Friday, January 1, 2010

Still Breathing....Happy New Year?

I'm still sick to my stomach over Pac-10 officiating taking the game away from us yesterday. I'm generally not a "blame it on the refs" type person. But the fact was we had the game won….and then play stopped to award Oregon two points. There was no part of me that felt we could take them in the 2nd overtime after that. 99% of teams can't overcome a call like that. I've been like a zombie over the past 24 hours, reading pretty much every fan's opinion on the various Coug boards out there (I've NEVER seen an ESPN recap for WSU reach a third of the 600 comments they got last night), and can't seem to stop. I feel the more I read them, maybe common sense will prevail and this game will be given back to us….but alas, now I'm just hoping this call won't carry over and make us start out 0-2 and get swept at home by the freaking Oregon schools.

I'm still racking this through my head. Some out there are saying "technically it was the correct call". Fuck you. No it wasn't. There was no impediment of any play. A whistle was blown as soon as the ball went through the hoop (presumably for the officials to determine how much time was on the clock). No Duck players were on the baseline ready to inbound the ball. In fact, the Duck HOLDING the ball was headed toward the sideline with the rest of his team. In addition, what play were we impeding? THERE WERE ZERO-POINT-THREE SECONDS LEFT ON THE FUCKING CLOCK. Not enough time for a catch-and-shoot. This game, for all practical purposes, was OVER. But just like two years ago and three years ago, officials make their stamp on the Oregon/WSU game (for those who didn't major in history, in the 2007 game, Aaron Brooks took a solid four steps before making a game-winning-three, and in 2008 a VERY iffy touch-foul on Maarty Luennen allowed him to shoot game-winning free throws after the clock expired.) I'm not saying this is rigged; incompetence is color-blind. But how many times is this going to happen?

I've said my piece. And your piece. We should be 1-0, but we're 0-1. Klay SHOULD go off for 40 points over the Beaver zone tomorrow, but I can't take anything for granted anymore. If the loss affected them half as much as it affected me, we could get blown out of our own gym.

Lost in the mess of this game was the remarkable job performed by X and Watson, while Reggie and D sat on the bench. It should be noted that Porter didn't start his 18 point tear until X checked out of the game. For all my grandeur regarding Reggie already being our best point guard ever, I've knowingly overlooked his defensive shortcomings, and those killed us tonight. Watson performed as admirably as someone who's outweighed by 80 pounds in the post could be. I figured Dunningan would kill us when Casto checked out; turned out the only thing that stopped Dunnigan last night were cheeseburgers. If he logs 30 minutes during regulation, Oregon probably doesn't even need overtime.

Plus/Minus from last night (minimum 10 minutes)

Watson 22
Thames 18
Lodwick 10
Koprivica 0
Thompson -2
Capers -8
Moore -16
Casto -22

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Leunen's free throws in '08 sent the game into overtime where Oregon got hot shooting and we almost were albe to get a second OT with Low's three but came up short.
Its one of those things where you get a call like that, basically keeping you in the game, it gives you new life and all the momentum which is exactly what happened on Thursday.