California @ Utah (21) - 1/25/19

[Shades]

Salt Lake City, UT - 9:00 PM ET
TV: Pac-12 Network, Pac-12 Mountain

Stream:
California at Utah (tvpli)

Audio:
ESPN700 - Utah's #1 Sports Talk

Live stats:
https://utahutes.com/sidearmstats/wbball/summary



Friday night is Pac-12 night, and there no great matchups of particular intrigue to me. This one might be the best.

It features California, who were ranked high early in the season and gave UConn a good fight but has since fallen off, versus newly-ranked Utah, who only have one loss (2-pt to ASU) on the season but haven’t had a particularly tough schedule. Their best wins are over Alabama and Florida in the out of conference schedule. They have beaten AZ in conference.

Utah’s schedule starts getting tougher with Stanford up next on Sunday (on free live stream) followed by games against Oregon and Oregon St.

 

[DefenseBB]

This post may be a personal cartharsis, so bear with me, I voted for Utah as they are having a good season, have something to prove and frankly I am biased against Cal. Lindsey seems nice enough, smart, personable and program savvy, it’s just she has been made out by the press/pundits to be a much better coach than her stats convey. She made a Final Four in her second year with Joanne Boyle’s recruits and then has been above average overall 102-62 for .622 and average in PAC12 47-43 for .522 yet some how she’s supposedly a great coach. When they started this year at 9-0 playing a week OOC, they were ranked (overranked) and hyped up. Now they have lost 5 of 8 and sit in 6th of the PAC12. And that’s probably where they will finish, middle of the PACk. Like I said, this post was more personal journey, so I can forgive the illogical WCBB pundits/scribes who inaccurately postulate higher esteem for an average, but very nice coach. Maybe one day I can openly root for Cal. Thanks for your patience. Go Utes! Respectfully submitted.
DefenseBB

 

[Plebe]

Salt Lake City, UT - 9:00 PM ET
TV: Pac-12 Network, Pac-12 Mountain

Stream:
California at Utah (tvpli)

Audio:
ESPN700 - Utah's #1 Sports Talk

Live stats:
https://utahutes.com/sidearmstats/wbball/summary



Friday night is Pac-12 night, and there no great matchups of particular intrigue to me. This one might be the best.

It features California, who were ranked high early in the season and gave UConn a good fight but has since fallen off, versus newly-ranked Utah, who only have one loss (2-pt to ASU) on the season but haven’t had a particularly tough schedule. Their best wins are over Alabama and Florida in the out of conference schedule. They have beaten AZ in conference.

Utah’s schedule starts getting tougher with Stanford up next on Sunday (on free live stream) followed by games against Oregon and Oregon St.

Utah did play an extremely weak OOC schedule, but by far their best OOC win was over BYU (currently #19 RPI and #42 Massey).

Utah also drew the easy straw in the unbalanced Pac-12 schedule: They play Stanford and the Oregon schools only once each.

They did suffer a big loss to injury a few weeks ago. Daneesha Provo, their #2 scorer and best on-ball defender, tore her ACL in the heartbreaker loss to Arizona State. But they bounced back well in the next game with a dominant win over Arizona.

 

[Shades]

Coming up!

 

[Shades]

Ouch, my toes!

I’m surprised to see this game is the least competitive of the Pac games so far.

 

[Plebe]

Cal made a nice run to get back into it late in 3Q, closed the deficit from 17 to 9.

 

[Shades]

It’s interesting that Anigwe put up 24 pts, 15 reb, 3 blk, 3 stl
but it still wasn’t enough to take down Utah

87-74 Utah final

 

[Plebe]

It’s interesting that Anigwe put up 24 pts, 15 reb, 3 blk, 3 stl
but it still wasn’t enough to take down Utah

87-74 Utah final

She had a tremendous game, but Cal really lost this game on defense. Can't give up 87 points and expect to win.

Megan Huff had a quiet first half but came to life in 3Q, and finished with 24 points and 9 rebounds.
Kiana Moore added 18 points and 9 rebounds.

Great free throw shooting by both teams. Utah was 19-22 and Cal was 17-21.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Yeah Huff pretty much negated Anigwe and her teammates were better than Kristine's were. Kiana Moore has stepped up big since Provo got injured.