Pat Knight has quickly hushed any talk of his job being in jeopardy.
—UPSET—Texas Tech 99, No. 12 Washington 92 (OT). 1) It doesn’t matter, because the Red Raiders won, but the call at the end of regulation was correct. The order for referring to a buzzer-beater goes clock, light, horn. The ball was still in Mike Singletary’s right hand. 2) Terrible officiating in this game. Felt like we couldn’t go 40 seconds without a foul call. Made it feel completely staggered and really upset the flow of the entire thing. 3) Will we see a lot of Pac-10 bashing from the national columnists today, tomorrow or Saturday after the conference’s last unbeaten fell less than a month into the season? 4) Bob Knight’s sweater was hideous. 5) I don’t like the “Red Raiders” on the back of the TTU unis. Looks, I don’t know, the opposite of novel? 6) Red Raiders are 8-0 for the first time in 80 years. 7) As for U-Dub, Quincy Pondexter is one of my 10 favorite players. If he doesn’t put up 31, overtime isn’t even in the discussion.
No. 2 Texas 69, Southern California 50. Do you remember the significance of the game when these two teams last met? It was the final time Kevin Durant wore a Texas uniform. Man, did that Texas team fizzle out. This group is three times as good and five times as deep but doesn’t have anyone with half the natural talent of Durant. Are the Longhorns finding an identity yet? Probably won’t until a team really tests them.
Notable:
Baylor 64, Arizona State 61. And down goes another Pac-10 team. This is pretty brutal. Seth Davis loves him some Big 12 this year, so expect him to be chirping a-plenty today on the conference’s utter domination of the West Coast kids. This game was probably lost when Baylor head coach Scott Drew did something terrific: after playing in a 2-3 zone for the large majority of the second half, Drew asked his team to go man with the game a 60-58 Baylor lead. The Sun Devils were unprepared and Derek Glasser fired a bad shot from 23 feet out over a teammate. Then ASU fell asleep on the next play, as Baylor had an over-the-top pass to the defense that allowed LaceDarius Dunn to lay it in with five seconds to go.
