bierce

Announcers now saying original ruling on the field was a fumble. That was the right call, btw.

Correction. Catch and fumble.

Call stands.

Announcer thinks ref will punt and say stands rather than confirmed. Big 12 money pouring into the AAC review booth.

Two bombs. One incomplete. One ruled complete, but a review. Looks like he took two steps before ball came out, but the question is whether he knee hit before he lost control. Could be a fumble recovered by Memphis. Call on the field was catch and down.

Tulane forced a three and out with a coverage sack. We suddenly have a game here.

Memphis ran half of its defense on the field just before the snap, but Tulane still got the snap off and scored. Ten point game with 13:29 left.

Now a PI in the end zone. Go Memphis D!

Then a second late hit on the same play. Two personal fouls imposed on the same play.

Another gift. Defender whacked scrambling qb when he was three steps out of bounds. 15 yards. Moronic.

Memphis gave Tulane a huge gift by trying a 3rd and goal from the one before letting the third quarter end. Didn't convert. Then committed procedure penalty, so had to kick fg. Saved Tulane 37 seconds, and wound up with 3 instead of 7. Still a three score game, so the Wave better get moving here.

Tulane is totally crapping the bed tonight. Down 14, and Memphis driving with little resistance. Big third down here though. Memphis in fg range, but keeping the clock moving matters. Complete on an out pattern first down near the red zone.

Purdue 71-61, thanks to owning the paint and shutting down HH in the second half. Arky down 49-34 at the half.

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.