1. Debbie returned to Eugene today. She left Kellogg about 9:00 and arrived safely in Eugene in the early evening. I'm hoping that with some things taken care of here in Kellogg that I will be able to visit Debbie in the next month or two. I am done with the many medical appointments, transplant list tests, and the cataract surgeries that have taken up a lot of my time in recent months. I will help Christy with transportation and other things when she has knee surgery in mid-April and I will hope Maggie continues to do well and that I'll feel all right about leaving her for several days for a trip to Oregon and possibly elsewhere.
2. I watched two of the fiercest college basketball games I've ever seen today. It was heartbreaking to see Gonzaga lose in their Elite Eight game with Texas Tech, 75-69. As I've written before, I tend to see teams win basketball games because of what they do well rather than what the losing team does poorly. That's how I saw this game.
What did Texas Tech do well?
Played defense.
Every great basketball team, over the course of a game, looks to establish an offensive rhythm -- or a comfort. They work to get shots where they want them, open shots, shots, if from the outside, that are launched with their feet set and their shoulders squared, and, if inside, shots that exploit an advantage one offensive player has over a defender.
Against a team that plays tough defense, this rhythm or this comfort gets disrupted. Shooters are crowded. Passes get deflected, and, even if the offensive team recovers the deflection, it disrupts their rhythm. This happened to Gonzaga all game long, but particularly in the second half. Texas Tech was ready for Brandon Clarke's patented inside spin moves and Clarke always spun into a helping defender, frustrating Clarke into a poor shot or a turnover. Likewise, while Rui Hachimura scored 22 points, he missed eleven of the nineteen shots he took, in large part because Texas Tech hassled him, made him force shots, especially close to the basket, and muscled him out of doing things he likes to do. Gonzaga often looked stressed out. Zach Norvell rushed some long three attempts. Josh Perkins played a pretty solid game. He buried four three point shots, including a dramatic one late, made a tough shot in the paint late, and forced a late Texas Tech turnover, but he had trouble, as the Zags' point guard, getting Gonzaga into their offensive sets.
How good was Texas Tech's defense? They blocked seven shots (including Tariq Owens' stunning block of Hachimura's late game shot from the corner), made nine steals, and forced sixteen Zag turnovers.
Gonzaga played solid defense, too. This was a bruising game, black, blue, and bloody. But, Texas Tech converted shots in key moments and Gonzaga didn't. In particular, Tech's Matt Mooney and Davide Moretti came up big. Jarett Culver sank key free throws. Gonzaga was only down by two points with eleven seconds to go in this game, but when Josh Perkins reached over the inbounds line and tipped the ball out of Mooney's hands as Mooney tried to put the ball in play, he committed a technical foul that spelled doom for the Zags. That was a most unfortunate and costly unforced error.
I have one more thought about last night's game and it is, in part, a result of many discussions I've had this winter with Byrdman. Teams like Texas Tech, Virginia, Michigan State, Duke, Auburn, and Kentucky play in brutally tough conferences. They get tested game after game by superb teams, especially when they play in their opponents' arenas.
Now, I think Mark Few is a superb basketball coach. He does all he can to schedule very tough opponents in the Gonzaga's preconference games. This year they played Duke, Tennessee, and North Carolina. They went on the road to Creighton. They played Arizona in a pre-season tournament, not knowing this would be a lousy year for the Wildcats. But, once conference play began, the Zags didn't play a single equal. Granted, St. Mary's beat the Zags with a brilliant game plan and (here it comes) bruising, collapsing, crowding defense, and with very timely shooting, but all in all, night in and night out, the Zags dominated their conference opponents.
There's nothing they can do about this imbalance in the West Coast Conference. I wish the Zags could move to a different conference, but history, tradition, geography, and alliances between WCC member schools makes this unlikely.
I don't know if Gonzaga would have defeated Texas Tech last night if they'd played a tougher schedule in January, February, and early March. But, I look at who Texas Tech played in their conference -- Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor, Oklahoma, Iowa State, and the rest -- and I have to believe their experience against these teams helped prepare them for today's game better than the games Gonzaga played against Pepperdine, Portland, Santa Clara, USF, and even St. Mary's. The Zags didn't respond very well to St. Mary's game plan and defense back on March 12th and I think it would have done this team a lot of good to have faced more adversity over the course of the season, especially in conference play.
3. The second game this afternoon was among the best college basketball games I've ever seen.
I don't make that statement disinterestedly.
I am a University of Virginia basketball fan. I have great admiration for UVA's coach, Tony Bennett (as I did for his father, Dick Bennett) and I have enjoyed watching the Cavaliers play all through the winter.
This afternoon, Virginia faced Purdue. Purdue's team features a freaky good player and shooter, Carsen Edwards, and Purdue plays hard-nosed basketball.
Statistically speaking, Virginia plays the best defense of any team in the nation. But, throughout the game, they couldn't stop Carsen Edwards. Virginia defended Edwards with different players at different times; they often tried to double team him; but, sometimes Edwards launched shots from beyond where any player normally shoots and he was dropping them. Edwards scored 42 points. He made an astounding 10 three point shots.
On the Virginia side, the Cavaliers answered Edwards' brilliant shooting with some of their own, primarily from guards Kyle Guy and Ty Jerome.
Guy flabbergasted me.
Late in the first half he stepped on the foot of a Purdue player and rolled his ankle. He heard a pop, dropped to the floor in agony, and limped off the floor for treatment. I don't know exactly what the Virginia training staff did to help Kyle Guy's ankle, but he was back on the floor at the start of the second half (I think he actually might have returned very late in the first half, but I'm not positive.) Kyle Guy had been shooting miserably throughout Virginia's first three games in the NCAA tournament. But, despite his injured ankle and despite his previous poor shooting, Guy came out in the second half firing away and swishing shot after shot. Likewise, his running make, Ty Jerome heated up, scoring from outside and on some tough shots in the paint.
Neither team could shake the other and in the closing seconds, up by three, Purdue fouled Ty Jerome sending him to the charity stripe for two shots. Jerome converted the first and missed the second (on purpose?) and the Kiwi hulk Jack Salt spiked the rebound beyond the half court line where Kihei Clark recovered it, made a long, no-look pass to Mamadi Diakite and Diakite popped a short jumper through the nylon at the buzzer.
Overtime.
Virginia has a team motto: "Calmness is contagious."
The Cavs maintained the composure that earned them the tie in regulation on into overtime. They made key shots from the floor and the free throw line and benefited from Carsen Edwards' one blunder in the entire game, an errant pass intended for Ryan Cline that Cline couldn't secure and went out of bounds. With two seconds left, Purdue fouled Kihei Clark who calmly (it's contagious) made both free throws and secured Virginia's 80-75 overtime win.
I have one other kind of random thought about these games. In the NBA, playoff teams square off in best 4 out 7 series. It means that unless series goes seven games, no single game has the intensity of the one loss and you're out format of the NCAA tournament. The lose one and you're out approach is what brings the madness to March madness.
And I love it.
Nonetheless, I left both of these games wondering what would happen if Gonzaga played Texas Tech and Purdue played UVA in a best of seven series. Would the Zags grow from the experience of repeated meetings and figure out ways to crack the Red Raiders' defense? I think Tony Bennett makes smart adjustments within a game. Would he figure out ways to clamp down on Carsen Edwards -- or would he instruct his team to not worry if Edwards goes for 40+ points when no one else on the Boilermakers even scored in double figures? How would Purdue coach Matt Painter anticipate Bennett's strategies and would he make adjustments to encourage more balanced scoring from Purdue?
These are idle questions, really, because what I'm wondering about will never happen. All the same, while single elimination tournaments create a unique pressure and excitement, a best 4 of 7 series between evenly matched teams creates intrigue and tests how well the two teams can tolerate the irritation of playing the same team repeatedly four to seven times. Compelling dynamics develop between players who see each other game after game after game within a short period of time.
No comments:
Post a Comment