Don’t talk back
January 8th, 2008, 7:07 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Mark Heller
Everything appears all quiet on the night before the in-state storm.
Arizona State appears to be a fairly healthy bunch. Rihards Kuksiks has a banged up forearm, but it’s not believed to be serious.
No real revelations came from Tuesday’s Q&A smorgasbord with the team. As expected, it was the biggest attended media event of the season to date, including a couple reporters already up from Tucson.
Couple quick bits of interest:
James Harden, who was in attendance for last year’s 61-58 Arizona win in Tempe: “It was exciting. I was ready to get on the court.”
Jeff Pendergraph’s most vivid recollection of his first four career meetings against Arizona: (Last January at McKale Center) Before the game during warmups someone spit on me,” he said. “I had a big blob on my head but I didn’t know it.”
Coach Herb Sendek spent most of his 10 minute news conference trying to downplay the significance of Wednesday’s game, noting it’s only the third game of an 18-game (minimum) grind. Some media types, however, weren’t buying in and kept trying to push Sendek into professing some speech about how it’s the Arizona Wildcats, which should make it a bigger game than the games against the Oregon schools.
Sendek’s too smart and possesses way too much tunnel-vision to buy into those lame answers and soundbytes.
Looks like Arizona won’t make a determination on Jerryd Bayless until Wednesday afternoon’s shootaround. He did some shooting and light practicing on Tuesday but not at full speed.
Jerryd Bayless is really good, but with a less-than-healthy knee he’d be better served sitting out another game or two.
One view: As much as ASU players said they’d like to be tested against a fully-loaded Wildcats team, there’s no reason for Bayless to play. The Wildcats have a tough game at Houston on Saturday, and a 1-2 conference record may set Tucson ablaze, but with their strong nonconference schedule and the Pac-10’s overall strength mean the ‘Cats can still finish in the upper half of the conference and go to the NCAA tournament. It’s about how teams finish, and Bayless’ health is too important fprArizona to jeopardize in the name of an early January game.
Fewer than 1,000 tickets are left for sale ($25 each). Get there early.
