bierce

Got bored with NC State-Purdue, so watching Arky-Illinois now. Arky has a huge amount of talent, but its half court offense is as primitive as it gets. Somebody drives and shoots and that's it. Three assists on ten baskets with 3:51 left in the half. Two of the assists were on transition buckets.

Purdue 33-32 at the half. Purdue shooting 3/8 bta out of 28 fga. Last miss was at the buzzer after a tap-out of a rebound. Huntley-Hatfield being impactful for NC State--11 points, 5 rebounds.

16-9 Purdue with 12:05 left in the 1st half. Purdue without a turnover and 2/3 bta, but only 3 attempts bta out of 13 fga.

West Virginia lost 79-70 in OT, a deserved loss for not trying to run offense in the last 12 seconds of regulation. I still would bet Coach DeVries will do the same thing in the final seconds of a tie game. Tell his pg to dribble the clock down to the magic 6 second mark, then drive. That is what every coach always does, and I don't understand. Well, I do in theory (deny the other team a chance to take the last shot), but I see it lead to poor results too often to not want someone like Pomeroy or someone like that do a real study on end of game scenarios. What is the likelihood of scoring in final possession started at 30 seconds, 25 seconds, 20 seconds, etc? Is there a magic drop-off point? Is a team better off running full offense from the get-go instead of reducing itself to a single drive to try to deny the other team a possession? Why does everyone insist on starting the drive with 6 or 7 seconds? Isn't that to have a chance at an offensive rebound? But fighting for position for an offensive rebound is one of the ways a team is most likely to commit a foul and give the other team free throws, so that negates the supposed advantage of not letting the opponent have a chance to score. So I don't get it. With so many variables to allow for a change of possession (charge, illegal screen, steal, etc) and the opponent getting a shot, why not just run your best offensive play to maximize your chance to score and then run defense? If you are willing to play for OT, you must be trusting your team to beat the other on even terms, so why not trust it to beat the other team on uneven terms of having the ball with less than 30 seconds to go and running full offense, compared to opponent having far less time to get off a play?

And there is why I always hate waiting until the final 5 seconds on the shot clock to try to score in a tie game. WVU didn't get a shot off in time. Louisville ball with 1.8 seconds left and a timeout. It can inbound to an open man as deeply as it can and call timeout. But instead of doing that, it threw a pass to a guarded player in the paint. OT. Bad strategy by both coaches, IMO. The first coach played to preserve the tie. The second coach didn't use his tools to his team's advantage.

WV and Louisville going back and forth with offensive fouls in the second half. Waterman got two in about 2 minutes, the first by walking sideways and shoving with both arms while screening. The other offensive fouls in the sequence were generally of the more pedestrian man with the ball pushing off variety. WVU up 37-29.

Tulane has a shot at being American champ and ranked higher than Big 12 champ. We might need 3 Big 12 contenders to lose this weekend for that to happen, but Tulane is currently between ASU and ISU in the CFP rankings and has two remaining games against teams in or on the verge of being in the top 25.

Does anyone else think the Battle 4 Atlantis rims look a little off?

They just can't get him the ball frequently against P5 competition.

Most interesting game for Texas fans today might be NC State-Purdue at 2 in San Diego. NC State has moved the needle in neither direction in its first five games, winning them by an average of 19 points, but all games were at home and against opponents between 198 and 343 in Pomeroy with a mean ranking of 258. NC State relies on interior scoring. It doesn't shoot threes well, but it holds opponents to a low % from the arc, and it forces a lot of turnovers. Will be interesting to see whether Purdue gets good looks from the arc. The Boilermakers are a very good 3pt shooting team. The other game in San Diego pits Mississippi against BYU. Arkansas plays Illinois in KC today. Showcase game, not a tournament. Florida is sneaky. It is playing in a tournament in Kissimmee, so home crowd advantage against the field, starting with WF today. Miss. State plays UNLV in Tempe. A&M won a close one over Creighton 77-73. It was on Max, so I didn't see a bit of it.

UConn lost again and by a wide margin last night, 85-67. Three games against (previously) unranked teams. Three losses. Dropped to 28th in Pomeroy.

Announcers trying to claim MSU didn't get the ball inbound within 5 seconds on its last possssion in OT. They aren't showing a stopwatch. Boo. Way to try to create controversy where there might not be any. Are they going to look at the previous possession in which 5 seconds was called against MSU? Noooooooo.

Michigan State survives because its broken play in OT finished with a dunk while UNC's broken play on the next possession finished with a layup going off the rim and being rebounded by MSU. 94-91 final.

UNC hit a three to tie with 5+_ seconds left. I will never understand why coaches do not have their teams trained to inbound as far as they can before calling timeout instead of calling timeout after the opponent makes a shot. Michigan State had to dribble up and got no worthwhile shot. This should be automatic. The clock is stopped. Look for the opportunity to make a pass to an open man 35+ feet from the baseline, and if there isn't an open man, then call the timeout. Don't just automatically call the timeout without trying to make an inbound pass. Stupid. And I see it over and over and over. Even from Hall of Fame coaches like Izzo.

Skinner ends it with an ace. 25-20. We hit .554.

But a swing was returned by Tennessee, and our next swing went long for an error. Probably not setting a team record tonight. Rutherford dink falls in to give us still a shot at it.

Our hitting slowed a bit this set, but we are up 21-17 and hitting .597 for the match, giving us a chance to set team match record.

Singletary kill of an overpass. No, thought Deseret was an Arizona publication, not Utah. Sorry.

consecutive Vol aces made it 7 all before Skinner blast put Texas up 8-7.

Call confirmed. 5-2

Ames with 9 kills in 10 swings and no errors. Carlson with a dump. Tennessee challenging a no touch call. Texas up 5-2 pending the challenge.

Nobody seeded #1 wants to see us in their bracket.

Shooting fish in a barrel. Tennessee is not a bad team, but this has been a slaughter. Texas has just 3 hitting errors with 3 points to go in the second set. Our hitting percentages are .889 .833 .778 .571 .500 Sick numbers. Won second set 25-14.

Ames on the slide for her 7th kill. Having a great night.

Point to Tennessee. I thought back line player touched it, but no. 16-10.