SAN JOSE “”mdash; Wednesday night, I had probably one of the more fitful nights of sleep of my life.
Yeah, I had an 8 a.m. final the next day, and yeah, I had not studied enough for it.
Despite the state of my GPA, this was not my main worry (or even much of a worry at all. History, after all, is history).
No, the reason I stayed up until four in the morning and the reason I could not sleep once I went to bed had nothing to do with academics; instead, I was thinking of what I would do if UCLA lost to Pittsburgh.
Thursday’s game against Pitt was the first NCAA Tournament game I attended. I rocked my history final and was out of Westwood by 11 a.m. to begin the drive up to San Jose. I felt a bit like I did when I was a kid going to Disneyland. I was almost sick with excitement, and I took that feeling to mean something might go wrong. (My road trip record stands at something like 2-18. I should be banned.)
Who knows, maybe something would have gone wrong if the Bruins had actually played a good team. But instead, they played Pittsburgh and Aaron Gray ““ henceforth referred to as “Michael Fey.”
The Bruins controlled the tempo throughout the game, and at no point would I say that the Panthers actually posed much of a threat. (Of course, this didn’t prevent me from clenching my fists and doing a hot-foot dance over the last few minutes as the Panthers cut the lead to five. Trust me, you never want to watch a game with me.)
Luc Richard Mbah a Moute was an absolute nonfactor for UCLA; Alfred Aboya had one of his more ineffective games as a Bruin. “Fey” and the Pittsburgh front line should have been able to dominate, but instead, they let a combination of James Keefe and Ryan Wright deny them the ball for much of the first half.
Let me repeat. The Panthers let a combination of James Keefe and Ryan Wright (I say again, James Keefe and Ryan Wright) deny them the ball for much of the first half.
We have now entered the Twilight Zone.
Either the Bruins have somehow miraculously developed a bench in the last, I don’t know, two days, or Pittsburgh is a lot worse than people think.
I’m leaning toward Pittsburgh and “Fey” being really overrated.
ESPN is calling the game ugly again, and this time I tend to agree. If I were a true basketball analyst, and not just a fan who gets free tickets to the games, I would have kept track of unforced turnovers by Pittsburgh in this game. The Panthers had 10 total turnovers and UCLA had just one steal. I’m going to go the lazy route and say there were nine unforced errors.
Since I am lazy, I have also never kept track of that stat until today, but I’m going to arbitrarily say that nine is a lot of unforced turnovers.
UCLA probably should have won this game by 15 or so, but a flurry of 3-pointers at the end by a series of Pittsburgh guards throwing up prayers kept it relatively close.
So the Bruins head on to play Kansas. Before the brackets were even announced, I decided that this matchup would be the NCAA championship game.
I tend to think that whatever team advances out of this game will be the best team left in the tournament. So basically, I’m calling this the championship game.
No freaking way I’m sleeping Friday night.
E-mail Woods at dwoods@media.ucla.edu if you can tell he wrote this column on no sleep. Don’t expect improvement in Saturday’s column either.