Day2

Just yesterday I referenced Larry Bird's epic NCAA performance against DePaul back in 1979. I noted that he scored 35 and pulled down 16 boards. I failed to mention that he also had 9 assists. One of the greatest performances in NCAA history.

In fact, only three players have scored at least 35, gotten 8 or more boards plus a minimum of 7 assists. They are all legends. Bird plus Oscar Robertson (1959) and Bill Bradley (1965).

Make that four. Today, Otega Oweh had 35, 8 and 7. Kentucky needed every one of them to outlast Santa Clara in overtime.

Buckle into the time machine, because we are going way back. The photo below is the 1991 Kentucky basketball staff. Pretty impressive group. Bernadette Locke-Mattox (the first woman to serve as an assistant for a men's D1 NCAA basketball team; she would go on to be head coach of the UK women's team), Tubby Smith (national title coach in 1998), Rick Pitino (national title coach in 1998 and 2013), Herb Sendek (led four teams into the NCAA including Santa Clara), Billy Donovan (national title coach in 2006 and 2007) and Rock Oliver (who is currently an associate AD at UK).

Herb Sendek recruited Mark Pope to play at Kentucky. As is well documented, Pope was the captain of the 1996 Kentucky national title team.

1996 was the last time Santa Clara qualified for the Big Dance. Their point guard? Steve Nash, generally considered the best Canadian baketball player ever (although Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is now in the conversation).

Herb Sendek was successful at Miami (OH), NC State, Arizona State and Santa Clara. He's a quality coach, but has never been great even though he had some high quality players including James Hardin (at Arizona State).

Sendek has been at Santa Clara since 2016. His teams have won at least 20 games every season since 2020. He's built this team old school, bucking every trend in the game. Every mid-major player that has any success transfers to a high-major. Sendek convinces them to stay at Santa Clara. He even talks some of them into red-shirting (that is, not playing) their freshman year. That strategy was last in vogue around 1978. But he makes it work, somehow. The fact that the bay area campus looks like this may have something to do with it.

Sendek's team lost today, but he out-coached Mark Pope. That said, he made one significant error. Sendek doesn't start freshman Allen Graves (what does he have against freshman?) even though he's the best player. Graves picked up two fouls in the first. Sendek took him out but put him back in with about 10 minutes to go in the first. He immediately committed his third foul. Graves ended up playing well with 17 points, but he was out of sync offensively and timid on the defensive end most of the game. Sendek ran plays for him repeatedly to get him back in rhythm offensively. This is a quibble, but in a game this close it was probably the difference.

Well, Graves' foul trouble and the fact that Santa Clara kept trying to shoot 3s over Brandon Garrison. The video below shows how that worked out. Garrison is a supremely frustrating player, the kind who does one good thing immediately followed by two stupid things. He was big for my team today: 10 points, 7 boards, 6 blocks (!). He was so good, I included a second highlight from him.

Overtime was tight and tense. Santa Clara would not go away. It seemed like a random kid named Gavalyugov (also a freshman, also not a starter) was going to take out UK by himself. Then Gavalyugov tried to shoot a 3 over Garrison, who is 6'10" with long arms. Block, run out UK dunk. Twice! Block, UK run out resulting in two free throws. An 8-0 scoring run over 90 seconds calmed a bunch of nerves in the Bluegrass.

I am watching Iowa State dismantle Tennessee State right now. Domination in every phase. UK gets Iowa State next. Great.

Iowa State All-American forward Joshua Jefferson went out early against Tennesee State with an ankle/lower leg injury. He returned on crutches. Hate to see that. Iowa State was dominant without Jefferson today, but they'll need him going forward.

Hofstra was frisky in their game against Bama today, leading by 10 in the first. Nate Oates put the game in Philon's hands in the second and the Tide slowly increased their lead. Not surprising that Hofstra would get frustarted as the game slipped away. But Victory Onuetu completely lost his cool, leveling one of Bama players and getting tossed out. You can't do that. Admirable restraint on the part of the Tide players to keep it from turning into a melee. Labaron Philon had an Otega-like performance with 29, 8 and 7 for the most glaucoma-free team in all of sports.

Hofstra is coached by Speedy Claxton, who won an NBA title with the Spurs in 2003. Speedy went to Hofstra back in the day, when they were coached by Jay Wright. Speedy's brother played for Wright at Villanova. Claxton has been the Hofstra coach since 2013. He's not doing it for the money. The first thing he did when he took the job was donate enough for them to build a new 5,000 seat basketball arena. Speedy was born in Hempstead, NY, which is also the home of Hofstra, which is named for the lumber baron who donated the land for the university.

Speaking of Villanova, they had their hands full with the Aggies of Utah State. Which isn't a surprise since this was an 8-9 matchup. Jay Wright was in the house to witness Utah State own the stretch, going on a 15-3 run in the last 5+ minutes. They scored at will at all three levels and forced two 5-second turnovers. Some great shooting in this one. Utah State hit 55% from 2, but only 12% (!) from 3 (2-16). Nova was the opposite, going 14-30 from deep (47%!) but only 44% inside the arc. That was a historic disparity in 3-point shooting.

Next up for Utah State: Arizona. I wouldn't bet against the desert cats, but that could be a good one. Utah State is really well coached.

Utah State brought a bunch of fans (they call themselves The Herd) who brought it. They wear blue latex gloves so their clapping is louder and distinctive. Who thought up that one?

That reserve point guard for Nova looks kinda familiar. Hey everybody, it's Devin Askew!  Playing in his sixth college season (!) for his fifth college team! (Kentucky, Texas, Cal two seasons, Long Beach State, Villanova). In the last 100 years, Kentucky has posted a losing record twice. Devin Askew was the point guard for one of those teams. Say what you will about Calipari, but this is certain. If he has a great point guard (like Acuff), his teams are awfully good. If he doesn't, his teams are awful. Cal stubbornly stuck with Askew during the disasterous Covid season and went 9-16 as a result. Memories, not good ones.

Miami (OH) won a game and proved they belong. Then Tennessee beat the stuffing out of them. Some Miami facts. Where are the ancestral lands of the Miami tribe? Florida, obviously. Nope. Ohio and Indiana. Meaning that the Miami in Ohio is the OG! Miami lost today. Miami (FL) lost the national championship football game. Boom!

Miami are the RedHawks. The nickname is relatively new. The Miami tribe formally requested a change in 1996 because the previous nickname, used since the 1930s, was widely considered a racial slur. The university received over 700 suggestions for a new mascot. "RedHawks" was chosen for similarity to the previous nickname while retaining the school's traditional red color. I would have included a space in RedHawk, but that's just me. Glad they made a change.

Miami got some unexpected support from the school swim team. They showed up to the First Four game...in their speedos. But they were stuck up in the cheap seats. In the second half, they positioned themselves at the top of one of the end zones. When a SMU player had a free throw on that end, they rushed down near the basket and made a general spectacle of themselves. The kid missed the freebie.

Founded in 1950, California Baptist is in Riverside, California. They have about 11,000 students. My first impression was that I'd never heard of the place, but that's not quite true. When I did a search on Cal Baptist, Google auto-filled Domaine Javier. Her I remember, because she sued for being expelled from college because she's trans. The school is, you guessed it, Cal Baptist.

The CBU student handbook mandates chapel attendance and abstaining from sex and alcohol. There are no rules addressing gender identity. The university said Javier was expelled for fraud when they became aware of an episode of MTV’s True Life on which Javier discussed her identity. Javier sued and won a case that was closely watched by the evangelical community (and reported in the Times, where I ran across it). Javier transferred to Riverside City College, where she was voted homecoming queen. She is now a nurse in the Riverside area and an occasional contestant on reality shows (such as Worst Cooks in America).

Cal Baptist brought a surprising number of enthusiastic fans to the Dance. They didn’t have much to cheer about as Kansas built a 26-point lead. Then the Jayhawks quit playing. They may as well have gone home. Seriously. The Lancers were down 26 with 16 minutes left. They fought back to within 6 with 30 seconds left. Down the stretch, the Lancers went on an 18-2 run. Shockingly inept play from a Bill Self Team. Cal Baptist ran out of time, losing by 8. They were led by Dominique Daniels with 25, 7 and 3. Some incredible individual performances today. Darryn Peterson had a very quiet 28.

Toward the end of the game, UCLA's Skyy Clark was rolling around on the floor fighting for a loose ball when he took an elbow in the mouth from a UCF player. In 4K HD, I could see his tooth crack and fly from his mouth; I watched it fall all the way to the ground. I love HD. 

I make that gruesome comment (as a joke) only because Clark took it in stride. He was mugging for the camera like a Team USA hockey player. Clark came back in and hit the free throws that finally iced a Bruin win.

I say finally because this game wouldn't end because the refs wouldn't let them play. The NCAA  changed the rules to severely limit ref video reviews. There are now coach challenges. Which I strongly support. Refs can only go to the monitors now for timing issues and blows to the head. So now they check those things All. The. Time! 

With seconds remaining in the game, the refs went to the monitor to conform how much time was in the game. They were over there so long the guys calling the game started ridiculing them. The fans in Philly booed. I’ve never been prouder of the City of Brotherly Love.

[Editor's Note: Refs on the floor should never be able to consult a monitor. Ever. Let some guy in the studio check it out. Give them 60 seconds. Make a call and move on. It's not that complicated. The referee divas in college basketball are ruining the game, and I'm not kidding. Back to the Notes.]

The fun thing about the web site is I can see who is visiting and from where. Every year we get visitors from someplace random. This year I would like to say a sincere As-salamu alaykum to our many new fans in Tehran. I hope we are providing a needed diversion from your current difficulties. There's surely no other reason for you to ping the web site repeatedly and daily, right? Moving on.

Somewhat surprisingly, Nebraska just won the first tourney game in program history. Ditto Howard, Prairie View A&M and High Point.

My research this week revealed this fun fact. The D1 school with the lowest enrollment appears to be Presbyterian College in South Carolina. They are the Blue Hose (the color of their socks back in the day) and have around 1,200 undergraduate students. How they managed to meet the requirements for D1 is beyond me. They field an FCS football team, amazingly. They have never qualified for the NCAA basketball tournament.

Miami opened up a 10 point lead in the first but Missouri closed the gap to a point at the break. The score went back and forth until the stretch run, when Miami took over. They won by 14. I'll say something about Miami coach Jai Lucas, a rising star, next round.

Tarris Reed showed up in the first half for UConn, with an amazing 19 points and 16 (!) rebounds. He didn't get much help as UConn let Furman's shooters go wild. Huskies up by four at the half, 40-36. Furman didn't go easily, but ultimately lost by double digits. Reed had a game for the ages with 31 points and 27 boards. Zach Eadey is the only other player to have 30-20 in a NCAA game. There has only been one 30-30 college game (non-tourney): Jerry Lucas in 1961.

Time to call it a night. I'll leave you with this. Queens University made the tourney for the first time. Their coach, Grant Leonard, showed up for the game against Purdue wearng whatever you would call this. Festive, I guess. [Editor's Notes: Someone tell coach that St. Patrick's Day was on Tuesday.]