Gregg Marshall on Sports Sunday (March 8)

[ShockTalk]

Downtown - Why not try to get these schools at neutral sites, such as early tournaments, beat them there, and the rest of your idea still works.

[Downtown Shocker Brown]

Downtown - Why not try to get these schools at neutral sites, such as early tournaments, beat them there, and the rest of your idea still works.

Because this:

Key wins: @ Texas Tech, @ Texas A&M

Looks better than:

Key wins: TTU (neutral), Texas A&M (neutral)

[WSUwatcher]

Gonzaga

In fact, many of Gonzaga's games against name teams over the years have been in tournaments or at made-for-TV neutral sites. Beat enough of them enough times, and you start garnering attention regardless of where it happens.

[ShockTalk]

OK. I'll counter with: We can get a home and home with Texas Tech (and the likes), but a win is more likely for us at a neutral site with the one and done bunch. Lower BCS schools should be "home and home" only. Mid to upper BSC schools that we can't get "home and home", go for neutral site games first, and maybe one "one and done" per year.

[SubGod22]

And they still get few, if any, home games with these teams. I believe they have to travel to Seattle if they want to play them at "home".

I still say we stick with the tourneys and do what we're doing and try to add more games with good teams outside the BcS conferences.

[rjl]

Re: Conspiracy

And as for the final play, maybe they got it right, maybe they didn't -- Elgin's response was to be expected, and he at least deserves some credit for being proactive -- but we've seen from the discussion on here that it's hard to prove with certainty that the decision on the court was wrong. I don't know if there's official language in the rules covering such a case, but it just stands to reason that if the actual ruling can't be clearly shown to have been wrong, it ought to stand. (Otherwise, you have a potential mess, which is why the NFL, for example, uses the approach it does.) So I can't complain about the decision, even though I hated the outcome.

ShockRef nailed it in another discussion of the game: there were so many things the Shocks could have done better, both in the last two seconds and throughout the game, that could have changed the outcome, that it's silly to obsess about the ending. WSU may still get into a peripheral tournament, which was all they ever had a realistic chance to do anyway, and regardless of whether they do the coaches have been handed about as good a teaching and motivational tool for next year as they could possibly want.

There are two gapingly huge holes in the argument you present in your second paragraph.

1. " It's silly to obsess about the end of the game."

The end of the game is the ONLY part that really matters.

The beauty if a game limited by time is that one team can be up by 20 at some point yet still lose because they had fewer points than the other team at the end, when the clock hits 0.00. That last second is the only second that the scores matter.

and...

2. "there were so many things the Shocks could have done better, both in the last two seconds and throughout the game, that could have changed the outcome"

The Shocks DID do enough things to win "throughout the game" and at the "last two seconds" to walk away victorious, and that's what all the hubbub is about.

Your argument implies that, in order to PROVE you won the game, you have to beat the other team by a significant amount. On the contrary; a win by one point is still a win. This game was a WSU win that became a Creighton win because of circumstances outside of our control: the referees and the individual running the clock. It's been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt in my mind by the two individuals who posted video evidence here on Shockernet. I don't see how you can argue against it.

[WSUwatcher]

Boring

Just call me Rhett: "Frankly, rjl, I don't give a damn" any more, because the outcome is decided and not subject to change.

Those who want to remain agitated are free to do so, ignoring the conclusion of others who have looked at the video and found it not so clear cut. Meanwhile, those of us with better things to do, like me and my old buddy KC, God help me, are moving on with life. The Shocks may yet make a lesser tournamnet, and in any case I have no doubt that Coach Marshall will use the game effectively as a teaching and motivational tool for next year. That's good enough for me.

You did swerve into one key point, though, in your phrase "because of circumstances outside of our control..."-- that's another reason it isn't worth dwelling on. The outcome is outside of anyone's control at this point. But to the extent the clock fiasco leads to an improvement in Valley procedures, which is still within someone's control, that's a good thing. So between that and what Marshall makes of the game in the future, I'm not worried (as the Shockernet saying goes).

[Ricardo del Rio]

Battle of the D.J.s?

[Rosewood]

Why do people always seem to confuse dwelling on an issue and posting on the internet?

I think burping takes more of my mental cpu cycles then making a post on the internet.