Hoops: UW men solidly #1 in Pac-10 standings

Last night's game between the UW Huskies and the Arizona State Sun Devils was awesome. The #1 and #2 teams, respectively in the Pac-10, UW (11-4) and ASU (10-4) were set for a real showdown. I went to the game with an old friend from Aldus days, John. He had been a student at UW many years ago back when, as he said it, "there will still columns in Hec Ed." He said he had never heard a louder crowd in that arena and I have to agree with him. The atmosphere was loud, noisy, and rockin'.

UW came out with a stifling defense that let ASU know what they were going to be in for all night. ASU's big guns, Jeff Pendergraph, and James Harden, were certainly the major firepower for the team. At one point in the 1st half ASU had 36 points. Between them Harden and Pendergraph had 30 of them, 15 each. In the second half, Lorenzo Romar adjusted the Huskies defense into a major-league, ball-denial effort against Harden and it worked. He only scored 4 more points to finish with 19. Pendergraph was very good, banging inside with Brockman and getting the better of him for the most part, finishing with 24.

The game was perhaps the most poorly officiated Pac-10 game I had ever witnessed and John concurred with me on that. That being said, it should never have gone into overtime. Unfortunately, some sloppy passing on the Huskies' part led to them giving away the lead in the waning minutes of the 2nd half and then coming back to tie it. At one point, Justin Dentmon missed receiving a pass right in front of Coach Romar. As the ball sailed out of bounds, I thought Lorenzo was going to grab Dentmon by the neck and strangle him!

In the end, our foul shooting, both percentage wise (24-31, 77.4%) and overall (we shot 31, they shot 12), made the difference, especially in OT. We ended up winning the game 73-70 with our last 5 points coming from the free throw stripe. Thank God we've improved from dead last in D1 in foul shooting percentage, otherwise we might have let this one slip away.

I wish I could go to tomorrow's game at Hec Ed against Arizona, but I have to run a retreat for a non-profit I'm the Board president for from 9-3 and the game tips off at noon. It would look bad for the Prez to bug out with 4 hours left in a 6 hour retreat. So far, I've tried to give the tickets away to 6 different people without any success. In the middle of writing that last sentence I took a call from the 7th guy I offered the tickets to, no dice there either. During this week, the Seattle Times called this "the hottest sports ticket in town". You can't prove that by me; though, trying to give away the tickets on short notice for a mid-day Saturday game makes the timing kinda tough.

As it stands, UW is now 12-4 in Pac-10 play, ASU is 10-5 and in second place. We have three more home games; Arizona tomorrow, Seattle U on Tuesday, and then WSU on Saturday to end the season. After that, it's Pac-10 and then NCAA tournament time. Barring a major meltdown, I feel reasonably certain that we're going to get an NCAA bid. If we don't, no-one in the Pac-10 will, that's for sure.