Day 215

Fresh Start_215: March 24^th 2017

There are very few days a year that the game of basketball starts to play like a well-tuned symphony. With everything that happened last night in the game of basketball, you can truly say that it is the month of March. Starting with the NBA, the professional basketball world revolved around Devin Booker. Booker last night in the Boston Garden scored 70 points. Booker’s 70 points is the most in the NBA since Kobe Bryant dropped 81 in 2006. Booker is also the youngest player to score more than 60 points. Booker is one of the youngest players in the league, being only a couple months older than me.

There is a ton of people in and around the league that thought Booker was a good player, but to have a night this, puts the league on Super Star watch. We’ve seen it with guys like Jeremy Lin who had a good couple of weeks than fizzled out into a decent NBA player. Booker is different. Coming out of college, Booker could shoot the ball, and giving him more control of the offense will make the Suns work. With a high chance at the draft lottery, the Suns have the probability of having players like Fultz, Ball, Tatum, Monk, to name a few to pair with the Suns franchise player Booker. With this 70 point performance, Devin Booker has shown the NBA that he is here, it’s time for him to make the next step toward stardom.

In college, the Madness of March is officially here. With incredible Sweet 16 games, the Elite 8 can only be better. The four games that come to mind that we saw in the Sweet 16 are the Michigan/Oregon game, the Gonzaga/West Virginia game, the UCLA/Kentucky game, and the Florida/Wisconsin game. Starting with the Ducks and Wolverines, the game was good because it was a great matchup that was just played on pure talent. The defensive side of the ball didn’t really factor in the game because both teams were just so skilled on offense. The game was won on two offensive rebounds that Oregon grab within the last minute of the game to give themselves a second chance which they converted on both times. The inability to rebound was the downfall of the Wolverines that led to the position that Derrick Walton Jr. was put in, ultimately missing the game winning shot as time expired.

The next game that mattered was the Mountaineers and the Bulldogs. This game was the ultimate defensive dog fight. Every possession was pressure and this game was the classic that was all about defense. The inadvertent whistle that lead to a stoppage in play that killed the momentum, and made basketball fans around the country scream at the television set “We know the call, give the ball to West Virginia!” The refs missed a call, and covered their backs by calling the play an “inadvertent whistle.” The refs could have just reversed the call of Gonzaga ball, and just gave the ball to the Mountaineers. Instead they covered their own backs calling it an inadvertent whistle, which switched the possession arrow to Gonzaga, which didn’t matter but could have. The about 5-8-minute stoppage had the country in a frenzy calling for better replay execution. This happens every time the audience and color picture announcers have made up the call before the officials. Recalling for a better replay system is a whole new conversation, but that is one of the main takeaways that people will remember about this game.

Moving to yesterday, there was a heavyweight fight between Kentucky and UCLA. The matchup of John Calipari vs. Steve Alford, Lonzo Ball vs. De’Aaron Fox and Malik Monk. The matchup may have been disappointing to some because of how Lonzo Ball played. The mouth of Lavar Ball (Lonzo’s father) has dug a hole for the three Ball brothers, and their family brand.

Ball had 10 points in the loss shooting 6-10 from the field, only hitting one three pointer on six shots. The eleven-point loss at the hands of De’Aaron Fox’ 39 point performance is something that Ball haters will put on Ball’s lack luster game. Something that flies under the radar with this game is the 21 points that Malik Monk scored in this game. after the game, Lonzo Ball declared for the NBA Draft in a locker room interview. The fear of many critics of UCLA came true last night with the poor shooting night. There will always be a team in the tournament like the Bruins, and if they have an off-night shooting the ball, they can fall into a Buzzsaw and get outplayed, especially by a team like Kentucky. Ball will have a good NBA career with his talent, but the team will have an interesting time dealing with Lonzo’s father Lavar.

Finally, getting to the game of the tournament… the Gators against the Badgers in the Mecca of the Sports World (Madison Square Garden) no less. Many people like myself turned on Florida against Wisconsin after the UCLA/Kentucky game, and well maybe we should have been watching the Gators and Badgers. Now, only watching about 5 minutes of the second half and the entire overtime I turned on the game at the right time. As the game went down to the wire, Wisconsin’s Zak Showalter hit a game tying three with 3 seconds left in the game to send it to OT. In Overtime, the Badgers Nigel Hayes got his free throw practice in. In the Overtime period Hayes shot twelve free throws by himself. Of those twelve, they included the two go-ahead points with 4.2 second left on the clock. That is when Florida’s Chris Chiozza turned on the burners, going 70 feet to stop on a dime and hit the game winning three as the clock expired, sending Madison Square Garden into an uproar. The game at the Garden can only be described as the game of the tournament, and is one of those sparks of just insanity that is the definition of why we love the tournament in the first place. As a basketball fan, I love nights like this, but it is like seeing a shooting star or a blue moon. So, basketball fans appreciate nights like last night, and look forward to watching Elite 8 basketball tonight.

Sources:(nba.com, espn.com)

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