year.

We have a huge game this Thursday night and Wise can not do it alone, but we can be confident that if we have the ball in the waning moments he will find a way to win.

Bracketology

We are in!

Is "The Streak" really over?

The Wildcats have 11 conference games left. Seven at home. Just two road trips left. One to NoCal which will be tough and one to Washington also tough. But if the Cats can run the table at home and split on those road trips they would have 19 wins going into the Pac 10 tournament. If they win 1 or perhaps 2 Pac 10 tourney games they would be sitting at 20 or more wins. Does that get them in? They are improving and so far not many teams in the conference can say that.

Cats regain the keys to McKale North

Our long national nightmare has ended. Coach Miller and the young wildcats restored order to the galaxy by handing ASU an old fashioned beat down. The Cats, who were inexplicably an 11 point underdog, beat ASU by 19 points. Wells Fargo arena cleared out with 3 minutes to go. UofA, which had struggled against Herb Sendeck's wacky zone for 5 and 1/2 straight games, figured out how to beat the zone in the second half. Suddenly Williams was open on every possession. When he wasn't dunking on ASU's pitiful inside defenders he was kicking the ball out for wide open threes. On the defensive end the Cats kept the devils on the three point line and dared them to keep hitting threes...they didn't.

Tyler texted after the game that as long as Arizona has Derek Williams we will never lose to ASU again. Greg Hansen wrote this morning that Miller's first game against ASU mirrored Olson's first victory. Hansen, who loves Miller even more than I do, predicted that the Cats could go on an Olson-esque streak against the Devils. His evidence, the way that Sendeck got flustered during the game.

It was a glorious night and the Cats have a chance to make it truly meaningful. If we were to win at home against Stanford on Thursday we would be playing for the lead of the Pac-10 on Saturday at home against Cal and then heading to Seattle to play pre-season favorite Washington. This is a huge stretch for the Cats and we are playing as well as we have all season. I can't help feeling that our inexperience will creep up again and make us lose an easy game (maybe Stanford) but our returning players Fogg, Wise and Horne are really sharing the leadership load.

We will find out in the next two weeks if Joe Lunardi will continue to ignore us.

Bear Down!

Spectacularly Overmatched

As I watched the Cardinals make Reggie Bush seem like he was back at USC this weekend I couldn't help thinking that Arizona sports teams have made it a recent tradition to get completely blown out on the big stage. The Arizona Wildcat football team in the Holiday Bowl, the Arizona Wildcat basketball team in the Sweet 16 against Lousiville and now the Cards. Is this the beginning of a trend? Why have we been getting so outclassed in recent games?