As bad as things are now, these are the glory days!

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.