March 31st, 2009: Arizona State at UConn (NCAA tournament)

UConn Huskies 83, Arizona State Sun Devils 64

The Devils are bedeviled, Renee Montgomery will not let her season end, and Tina Charles has moves on the court.


Hats off to Arizona State. They played unafraid the entire game, and until UConn found the afterburners, the game was closer than the final score would make it look.

Not quite the same crowd as on Sunday, but a goodly number of people were there, including a fair smattering of Arizona State fans. Considering the distance most of them would have had to travel, that's pretty impressive. Also have to shout out to the Cal and Texas A&M fans who came for the second game. They could have scalped their tickets for an extra ten bucks and gone sightseeing, but they stuck around.

Anthem was by the Arizona State band. I'm not a fan of the sped-up renditions, but it was well performed. But on band notes, I really do like the UConn band director. She's very good at what she does.

Oh, Arizona State. If only you could hit the broad side of a barn. If only you knew where the barn even was. So many easy shots that didn't go down. It was horrifying. This would actually have been a single-digit game if Arizona State could hit open shots. Danielle Orsillo played well on the offensive end for the Sun Devils, and I thik she wanted to drag them back by her teeth if necessary. Briann January was trying too hard- making shots flashy that didn't have to be. Whether that was pressure to perform or perceived pressure on her part, thinking the UConn defense was going to kick her ass, I don't know, but it was not of the good if you were rooting for the upset. The big problem for ASU was that they couldn't get anything really useful out of their posts, whether it was because they couldn't hit the aforementioned barn (seriously, Lauren Lacey, 3/10? Who do you think you are, Jennifer Lacy?) or they couldn't stay on the floor ('sup, Sybil Dosty and your foul troubles?) or, well, they were just epic fail. Engelbrecht seemed less scared to shoot than usual, and had a couple of hard plays that might have dispelled her Bambi nickname. I'll tell you who really impressed me and I hadn't heard of before: Nia Fanaika. Not a major boxscore, stat-line game, but somehow she always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. CTT didn't go to the line changes as much in the first half as I got used to during the Texas A&M game, which I think hurt them- they're so used to going all-out because they know there are reinforcements behind them that they started hurrying their offense and slipping on defense. And whoever was supposed to be checking Maya Moore can meet me in the alley out back and I'll thwack them ten or twenty times with my clipboard, because how in the green and orange fuck do you not guard Maya fucking Moore?

Which, speaking of. Setting aside "how in the green and orange fuck do you not guard Maya fucking Moore?", she was a thing of beauty to behold. Those jumpers were so smooth, and she was all over the boards- ASU just couldn't get or keep anyone on her. For a while, I thought Charles was going to get her Jayne Appel on, but then she started getting sloppy and it was more like she was getting her Kia Vaughn on. Love the way she moves, though. Very sleek. Montgomery was going to the hole like she'd decided there was no way on God's green earth this was going to be her last collegiate game. Hayes did not play her smartest game tonight. Lot of freshman mistakes. UConn can't afford that in the Final Four. Kalana Greene was another one of those "in the right place at the right time" players. I think she's officially healed from the ACL tear. Can we say that? Dixon got run because Montgomery had the foul trouble, and it must have torn her up to have to slow the game down, keep the ball in the backcourt, and run clock to negate ASU's tendency to pressure the ball.

I know this is going to sound weird, but for the first time, watching UConn, I felt like I could pick out moves and countermoves on a grand basis. Most of the time, it feels like the two coaches are throwing what they know works at each other, and if it works against the other coach's thing, shiny, and if not, well, life's a bitch. With Auriemma and the Huskies- probably because he has so many things he can throw at an opposing coach- the adjustments are written clearly on the court. Having trouble with posts? Go big. Having trouble with a running team? Slow the game down. Things like that. As a fan of the game, I find things like this fascinating.

Also impressive: the UConn cheerleaders. I hope they have permits for those concealed guns, because, seriously, for a squad composed of women with average builds, those three-layer pyramids and extended lifts are fucking amazing, and probably speak to upper body strength that would make a grown man jealous. Mad props to Jonathan for climbing atop one of the pyramids in the second half. It takes nerve for a guy in a mask to trust to a bunch of people he can't see all that well.

The refereeing was inconsistent, and there were a couple of points where I thought Geno was going to get him thrown out... plus one point where I thought Dailey was going to tire of keeping him tethered, because she looked like she was trying to remember her old post moves from RU.

UConn's dancing after the game was so gosh darn cute. And damn, can Tina Charles bust a move or what? The way everything was moving at once- wow. I think one of the benchies was considering tossing her Trenton Regional Championship t-shirt to the band, but she decided against it. If I'd known Geno wasn't planning on cutting down the net, I'd have left at the buzzer, and these notes might have been written a couple of hours earlier. Please blame all incoherency on the fact that it's about two-thirty in the morning.