Basketball Hurts

 

Basketball Hurts

April 8, 2021

Three days after the dispiriting defeat by Baylor in the title game, our Gonzaga flag still hangs limply and listlessly above our porch.  I’ll take it down soon.  It got wet in the rain this morning; it has no flap left in it.  Down it goes.

Sad Suggs

Ever since the Elite Eight run in1999, the  that began this 22-year streak, The Zags have lost a game in the Big Dance that ended the season.  I can remember every one of the losses.

Every single one of those defeats—twenty-two of them—has provided a unique flavor of disappointment.  I won’t bother recapitulating the worst ones—the 2006 melt-down vs. UCLA and the 2013 loss to Wichita State [1] come immediately to mind—but this last loss against Baylor on Monday night produced a particularly bitter taste, most obviously because it spoiled the “perfect” 32-0 season, something that hadn’t been done since Indiana did it 45 years ago. 

Limply it hangs.

Gonzaga has the best record in college basketball over the past five years:  164-14;  it’s ridiculous.  The irony here, at least for this spoiled fan, is that every loss, just because they are so rare, becomes that much more memorable.  The wins are expected, and except the big ones in the tournaments, you forget most of the victories.   I call it Spoiled Fan Syndrome.

It’s not just the fans who feel it.  Senior Corey Kispert said after the game, "You really do forget what it's like to lose, and every time it happens, it doesn't feel good. And thankfully, I've had not very many of them over my career, whether it's in the regular season or in the tournament. I'm going to remember this for a long time."  (ESPN.com.)

Kispert, hormone-depleted

Each year after the last defeat, along with the disappointment, I’ve had to deal also with the feeling of embarrassment, even shame, that I cared so much.  Here I am, now 70 years old, feeling this way…. Why should I even care?  Where is my perspective?  Don’t I have more important things to care about than a bunch of overgrown kids wearing shorts and running up and down a basketball court?  And every year I think:  Maybe next year I won’t care so much, or even care at all.  Maybe old age will finally give me some perspective, not only in this matter, but life in general.  At the risk of making it sound more important than it is, it’s a spiritual problem.  There are so many other worthwhile things to do in this life.

I have relatives and good friends who care little or not at all about what happens with the Gonzaga men’s basketball team.  I envy them.  This season, as the Zags kept on not-losing, a few of them became marginally interested, if only because it became a big story.  For instance, my sister, who knows my obsession, might say something like, “I’ll bet you’re pretty excited about Gonzaga basketball this year.”  "Excited" isn't exactly the right word.

As the season progressed, and the number in the “loss” column remained “0,” the pressure mounted.  And here I must admit that the pressure was probably felt more by me, and fans like me, than by the players or coaches.  They at least have the advantage of being able actually to do something.  We fans could just stand by and cheer them on, and watch.  And suffer.

And, as good as the team was, the watching was not easy this year—especially not this year.  For the past fifteen years or so, I’d had the good luck to get two free tickets to every Gonzaga home game at McCarthy Center, a wonderful place to watch basketball. Ten or twelve games each season, and the Zags hardly ever lost.  [2].  I could take a friend or family member with me.  This year, though, because of Covid-19—nothing.  All games were on TV, with the incessant, repetitive, irritating commercials.  [3].    

The NCAA Tournament this year was fun to watch, but only when other teams were playing.  I’ve always thought that the first four days of the tourney, Rounds One and Two, are the best sporting event of the year.  Fifty-two games in four days on four TV channels.  I had my bracket filled out like millions of other fans, casual and serious. [4]  When it came time for the Gonzaga games, though, the “fun” stopped..  That’s when Henry B., our faithful basketball bubbler [5], came over to watch.  If it’s possible, Henry is even more fretful and pessimistic than I am while watching.  Every play, every official’s whistle, was subject to emotional reaction and critical appraisal.  And hat-throwing, and cursing.

Because of the afore-mentioned pressure, watching the Zags play was not enjoyable in any normal sense.  Only when we got twenty points ahead, which happened a few times in the first four rounds, could we relax a little and maybe have a bite to eat. 

Just last night, Henry came over to have dinner and watch a movie.  He’s not yet over it, either.  We shared a few thoughts about the game and the season as a whole (Some of those thoughts appear in this piece.)  He’d even had a chance to talk to his psychologist about it.  Both of them agreed that mental and emotional fatigue after the UCLA game on the previous Saturday were factors.  The shrink explained it terms of temporary hormone depletion [6]. 

Physical exhaustion played a part, too.  All the Zags’ starters played 40 minutes or more in the overtime drama vs. UCLA, except Timme, who played “only” 38 (still his high for the season.)  By the second half of the Baylor game, he was not only gassed but hurt.  For the first time this season, we saw him on the sideline, swallowing some kind of pill and then lying prone on floor and getting his hip and butt massaged by the trainer.

********

I’m tempted at this point to launch into a reminiscence of my long and complex relationship with the game of basketball, a “love-hate” relationship, if you will; how, as a 2^nd grader I first picked up a ball bounced it on the blacktop of the Ascension School [7] playground; how I launched it toward the hoop so high above; how just a few years later in grade school I started playing on an organized team coached by Mr. Hodges, still my favorite coach ever; how for hours on end  I dribbled a rubber ball on cold wet, gritty pavement on the playground at my grade school in Eugene, alone or with my friends, till our hands got raw and numb; how my Dad took me to U. of Oregon Ducks’ games at old McArthur Court (the Pit) in Eugene; how I can never forget those players, even their names [8]; and my God, how they ran and jumped and shot the ball, and the sound and excitement in the arena, and the band playing "Mighty Oregon," (years before deafening and irritating electronic sound systems); how our team won the 7^th grade city championship [9]; how when we moved to another city I played through junior year in high school,  which is the year I failed in basketball, having stopped growing five inches short of my desired height of 6’ 8’’;  the sheer joy of dunking a basketball, in practice only, just for the fun of it, because ironically in those days it wasn’t allowed in games, [9.5](not that I got to play much, anyway); and  so I quit; how I never gave up the game completely, though, but played “gym-rat’ and intramural in college and even afterwards, into my thirties; how we felt in Seattle when the Supersonics won the NBA championship in 1979; how, in the 70s and 80s, my Dad again took me to NBA games in Portland, where we saw the great Walton in his prime, and Larry Bird and Magic Johnson and Jabbar, et al.;  how to this day, more than fifty years later, I still have dreams of playing, feeling a low pass slip out of my grasp and go between my legs out of bounds because I've already got my eyes on the basket, then seeing the coach shake his head in disgust and point to another guy on the bench to come in for me.

All of which enables me—dooms me might be a better word—to view the game and its players and its vagaries and its difficulties from the viewpoint of a former player (though long, long ago), as one who tried and failed.  I remember the blistered, raw feet and the sprained ankles.  I remember getting elbows to my chin from a taller, stronger guy.  I remember coaches questioning not only my thinking processes, but my character.[10] That always felt worse than the physical pain.  Other kids handled it better than me, maybe.  To summarize, I've had an emotional attachment to the game since I was a little boy, and that attachment lingers.  Basketball hurts. [11]

*******

Which brings me, finally, to discuss the game itself, and by that of course I mean the Gonzaga Baylor final.  The first ten minutes was a nightmare, (almost too painful to recall.)  By that time, the Bears had jumped on top, 29-10.  Gonzaga had turned the ball over 7-8 times and, failing repeatedly to snag rebounds on Bears’ misses, allowed them numerous second chances.  Not that the Bears were missing much; they made their first five 3-point attempts.  And ah, we mustn’t forget the uncharacteristic turnovers.  (Timme coughed up the ball five times.)  So, looking back, it was those first ten minutes that decided the game.  The Zags’ coaches had to resort quickly to a Plan B, in this case a zone defense, which worked, mirabile dictu--stopped the bleeding, anyway.  By halftime, the Zags had cut the deficit to ten. 

Muscle manhandles Mustache.  Whistle?  Nah...

At that point, the situation, though admittedly dire, still didn’t look hopeless.  Had not Gonzaga recovered from an even larger half-time deficit (12 points) in the WCC final vs. Brigham Young a few weeks earlier, and gone on to win, going away, in the second frame?  [12]  But alas, Baylor was no BYU.  Early in the second half, Gonzaga got as close as nine, and there was plenty of hope.  (Henry: “When it got down to nine points, I really thought we were gonna come back.”) But then, Baylor hit a few more triples, Gonzaga turned the ball over a few more times, the clocked kept running, and finally, after what seemed like a thousand more irritating TV commercials…it was over.  86-70, Baylor. 

I read the paper and the Internet sports reports.  Sports writers, Baylor fans and casual observers have characterized the Baylor victory as a “rout,” “blow-out” or “domination.”  Yes, that is certainly true for the first ten minutes, but after that, the game was even-steven.  The Zags had simply dug themselves too deep a hole to climb out of. 

Not to take anything away from Baylor; a sincere tip o' the hat to the Bears.  They were clearly the better team that Monday night. “Well, hey,” Gonzaga Coach Mark Few said, “it’s a really, really tough one to end a storybook season, but listen, Baylor just beat us. They beat us in every facet of the game tonight.”

And now, speaking of Few, the time has come to record my annual criticism of him as a Big Game coach.  By that, I mean his decisions during the NCAA Tournament and before and during the big games therein. 

Briefly, the criticism is that he didn’t utilize his bench players enough in the tournament.  It’s called the Shorten the Bench Strategy.  Briefly explained, it means by the time the Big Dance rolls around, Coach in his wisdom knows his best players, and, barring injuries or other disasters (this year, Covid perhaps), and he needs only one or two key reserves off the bench; in the Zags’ case, Anton Watson, a 6-8 forward, and Aaron Cooke, a 6-1 guard.  During these win-or-go-home games, resting your starters isn’t an issue because of so many TV time-outs. [13]. 

Now, I know there is difference of opinion among coaches about Shorten the Bench.  For the past five years or so, Few seems to have been one of its main proponents, no matter how many very good players he has available.  Here’s a summary of the rationale by Will Schreefer: 

“While I didn’t do much in-depth analysis to explain exactly what was going on here, I’ll take a reasonable, short stab. Having a deep bench benefits a team more during the regular season, being able to combat fatigue and injury with extra bodies is a real advantage. Over the course of a season, it’ll let a team pick off a game or three they may not have gotten otherwise. Those extra victories help seeding and positioning for the postseason.

“But when it comes down to single-elimination games, who wins is most often about who’s putting the best players on the floor. Many coaches cut their postseason rotations down to 8 or less even if they have other options available. Much like the NBA postseason, depth and benches matter less; it’s your best vs. their best. Teams that earned high seeds with short rotations will likely have better top end players than teams with deeper rotations, almost by necessity. They managed to earn the same thing, without the marginal benefits mentioned above.”

Early in the season, after big wins against ranked teams like Kansas, Virginia and Iowa, we fans knew the Zags had a deep bench.  The second string (Ballo, Strawther, Nembhard, Cooke, and Harris), would themselves have been competitive in any league in the country.  And early in the year, Few actually used these guys; 55 bench minutes against Kansas and 63 against Iowa.

But, come late March, it’s time to Shorten the Bench.  Why?  Because that’s how Coach Few does it (and by this time it has become conventional big-time coaching strategy.)

But not so much by Baylor’s coach, Scott Drew.  Here’s a comparison between Baylor and Gonzaga; minutes played by reserves in each tournament game:

                                                            Minutes played by reserves

Round	Gonzaga	Baylor
1	78    (blow-out vs. Norfolk St.)	75
2	25     (vs. Oklahoma, 7 players used)	56    (8 players)
3	35    (vs. Creighton)	51     (8)
4	32     (vs. USC)	70    (8)
5	19    (OT,, vs UCLA 25 extra mins. (7)	71
6	26     (vs. Baylor)	59
Total	215	382

Now, as far as this essay goes, the only game that mattered was #6, the title game. Numbers aside, my two-fold point is that 1. The Baylor players—all of them—were fresher by the time Monday evening rolled around, and 2. The Baylor reserves, most notably Flagler, Mayer and Tchamwa-Tchatchoua, knew they were going to play and contribute substantially. Gonzaga, on the other hand, had only Watson and Cooke to run out there, and, as important as their contributions were, they knew their minutes were restricted, barely enough to get into the flow of the game. As mentioned before, the starters, who had to play 204 of the 225 available minutes in the UCLA game less than 48 hours previously, were leg-weary (and more importantly, emotionally weary).  Except for Watson and Cooke, the reserves knew their only role was to sit, pat the starters on the ass, and cheer. Obviously, since the Zags hadn’t lost even once before the title tilt, Coach Few’s Short Bench strategy never came into question; how can you argue against success? But then came the Baylor game.

Why didn’t Baylor’s coach, Scott Drew, use the Short Bench? Were his bench players so much better than Gonzaga’s? Yes, they were, but only in this sense: They were better because they played more!

And so ends my annual criticism of Coach Few. I will add only that Gonzaga’s much-heralded team unity and chemistry comes into question when six of your thirteen scholarship athletes know they aren’t going to play in big games. [14]

April 22, 2021. The players, who have other non-basketball things to do, (not the least of which, one hopes, is school work. Finals are just two weeks away.) The athletes will probably find it easier than fans and coaches to flush the loss . A few lucky players (Kispert, Suggs, Ayayi, maybe Timme) are preparing for the imminent NBA draft. Long-time assistant Tommy Lloyd has taken the top job at Arizona; now his focus has abruptly flipped to: Beat Gonzaga. Coach Few, of course, has been Gone Fishing, and unavailable for comment. [15] Until just this Monday (two weeks after the game). Dana O'Neill of The Athletic caught up with him and scored an interview. About the season and the more-than-disappointing way it ended, Few said, "At first, I mean, you're 31-1 and you feel like, I don't know? 1-31? Kinda. And then you slap yourself and say, 'C'mon, man.' In 40 minutes you can't go from people saying you were the greatest team ever to whatever they're saying now. I never bought into the greatest ever, and I'm not going to buy into the Oh, my God, what happened? We're all good. The program reigns supreme."


Coach will undoubtedly be talking to himself and slapping himself for a good long time. On his personal responsibility for the defeat, he says only, "That was the most physical game we've played in the last five years. I wish somebody had told me on Sunday morning that's what we were in for. My guys would have responded. I wasn't ready to go there." [16] What? Nobody told him? It sounds as if he is stuck on a very early phase self-appraisal; we Zags fans will leave him to it. Even if he had been ready to "go there," it's hard to imagine what he might have done--in one day--to prepare his physically and emotionally drained squad for the more "physical" Bears. [17]

So it goes. "Wait till next year," as the fans always say, (as if we have any choice.) Maybe we won’t care so much.

NOTES:

1.      1.  Zags-UCLA in 2006 Sweet Sixteen, when we blew a late lead, when, with just a few seconds left, Jordan Fucking Farmar swiped the ball from J. P. Batista, passed it to Luc Mbah a  Moute under the bucket for the easy, game-winning score.  Check out this remembrance by the UCLA players at U.C.L.A. Is Trying to Send Gonzaga Back to ‘Heartbreak City’ - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

2.       2. In 2015-16, the Zags lost four games at home—unheard of!  To Arizona, UCLA, BYU and St. Mary’s.  And I was there to watch to watch every game.

3.       3. They say that at the moment of death, your whole life flashes through your memory in an instant.  If that’s true, I wonder if I'll have to remember all those thousands of wretched commercials.  Does watching commercials even count as “life”?

 4.  This season, hoping to avoid a jinx, I didn’t make predictions all the through to the final.  I just picked first-round winners (I was 22 for 32), and after that just wrote down the winners. But I still haven't been able to write "Baylor" in the center square.

5 and  6:  Henry B.  says about the game:  (Waiting for his comments.)

7.      7. SE Portland, near Mt. Tabor Park.  I attended grades 1-3, 1957-60.

8.       8. Charlie Warren, Jim Barnett, Steve Jones, Jim Johnson.  Oddly enough, I can remember the names and styles of the Oregon State Beavers’ teams (the Ducks' hated rivals) during those few years, too:  Terry Baker (Heisman Trophy winner in football, 1963), Jim Jarvis, Mel Counts (one of the first college 7-footers who could shoot the ball from outside), and Steve Pauly (also a multi-event track athlete). 

Charlie Warren

9.     Our teams, the Falcons, won the game 32-28.  Seventh grade, the quarters were probably only six minutes long.  I scored 8 points; I can still remember all four shots I made.  Funny, I don’t remember the misses. In retrospect, sadly, that was the peak of my basketball career.

9.       9.5  Dunking was banned in high school and college from 1967-76, the so-called Lew Alcindor Rule.  

10.    They were probably right about my character (or lack thereof).  I was never a good team player, that’s for certain.  I was a “sensitive” youth, as well, so I was, i.e., self-centered and prone to hurt feelings.  Not until adulthood, years into recovery, did I become aware of how I'd been hampered by those juvenile defects.  

11.    Yes, yes, I know:  Other sports hurt, too, I know, probably more; Football, hockey, rugby, just to name a few.  Boxing, skiing.  Every athlete has to get get used to the physical pain and injury.  For me, the emotional side was more difficult.  (See previous note.)

12.    Final score:  Gonzaga 86, BYU 76.

13.   See, for instance, TV timeouts are ruining college basketball (awfulannouncing.com)

14.    Two defections already: Oumar Ballo and Pavel Zakharov, both 7-footers, have entered the so-called transfer portal, never again to fold their long frames on the Zags bench and appear enthusiastic.  We hope they'll find teams where they can develop their game and play.

 15.  You have to wonder how much he thinks about basketball--especially the Baylor game--as he wades out there in the stream and casts his fly rod.  

16.  Mark Few wishes someone warned Gonzaga 'what we were in for' vs. Baylor - The Athletic

17.  One other thing I noticed--and I don't think I was alone--was that Baylor players looked stronger and more muscular than Gonzaga, as if they'd spent more time in the weight room.  

*****

MISCELLANEOUS REFS.

Box score, game flow:

Baylor vs. Gonzaga - Game Summary - April 5, 2021 - ESPN

Short Bench analysis:

Short Benches & the NCAA Tournament (fansided.com)

Houston vs. Baylor - Game Recap - April 3, 2021 - ESPN

The Hormone Surges That Keep Winners Winning - The Atlantic

Testosterone changes during vicarious experiences of winning and losing among fans at sporting events - PubMed (nih.gov)

Abstract

Basking in reflected glory, in which individuals increase their self-esteem by identifying with successful others, is usually regarded as a cognitive process that can affect behavior. It may also involve physiological processes, including changes in the production of endocrine hormones. The present research involved two studies of changes in testosterone levels among fans watching their favorite sports teams win or lose. In the first study, participants were eight male fans attending a basketball game between traditional college rivals. In the second study, participants were 21 male fans watching a televised World Cup soccer match between traditional international rivals. Participants provided saliva samples for testosterone assay before and after the contest. In both studies, mean testosterone level increased in the fans of winning teams and decreased in the fans of losing teams. These findings suggest that watching one's heroes win or lose has physiological consequences that extend beyond changes in mood and self-esteem.