I’m just going to ramble a little bit about last night’s Arizona UCLA game. An overarching takeaway, revealed truth, or a silver lining just aren’t in the cards. Not today. I’ll proceed in four parts:

1. A Decree

Hear ye, hear ye! Now hear this! I hearby begin the campaign to get Kaleb Philip Tarczewski to foul out of a game! In doing such, he would demonstrate that seven-feet and two-hundred-sixty pounds of developing manbeastchild got aggressive; a terrifying prospect considering the aforementioned mass metrics. Just two rules to the campaign:

• No fouls committed beyond eight feet from the basket
• If And-One occurs and it is not #SCtop10, 1000 stadiums will be run

[insert image of Tarc stare down following block of LD2]

2. Mark Lyons

Bad game. Happens.

3. I Was Wrong

Last night was a big game – contrary to what I said – and UCLA played it as such. I’m microwaving the crow now. My oversight was in not recognizing the issue of Oregon’s stranglehold on the conference. NCAA tournament seeding is really awesome stuff, but conference championships are super awesome. Arizona is going to need some help now. I also mentioned that the Cat was let out of the bag about Arizona making statements en route to season’s end. The cart was a bit ahead of the horse there but Brandon Ashley continues to improve, Grant Jerrett is playing more assertively, and sometimes point number two (above) just happens. Worried about Arizona? No. Expected more, a better effort? Absolutely.

4. Lizard Catching

In something like second grade – and note that this is very growing up in Tucson-centric – we learned how to catch lizards. I don’t recall if it was for scientific purposes but someone, presumably from the Desert Museum, guided our class into the desert and showed us how to capture these little critters. We would dig a small hole, big enough to bury a coffee can or the like, then surround that hole with four rocks to prop a shade delivering something over the hole. The unsuspecting lizard would be gleefully drawn to the shade and fall right into coffee can, unable to climb his way out. And that’s how we got ourselves lizards. The moral of the story? Don’t fall into holes. (As defined here, a hole is 3 points in a game’s opening 7 minutes and 37 seconds)