Last Night's Games

Not much to say, really. I didn't see very much of the UCLA game, because it started fairly early, but it sounds like Hollins played pretty well. Oregon State isn't very good to begin with, so when you take away three of their best players, they're probably going to get their asses kicked. The nice thing is that Coach Howland was able to give extended minutes to some of the bench guys, and was able to rest Farmar and Afflalo.

Great to see Lo Mata back in action. If he's able to provide some minutes and/or fouls come tournament time, that could be a nice boost. Not that I expect much, mind you, but every contribution helps.

The ankle injury to Ced Bozeman illustrates exactly why I think conference tournaments are stupid. You play extra games, you expose your best players to injury, and the teams derive virtually no benefit outside of the financial. For the power conferences, you're going to have a handful of teams that are already in, and winning the tourney really does nothing except perhaps move them up a seed. And if a team that otherwise wasn't in (say, U$C for instance) gets on a roll and wins, that knocks a more deserving team off the bubble. For small conferences, you could have a school that dominates its league all year, then someone gets lucky in the conference tournament and beats them, leaving them on the outside looking in. So basically a 15-18 game conference season of dominance can be erased by one three point shot.

As for the Kings, their five game winning streak came to a screeching halt last night in Detroit, as Aaron Miller probably played just about the worst game of his career. He was at least partially responsible for four Detroit goals. He got undressed by Robert Lang on the first goal, accidentally deflected the second goal in, passed the puck right to Henrik Zetterburg for the third goal, and failed to outmuscle Zetterburg for the fourth goal. The Kings hung in for a while. They were tied 2-2 halfway through the game, and even after the Wings took a 4-2 lead, Lubo scored a power play goal to pull them back to within one. But the Wings dominated the third period much like they dominated the first two periods, and that was pretty it, as they pulled a Deadmarsh (1996 World Cup version) by scoring a goal in the final minute AFTER they'd already scored an empty netter.

Two more hoops games tonight, which I'll probably watch, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to write about them. I'm leaving right after to go see Mazarin at Schuba's, then I'm having people over for St. Patty's day festivities tomorrow. I normally don't do parties at my apartment, but I'm the lone holdout that still lives in close proximity to all of the Lincoln Park bars, so it's kind of fallen to me by default.

And with that, I'll leave you with a Brian Jonestown Massacre video.