Virginia at Arizona

It was the Sean Singletary show! The little guy, Iverson-Singletary was able to carve up the Arizona defense like a pumpkin and score or get his team mates good shots. On the other side of the aisle, the first ominous clouds will start hanging over the Enforcer Kevin O'Neill. Stumbling through wins does not create discontent, especially this early in the season, but losing at home does.

This was the first game of the season for the national FSN, and the first game of Marques Johnson, who was select as second funniest basketball announcer by this blog. But gone was his partner in crime Steve Physioc, and in the more "boring" Ted Robinson.

Virginia was like two teams, one with Iverson-Singletary, and one without him. It will be interesting to see whether the little guy can withstand yet another season of carrying the team bucket by bucket. With Iverson-Singletary in place, Virginia looks good as the other pieces fit around him.

Arizona on the other hand is probably going to start "feeling" the absence of Lute Olson. Granted Bayless (not Skip), is a true freshman and "converted" to point guard from czar-guard. What's a czar-guard? A czar-guard is a guard who dominates the offense by shooting, dribbling, driving, scoring, and giving the ball a headache.

Clearly Daniel Dillon is a major headache on defense for opponents, but he is also a liability on offense. This makes it difficult to score when the trio of Bayless, McClellan and Budinger are not on the court at the same time as Dillon.

Jordan Hill is another one of the big men with a big potential, but he's not there yet, he's on the journey towards the potential. Fouls seem to like him, which doesn't help. Without Jamelle Horne, Arizona was down to just one big man, either J-Hill or walk-on/walk-off Bret (not Brent, or Brett) Brielmaier (not Brillmayer, Brillmeyer).

While this team looked good on paper in the off-season, it is now down to a very tight rotation. Starting to remind you of the 2006-2007 Arizona situation?

This turned out to be an exciting game series with dramatic games, that perhaps can turn into a made-for-TV rivarly for FSN. This is etched in Virginia history as the game/series that cut the ribbon of their new John Paul Jones arena.

More on this game at March to Madness who was live-blogging this game last night, and by Bruce Pascoe of the Arizona Daily Star.