1. In college basketball, it's championship weekend. Many of the conference tournaments wrap up this weekend and today I had keen interest in three games: the championship games of the Big East and the Pac-12 and the semi-final match up in the Southeastern Conference between Tennessee and Kentucky.
With under three minutes to go and Kentucky ahead by eight in the SEC semi-final, it looked like the Wildcats might cruise to a victory, but Tennessee rallied. They clamped down on Kentucky on defense. Admiral Schofield, Grant Williams, and Lamonte Turner splashed shots late from beyond the three point arc and Jordan Bone converted a string of four clutch free throws. Tennessee won, 78-82. Gonzaga fans watching this game must have had flashbacks to December when Tennessee rallied in a similar way late in the game to come from behind and beat the Zags. Tennessee now faces Auburn for the conference championship on Sunday. Auburn defeated the Vols by four points just a week ago.
Villanova and Seton Hall also engaged in a tooth and nail gut tightener for the Big East championship. Villanova triumphed, 74-72, stoutly defending their slim lead in the game's closing seconds, surviving Seton Hall's late surge. As expected, Villanova's Phil Booth and Eric Paschall performed brilliantly, but I thought the Wildcats' win hinged on the superb play of two supporting players, Jermaine Samuels and Saddiq Bey, who combined for 28 points and scored key points late in the game. Seton Hall played with great determination, mounting a late game comeback that just fell short when the irrepressible Myles Powell missed a potentially game winning three pointer with under 10 seconds to play.
I don't know how these Big East conference teams will do in the NCAA tournament which starts this coming week. I do know, however, that I loved watching the teams in this conference play each other over the last two and a half months. The games were emotional, unpredictable, hard-nosed, and exciting. I am going to miss checking the schedule every morning to see if another Big East tilt is being televised on FS1 that day and can hardly wait until next January when this Big East conference play resumes again.
2. Byrdman's son, Nick, was just hired to run the golf course in Pinehurst and he organized a St. Patrick's Day party today, maybe to help kick off his new job and get golfers together. I dashed out after the Villanova/Seton Hall game wrapped up and joined Byrdman, his daughter Amanda, Dan and Jennifer Carrico, Bucky Fulton, and Michele Rauenhorst, and later Hank, and others around a big table and got in some yakkin'. I didn't stay long. The party was breaking up and I wanted to return home to watch the one game I'd been the most eager to see.
3. That game featured the Oregon Ducks playing the Washington Huskies for the Pac-12 Conference championship.
I sat in my TV chair, took a deep breath, and sang fitting lyrics in my head, in anticipation of another couple of hours with with the big red head, Bill Walton, in anticipation of yet another magic carpet ride. Here's a bit of the great Blues Image song I sang: "Ride captain,ride upon your mystery ship/On your way to a world others might have missed".
This is how I enjoy Bill Walton. I pretend it's a magic carpet ride. I open myself to going with Captain Bill on a mystery ship to who knows how many worlds that others might have missed.
Bill Walton came through, finding moments in this game to advocate for public lands, mourn the shootings in New Zealand, promote an upcoming John Fogerty concert, pay homage to Phil Knight and his entourage in the stands, claim, as a player, he'd suffered a broken nose 14 times and had his teeth knocked out 6 times; once again, Walton argued that all college basketball games should be played in the "spectacular" T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Duck Coach Dana Altman should be in the Hall of Fame, and, he may as well have argued that Oregon's trainer, Clay Jamieson should win a Nobel Prize for Medicine, so ebullient was Walton in his praise of him. Tonight, Walton did not make repeated references to Melville's Moby-Dick because Ehab (not Ahab) Amin didn't play many minutes tonight, but he did make other literary allusions that have slipped my memory.
Did Captain Bill take me on my way to worlds I otherwise might have missed?
Without a doubt.
Almost nothing Bill Walton says in the course of a basketball game is anything I would have thought about on my own. Bill Walton should open every broadcast singing, "Well, you don't know what/We can find/Why don't you come with me. . ./On a magic carpet ride".
Oh!
The game.
Oregon dismantled the Huskies. The Ducks were playing their fourth game in four nights, yet it was the Huskies who looked tired as the miraculously fresh Ducks swarmed the Huskies, disrupted their offense, blocked shots, changed the trajectory of other shots, and otherwise demoralized the Dawgs on their way to a 68-48 victory.
The Ducks were led in every way by Payton Pritchard who scored 20 points and had 4 steals, 7 assists, and 6 rebounds. He was the tournament's Most Valuable Player and (this is mind boggling) in the tournament's four games, Pritchard dished out 22 assists and only turned the ball over 4 times.
By the way, during the magic carpet ride, Bill Walton swooped into a lot of hyperbole as he raved about Payton Pritchard, drawing comparisons between Pritchard and Steve Nash and John Stockton.
Allow me to retort.
I'd like to quote the 80s group Asia on this one: only time will tell.
Once again, Linda Schantol and I had our text messaging machines on hand and commented back and forth throughout the game. Our single concern in the first half was that Kenny Wooten was mentally discombobulated. We both hoped that during the halftime intermission the coaching staff or his fellow players might help him clear his head.
Someone did.
Wooten was back to his shot blocking, shot disrupting, mighty rebounding self in the second half and the way he played had a lot to do with Oregon stretching a two point half time lead into a twenty point victory.
As Bill Walton would surely say, "It was a spectacular night for the Conference of Champions!"
(Actually, he would probably say "this was the most spectacular night in the history of the Conference of Champions! Quack. Quack.")
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