Posted by Andrew Murawa on February 24th, 2014
- ESPN visited Pac-12 country this weekend, bringing its pregame show GameDay to Boulder on Saturday in advance of Colorado’s battle with Arizona on Saturday night. Students waited in line overnight, through the type of weather that only college students should try to endure, in order to be among the first inside the Coors Events Center. And while all was good and fun for those fans and the Colorado program certainly enjoyed the national exposure, the game itself didn’t turn out so well. Despite sophomore forward Xavier Johnson predicting a 20-point blowout win for the Buffs, it was the Wildcats that ran roughshod. Colorado missed its first 15 field goals, and then somehow it got worse from there as the Wildcats made 22 of their 26 shots in the second half. As for Johnson? Well, he probably learned that all that talking puts undue pressure on you, pressure of which he didn’t respond well — he was 1-of-10 from the field.
- Another Arizona school was involved in a blowout this weekend, as Arizona State went to Utah and wound up on the wrong side of a 23-point margin. Dave Dulberg of ArizonaSports.com breaks down the loss by the numbers, noting that, among other things, Utah blocked 18.4 percent of Arizona State’s field goal attempts on Sunday. To convert that number to KenPom speak, that’s actually a blocked-shot percentage of 31.5 percent, since that stat only takes into account two-point field goals attempted. Speaking of which, I’d add one additional number to Dulberg’s effort: 27. That’s the number of three-point field goals the Sun Devils put up in this game, many of which were wild second-half attempts to erase a 20-point deficit with a single shot.
- Oregon played its game on Sunday evening against Washington State without the services of sophomore guard Damyean Dotson, who was busted early Saturday morning for attempting to use a fake ID at Taylor’s Bar and Grill in Eugene. Yup, get this. The security staff at this bar saw through Dotson’s fake ID, and then rather than just turn the guy away, they actually held him and called the cops. Dotson was detained there until the police arrived, at which time he was cited and released. Dotson, as a result, watched the Oregon win from the bench.
- Just in case you didn’t realize how deep into the college basketball season we really are, here’s some perspective: Senior Days in the Pac-12 are already officially underway, after Colorado honored its pair of seniors – little used Ben Mills and Beau Gamble – prior to Saturday night’s game against Arizona. Neither guy has had a huge impact on the court, but each has made an impact on his team. We’ll have more on some of the high-profile seniors from here to the end of the regular season, but even though these two aren’t guys we’ve written extensively about, we wanted to recognize them before they head out into the real world.
- One senior we’ll certainly highlight in the coming weeks is Stanford’s Josh Huestis, the pride of Great Falls, Montana. The Cardinal forward is now the school’s all-time leader in blocked shots, and Jesse Geleynse of the Great Falls Tribune has a great feature on their city’s native son. It’s 10 pages long and you’ve gotta click through every one, but it is very much worth the effort.
| microsites, morning 5, pac 12
| Tagged: arizona, arizona state, beau gamble, ben mills, colorado, damyean dotson, Josh Huestis, stanford, utah, Xavier Johnson
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