January 2007 Archives

The James Harden vs. O.J. Mayo will apparently take place after all tonight at Duke.

Creating a "mid-season" list of 30 candidates for the John R. Wooden Award was a difficult as heck.

Anyway . . . you've come to the right place to see the definitive list (he said, modestly).

I'm in the Galen Center, coving the Long Beach State vs. USC men's volleyball match.

And I just heard Artesia's boys' basketball team just lost at La Mirada, 67-65.

I'm assuming anyone reading this probably watched the telecast or was in the Galen Center.

But the UCLA-USC game, won by the Bruins, 65-64, was about as well-played as one of these Bruins-Trojans game have been in a while.

Well, depending on your perspective (regarding the importance of half-court defense in basketball), it was either a "sluggish" first 20 minutes of play in the Galen Center Saturday morning/afternoon or a fine example of college defense at its best.

It's 15 minutes before tipoff in the Galen Center.

So far, the crowd -- what there is of it; the folks tend to be late-arriving in SoCal -- is roughly 80 to 20 percent, Cardinal and Gold.

I, too, bought into the notion for most of the season that the Ohio State Buckeyes were the best college football team in the country, based largely on their ability to go into Austin and beat defending national champion Texas early in the season.