{"id":143,"date":"2006-03-26T07:09:17","date_gmt":"2006-03-26T07:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/03\/26\/pay-no-attention-to-the-game-b\/"},"modified":"2006-03-26T07:09:17","modified_gmt":"2006-03-26T07:09:17","slug":"pay-no-attention-to-the-game-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/03\/26\/pay-no-attention-to-the-game-b\/","title":{"rendered":"Pay No Attention to the Game Behind the Curtain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just a quick note: When I talked earlier about the <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/03\/im_a_basketball_fan_thats_why.php\">aesthetic superiority of college basketball<\/a>, I wasn&#8217;t thinking of last night&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/03\/26\/sports\/ncaabasketball\/26memphis.html?ex=1301029200&#038;en=2994e882df6c4251&#038;ei=5088&#038;partner=rssnyt&#038;emc=rss\">Memphis-UCLA<\/a> game. Ye gods, what an ugly display. That set basketball back so far they should&#8217;ve replaced the rims with peach baskets at halftime.<\/p>\n<p>I think Memphis coach\/ huckster John Calipari said it best:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;We just couldn&#8217;t make a basket,&#8221; Memphis Coach John Calipari said. &#8220;Please make a basket. Make a free throw. Anything. Kick one in.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It was vaguely consistent with my view of the game, in that Memphis was playing like an NBA team (one or two passes, followed by a one-on-one move), and was completely stifled by a bunch of guys playing good team defense. But for all they played as a unit on the defensive end, UCLA played like a bunch of amnesiacs on offense&#8211; it was like they couldn&#8217;t remember that they were even supposed to try to score until about five seconds were left on the shot clock.<\/p>\n<p>What a mess. The LSU-Texas game, on the other hand, was fairly entertaining. I think I&#8217;m rooting for the Tigers now, and not just because they made J.J. Redick cry. (Of course, I&#8217;ve probably doomed them with that statement, but, hey, it was fun while it lasted&#8230;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just a quick note: When I talked earlier about the aesthetic superiority of college basketball, I wasn&#8217;t thinking of last night&#8217;s Memphis-UCLA game. Ye gods, what an ugly display. That set basketball back so far they should&#8217;ve replaced the rims with peach baskets at halftime. I think Memphis coach\/ huckster John Calipari said it best:&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/03\/26\/pay-no-attention-to-the-game-b\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Pay No Attention to the Game Behind the Curtain<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basketball","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}