Bear Down Wildcats

Great news, Hope will be coming back next year.

Cats lose to asu 3-2 and now wait their fate. The bracket will be announced on Monday.

Had a 2-1 lead going into the 79th minute. Game they should have won

Arizona is left out of the NCAA tournament. Looks like the loss to asu was the difference as asu made it. UCLA, USC, Cal & Stanford also made it.

That is some BS. They are easily one of the 64 best. 39 in RPI and I think the highest left out. Of course a win in Tempe would have sealed it and maybe another win earlier so no one to blame but themselves.

Kind of slim pickings last night for sports after the Chargers game, but in flipping around, I stumbled on ASU soccer. Ordinarily, there'd be no chance, but I didn't feel like starting a movie or something. I thought it might be another really bad idea by the Pac-12 Network to show some prior year soccer match. But, it was the very first live college sporting event I've seen for this season. So I watched the first half. First off, what's with the lights? Dim with long shadows, and the area beyond the pitch was as dark and spooky as a vampire movie. Get some decent LEDs. (Our team could use some improvement in that area, too.) ASU played Mississippi St. As best I can tell, ASU was playing for a tie the whole game. They just let the clock run while their goalie and a fullback would tap the ball back and forth deep in their side of the field. Like for a full minute. They did this multiple times in the first half, and only had one or two forays at the MSU goal, which were sloppy and ineffective. Well, they got what they wanted with their stall: 0-0 was the final. So they're 1-0-1 after two home games (Wright St was their big victim), and we're 0-1 after a road game at Iowa St. After some streamed games, we play Boise St on Pac-12 Arizona the Sunday after next. Hopefully, regardless of the outcome, our play in that game will be more entertaining than ASU's slow-down garbage. Back in the day prior to the shot clock, I had debates over the stall in college basketball. I argued that it was more interesting to see a close competitive game that way than to see an overmatched team get blown out. Well, I've changed my opinion. It just seems like a poor twisting of the rules and bad for any sport. Play straight up and let the chips fall where they may.

(Note: I edited this after realizing I had erroneously posted that we were 0-2 after dropping a game at Pepperdine. That was just an exhibition. The loss in Malibu was noted on the schedule without noting that it was an exhibition, but it is not included in the overall total.)

You never saw UTEP play basketball in the WAC, did you?

I actually did. God, it was the worst...especially during a time when Snowden's guys wanted to run up and down the court willing to give up 110 to get 120 (which I believe they did more than once.) One of the worst parts of it was that while the crowd was bored into a silent stupor, the visiting UTEP cheerleaders were intentionally annoying in banging wooden blocks on the floor in front of them. Good times.