“It’s not how good you are
when you play good. It’s how good you are when you play bad.
And we played pretty good, even though we played bad. Imagine if
we’d played good.”
--Litterial
Green, Georgia basketball guard, after the Bulldogs beat Georgia
Tech 66-65, in 1992.
A National Merit Scholarship may have eluded
Litterial Green, but the kid knew what he was talking about. And
I submit that the thoughts expressed above capture the essence
the ’01 Big Game from the Cardinal perspective. In short,
there is such as thing as winning ugly. But there is no such
thing as an ugly win.
Take pride in this one, folks. Despite the
butt-ugly packaging, the contents amounted to a rare and
beautiful thing. We’re seven and two for the first time in
nine seasons.
Let me take it a step further,
Cardinalmaniacs. Ridicule this reporter as you will but the 104th
renewal of the Big Game last week may have been – just
may have been – the most impressive Stanford victory
thus far this year, bar none. Think about it. In the
clarity of hindsight, this one was absolutely prime for a kal
upset. It had all the incendiary ingredients:
- A departing, albeit pathetic, coach who is genuinely
liked by most of his charges.
- An absurd point-spread that inevitably has as a
psychological impact.
- A lightly-regarded, forlorn team going nowhere and
viewing this one game as the season’s last hurrah
– one last opportunity for dignity and esteem.
- Just enough speed and talent to pull it off.
- A Stanford team that is already Somewhere-Bowl-bound and
subconsciously complacent (I mean, how pumped can you get
teeing up against an 0-9 opponent, no matter how many
disclaimers you make during the week?).
- A gameday atmosphere of low energy, even at
hallowed-ground tailgate venues wherein gather the inner
core of hardcore Cardinalmaniacs.
- Flat, uncharacteristically sloppy execution by players
who take pride in discipline and precision.
- A kal team that was allowed to hang around and hang
around like uninvited guests to your catered tailgate.
- Brian Allen and Zack Quaccia going down, yet two more in
maddeningly continuous series of injuries to major
contributors.
No doubt about it, this one emitted the
off-and-on scent of “eau-de-upset” throughout the long,
TV commercial-laden afternoon. So what happens? Stanford
overcomes all of the above and makes the plays at crunch time:
those last agonizing minutes that Big-Game veterans know all too
well. In fact, Stanford plays kal the way Washington plays
Stanford in Seattle. And, unlike the Huskies, the Cardinal draws
little inspiration from the crowd noise. In fact, at home, just
as in Berkeley, the crowd decibels usually favor the Bears. But
again, Stanford overcame this as well in the final moments
despite the dry-tank offense’s insistence on handing the
ball over so that kal could take yet another shot.
So, the flashy heroics of Luke and Teyo
notwithstanding, it still comes down to the final play. But
the record will forever show that Stanford made that one, too.
Or, as Litterial Green might say, “just think if we’d
played good.”
And as long as you’re thinking, just
think if we had football cheerleaders who actually led cheers.
The crowd wearing red might have even gotten into it – even
the Shadyside Rest Home for the Energy Challenged. What’s
the deal with these bucket-hatted, tired Aloha-shirted clowns?
When will they learn the difference between close-confines
basketball cheers and football exhortations? It’s bad enough
we have to look at these frizz-haired bozos going through their
pointless, acrobat antics like some unsupervised pre-schoolers on
a candy factory tour. We also have to listen to their
indecipherable, in-joke gibberish. That is, when they deign to
gibber anything at all. Most of the time they seem to be
satisfied just sort of chasing each other up and down the pink,
Tartan track that matches their Aloha shirts. Yo, cheerleader
dudes (and dude-ettes): sign up for “yell camp” and
learn some audibly coherent cheers appropriate for the wide-open
spaces of Stanford Stadium. Here’s kal at 0-9 and they’re rockin’
the house while you fools are moon-walking and mugging for each
other’s private entertainment. Pitiful.
Just think if we cheered good.
Happy Thanksgiving – and speed up to
run over leprechauns this week.