...or should I say DEPAUL 38 17:21 CREIGHTON 50?
That's a little inside joke, never mind. On Tuesday in Vegas, the Jays played an athletic Big East team (and I use the word "team" loosely) in DePaul, and were murdered so violently on the boards that the authorities are going to have to call in Gil Grissom to survey the damage for DNA samples to determine just what went wrong.
None of this would be necessary if A) the Jays didn't allow Mac Koshwal to nearly outrebound them ALL BY HIMSELF and B) the webcast showed time and score, and live stats were available.
I don't know about you, but I love it when I'm watching a webcast and I have to bust open a text document on screen to manually keep track of the score. I mean, I just LOVE (sic) it when that happens. In the first half, the webcast with no radio or TV announcers was quaint, and I actually kinda dug it. I've always wanted to watch games on TV with judge the PA and ambient crowd noise, and for 20 glorious minutes, I got my wish. You could hear the roar of the 1,100 people in attendance, most of them Jays fans. You could hear the PA guy announce fouls and points scored. It was grand.
Oh, but that second excruciating half! With 17:21 remaining, the on-screen scoreboard froze, and here's how dumb I am: I didn't even realize it until about 90 seconds had gone by. Until just before the under-12 timeout, the scoreboard remained frozen with the Jays up 50-38, at which point the graphic was simply removed altogether.
This left webcast viewers like me to try to catch glimpses of the in-arena scoreboard in the background of a shot as the pixellated camera quickly shot past it, or to keep track manually. During the under-12 timeout I built a down-and-dirty Flash scoreboard, and spent the rest of the night tallying points myself to follow along. This was beyond annoying, this was like watching a heavily pixellated episode of The Nanny where all the other characters voices are muted except for the shrill, spine-numbing cackle of the Nanny herself. That's one definition of hell, am I right? This is another: watching a Creighton game with no scoreboard and no announcers. Good luck with that.
Oh, and did I mention that every time the Jays shot free throws, the screen went to a static "Las Vegas Classic" logo? The webcast was the same feed as the video board, and because it was located directly behind the basket on one end, whenever the team using that basket shot free throws, they turn off the video. This was a mild disagreement between me and the webcast in the first half, as DePaul shot throws in a game the Jays were winning handily. This was grounds for pseudo-violent actions like throwing shoes in the second half, as the Jays shot throws in a close game. Although thanks to the crowd being 90% Creighton, listening for the crowd reaction was a good barometer of the verdict. It also helped that they didn't miss a single throw down the stretch.
So yeah, the Jays won, but I can't tell you how because I was too damn busy keeping score manually while trying to guess what their free throws looked like. Yes, I could have turned the webcast off and went to the radio, or supplemented the webcast with the audio from the radio, but they were about 90 seconds apart. Besides, if I'd done that, I wouldn't be able to complain about the shittiness of the webcast, and instead I'd have to gripe about actual problems, like allowing Mac Koshwal to grab 22 rebounds or Dar Tucker to score 32 points on 12-22 shooting. And what fun would that be?
As for the Jays, here's part of what I wrote about Booker Woodfox yesterday:
I continue to be impressed by Booker Woodfox, but be honest, isn't his 24 points and 4-6 from behind the arc almost taken for granted at this point? Dude is consistent. Consistently Awesome!
And then on the postgame, Dana Altman said basically the same thing, minus the words "dude" and "awesome". He did say that they're almost taking his 20-25 points a night for granted, and crazy as that sounds, he delivers every night. Woodfox is at the point in his career arc where he needs a bitchin' nickname...except his actual name is better than any possible nickname you could ever devise. Booker Woodfox. The man so cool he doesn't need a nickname.
You bet.
*****
Today's Polyfro Player of the Game is brought to you by Big Ass Trophies, LTD. If you need big trophies shaped like asses, go somewhere else. But if you need Big Ass Trophies, call us!
(Seriously, did you see the size of the trophies for this tournament? They looked like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and put the NCAA Championship trophy to shame in both design and size.)
Woodfox. Booker Woodfox. 26 points, 5-9 from behind the arc, 7-7 at the line, 7-12 from the floor. He's awesome, he's automatic, he's the Player of the Game.
You bet.
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