Pac-10 Tournament, Day One

Here we are at the Galen Center, ready for nine basketball games in four days — basketball junkie's heaven!

Watching a game when you don't really care who wins is so relaxing. Neither of tonight's games was great basketball, but they were entertaining.

In the first game, Arizona outplayed WSU most of the way. WSU managed to stay fairly close (five or six points) only because Arizona couldn't hold on to the ball – they turned it over 25 times! WSU pulled within two points with less than a minute to play, but they couldn't get that last basket and lost 62-60. They may find some small consolation in that it's the closest they've ever come to winning a Pac-10 Tournament game. Here's a game report.

So Stanford plays Arizona tomorrow in the quarter-finals. Ify Ibekwe should be well-rested for that game. She played just 25 minutes tonight, well short of her usual 34.

Then came Washington against OSU. The game began with a 20-2 run by the Huskies. Their defense was almost impenetrable for most of the first half, and an OSU loss seemed unavoidable. If I'd been watching the game on TV, I would have turned it off and found something more interesting to do. But then the game took a 180º turn. OSU was behind by just two at halftime, took the lead a few minutes into the second half and ended with a 52-42 victory. We enjoyed cheering the underdog almost as much as the loyal Beaver fans sitting behind us. Here's a game report.

In addition to the bands, cheer leaders, dance teams and about 500 girls who had attended a basketball clinic earlier today, there were at most 500 fans in attendance. Among those were a couple of dozen Cardinal fans. Henry Franco, the Stanford Athletics ticket guru told us that the Stanford ticket office sold only about 80 tickets.

The Cardinal team was also there for the first game, checking out tomorrow's opponents.

Between games, Nneka and Jayne joined other Pac-10 players to sign autographs.