A purge of thoughts from the Arizona/Cal game

Having the Fox College Sports pack is worth the $6/month for so more many reasons than getting to watch as many Oral Roberts games as you can stand. For starters, you get to watch the commercials only shown on deep cable (hi Mega Insurance and TaxSlayer.com !) Arizona games are a special treat in that the analyst is usually Bob Elliott, who not only in 2009 still looks like Wondermike from the SugarHill Gang, but also whose prose makes Ehlo’s analysis sound like an Obama speech. One of Elliott’s gems this evening was that a team has a better chance of winning if it makes a 3 point shot instead of a 2 point shot. I then spent the next 2 hours lighting myself on fire.

Not much to report here. Arizona is going to be a team that loses by 20 one night and wins by 30 the next. That’s the beauty of the freakshow Russ Pannell is operating in Tuscon. I thought in the first half the Wildcats would run away with this one, but after Nic Wise got into foul trouble (story of the night so far), Arizona’s circus-shots stopped falling and Cal methodically pulled ahead.

And holy shit, the Pac has some shooting guards this year. After watching Wright dominate Oregon earlier today, I didn’t think it could get any better than he and Harden, but then Patrick Christopher inserts himself into the conversation. Mike Montgomery is going to have this team ready to go, and I think they might be a bubble-tourney team.

Arizona? I don’t know a starting 5 in the conference more capable of getting to the rim than them (other than maybe USC), and I think if I were starting a team from scratch, I would entertain the thought of Jordan Hill, but I just don’t see this team having the mentally capacity to put together 10 wins in conference this year. Although they might be just the type of team to go 7-11 in league play and then blow out all three of their Pac-10 tourney games by 30 points to get their bid.

Speaking of freakshows, Cal got to play their 7’3” Chinese transfer, Max Zhang, and man is he awkward! He’s sophomore-year Caleb Forrest to the 10th power.