In Case You Missed It…
After attending my first NIT game last night, I now know why nobody cares about the NIT. It’s not because people are disappointed that their favorite team missed the NCAA tournament, or because they’re too busy paying attention to the NCAAs. It’s not even because the NIT isn’t an actual national championship, the ‘National’ in the name notwithstanding. No, the reason nobody cares about the NIT is that, by and large, these teams aren’t very good.
See, when you get two basketball teams together that aren’t very good, as we did last night at Haas Pavilion, what you get is a not-very-good basketball game. I don’t care what the teams are playing for, almost nobody wants to watch the kind of ugly basketball on display last night, and judging by the sparse crowd that actually showed up, almost nobody did.
A sparse crowd of curious onlookers wandered into Haas Pavilion only to find a basketball game going on.
Being that the game was televised nationally on ESPN2, perhaps many of you watched the game from the comfort of your own home. Perhaps. You didn’t come to Berkeley, that’s for sure. A crowd of just 1,906 turned out to watch this game. To put this in perspective, just a few months ago, fellow Mountain West foes San Diego State and Utah drew crowds of 7,590 and 7,387, respectively. To be sure, some of those announced crowd totals were buoyed by season ticket holders who chose to stay home, but there’s no question that interest in this game was somewhere between ‘lackluster’ and ‘non-existant’.
Anyway, for those of you who still care about Cal Basketball, but somehow plumb forgot that there was a game last night, here’s what you missed:
It was immediately obvious that J.R. Giddens was the Lobos’ best player; he was as good as advertised. The kid is a heck of a ball-handler, and he can make all the shots. The rest of the team? Basically, they’re just a bunch of guys. They run the offense well, providing screeners, decoys, and distractions, making the occasional three in the corner.
However, this team has a whole has virtually no inside game. They probably attempted something like 6 shots in the paint all night, most of those off of rebounds. To their credit, they still managed to act as though they had something going on inside. The typical play went something like this:
1) Ball handler penetrates off the dribble into the paint.
2) Cal defense collapses effectively on the ball handler.
3) Ball handler kicks out to a teammate outside.
4) Wide-open 3-point shot.
Somehow, this continued to work, over and over. Cal’s defense continued to collapse, leaving shooters open on the outside, and the Lobos continued to take advantage. Towards the end, it got really frustrating to watch Cal continue to leave shooters open over and over, when everybody in the building knew that the guy driving to the bucket was just going to pass it out again.
And the Bears? With their size and skill advantage in the paint, you would expect them to continue to feed it inside and feast on some easy layups. Well, you would be half right. The Bears continued to pass the ball inside, but they had an amazing amount of difficulty in actually completing those passes. Passes would be bobbled, batted away, or intercepted; one pass from Randle went right through Hardin’s legs. I was surprised when I looked at the box score today and found that the Bears turned the ball over only(!) 15 times. It was pretty ugly, and honestly I think it would have been worse had the Bears not been bailed out by some rather favorable foul calls.
The end of the game was tight, but it was not pretty. Jerome Randle made a 3 with seven and half minutes left to break a 53-all tie. From that point on, the Bears took only 2 shots the rest of the game. 2! In seven minutes! However, despite not having any sort of offense whatsoever, they managed to continue getting to the line, drawing seven fouls down the stretch.
Once again, the Bears’ excellent free throw shooting saves the day, as Cal goes 10-13 from the charity stripe over the final seven minutes, enough to seal the deal. However, it still took a big-time hustle play from Jamal Boykin to pull this one out. With the game tied at 66 with only 36 seconds left, Ryan Anderson gets to the line to shoot 2. An 87% free throw shooter, you gotta figure the Bears look pretty good to take the lead, and even after he misses the first one, everyone assumes he’ll make the second. Not Boykin. When Anderson inexplicably misses them both, Boykin is johnny-on-the-spot in grabbing the rebound, giving the Bears a fresh shot clock and the ability to just about take the last shot. On the ensuing possession, the Bears’ offense once again goes nowhere, but with time winding down, Boykin drives to the hoop and manages to get fouled with just 4 seconds left. His two subsequent free throws turned out to be the difference in the game.
My other shout-out from this game goes to DeVon Hardin, who’s taken some grief from Cal fans this year for what we perceived as his ‘failing to live up to his potential’ - i.e. not playing like a lottery pick. Well, in his final, final game at Haas, Hardin had a heck of a game. Yeah, 10 and 6 isn’t that great, and fouling out with more than 6 minutes to go (on a stupid push, even) seemed to really sum up his career at Cal, but let me tell you, he was a beast on defense. Not only was he a big reason why New Mexico had no inside game whatsoever, but he played a pretty mean perimeter defense on Giddins, as well. Not an easy thing to do. Man, if he had come out like that every night, I think the Bears could have pulled out a few more games this year.
Still, if this game convinced me of one thing, it’s that not only did neither team present have any business ever being in the NCAA conversation, but whichever team won (thankfully, Cal) was going to have no chance against Ohio State on Monday. An ugly, ugly game from two teams that really aren’t all that good. But then, I suppose that’s the NIT for you.
You failed to mention we got ‘bailed’ out on the “foul” called on Boykin. That was a straight up REJECTION if I’ve ever seen one. Maybe all those fans got in the way.
Also, of note, what was up with the ESPN camera angle on the game. If anyone watched it on TV it looked as if the game was being filmed from a BLIMP. No zoom, nothing. FSN and Comcast Sports Net zoom in a little bit on the play by play. It looked as if ESPN was zoomed out. Same camera angle as the typical broadcast but absolutely no zoom. That, in combination with, the horrible game play made the game very unwatchable - of course, I still watched.
Comment by johno — March 21, 2008 @ 8:44 am
Rag, I disagree a bit with your claim that New Mexico continued to penetrate and kick out for 3s AND that this worked “over and over.” If you look at the stats, this in fact did not work “over and over.” NM was 7 - 25 from 3 point range for a mediocre 28%. Given they shot 42% from 3s for the season and led the nation in this category, I expected an Oregon type blow out b/c Braun’s teams never defend the 3 well (at least not for the past 5 years). Given the 28% I would call that successful 3 point defense for the Bears. I think NM’s failure was not to penetrate more b/c this was more effective.
On a separate note, is any one as disappointed with Randle as I am. Two years in he is still dribbling like a madman with no plan and no idea what he is doing. This leads to so many lame turnovers. The large amount of TOs lays heavily on his shoulders as he continues to play wild street ball instead of realizing his primary job is to take care of, and distribute the ball.
Finally, I will be so relieved when this season is over, for no other reason than the fact that we will no longer have to see Viernesel on the floor. I can’t comprehend how such a bad basketball player logs so many minutes on a Division I team. Seriously, many of us joke about playing better than some college athletes, but seriously, I have seen HUNDREDS of better players at the rec center. He must be Braun’s secret “boy” lover. Just a horrible player.
Comment by oaktownmario — March 21, 2008 @ 9:13 am
Johno,
Honestly, I and the people I was sitting near felt we got bailed out by the refs a few times — not the least of which was on Boykin’s final drive — hense the ‘rather favorable foul calls’ I mentioned. However, I was sitting in the corner on the other side of the arena, so I admittedly didn’t have a great view — you probably had a better one, even with your way-zoomed-out ESPN2 cameras — so I didn’t want to mention it.
Comment by ragnarok — March 21, 2008 @ 9:24 am
Mario,
You know, after looking at those statistics, I was a bit surprised. Watching the game, it sure seemed like they got open look after open look, but I guess they didn’t knock down as many as I thought. Maybe they were better defended than I thought, but I think that maybe they were just shooting cold. After all, they’re 66% from the free throw line on the year, yet they were only 9-20 from the line against Cal. You certainly can’t attribute that to Cal’s defense.
Comment by ragnarok — March 21, 2008 @ 10:15 am
Yeah, I’ll admit I’d much rather have Randle if I was trying to run a two-man streetball hustle, a la “White Men Can’t Jump”, than if I was trying to lead a team to the NCAA tournament.
It’s clear that Randle wants to run and be creative out there, and we all know the sort of offense Braun tries to run, which means there’s some sort of coach-player conflict. I don’t know whether to fault Randle for not buying into Braun’s system, or Braun for not tailoring his offense to Randle’s strengths, but that’s going to have to get fixed over the offseason. Somehow, Randle has to get his quickness and talent under control.
Comment by ragnarok — March 21, 2008 @ 11:27 am
He must be Braun’s secret “boy” lover.
I don’t know about that. He’s not even pretty!
Seriously, though, Vierneisel does a lot of things well. He inbounds the ball pretty well. He takes pretty good fouls. He takes up a good amount of space. Some of those ill-timed 3s he takes actually go in. I mean, he’s not that bad…
Actually (and I had to look this up), his 1.9/1 assist/turnover ratio is the best of any of the 8 players who are in the normal rotation. Overall, he’s second on the team in assists behind Randle, and he’s got less than half of Randle’s turnovers. So, at least there’s something…
Comment by ragnarok — March 21, 2008 @ 1:00 pm
Some people (not me!) have been known to refer to Verneisel as Vagisil. But not me. I greatly respect Verneisel.
Comment by TwistNHook — March 21, 2008 @ 3:48 pm
Am I the only one disappointed by the fact that Braun’s Cal career didn’t end with an opening round loss to an inferior team in the NIT?
Comment by Ted — March 21, 2008 @ 5:03 pm
Young pups, let me tell you about the bad old days. When Cal played a home NIT game in, I think, 1985, it was a hot ticket. The game sold out and then some. Of course, it had been 25 years since Cal basketball had last been in the post season and football wasn’t any better.
As bad as things are now, these are the glory days!
Comment by Nonplussed — March 22, 2008 @ 9:23 pm