Dribblings 12/14/2004 (High-Octane Edition)

San Diego 75, Eastern Washington 56 (story) - San Diego was the 298th-best team in the nation last year in terms of RPI, and now here they are beating the stuffing out of the defending Big Sky champions. EWU is now 2-5, mostly against lower-tier WCC and Big West competition. Is the door open for Weber State and/or Montana (provided they get their respective poop together)? A 11-0 run midway through the first half and a 7-0 salvo early in the second was all it took to send the Torero faithful happily away from the Jenny Craig Pavilion, out into that balmy San Diego night.

Lamar 66, Air Force 59 (OT) (story) - When a Princeton-style system meets up with a team that subscribes to the early-Eighties Denver Nuggets philosophy of quick shots and no defense, general wackiness is sure to ensue. Look at these zany stats: Air Force went 6-for-28 from behind the arc, held Lamar to 49 shots (well short of their average of 67 per game), and yet Lamar doubled up AFA on the boards 42-21. Knowing that the Falcons only go five deep, Lamar coach Billy Tubbs threw the bench at 'em - the Cardinals' reserves outscored Air Force's by a staggering 41-5 margin.

If you want to talk about big-time offense, you've gotta go old-school: Loyola Marymount was a team that twice scored more than 180 points during the Hank Gathers era. At Gerston Pavilion, a/k/a "Hank's House," the crowd chants the fallen Lion's name and number 44 after the national anthem is played. Washington visited on Sunday and won 100-93. "If that was a true, pure Loyola basketball game," said Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar afterwards, "we'd still have another half to go."

Ken Pomeroy looked at Rice coach Willis Wilson's "rant" about declining free-throw shooting on College Insider, and destroyed its core hypothesis in three short paragraphs. "Here we have a case where I'm guessing most fans and coaches believe that free throw shooting is deteriorating, when actually the opposite is true. If our intuition can be off on a matter as simple as this, why couldn't it be off on other fundamental basketball-related beliefs?"

The Big Sky Conference presidents met yesterday, and decided to consider just a single school for possible expansion - current provisional D-1 Northern Colorado. Losers: the University of North Dakota and North Dakota State.

Today's Dick Vitale column in USA Today has four mentions of the word "baby." His previous column, a season preview of sorts from back in November, contained but two. We'll be tracking this leading indicator all season here at The Mid-Majority, and graphing it against the rise and fall of the S&P 500, the euro, and the Michigan consumer sentiment index. Something, somewhere's got to correlate.

(Or perhaps you'd like Dickie V to speak at your business luncheon, company picnic, child's birthday party? That'll be 40 grand, please.)

It's never too early to start thinking about the Final Four, especially if you live in St. Louis and you have only 100 or so days left to get ready for it. Tomorrow marks the "dress rehearsal game" at the Eddie Jones Dome.

The men's basketball teams from Meramec Community College and Lewis & Clark CC will play Wednesday night, and they will be treated just as the Final Four teams will be in April, with escorts from the locker rooms to the floor and their names in lights on the scoreboard.

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