UCLA at California

This was a relatively low-scoring game, but it was not an ugly game. It was instead an intense game with lots of defense. Once again UCLA "Georgetown'ed" its opponents on the defensive end, and the Cal Bears fell too far behind to be able to make a comeback.

Cal has a really bizarre roster, and don't use the Omar Wilkes early departure as an excuse. They only have one mini-me point guard and a euro-guard and that's it. Typically a team should have at least four guards, not two. On the other hand Ben Braun is loaded in big men, and he doesn't even have room for Jordan Wilkes to play and has a "Yao Ming" red-shirting. With Theo Robertson injured, Braun's options are even fewer on the perimeter.

But Howland won the Ben vs Ben face-off, and managed to sweep their road trip making them the early leader in the Pac-10 ...primaries!

Russell Westbrook continued to have some impressive moments, including a "posterization" (or YouTube'd) moment dunking from Telegraph Avenue. The "Beached Whale" (Kevin Love) continued to be effective while not necessarily dazzling.

Louisville at Kentucky

If this was a movie, an appropriate title would be "The Return of the Injured". Juan Diego Tello Palacios and David Padgett for the Cardinals and Jodie Meeks and Derrick Jasper for Kentucky. This was not their first game since returning from injury but it was their first high profile game on national network TV (CBS Sports).

A new wrinkle was added to this rivarly last March, when Billy Gillispie beat Rick Pitino at Rupp Arena in the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament in dramatic fashion. Fast forward now, Billy G is the Kentucky coach, once again squaring off with Pitino as the place of his coronation.

Despite Earl Clark being suspended for a game for undisclosed reasons, the presence of Palacios and Padgett seems to have kept the Pitinoville youngster in check and they grabbed the game early and were able to hold on when Kentucky attempted a couple of comebacks. But really the game was decided early on.

Billy G is a very stubborn man by his own admission, which is perhaps why he insists on full gameday practices which goes against conventional wisdom and UK tradition. But if that wasn't enough, Billy G is developing a scorched earth / sour loser late game strategy where he fouls and fouls even when the game is clearly decided. He did this once again, prolonging the game to save his arse from further embarrassement. I'm sure his interpretation is playing tough.

Given that Billy G was able to turn around both UTEP and A&M in similar fashion he can point to his past and excuse all the struggles of this year. At UTEP and A&M no one would even notice, but at a large stage like this, you can't just get away with it. This looked like it was going to be an easy transition in the pre-season, but things are going to get ugly before they get pretty. Given time, I'm sure he can turn it around, but he'd better get to the NCAAs in Year 2!

With Palacios and Padgett providing experience and stability, Louisville is on a path to finding its preseason ranking. With the addition of the football guy (can't spell his name), Pitino has a rotation of five forwards, T-Will, four perimeter guards and a designated shooter (Scott). Plenty of bodies to play Pitino-style basketball without worrying too much about fatigue. Just like in years past, Pitino's seasons seem to have a designated slump and a winning streak in them. The question for this team is whether the winnning streak comes in late January or late February and March.

PS> I forgot to mention, Billy Packer had his senior moment when he mentioned Eddie Sutton as the Kentucky basketball coach. Oh Billy, did you forget to drink your Coca Cola? :)

Oregon State at Arizona State

The battle for the #9 spot in the Pac-10 took an interesting turn as Arizona State managed to handily beat the Beavers but also beat the Run and Gun Ducks two days earlier. It looks like Oregon State might be all alone at the bottom of the Pac-10 this season.

And they may not be a bad team even! With CJ Giles just recently added to the team (eligible after mid-season transfer) and very promising power-freshman Omari Johnson recovering from an injury, they look like they could improve. The problem is that they are climbing a hill backwards in the snow and driving rain that is the Pac-10 of 2007-2008. CJ Giles was taken out of the game by early foul trouble and that did not help the Beavs at all.

Herb Sendek's success so far on Year #2 may have sealed Jay John's fate at Oregon State. Not only did Tony Bennett managed to revitalize Washington State, but now in just two years Herb Sendek has taken another perennial Pac-10 patsy and turned it into a good team. Meanwhile Jay John has been at OSU for a while now, and he's still working uphill.

Arizona State may have had its best game of the year last night, with super-frosh James Harden taking over the first half and big man Jeff Pendergraph taking over the second half. In between, the "Jeans" point guard provided some stability and the rest of the players filled in the gaps to give the Sun Devils a 2-0 start in the Pac-10.

Speaking of James Harden, I think he is really Julius Hodge after a facelift or two, and a perimeter shot ;-) There's no way a 17yo freshman plays with such basketball savvy and weighs 220lbs at his height. He must be Julius Hodge! NCAA, investigate this please ;-)

But can Arizona State continue this or is it fool's gold and their early success a result of their schedule? It may take another two weeks to find out, as next week they face in-state rival Arizona. Beating Arizona maybe another barometer game as ASU has been "owned" by the Lute Olson Wildcats in the last few years.

Oregon at Arizona

This is typically an exciting game since both teams like to go up and down up and down. Of course Kevin O'Neill's Wildcats are not as run and gun as the Lute Olson Wildcats, but that didn't stop it from being an up and down game, with Oregon being the fastest of the two and the winner of the game.

As it is typical with the 07-08 Meercats, they fell behind early in the game, as much as 20 points down. They did make a comeback, but they were never able to take over the game. The Ducks withstood the McKale bump and kept their lead and the badly needed road W.

Interestingly last year these two teams split but with each winning on the road. Arizona was without Jerryd Bayless, Oregon without space-eater Joevan Catron. Just like Arizona, Oregon choses to play small, both teams have lots of big players on the bench that rarely make it off the bench.

Oregon starts the Pac-10 season with a split, but now the Arizona State loss doesn't look as bad as it would have looked in previous years. Arizona on the other hand starts 1-1 when they were expected to start 2-0 at McKale. The tough schedule and the comebacks along with the Bayless injury will "discount" the loss but without Lute Olson the NCAA tournament selection committee may not be as generous: they have to earn their bid!

Basketball fans love 100-inch HDTVs!

A story from the CES gadget show taking place right now in Vegas, CNet's Crave blog says that basketball nuts love the 100-inch HDTVs. Among the buyers mentioned is "poor" Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks. One hundred inch TVs! Imagine watching March Madness on those! It's awesome with capital A!

Memo to readers: Please send me one :-)

ESPN Full Court half-season special at $75

With the conference season starting up, ESPN has discounted their college basketball pay per view package, ESPN Full Court to $75 for the rest of the year. The package is available on cable and online, but those are two separate subscriptions, so if you want both you have to purchase both.

Multiple advertisements of this are airing on the ESPN family of networks, especially during broadcasts of college basketball games (duh!). Please keep in mind that with the launch of the Big 10 Network, you are not going to find Big 10 games on ESPN Full Court, but rather on the Big Ten Network itself. This means more games for the rest of the conferences. Which ones benefited from this? I don't know - I haven't looked and compared the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 schedules in detail.

This of course further segments the market with Fox College Sports covering essentially every single Pac-10 basketball game, the Big Ten Network covering the Big 10 games, the mtn covering the Mountain West, and regional CSTV covering Conference USA. Other than games shown on national TV of course (CBS, ABC, ESPN, ESPN2).

Time to go to six fouls or get rid of the foul-out rule altogether

The players are getting bigger, stronger, thicker, faster. The court is not getting bigger. The fouls keep piling up and make exciting games turn into ugly substitution-fests. Let's face it, the purpose of the game is to play the game, not for the coaches to play "monopoly" with fouls.

It is high time to either go to six fouls or get rid of the foul-out rule altogether. Even boring 0-0 soccer doesn't foul out players! Even violence-fest soccer with helmets (NFL football) does not foul out players.

Wake up and smell the roses! Fix the foul-trouble troubles!

UCLA at Stanford

It was supposed to be a big game, the Lopez Twins vs Kevin The Beached Whale Love, a national FSN TV game with Marques "thirdary" Johnson. While it wasn't a bad game, it didn't have the same excitement level that some of their previous matchups had.

Love and the Lopez twins sort of canceled each other out, and it was up to the rest of the players to make it happen. And the UCLA group made it happen, while Stanford's group continued to under-perform. Especially Lawrence Hill since the other two starting guards are not at the same level as most of the other starting guards in the Pac-10. With that in mind, and with just Greg Washington as the only perimeter/wing player off the bench that got significant PT. And this is what Trent Johnson has to figure out. He has two of the best big men in the country. Can he leverage them for a memorable season despite not having comparable talent elsewhere?

Ben Howland continued to go crazy with his time-outs, but as long as his record is as it is, he will be able to get away with it. He was left with just one time-out with 8 minutes left in the second half. He took his 2nd to last time out right after UCLA hit a three-pointer! Not a typo! He took a time-out after his own team made a momentum team.

UCLA, sort of like Georgetown, is a team that seems to find ways to make comebacks and beat opponents, and that is a very good trait both during the conference season but also during March Madness!

Oregon State at Arizona

It was a relatively sleepy game for a conference opener, with Arizona doing their patented thing, falling behind in the second half and then finding a run in the second half to take the game. As the FSN-Arizona announcers called them, they are the "archeological" cats because they "dig" themselves early in games.

Nic "Hoops" Wise had some Tywon Lawsonesque moments in terms of game impact during the game, and Jordan Hill put up some solid numbers, while Budinger and McClellan continued to underachieve without Bayless, yet do enough for the Wildcats to get the win.

Jay John does not have a bad team, but he has the worse team in the Pac-10. Regardless of how good the Pac-10 maybe, you never want to be #10 out of 10. However, there is hope for the Beavs. Power freshman Omari Johnson is just getting started and Moody Blues Jayhawk CJ Giles is just warming up after his transfer (he did not play against Arizona because of a suspension). However given all the transitions, Oregon State should probably be happy with a CBI bid. CBI being the new post-season tournament, the College Basketball Invitational that picks up the teams that don't make the post-season NIT.

College Game night debuts tonight on ESPN and ESPN2!

The first official College Gamenight shows debut tonight on ESPN and ESPN2 after the respective games end on those two channels. ESPN2 is interesting tonight, ESPN2 was trying to get rid of its contractual obligations of showing ugly teams from the Big East and the Big Ten, so they grouped the four ugliest teams together, and had a festival of Penn State, Northwestern, South Florida, and Rutgers. All apologies to the fans of those schools, but the truth hurts!

Valpo at North Carolina

It took Valpo 7 minutes and 16 seconds of game time to score its first point. Need I say more? Probably not. But I will rumble on anyways :)

Valpo actually made a comeback and got the game close, 35-31 at half-time, with Coach Drew smiling as he was heading towards the locker room. It's a good thing he got the smiles out, because UNC went on a 40-10 run in the second half and put the Valpo offense in a straightjacket.

The big question for UNC was how they would play without Frasor (out for the season) and The Q. The Q (not the Star Trek Q) was out with an ankle issue, and this was the worse possible time for a Q injury since the Frasor injury would have boosted up the team-oriented senior's PT.

But when you are UNC, the players come in waves. Off the bench came William Graves who showed an inside and outside game. While Graves may not be a household name, he's no slouch. He may have been the 6th best freshman of the 6-man freshman class of 2006, but he could have easily been the best incoming recruit at at least half of the NCAA D1 schools. He was a top 100 player who took a redshirt after all!

Danny Green was the star of the show with career highs in various categories, pre-game dancing moves, and serious interviewing skillz during the post-game interview. Is Danny Green this year's Marvin Williams? UNC fans can hope so!

Valpo played a classic "lambs to the slaughter" game, there's not much to say here. They had a statistical chance to win the game, and Drew's point that they had played a #1 ranked team in each of the last four years doesn't really change much.

Florida State at Georgia Tech

This game promised to be exciting on paper. It turned out to be a closely contested game but not as fun. Georgia Tech is a team that will play hard every time, usually turnovers, and poor decisions are the things that get them. They seem to always look like they are one Jarret Jack short from being a Top 20 contender.

Leonard Hamilton had to adjust his game plan and do some small-balling because both of his big men were unavailable due to injury (Alibi and Vaughn). Despite an early run and gun by Georgia Tech, the seasoned guard oriented FSU teams managed to withstand the Ga Tech run, chip away and then take the reigns.

Is FSU an NCAA team without Alibi and Vaughn? Probably not! Can they become one with at least one of them? Quite likely! Leonard Hamilton has had Dr Jerkyl and Mr Hyde teams during his tenure at Florida State, and they always seem to be just a coin toss away from an NCAA bid.

Georgia Tech is suffering from the early departures of Javaris Crittenton and Thaddeus Young. There is such as a thing as "too good of a recruiting class". Hewitt is struggling to find a point guard committee to get things done, with Causy, Dell and Mo in the turnover mix.

The season is young, this was just game #1 of a long ACC conference season, so there's plenty of time for the teams to adjust and adapt!