If you were plotting the highs and lows of the Jays season last year on a graph, the game at Arkansas Little-Rock last November would be one of the three lowest points. Here’s how I summed it up after the game in a horribly disjointed, embarrassingly bad post:
The Jays shot relatively well in the first half, made a bunch of three pointers, avoided turning it over and were basically even on the glass. Hence, they had a 7 point lead.
(To be fair, the boards were 21-17 in favor of UALR. Not great, not awful.)
In the second half, they cooled off slightly from the floor, made fewer threes, and got destroyed on the boards. 25-9, as a matter of fact. If I may be so inclined as to inject opinion here, if you get outrebounded by 16 in a half on the road and lose on a tip-in with less than a minute left, you are fortunate.
That 25-9 stat on the boards in the second half is staggering, isn’t it? The Mighty Thor sings a song called “Devastation of Muscualtion”, and while I know it was not written about this game, it could well be a metaphor for it.
25-9. That’s unbelievable. Yeesh. Of course, the game was just the start of the UALR fallout. Something occurred between the final buzzer and the next game to cause P’Allen Stinnett to be benched for that next game — which just happened to be the Nebraska game. The Jays lost that one, too, and many felt the outcome might have been different with P in the game. Two straight road losses that, while not the entire reason, certainly didn’t help the Jays NCAA Tournament aspirations. Who would have thought with a 16-point lead that such lows were on the horizon?
UALR has won 43 games the last two seasons, and last year was among the leaders in D1 with 11 road victories. They are no pushover, or at least, they haven’t been. What about this year? UALR is in rebuilding mode, with their fans expecting a middle-of-the-pack run in the Sun Belt with hopes of making an NCAA Tourney run next year. They’ve lost their only two D1 games this year, both on the road to teams receiving votes in the Top 25 poll (Tulsa and Ole Miss), while their lone win came against NAIA St. Gregory’s. They’re breaking in a new point guard, their center has bulked DOWN and is not patrolling the paint they way they’d like, and their newcomers are not grasping the offense as quickly as they’d hoped. One bright spot in three games has been South Florida transfer Solomon Bozeman, who’s averaging 15 points per game, and has been saddled with the expectation from their fans of leading them back to the NCAA Tournament. A BCS recruit who is talented enough to succeed in the Big East, Bozeman could dominate in the Sun Belt.
Lets hope Sunday’s game resembles the first half of last year’s meeting, and not the second. And lets hope this time when Thor sings, its about the Jays dominating, not the other way around.
One Big Paragraph with Lots O’Dots™: UALR Athletic Director Chris Peterson was the Associate Athletic Director at Creighton for four years beginning in 1997, and his history with the school is what prompted the Jays to agree to a 2-for-1 deal with the Trojans … UALR is 1-2 this season, with their only win coming against an NAIA opponent, and both losses coming to teams just outside the Top 25. They lost to Ole Miss 92-64, and to Tulsa 59-45 … They’ve yet to play a close game, with all three contests decided by 14 or more points … Dana Altman holds a 5-3 record against the Sun Belt Conference, which shows the level of competition from its’ teams has been decidedly better than that of the MEAC or SWAC … Porter Moser, who played hoops for the Jays in the late ’80s and later coached at Illinois State, got his coaching start at UALR in 2000. He departed in ’03 for Normal, and is now an assistant with Rick Majerus at St. Louis.
The Last Time They Played: UALR beat the Jays 71-69, overcoming a 16-point deficit in the process. The teams have met two other times, with Creighton taking both games convincingly: a 91-66 win in December of 2003, and an 80-61 win two years ago. Both games took place in Omaha.
Gratuitous Linkage: Everyone with a shred of dietary knowledge is aware that movie theater popcorn isn’t exactly healthy. Especially with lots of butter slathered on it. But the same calories and fat of THREE McDonalds burgers? This upsets me greatly. Thanks for ruining my day, Reuters, and you’re welcome, readers, for ruining yours.
Official Gametime Snack: Well, dammit, not popcorn apparently. Jeez.
The Totally Random Song I’d Play Right Now if I was Still a Radio DJ: I mentioned The Mighty Thor up towards the top of this post, and I realize he’s a fairly obscure artist that most people may not have heard of. So here you go: “Thunder on the Tundra”. Ah, the days when metal was larger than life. You bet.
True story to segue you into that song: A couple of years ago, Thor and his band played at the Saddle Creek Bar. Tipped off by a friend who knows the music reviewer for The Reader, a group of us went and checked it out. I love going to shows at Slowdown, Waiting Room and other local venues, especially when its a band I’ve never been exposed to. The opening band this night was Zolar X, who purported to be aliens and spoke in a made-up language with bizarre accents, wore the sort of shiny spacesuits you’d normally see in a bad 1950s B-Movie, and at one point put on helmets to communicate with their mother ship.
Once Thor came out, things got even more bizarre. The guy is a former Mr Universe, and as part of his show would perform feats of strength like tearing a chain in half or wielding an axe. During “Devastation of Musculation” a ringer in the audience wearing a medieval costume was sneaking up on people and attempting to frighten them. After the song, Thor captured him, brought him on stage and prepared to offer him up as a sacrifice to some sort of deity. The crowd of fans roared as he held up various obviously plastic prop weaponry, as he queried, “Shall I use an axe?” The crowd would roar, “NO!” And he’d answer, “I have other means. Shall I use a chain?” And so on.
There’s bizarre shows that are beyond explanation or comprehension. And then there’s Thor. Still, I’ll give him this: we still talk about that show in astonished tones from time to time, which is something that I can’t say about other supposedly “better” shows by “more accomplished” bands. Make of that what you will.
Prediction: Devastation of Musculation as the Jays avenge both their horrible rebounding and their performance in the loss to UALR last year. Big win for the Jays, 85-59.