PUB WISDOM
Brass Turns SilverArchive for College Sports
Highlanders’ Schedule is Tougher than Yours
Sophomore maestro Joe Kelly clocked two saves as visiting UCR took last weekend’s series against No. 5 UC Irvine. The overall toughness of the Big West Conference no doubt helps UCR’s strength of schedule — allegedly the best in the land. According to the preview of this weekend’s Big West conference weekend series between UC RIverside and Cal State Northridge — bitter rivals back in the D2 CCAA — the latest set of Strength of Schedule ratings at Boydsworld.com has UC Riverside’s schedule ranked as the toughest in all of Division I College Baseball. (I looked and couldn’t find it at www.boydsworld.com-PW)
From the UCR release: The Highlanders rank ahead of defending national champion Oregon State and current PAC-10 leader Stanford. UCR has played #5 UC Irvine three times, #8 Nebraska four times this season, #21 San Diego twice, #22 Cal State Fullerton and #25 Long Beach State three times. UCR plays #5 UC Irvine once more for a non-conference match-up on May 6th.
That said, they’re well under .500 this season overall, and have their hands full in a Big West conference race that looks to be an all-out dogfight. They currently are tied for 4th with No. 25 Long Beach State.
The Highlanders have retained their propensity to swing above their weight when they play the heavy programs. To wit, they’ve won weekend series against two top-ten teams — UC Irvine when they were No. 5, just last weekend, and Long Beach State, while they occupied the No. 9 slot earlier in the season. They don’t have the consistency of last year’s Big West-winning squad, but if they can turn some of the experience they’ve gained playing the toughest schedule in the land into a second-half surge and sneak into the rankings, they could well find a spot in a regional.
Ace sophomore stopper Joe Kelly is back in the bull pen for Doug Smith, and proved stone-cold in the 9th inning during Sunday’s rubber game win over UCI at Anteater Field — another bit of mo’ upon which the Highlanders can build.
Done Deal
The 2007-08 basketball season is a done deal for UC Riverside with an 81-69 loss to Cal State Fullerton last night. Ultimately, they hung tough in this game. The Titans were on — raining threes.
The Highlanders finished 9-21. 7th in conference. First-round survivors of the Big West Tourney. A team with much of which it can be proud. A team with lots of “upside potential,” too.
Hat’s off to the only departing senior, Larry Cunningham, who walked tall through darker seasons than this. A winner despite it all.
Highlanders Send Stangs to the Glue Factory
Well, not really, so please don’t call PETA. But the No. 7 seed Highlanders did send No. 6 seed Cal Poly home early with a first-round exit in the Big West Tournament. The Highlanders’ 62-56 UCR victory, was only its second-ever D1 “post-season” win, and its first since the Nate Carter-Vili Morton days. Read full coverage here.
When the team huddled before tip off, their team cheer was a business-like “Play hard” and ultimately their efforts resulted in a hard-earned if somewhat ugly win. Both teams got off to slow starts, and UCR held a slim 20-17 halftime lead after leading by as many as 10.
Cal Poly came out of the second half with more pressure and even led for a few minutes before UCR went back out in front and the two teams started trading buckets for an extended time. Ultimately, a series of defensive stops by the Highlanders resulted in a consistent 6 to 8-point gap down the stretch, forcing the Mustangs to start fouling with about a minute left. The right strategy, considering the Highlanders’ pathetic average from the stripe, but it didn’t pay off this time as Jalonni Diggs and Larry Cunningham made enough of their free throws to seal the deal.
UCR will have to raise its game to compete with Cal State Fullerton in the early game tonight. The Titans hold the fourth-best ppg average in D1. Fortunately for Rivi, defense and hustle are two of its strong suits. Couple that with a solid team offensive performance and it could be close enough down the stretch to be interesting.
No matter what happens tonight, however, it’s clear that UCR has made forward progress. As mentioned before, the Highlanders are plain competitive this season. Ask UCI, Cal Poly, Long Beach State, and Hawaii — teams they beat — as well as UCSB, Pacific, CSUN and the other teams they played tight.
Wooldridge, here’s your bogey for next season: .500
Pub Wisdom Predicts: CSUF 85, UCR 72
75-66
So I was 3 points off… (See prediction in my previous post).
UCR — picked last in the preseason coaches poll — handled the UC Davis Aggies from beginning to end to pick up its fourth conference win, 75-66, and finish the regular season in 7th place in the Big West, ahead of UC Davis and Long Beach State. A loss would’ve dropped them to 9th and out of the Big West Tournament.
Sean “No Relation” Cunningham went off the richter for 22 points on 8-of-9 from the field.
So the Highlanders extend their season and earn the chance to see if they can turn their increased competitiveness into a four-game run in the neutral (creepy?) confines of the Anaheim Convention Center. As I said before, weirder things have happened.
First up, sixth-seeded Cal Poly – a team UCR has beaten before this season — in the late game on Wednesday night. See you in Anaheim. Sorry, not you, Aggies…
The Hammer Drops on the 49ers
It’s all very anti-climactic, with a year’s worth of dust accumulated on this shady story, but the NCAA dropped the hammer on Long Beach State’s basketball program on Thursday, hitting it with all sorts of sanctions and penalties.
Larry Reynolds, the darling coach who jump-started Long Beach State’s basketball program, is long gone. T’was all very fishy when, after posting a stellar 24-6 season that included a Big West crown, a coach of the year award, and a sacrificial-lamb gig against Tennessee in the first round of last year’s big dance — LBSU declined to renew Reynolds’ contract. Huh? That’s strange… Well, the athletic department and others already had more than an inkling of the shit storm brewing under the surface.
Many of the details of wrong-doings seem ticky-tack, others are not – read this for a detailed analysis of the situation — but it comes down to this: The 49ers loaded up their 05-06 recruiting class with a raft of academically dicey juco transfers and didn’t cross all the Ts on their eligibility. It’s allegedly more nefarious than that, with coaches actively participating in the charade. Former assistant coach Reggie Howard — one of my favorite players during my undergrad years at UC Riverside, I might add – allegedly aided in the enrollment smoke-and-mirrors.
It turns out six players were not eligible, and the 49ers now have to forfeit games and face recruiting sanctions. Reynolds’s role is unclear, but it’s hard to believe he didn’t have some influence over the way his program recruits. Did he just look the other way and cross his fingers as his staff bac-doored all these juco ballers?
For someone who learned to love Reynolds while he assisted legendary UCR coach John Masi, and who cheered Reggie Howard — who was so cool in college he somehow pulled off wearing a Davey Crockett-style coonskin hat as he rolled around campus (what was that about?!?) — during the D2 hey-day, this is all very sad. I marveled as Reynolds built a winner at Long Beach, and loved Reynolds even more when he brought Masi into the fold as an associate head coach for the 06-07 season. Even now, I’m ambivalent about these charges. It’s just sad, that’s all.
Walk-off Shot Worth the Wait
It was cold, guv. Too cold for disappointment.
The UC Riverside baseball team’s season opener snuck into the Riverside Sports Complex in between winter storms, ushered along by a biting wind that sent the huddled supporters lining up for hot chocolate and blew the tarps off the bullpen mounds as endless clouds galloped north over the Box Spring Mountains.
Of course it wasn’t cold for the visiting Washington Huskies, in town for a four-game stint in sunny — ha! — So Cal. They’re used to such misery in Seattle. Heck, they were probably hot, suckas.
An early 2-0 UCR lead that had the hearty home crowd giddy was erased in the 5th (4th?) by a two-run UW homer, setting up a second half of the game that was played with trepidation — at least for me. Too close for comfort. Too easy for a good team to manufacture a run or blow it wide open. After enduring this bone-chilling duel, it would be a bitter loss.
In at least three of the subsequent innings, Highlander moundsmen put Huskies on base and got out the jam with clutch pitching. But it felt like a rising tide, with Rivi’s fortifications perilously tested to their limits.
Somehow we ended up in the bottom of the ninth at 2-2, after escaping yet another jam in the top of the inning. UCR quickly racked up two outs, and it looked as if we might be there a while. I shot a look over at the concession stand, thinking about rocking a third hot chocolate, but it was shut tight — the cold, curled steel door quietly mocking us frozen bums, the knackered and harried staff having slipped away when the mob wasn’t looking.
Then there was life. A two-out walk and a man on first. Ben Price stepped into the box, fresh off a humiliating inning-killing pickoff his last time up. But crank up the Bob Marley, mon, ’cause this is redemption song, y’nah?
It was evident soon after the ball left the bat that it was game over. Seriously. Deep and directly in the gap, the outfield had no chance and the base-on-balls easily scored from first. Boo-yaa. Welcome to the 2008 season.
The Huskies and Highlanders ultimately split the four game weekend stand, and UCR then dropped a game to No. 24 Pepperdine. The early read is that the Highlanders may be too young to repeat as Big West champions — the banner looks filthy up on the outfield wall, by the way — but we’ll just have to see what happens, won’t we? Pub Wisdom reckons a healthy pitching rotation down the stretch could be the bridge to lively late-season bats in the hands of cocky world-beaters. Make it so.
Aloha Means Goodbye
Welcome to Cali, Rainbow Warriors. Now take that WAC junk with you and go home — and consider your bracket busted. You better win the WAC tournament, because otherwise there’s no way you’ll be dancing come March with a loss to the lowly Highlanders on your rez.
Sometimes, playing the spoiler can help get you through the dark times. On a weekend that saw UC Riverside’s baseball team open up its 2008 campaign on Friday with a 2-out, walk-off double for a 3-2 win over visiting University of Washington (more on this soon — promise), the men’s basketball team also delivered on Saturday with a 79-62 ESPNU Bracketbuster win over visiting Hawaii. Alo-fuggin-ha.
Much credit is due to Larry Cunningham, whose 31-point performance propelled him past Howard Lee’s long-standing record to become UCR’s all-time leading scorer. Hat’s off, Larry. After some rough times, it seems as if there’s some measure of payoff coming your way this season — let’s channel that into a few wins at the Anaheim Convention Center and a magical March, huh? It was a team effort, however, as four Highlanders scored in double figures.
Sniff, sniff… what’s that? Michoacan? Nope. What your smelling is a bona fide win streak. Two in a row, baby, and against teams that are nuttin’ to sneeze at for Rivi. The game was closer than the score would lead you to believe, it seems (I wasn’t there — battling through the loser’s bracket to the doubles finals of a beer-pong tournament — more on this soon too), but UC Riverside once again jumped out to a commanding early lead. I like this early-lead trend, and I like this new Wooldridge math: ball movement + rebounding + tight D + patience on O + made free throws = competitiveness.
Read full coverage here.
Highlanders Feed Eaters a Loss
The UC Riverside mens’ basketball team made another step in its Big West maturation Wednesday night by pummeling UC Irvine early, then staving off a fierce Eater rally late. The Highlanders made 11 of 13 free throws down the stretch to seal the deal, 85-76, at the Student Rec Center.
Once UCR established its competitiveness with the likes of Long Beach State and Cal Poly, Pub Wisdom previously called out UCI as next in the crosshairs in the Highlanders’ journey north, both in the standings and in respect from conference opponents. Well, check that one off the list, as the Jim Wooldridge-led Highlanders gave our old friend Pat Douglass fits that no doubt stirred memories for him of the classic UCR-Cal State Bakersfield wars the two teams fought for dominance back in the Division II California Collegiate Athletic Association days. I love this excerpt from the Daily Pilot’s coverage:
Douglass, like his players, showed visible signs of frustration in the first half. He went to a zone, called numerous timeouts, and substituted liberally, trying to find a way to snap his team out of its funk.The Highlanders remain tied with Long Beach State at second-bottom in the Big West but on pace to qualify for the conference tournament. UC Davis would stay home, excluded from the 8-team tournament, if the season ended today.
Highlanders Scrap Their Way Out of the Cellar
This is the season we’ll look back on, the season when the present showed glimmers of the future. The season when UC Riverside basketball players began to carry themselves a little differently. The season they began to believe. On the surface, the Highlanders’ overall record to date — 5-15 — is nothing to shout about.
But delve beneath, to the nether regions, and you start to see what I’m talkin’ about. No quit. Tight D. Tough rebounding. Patience on O. It’s all there. First-year coach Jim Wooldridge — his last head coaching job was in the Big 12 at Kansas State — has his team working and believing.
And on Saturday, on national — er, regional — TV, the Highlanders took that symbolic first step out of the Big West cellar by outplaying Cal Poly SLO for a 62-58 win in front of a season-high 1,012 at the Student Rec Center at UCR.
We know misery loves company, but tell first-to-worst Long Beeatch State — now alone in the cellar — that we had to bone out, split, vamoose. UCR and LBSU had been chummy down at the bottom of the table for the past few weeks, both teams clinging to a single conference victory. But while the Highlanders were giving Cal Poly the business, the 49ers were suffering a home loss in the Walter Pyramid to the UCI Eaters.
First they beat LBSU. Now they’ve beaten Cal Poly. Logically, next in the cross hairs should be UCI, an admitted step up the Big West food chain. But UCR had UCI scared at home last week. In fact, UCR has been more competitive across the board this season, hanging with USC and Texas Tech, playing Big West preseason favorite UCSB tough on the road in their last game, and generally staying in games. UCR’s only blowout losses have come at the hands of Gonzaga and Minnesota.
On Saturday, with Prime Ticket commentators Michael Cage and Paul Sunderland quickly on the bandwagon, UCR calmly hammered out a 12-point halftime lead with the consummate veteran Larry Cunningham leading the way. Ball movement, patience on offense, rebounding at both ends of the court (UCR outrebounded the Stangs 41-27 in total), and a fortunate hot streak from behind the arc — all these factors played a role.
And praise Jah for that hot first half, because UCR came out colder than the kegerator at the Fiji house in the second half, not settling down until the last 10 minutes or so. The Mustangs eventually cut the lead to two, but UCR sacked up and found its footing, ultimately grinding out the victory. It was a team effort, with four players in double figures. Cunningham, Cleavon Barlow, Jalonni Diggs (game-high 16 points), Severin Gates, Aaron Scott, Christian Soto, and others all played with heart, composure, and belief in their skills.
UCR is building confidence at the perfect part of the season, and their next game offers a chance to stay on a roll as they are on the road at Long Beach — after 10 days rest. Big West foes: you’re officially on notice as we look down the road to the conference tourney. A handful of wins at the Anaheim Convention Center, and the Highlanders are dancing.
Somewhere, legendary UCR coach John Masi is smiling. Well, probably not, actually. But even he has to recognize the progress. I don’t think he’ll smile until he sees the backside of Stan Morrison filling the doorframe on his way out. I witnessed first-hand the quality of Masi’s program during the D2 golden era, and in Nate Carter and Vili Morton he had the foundation of dangerous team — dangerous — but it was not meant to be. I now can’t help but look forward, with Stan, to the future with high hopes for Wooldridge.
Mark Pub Wisdom’s words — this is the season it all changed for the D1-era Highlanders. The end of the beginning.
Highlander Betwixt the Sticks for L.A. Galaxy?
Big West Keeper of the Year Charles Alamo, who helped UC Riverside end its season with a 1-1 draw against defending national champions and No. 9-ranked UCSB, was selected by the Galaxy in the MLS draft. Could he man the net for the Galaxy in the near future, rolling with Becks and Landon?
Only time will tell if we will, indeed, remember Alamo. For now, live it up. Good on ya.
