Today I went to the Midwest regional final in San Antonio, which featured Illinois and Arizona. Let me start out by saying that the Alamodome sucks as a basketball arena. Its cavernous, and the seat I was stuck back in the back of the first level, where a big air conditioning vent partially obstructed my view so i was unable to see the scoreboard fully. Luckily I brought a pair of binoculars so I could see the action on the court nice and close. Some of the stuff surrounding the game struck me as interesting. First off, neither team has a real good fight song, and the Arizona fans had some really pedestrian cheers. I would have expected more. Of course, I didn't go to the game to watch the fans, but to watch the players. I got in early enough to see the teams come out for warm-ups. The Illini did one of the most complicated warm-ups I've ever seen, some sort of figure eight thing with people passing the ball all over the place. On the contrary, the Wildcats were just doing alley-oops and didn't seem real focused on the game at hand. But they were. On to the game : The first thing I noticed was that Arizona stuck Richard Jefferson on Frank Williams. I think that was the key to the game right there, Jefferson hounded Williams when he was in there and The Illini guard didn't get any significant rythm going like he did against Kansas until it was too late. Plus Jefferson had a few monstrous blocks coming on help defense that were impressive. I knew the guy was athletic, but you don't realize how athletic he is until you've seen it in person. I'm dissapointed I didn't get to see much of his offensive game. Someone who's more knowledgable then me should answer this, but he seemed to be more built to play the 2 in the NBA, does Jefferson project as a shooting guard or a small forward? Loren Woods gave me mixed feelings. On one hand he spent most of the game kind of disinterested and he never reall asserted himself on either end of the floor and was getting worked by Robert Archibald, who? Then in the last five minutes something changed. He started changing shots on the defensive end of the floor, I saw at least 5 times in the last few minutes Loren Woods directly stopped, either by blocking, or by making the Illini hesitate, an Illinois offensive possession. Then, during timeouts, I could see him talking to his teammates, stuff like "No fouls, absolutely no fouls" or "Run time off the clock". That's another plus about Woods, he enunciates, so I could read his lips and know what was going on. Gilbert Arenas is a star in the making. He has such smooth moves, and I really like his mid-range jumper. He was able to penetrate at will early in the game, if he played on a less talented team, he could average 25-27 pts a game. I was dissapointed in the Illinois offense, they were able to get some really open shots throughout the game, but they kept blowing em. But then late in the game they start nailing 3's from ridiculous angles and with defenders all over them. Go figure. If you get a chance to go to an NCAA tournament game, especially a late rounder, do it. It's a hell of a time. ------------------ Founder and President of the Houston Homers Club(HHC) - Are you a homer? Join now! The Rockets will be NBA champions. Believe. [This message has been edited by Puedlfor (edited March 26, 2001).]
