Basketball?
Yes, basketball! We have a team. Stunning. I’m not the resident basketballogist around here. Growing up a Dubs fan in the Jai Area in the late 90s and early 00s, every iota of joy I might have had for basketball was mercilessly squeezed forth from me. And it didn’t help that Vonteego Cummings once punched my puppy in the face. Why, Vonteego, why????
But there are people here who love basketball. They love it enough to even go to the opening game of the season against Arctic powerhouse Alaska Fairbanks. Resident basketballogist Ragnarok was unable to make it, but our roving reporter in the field Brian "CBKWit" Fantana took time out of his busy Sex Panther schedule to make it to the game. He wrote a recap for you, the readers.
But before we get to that, reader Chris Clavin (or as we call him around the Golden Blogs water cooler, reader Chris Clavin) sent us an interesting link. According to the Chronicle, a protestor fell out of the trees and injured himself. One can only assume that the trees are making a conscious effort to slough off the protestors. Note that the article is NOT written by Carolyn Johnson and it actually presents it from the Cal side. It actually notes how the tree-sit is illegal. I, for one, was stunned.
One of the commentors at the Chronicle site had a funny quip: "I heard he’s now protesting gravity."
But that was just a quick interlude away from the delight that is Cal’s suckier version of Ben Ball (thanks to CBKWit):
"I went to Cal’s season opener on Thursday night, an exhibition game against the University of Alaska - Fairbanks Nanooks. A “Nanook“, for the few of you who don’t know, is a derivation of the Inupiaq Eskimo word “nanuq,” meaning Polar Bear. The polar bears are not great basketball players, but they are the two time defending NCAA rifle champions, so you do not want to fuck with them.
Apparently a Cal versus Nanooks exhibition game is not a great draw, as I was the only one in my 60 person office to put in a request for our free tickets. Regardless, I pleasantly surprised with the turnout at Haas; a decent amount of alums filled the lower levels, and the “bench” was almost completely full. My guess is that the football team’s recent swoon, coupled with the desire to see probably the only guaranteed Cal victory of the year brought a majority of the fans to the game.
I went to see if I could get a feel for the new guys, but mostly I wanted to see how Nikola, our George Michael Bluth clone/Serbian point guard would play after missing all of last year with a knee injury. Besides being our only healthy scholarship point guard (Jerome Randle is out with an inflamed kidney), Nikola is my friend. I sat next to him on the team’s charter flight from Dallas to San Francisco last year, following our first round exit in the NCAA tournament. He is a very friendly, nice, strong shouldered person, as I found almost every player from that team to be. That spring, in an effort to not starve, I ate most of my meals in the dining commons with freshman who had extra meal swipes. Nikola would often be wandering or eating alone, (he was, after all, a freshman foreign exchange student who spent almost all of his time with a very small group of people) and we would invite him to sit with us. He always seemed grateful to have people to talk to.
Last fall, I ran into him at the Bear’s Lair after a football game and he invited me to a house party. I’m not sure if he would remember me now, but as of a year ago, a member of the men’s basketball team thought I was cool. In this regard, he joins an exclusive club consisting of my mom, my grandma, and this kid I taught to play poker during his overnight stay in the dorms.
On to the game:
- Nikola seemed fully recovered from his injury and surgery. He was quicker than I expected and strong defensively, and I was impressed with how well he was able to keep his man from penetrating. He was decent passing and running the offense, but he looked a little inexperienced (got called for a charge after passing off at least once), and he was pretty gun-shy after bricking an early three. I don’t think he scored and he was very hesitant to shoot. We don’t really need him as an outside shooter (Ryan Anderson, Patrick Christopher, and Eric Vernieklasjdfsal have that role covered), but if he can’t make good teams respect his shot, it’s going to be very difficult for him to beat his man off the dribble.
- Patrick Christopher, who looks like Lebron James’ dorky teenage brother, showed why he was a top 50 recruit two years ago. He was more of a slasher than a pure shooter last year, but he was scoring from everywhere on Thursday, including a great night from behind the arc. We’ll have to see how he does against more athletic wings, but it was a very encouraging performance.
- The team plays completely different with Hardin in the game. We have a bevy of tall players, but he’s the only one with a lot of upper body strength and athleticism; he can really go up in traffic and tear down rebounds, while Ryan Anderson and Jordan Wilkes tip the ball around and sometimes fail to bring it in. On defense, he alters almost every shot taken within 7-8 feet of the rim. I was remarking to “RemorsefulBruinBabe,” who accompanied me to the game, how the season would be lost if Hardin were to go down again when he hit the deck. After 2 minutes of writhing around on the floor (Haas was dead quiet), he jumped up quickly in one motion as we laughed and cheered, relieved. I think he just got hit on the nose, and he was all smiles after the game.
- Eric Vierneisel had a decent game shooting, but is very slow and will be a liability at the 2 or 3. With Robertson, Randle, and the newcomer Amoke all out, he will be forced to play significant minutes at the wing, which will mean a lot of trouble defensively.
- Late in the second half, with Cal up by 30 or so, the loudest cheering of the game erupted from the band and student section. Max Zhang, our 7’2” freshman center from Yantai China, was checking into the game. He is every inch of 7’2”, slower than an offensive tackle, and weighs at least 200 pounds (in reality, it’s probably closer to 220, and this is not an exaggeration). He’s clearly very raw and will likely not play this year, especially with our abundance of post players, but he did provide the two biggest highlights of the night: feeding Thomas Fang, a walk-on of Chinese descent, for a three pointer late in the game, and with 2 seconds left, after missing a number of put backs, draining the first of two free throws to break a hundred for the team.
After the game, the team held a meet and greet on the court for students and particularly obsessive alums. The players were all very friendly, happily snapping photos with just about everyone. Ryan Anderson stood under the rim, rebounding errant shots and lifting up kids who wanted to dunk. Hardin took off his jersey and looked like he could rip you in half. Max was mobbed by students who appeared more athletic, if 18 inches shorter, than him. I spoke with Jerome Randle, who told me he’d be back on the 24th of November. I also overheard him decline a party, saying “I’m sick, and I’ve got to go to bed.” A 7-2 Chinese center feeding a 6-5 Chinese walk-on for a 3? An outgoing underclassman going home to bed after a 50 point victory? A cynical observer who is optimistic in the face of a dominant Pac-10 and season after season of underachieving mediocrity? Only at Cal."
