40 Acres Sports

Somebody finally noticed USC’s defense has been average all year.

Looks like we’re going to miss the start of the game due to the Bowling Green versus Toledo football game. It’s Tuesday, why in the world is there college football going on? There was even a game last night (Miami and Ohio), do athletes in the MAC ever go to class?

Well it looks like they’re switching to the game here in Dallas at least…

First Half

• College basketball officiating really is a freaking joke. Someone at ESPN needs to let the NCAA that the way the games are officiated makes the games almost unwatchable. There’s a stoppage for some unseen foul every 20 seconds, then you’ll see a guy hammered on the shot and no call is made. Just let them play basketball and shove the whistle up your…
• Daniel Gibson not hitting right now. I can handle some hot and cold shooting out of him, but he’s got to control the ball better than he did last night.
• If LaMarcus Aldridge can hit that jump hook consistently he’ll be tough to defend.
• Aldridge looks a lot less goofy running the floor this year. The time in the gym has helped him fill out a lot.

Texas 17, Iowa 16

• Do we need a sideline reporter at a preseason college basketball tourney? Erin Andrews definitely needs more air time, but man is her job pointless. Maybe get rid of Stuart Scott to make room for her.
• Speaking of goofy, Connor Atchley makes Jason Klotz look coordinated. Sounds like he’s going to be an excellent role player for us in coming years. Definitely looks like he still has room to grow physically.
• Hey look, more overofficiating. Is that a word? It is now. I think part of the problem is that the announcers haven’t mentioned what these calls are or who they were on.
• Why are there dinosaurs in King Kong? Were they in the original movie?
• Mike Williams in for Brad Buckman for a long time now.
• If P.J. Tucker can hit his jumper he’ll be a totally different player than he was before. Much better fit at the 3 if that’s the case.

(more …)

I think a 300/50/3 day in two and a half quarters will get it done.

A week after saying Vince Young had “added a little separation in the Heisman battle,” Terry Bowden drops him all the way to third in his latest rankings. While I don’t agree that Reggie Bush should be the Heisman favorite, after his fantastic game late Saturday night I can certainly understand that Bowden might think he is. What I can’t figure out is how does Matt Leinart’s 200 yards passing and 1 TD against a bad defense while Bush did all the work mean he should move ahead of Vince Young as well. What exactly did he do to close the big that Bowden himself said was there?

PTI’s Michael Wilbon thinks Vince is ready for the next level. (BugMeNot)

Update: Want to see a Sobbing Sooner? Click here.

As they say, a picture is worth a 1000 words. If you know any OU fans that are complaining about the Texas Tech touchdown, just show them this picture. (OU still has justified beef about that 4th and 3 play though.)

Thanks to AgRyan04, we now have video of the touchdown. Still looks like a touchdown to me.

Note: Video requires Flash Player 8 be installed in order to play properly.

Must have been real fun to watch a big pile of logs do nothing for 3 or 4 hours.

Much too close of a game for my tastes. I was really surprised by how sloppy Texas played, and it almost cost them the game. Texas committed 24 turnovers, with 9 of them coming from Daniel Gibson. That is something that you just cannot have from the point guard position. But if you take away the turnovers, Texas absolutely dominated this game. Texas had 40 rebounds to West Virginia’s 19 and Texas shot 54.2% while holding West V to 47.5%.

The main thing that I took away from the game is that we need to figure out a way to get the ball to Aldridge a lot more. I just don’t see too many people being able to guard him down low. Aldridge ended up finishing the game an impressive 7-10 from the field for 15 points and added 14 rebounds.

He also played a big part in the end of the game scoring the winning basket with 3.6 seconds left. And if that wasn’t enough, he had the final block of the game as Gansey went to the rim for a wide open lay-up and Aldridge came out of nowhere to block the shot. One thing to note though is that none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for the fact that West V missed 3 front-ends of a one-in-one, 2 by Pittsnogle (I would change my name if I were him).

And on a side note, was it just me or were the refs frustrating in the second half? Texas never seemed to get a foul called their way and West Virginia seemed like they were getting everything. The game was definitely physical, but if you are going to call the game like that you have to let it go on both ends.

Related Links

• Texas squeaks past Mountaineers into Guardians final
• Horns still trying to gel

I still think LSU will catch back up though with probably 2 games remaining.

First televised basketball game of the year on the Deuce at 6 p.m.