Per ESPN, the D'Backs and the Dodgers are going to play @ TEP on 3/25 and its for a good cause too!

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It wasn't pretty, often ugly, but it sure was passionate.  Both sides wanted this one and someone was gonna be disappointed.  There are some games where teams simply match up better than others and last night was evidence that Arizona may not have closed that gap as much as its fans would have liked.  Regardless, scoreboard matters and in this case, it favored our Cats.  I believe that Lorenzo Romar deserves some praise for recognizing what was going on to keep his team in the game.  Each time that the Cats appeared to be poised to allow the crowd to take them another level, his players made a crucial stop or shot or both to keep tabs on the Cats.  Also credit should go to Isiah Thomas who willed his team to stay close by his generalship on the floor and keeping the Dawgs focused.

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Do not adjust your set.  the Cats are in control of the vertical, they are also in control of the horizontal and for all intents and purposes, for now they are in control of the Pac 10 race.  Wazzu gave them their best shot as Ken Bone's lads played the full game and never rolled over.  Klay Thompson found his shooting touch (he poured in 30)and yet it still wasn't enough.  Coach Miller's gang persevered to a 79-70 win that showed that the Cats could keep their poise even stacked up against someone with a hot hand and gut out a win. Derrick Williams is showing signs of his finger sprain recovering as he led the Cats in scoring and with rebounds.

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The lingering unanswered question appears to be, is the Arizona program back? Has the rudderless program found direction?  Did Livengood screw the pooch one last time on his way out of town?

Those questions appeared to have been answered.  This is not you classic Lute Olson juggernaut of a club circa 1999 or some such, this looks more like a 1985 version where pieces still have edges and players are still finding untapped levels of potential. Still, this team is showing a resiliency that is well worth applauding as the DWill and the "Hole in the Hardwood" Gang keep finding ways to bury their opponents.

Last night they faced down a determined bunch in Tempe, led by a group of seniors that had pretty much helped the folks in Tempe believe that they could also revive the halcyon days of Ned Wulk before the Pac 10 came calling. The Devils squad has been battered all year and while the scoreboard hadn't reflected their efforts they have continued to play tough throughout the season. If a postseason tourney wasn't in the cards, then sticking a spanner in the wheels of the Cats march to a season title would have been a feel good consolation prize.  Alas, it was not to be.

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It appears that we received some clarity in the PAC 10 picture last night.  Posuers were identified and challengers stood up to be accounted for.  The Pac 10 now appears to be a three team race and that's the same amount of bids that the league can expect, lacking any surprises in the conference tournament.  Three shall be the number and that number should be henceforth engraved in stone at least until the games this weekend.... so what happened?

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The scoreboard stated that the final score was 107-105.  What it implied was a whole different horizon for our Cats.  The result was a team accomplishment and perhaps the most critical stepping stone for this team to date.  They won a close one on the road, without DWill to bail them out, with officiating that was as consistent as a coin flip.  Despite those worries, they won as a team and have grasped control of their own tournament destiny.  Perhaps with this win comes the sense of belief that the change of the guard is complete, we have a new identity, very much like our old identity, we're a team that needs to be reckoned with.

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Are we all growed up yet?

Our lads in their stylish new white uniforms took the court and manifested themselves in a most unusual way last night...last night we got to see the transitional Cats.  Breaking out the fast break offense for the first time in almost a decade, the Cats beat down UCLA with a game plan that combined punishing the Bruins on the fast break, continued applied efforts in attacking the rim and scalding outside shooting.  Was it perfect, no, but it was the best that the Cats have looked all year and they happened to do it while in the National spotlight.

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After the first couple of weeks of league play now being complete, its looking more and more that as Derrick Williams goes, so go the Cats.  Auditions have been held to develop a wingman of sorts for Derrick but as of right now all we have are understudies.  This isn't to deny Mr. Williams talents and skill set, he has those in abundance.  He also has an unerring drive and desire to compete.  What is lacking in this club is the consistency of the other players to allow this club to move from the threshold of pretty good to being a real contender.

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What a nice way to leave Eugene (author edit and gaffe, I had Salem here until some gracious Duck backers edumaceted me)  and McArthur Court.  That place has been raucous and filled with horror in the past, yet this year, in its last go-around as a home court venue and with the students gone, the Cats were able to exercise some road demons and began the Pac 10 schedule with a well earned win.  This is where Coach Miller and his team concept is paying dividends, the team was ragged in its handling of the full court pressure, Derrick Williams was having problems getting untracked, yet the Cats imposed their collective will on this game with their offensive execution and cruised to a 19 point victory.

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The Cats started the week of Christmas by giving the Colonials a brief tour of the dangers of the desert before they continued on their trek across America.  It was a thorny, painful and difficult trip for the Colonials, like bunking with cousins you don't get along with. In the end about the best thing you could suggest about it is that the food wasn't too bad.  Arizona took some time but their advantages in the contest (size and quantity) proved telling in the end.

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It wasn't pretty but it was effective and perhaps the best true road test indicator that the team has facing them this year.  Forget Kansas and BYU, one is a roster of all-americans that has a strong veteran presence, the other was looking to prove all of the doubters wrong and had circled that return date with a certain salivating anticipation.  NC State was a raw team with a talented roster that plays in the historic ACC.  You can say that we caught them at a good time because of injury issues but then again, I'm not sure if the Wildcate psyche could have been any more fragile after a humbling loss in Utah and then a couple of unsettling efforts against NAU and Cal State Fullerton.

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Coach Bob Burton should be quite pleased with himself.  He had a game plan and his players executed it and if there hadn't been a certain amount of home cooking going on, his squad might have well pulled off a pretty significant upset.  The plan was, if things got tough, go zone on defense and attack the rim on offense.  His team did just that and while the Cats kept the lead in double digits throughout much of the game, they couldn't put away a scrappy Titans team that played disciplined basketball tonight.  This isn't to say that the Cats were dominated, they weren't, but they were outshout from the field and at the stripe, but the big difference maker in this affair was the advantage at the Free Throw line and Arizona's dominance of the boards.

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What a difference a year makes.  Last year, the Sooners embarrassed the young Cats and taught them the first of many harsh lessons of the road. This year, the lesson was returned in kind as the Cats established their dominance early and steadily established themselves as a potential force to be reckoned with; amongst the contenders for the PAC 10 crown.  While Derrick Williams continued to show why he considered to be one of the most exciting players on the West Coast, Coach Miller is ready to show that Arizona is more than a one trick pony.

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Ben Braun must hate Arizona.  The Cats owned him in Berkeley and he moves to Houston and we darken his doorstep again.  In his defense, he's new there and it looks like he has a couple of pieces of a decent club but they are a bad matchup against Arizona.  Wednesday night was no different as the Cats showed up intense and ready to tango and they tap danced their way through the night to a convincing victory.  The Kansas game behind them, there was no hangover evident in the demeanor of the team and our Cats employed their style of outworking the other team and relentless effort to put this one away early.

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It's November..... and most of us are aware of what November brings as far as Arizona athletics go....

 a smokin'  hot  Women's Volleyball Team, i.e. they play good and look even better

an eternally rebuilding women hoops team

a "not quite there yet" football squad

and the renewal of our traditional chest thumpin' theatrics regarding the Men's basketball team...

 ohhh by the way, the season started yesterday and it was a feel good session for all Cats enthusiasts

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At long last it's happened.  As was alluded to by Peter King from his column over the HOF lovefest earlier this year, it appears that the movement not only has legs, its a movement all its own:

http://www.profootballhof.com/enshrinement/2010/8/25/hanburger-richter-are-seniors-for-class-of-2011/

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I haven't seen anything regarding his status, so I thought I would pass it along.  Looks like the revised timetable is for his return to be August. I overheard this mentioned on the MLB network before the game highlights last night.

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Was anyone else surprised by this move?  I had thought that Parra had won the 4th OF job out of training camp but instead of Gillespie being sent down, GP gets the ticket to Reno instead.

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It can only mean one thing..... 

yes.... 

It's acronyn/nickname time.

I'll offer up some suggestions, you can choose amongst the offerings below, or feel free to make up your own.

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Derrick Williams and Nic Wise were both named to the all Conference 1st team.   Derrick Williams also was named as the PAC10 Freshman of the Year.  After a challenging first year under Head Coach Sean Miller our topsy turvy Cats do manage to garner some accolades before the conference tournament even starts.

Well done gentlemen!

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I don't know what it is about UCLA and Kyle Fogg but Sean Miller should convince that kid that every opponent is secretly representing the Los Angeles campus for the University of California every time the ball gets rolled out onto the court.  It was a first half that was almost reminiscent of the first few games of the OOC schedule.  Turnovers, missed assignments, foul trouble inside, shooting that resembled a game in an auto shop, clunkers abounded.  UCLA played steady ball but lacked that certain something to put the Cats away, but they certainly looked to be in charge at halftime, up by 10.

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Well it appears that our season is going to continue to get more interesting.  In one of those long-shot scenarios where if the Cats wanted to harbor any hopes of postseason play, outside of the PAC 10 tournament that is, they would have to beat a good team to prove that they were worthy of anything more than an afterthought.  That's exactly what happened.  Still, it was far from a perfect game, but now the Cats are winning a couple of these games instead of losing them.  The season may still yet hold more surprises for our favorite felines.

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It was another step forward and in my humble opinion Sean Miller is showing he's worth every penny of his contract so far as the Wildcats downed the Sun Devils 77-58 in Tempe.  Granted, he's not the one hitting the jumpers but it's obvious that he is having a tremendous impact on how these kids play as a unit and refuses to get down on them.  The game was immensely important for quite a few reasons.  One, has ASU truly established itself as having pulled ahead of U of A in hoops, were they on an even level in regards to coaching, personnel and competitive fire.  Also, the winner of this game grabs momentum into the latter half of the Pac 10 season.  Plus you had the history background concerning the coaching staffs and the fact that the fanbases of each school have an amplified moronic effect on each other with catcalls, flames and hyperbole being thrown around as if it was loan refinancing before the financial crash.

The defining moment, it could have been one of two items in my opinion.  Was it the pivotal defensive stop in the first half when the Cats battled back from a 20-10 deficit and willed themselves back into the game? Perhaps it was the hard foul committed by Kevin Parrom, which served notice that no cheapies were  not allowed in tonight's game?

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Now that we've started the conference slate, it's becoming evident that the Cats are either improving or the caliber of teams in the conference this year are not what they used to be.  The third option not mentioned could be the most likely one, basically it's a bit of both, the Cats are improving and the Conference is down so it is difficult to gauge just how much improvement there is. No one questioned that the conference was in transition this year but based on the evidence of play from the first two weekends there are suddenly no clear favorites and no postseason guarantees outside of the automatic bid.  What does this mean for the Cats and their tourney chances, per usual it's a matter of give and take and in this year of resetting and remaking the image of the program, the streak is more likely to be a curse rather than a help.

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It got close..... once, about three minutes into the second half, the Dawgs had just about reached the tipping point but an alert Coach Miller called timeout, refocused the troops and they never looked back.  As close as the game was on Friday, this one lost any sense of ennui by the ten minute mark in the second half.  The Cats had the answers and the Huskies were left mumbling to themselves wondering if this national ranking thingis everything it's cracked up to be. There were a few scares along the way, MoMo getting an elbow to the shops that drew blood, but that's wasn't deliberate or anything, just one of those things.  Then Nic Wise was faked out of his shoes and took an acrobatic tumble , but there appeared to be no lingering effects.

The game started off like the UCLA game, the Cats came out prepared and ready to do what was needed to get ahead, they crashed the boards, kept the quick Washington guards out of the lane and made their open shots.  The work on the boards is what made the difference, the Cats were the aggressors outboarding UW by a margin of 36-22 and owned the O boards as well 10-7. This victory levels the Cats in conference play and should boost their confidence by taking down a nationally ranked team. 

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It was close... that close....0.1 and DeAngelo Casto put in an off-balance little 6 foot shot that crept over the rim in little Cat feet and in that moment the hard work of the road in Los Angeles was undone as the Cats failed to hold serve on their home court.  So the Cats are now under .500 in the conference as a result of their defeat at the hands of the Cougs 78-76

We all know that this team is going to cause us to be frustrated and there will be times where they will exceed our expectations as well.  Tonight was a night of missed opportunities, yet still, we can slowly see this team being crafted out of the chaos due to Coach Miller's relentless coaching.

Wazzu frosh Reggie Moore led all scorers with 20, Klay Thompson was held under his average of 23.5 and managed 19 hard earned points and the aforementioned Mr. Casto had 16 points to go with 9 boards.

More thoughts after the jump.....

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That's the question that has to be asked right now.  After the split on the road against the LA schools, it was good to get one chalked up in the win column.  Arguably, USC was the league hottest team winning the Diamond Head classic and integrating the transfers into their lineup to give Kevin O'Neill a good group of veterans that allowed the Trojans to play their coaches hard nose D.  With USC winning 56-50, the only surprise was that the Cats made it cose.

At UCLA, the Bruins had finally climbed within sight of .500 and dealt the improving Sun Devils a defeat, so imagine the surprise when the Cats came out and seized control of the game and never relented as they exhibited a workmanlike performance en route to a 77-63 victory.

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Well, I think the Cats will be happy that the out of conference season has ended and with luck, they took to heart one more painful reminder of what it means to wear the name Arizona on the front. as BYU beat Arizona 99-69 at McKale Center on Monday night.  If there was one alarming note based on the play of this team, it appears to be a lack of grit and pride.  Maybe that's just a fan thing nowadays, but I suspect that none of our NBA alumni are gonna be happy to see a guy named Fredette dropping 49 on the team in their own building.

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Since the conference schedule is almost upon us, it's time to reflect upon the OOC results thus far and maybe rethink how the conference may play out.  So we'll let you know our thoughts on what we've seen and sort out the good from the bad and the meh.  Now these expectations were mine, so you can quibble about that if you wish.  Your thoughts and observations are encouraged and welcomed.

Feel free to add some input on your thoughts on PAC 10 Big Dance Participants in our poll.

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