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!
Joe Lunardi at ESPN Bracketology has ASU as the very last team in the tournament right now.
ReplyDeleteThis was a great game, and a really fun night to be a Wildcat fan.
ReplyDelete