Around the country 1/4/09

W

Wulaw Horn

1,000+ Posts
Post here if you have any interesting thoughts or games.

Interesting (to me anyway) games on my TV:

UCLA at Oregon- we've played them both I want to see how much UCLA has progressed b/c I wasn't really impressed with them early except for Collison- he's legit

Kentucky at Louisville- always a fun game, I love Pitino and loathe Gillespie- so my rooting interests are clear.

UNC v BC- just b/c I like watching UNC play. I love Roy Williams teams and always have and its always fun to watch the best.

Duke v V-tech- I'm not sold on the dukies- maybe they'll surprise me

****Stanford v Arizona- Haven't seen stanford yet but they've been killing people up till ASU got them. Want to see what AZ looks like post Lute Olson, haven't seen them yet.

Pretty good day (if somewhat abreviated) for college hoops.

And can anyone tell me why CBS had a womens double header yesterday? I imagine that was enjoyed by tens of viewers.
 
Well, for me personally I'm watching Michigan - Illinois. Illinois has Alex Legion who was initially committed to Michigan with Manny Harris until Amaker was fired. He went off to Kentucky...was unhappy there....and went to Illinois. He would have made a pretty great combination with Harris.
 
What were your thoughts on Michigan v Illinois- I didn't get a chance to see it.

I really like Beilein and liked what he did at WVU and am rooting for him to return Michigan to a decent team. It seems strange as a guy who grew up on college hoops in the late 80's and early 90's to see Michigan as a punching bag. From what I've seen of them so far this year v Duke 2 times and UCLA 1 time I like what I've seen.
 
Well, after being non-competitive for most of the first half Oregon comes out strong in the second half and cuts the lead to five. Hit 5 of the first 6 or so. UCLA spreading the love and shooting well in the first half- 8 of 9 from distance with 7 different guys hitting. Collison has knifed to the basket a couple of times like Oregon didn't exist.

Crowd has been pretty solid in the second half after being asleep for most of the first. Maybe the noon tip time didn't sit well. Also, one kid has a siggn that says "we still hate kevin Love" I must admit tghat I laughed and admire the focusness of still makingg it an issue even after he's in the league- keep up the bitter ball of hate Nike U- good job.

Louisville looked at tgimes in the first 8 minutes like they were going to dominate Kentucky- jumping out to a 10 point lead on a 9-0 run. Kentucky is a turnover waitiing to happen. Louisville is pressing full court and kentucky is turning it over, but it's not really takeaway I'd classify it as Kentucky giving it away through carelessness and lack of attention to detail. Have cut to a smirking Billy G a couple times- what I wouldn'tg give to wipe the smirk off his face. It will be a happy day for me when Kentucky cans his sorry ***. It's not so much that I think he's going to fail there, rather that I don't think he's goingg to make them a perennial final 4 team and if you don't do that at UK you are in trouble.

Combine that with his general churlishness and drinking problems and I think it's a recipe for disaster. Though to be fair the drinking probably isn't a problem to those moonshining hillbilies.

Cincy lost by eleventy billion to Marquette- who seems to be ok but not really good. They also gogt smoked by Memphis- I'm thinking that they are just about off my tourney bubble and the big east looks like "only" a 9 bid league to me right now. 1 thing they do have going for them is plenty of chances to get a couple of big wins, but they look non-competitive and like nothing special so far.

Oregon within 3- looking like a good game on Fox now- I'm going to that as my primary game and leaving Kentucky v Louisville for commercials and the second half. Great shooting right now in Eugene 7/12 from ducks 9/15 from UCLA.
 
Kentucky's hanging in... only down six with six to go in the half.

I think Gillispie will hang in as well. They could have fallen apart last year and didn't... they made the NCAAs without their best player.

I'm not in love with his style, and he loses games he shouldn't, but his teams are pretty sound.
 
I don't disagree with your assessment of the smirking one, but Kentucky fans hate losing any games, let alone ones that they should, and winning isn't even enough for many of them they want to win with a style that Gillespie is not ever likely to do so.

They don't want to watch methodical and grind it out teams that flame out before the final weekend of the tourney- which is what I expect out of Billy G. That gogt Tubby fired and he had the credibility of a Championship to his name (granted with Pitinio's guys).

Oregon still hanging close- 6 point game with 5 minutes left. On Fox Sports if anyone is wondering.
 
Btw- I like Jrue Holliday ok for UCLA but he should not be a one and done guy at all. He's still got a lotg of rough edges to polish and he is nowhere near NBA ready.

As I type Shipp hits his 5th 3 of the game to stretch it to 9 then comes up with a steal on the ogther end. I don't like the guy as he seems kinda like a jerk, but he's got some serious ggame to him. It would be better if he didn't know it though.

Collison with a ridiculous blow by for the and 1 at the under 4 TO 11 with a freethrow for 12. This game is D-U-N done.
 
UK on a 11-2 run gto cut it to two points with under 2 minutes left. I missed the run as I was watching BC go up at the half by 6 points on UNC.

Story of that game appears to be offensive boards, UK is up 20-5 on Louisville 2nd chance points.

It's weird, everytime I flip to that game and watch a segment louisvile dominates the segment, then I turn it back and Kentucky has cut the deficit back to manageable.

1 of 2 from the line for louisville to go up 3 and kentucky throws the ball away. 20 turnovers for the cats, many of which to my eye were careless or sloppy
 
Just horrible end game for louisville. Up 6 and UK scores, turnover and score again to cut it to 2. Then they throw a length of the court pass to nobody in particular for another turnover and UK shooting FT.

Just a horrible stretch of 20 seconds for the ville.

UK hits the first and the second. Tie game
 
Dribble up front for the ville down to 2.5 seconds and the kid pulls up and drills one from 6 feet behind the arc. uk no timeout and misses a half court shot. I have no idea why this game was close other than offensive boards keeping UK in it.
 
BC up 7 in the 2nd half right now, Ty Lawson with a drive to the hole to cut it to 4.

Lawson is great with the ball in his hands. TJ Ford quick with the ball.
 
I think BC's legs are gone... two offensive boards for UNC on the possession before last... 1:40 to go...

And a bad call on a pivot foot. 1:30... UNC has pulled out worse than this, but they're not shooting well at all.
 
BC won by 7, wow was I wrong. I said I thought UNC was going undefeated.

The only thing I did get right was I predicted if they were only going to have 1 loss it wasn't going to be Duke or Wake or anything it was going to be a sunday afternoon game that they just overlooked. I wouldn't have thought it would be a home game though.

I don't really know how this loss happened. I'd say I watched 30 out of the 40 minutes and UNC was up by something like 8 or 10 points, I missed BC's 12-5 start and I turned in the tail end of a 9-0 run or something like that.

UNC missed 4 FT in the last minute and a half and 6 or so 3 pointers, many of them really good looks.

Congrats to BC I'm guessing that more or less punches their ticket as long as they can finish at 500 in their league. There are enough bad teams in the ACC they should be able to manage that.
 
I tried to watch the UNC/BC game on Time Warner, and even though the programming said the game was scheduled, poker was on.

Anyone else have this?
 
I sure wish I had seen that UNC game. It's like I was in a time warp.....I saw on the ESPN bottom line it was coming on....and then I saw on the bottom line that BC had won.

Amazing comeback by Kentucky in those last few moments. Great, if questionable shot, by Louisville at the end. Reminded me of that TERRIBLE shot Louisville put up towards the end of the game against A&M in the Tournament.

As far as Michigan...I really love Beilein and what he does. Something I found funny during the game yesterday was the commentators talking about Kelvin Grady, a PG for Michigan, who apparently said this year he buys into the system and last year he fought Beilein on it. Are you kidding me? You are a guard on a team that hasnt won consistently in more than a decade....and Beilein is a guy who has won at every level (literally!). That was unbelievable to me.

Michigan is one of those teams you will see great moments from....and then terrible moments. As a whole they really arent that talented. What they have is one great player (Harris), one good player (Sims) and some good shooters. They are also very young. Beilein is just getting started at Michigan in terms of what he can achieve.
 
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