The big, ballin’ Bruins
February 26th, 2008, 7:37 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Mark Heller
He’s big, strong, quick, agile and a future first-round NBA pick. Could Thursday night be the only time Kevin Love stops by ASU?
On the basketball side, optimism was in the air Tuesday as Arizona State talked about this huge weekend against a couple NCAA Tournament teams in UCLA (and USC, but nobody’s talking Trojans yet).
A few highlights:
ASU fans may shudder at the memory, but the 33-point blowout loss suffered in Los Angeles three weeks ago wasn’t completely worthless (though almost).
“They put their foot down and showed us what being a really good, experienced team is about,” James Harden said.
A month later and feeling better about his team, coach Herb Sendek took a lighter approach in retrospect.
“I think at one point we were down 100-2,” he said. “It was an avalanche that hit us. We contributed to it. Despite UCLA’s greatness, we made sure we took out our chisel and hit a few rocks ourselves to increase the flow of the avalanche. We more than helped them along, I think, not that they needed it.”
A handful of players polled claimed they were unaware of this Sendek audio/video tribute. Sendek, however, has seen it.
Obviously no one has stopped UCLA super frosh Kevin Love given his impact and season stats (17 points, 11 rebounds 58 percent shooting), but Jeff Pendergraph seemed half-annoyed, half-amused by the question:
“Why do people ask questions like that? What do people try to do to stop Kevin Garnett? People that are scorers are scorers. NBA people are NBA people. You can hope to try and limit his touches but he’s still going to get his. That’s why he’s that good and averages what he does. Everybody else tries to stop him too but have a hard time doing it. It’s going to be limit him and not let him get 40 points and 20 rebounds. Tone it down a bit so he doesn’t have a career night.”
Again, the Sun Devils were asked peeking ahead toward NCAA Tournament implications, RPI, strength of schedule, possible scenarios necessary to reach March Madness. They again, conceited there’s a little talking and peeking.
It probably goes against Sendek’s ideal wishes, who noted this stuff has been out and about since Thanksgiving. It’s not like they’ve broken down every scenario or spent time calculating future RPI standings, but they’re teenage kids within reach of getting somewhere big they’ve never been too. Of course they know what’s going on and what lies ahead.
