for all the reasons previously mentioned. winning is always easier when you shoot well from long distance, but our 14-23 3-pt shooting came mostly on very good looks. we also played very good defense, as ND never figured out how to deal with us doubling quickly in the post. and afflalo's d on chris thomas was excellent, although farmar's d is still a liability. our handling of the full-court press was sketchy at best, mainly due to very lackadaisical passes. a few other thoughts, first about the perception of our tourney chances, and then about the game:

before the game, pretty much every talking head (digger phelps, billy packer, seth davis, to name a few) was saying the Pac-10 would only get 3 teams in the tourney. only jay bilas came close to making sense, saying that teams, not conferences, get tourney spots, and he said the pac-10 could have 2 teams that make it, or it could have 4. even after the game, one of the knuckleheads at espnews said this win MIGHT be enough to get the bruins into the tourney.

one thing i noticed that kept getting shown when addressing our tourney credentials is that our record against the top 50 rpi is 1-7. now i'm pretty sure the selection committee doesn't pay much attention to this, as the top 50 is just an arbitrary cut-off, and it isn't accurate for some teams, especially us. why? because out of our eight games against the top 50, five of them are against the top TEN. also, we happen to be 3-0 against teams 51-60, so if the arbitrary cutoff happened to be 60 instead of 50, our record jumps to 4-7 instead of 1-7 (these RPI numbers are from Ken Pomeroy).

regardless of all the talk, our tourney chances are clearly very good. if we win two out of our next three games, i'm pretty sure we're in. and there's a good chance we win all three of them if we keep playing well.

as far as today's game goes, i'm not sure what other accolades i can give to dijon thompson. i'm watching the game, and i'm thinking to myself, my gosh, he's having a really off day. but then you look at the final stat sheet, and he ended up with 16 points, 10 boards and 4 assists. plus he did a great job of doubling in the post. so even though he shot miserably (4-15 from the field and 5-11 from the charity stripe), he still was productive.

it is so obvious how much Mike Fey could help this team. bill raftery noticed it after just one half of basketball. our perimeter play is very good, we just need a physical presence in the middle. someone who can demand attention on offense and keep people away from the hoop on defense. and the only one who has the size to do it is fey. i give him a hard time because of this, and it can be so very frustrating to watch him play, but i must admit he was fairly effective today. 5 of 10 from the field with 9 boards, and he played good d. but still no free throw attempts. he just is not real comfortable with contact, which is really a shame.

was it just me, or did all of brian morrison's ill-advised shots go in, and all of his wide open looks miss? oh, and he provided the funniest thing i've seen on a basketball court in quite some time - raftery was talking pretty seriously about the john chaney situation but then in mid-sentence, he just blurts out with "oh my goodness" when morrison tried that crazy breakaway dunk. it was hillarious (well, you probably had to see/hear it).

anyway, if we keep playing well, it is conceivable that we enter the second round of the pac-10 tourney on a 5-game winning streak. but before we look that far ahead, i hope we come out ready to play against oregon state on thursday. and it was great to see Josh Shipp able to play today, let's hope his ankle gets even better during the week.