Where's P-Ma...er... Where's Nic Wise??

Tonight's recap of the No. 10 Arizona hosting Oregon State University takes a big hit due to being taken away from my glorious seat at the scorers' table and being relegated back to the ol' Zona Zoo. I realize this is the same as complaining about going from a Bentley to a BMW, but damn, I miss those court side seats with full stats right in front of me and the Cats bench four feet to my left. These game notes are quite light on stats and over-all notes, since it's hard to stand in the student section, cheer and make wildly inappropriate chants while taking copious notes. As always if you want a in-depth look at the game you can go here, here, or here. If you want a page that celebrates any action by back-up freshman Nic Wise and equally values the players' kicks as much as their game, Where's Paul McPherson is the spot for you.

• Wilbur is either going for a new gangster look or has Vern Troyer inside of him, either way everything on Wilbur is extra baggy. Wilma needs to be here to tell Wilbur to show a little class, tuck his jersey back in and pull his shorts up from his Chucks.
  
• 18:19 Marcus Williams strokes a 3-pointer off a Chase Budinger assist. Marcus back-pedals down the court while talking reckless to his defender.
  
• 15:50 Chase Budinger gets the hustle play of the game for fighting for a rebound under his own basket then throwing the ball off the Oregon State player to keep possession in the Wildcats' hands. 12-5, UA. Chase has 5 points and 2 boards in less than five minutes of play.
• 15:42 Mustafa Shakur lobs a perfect pass from near the 3-point line to Budinger, who completes the back-door alley-oop.
  
• Props to the Zona Zoo student who was wearing a Daniel Dillon wig with the headband and all. Giving props to the sixth man on a team stacked full of talent is dope and another good reason it's good to have the Zona Zoo back in McKale after the holiday break.
  
• 7:45 Jawann McClellen hits a cutting Shakur on a fast break, Shakur catches the pass in mid-stride and completes the alley-lay-up. 28-18, Cats.
  
• 7:26 Williams hits another 3 to give himself a quick 12 points.
• 3:41 On a fast break McClellen gets a vicious two-handed dunk on Kyle Jeffers and draws the foul. If McClellen would have been able to finish the dunk cleaner it would have been one of, if not the, top dunk of the season. McClellen falls the ground hard post dunk and Marcus Williams does a crazy tribal dance and screams to congratulate McClellen.
• :13.6 The Wildcats are up plenty and Lute still calls a time-out before going into the half. If he can Lute always call a time-out before the half, just to keep the momentum in the Cats' favor, I'd assume. These pre-halftime time outs result in one of two options: one, finding Budinger in the corner for a 3-pointer, which happens one out of every 10 times. The other option which happens the other nine out of 10 times is Shakur dribbling the clock out and throwing up a stupid lay-up, whiling praying for a bail-out whistle. This time is like most where Shakur "earns" his way to the line, where he sinks both shots.
• Halftime: 42-27
• 16:40 Staf steals the ball in the mid-court and gives it to Williams for the dunk and his 20th point of the night, 50-31 Cats.
• 9:34 The Beavers cut the Cats' lead to 10 points 61-51 off a bunch of UA turnovers and overall sloppy play.
• 8:24 Fendi Onobon gets some burn as he checks in for McClellen. Mohamed Tangara, who the local papers said would be most likely to get more minutes due to Bret Brielmaier's bum knee, doesn't see the court until 1:02 remains in the game.
  
• Yes, I do believe Fendi, who was averaging just under two minutes a game this season, was the one to Tanya Harting Brielmaier's knee in practice to get himself some real minutes.
• Final, 83-72. Arizona bounces back from the Washington State OT loss and improves to 13-2 on the season. Marcus Williams put up a career-high 27 points in a sloppy contest. The Wildcats shot 49.1 percent from the field, rebounding from their 39.4 percent shooting against Washington State, but still 10 percent below what they were averaging against the Pac-10 before Washington State.
  
• Oregon State's Kyle Jeffers was on the receiving end of a Zona Zoo barrage of taunts, which I believe only started because he got dunked/shitted/owned/flushed/slammed on by McClellen late in the first half. Jeffers put up the huge numbers of 2 points, 4 boards, 2 assists, and 3 turnovers in 21 minutes, so I can't think of any other reason for the taunts. However the relentless taunts must have gotten to Jeffers because post-game while exiting the court via the tunnel next adjacent to the Zona Zoo he spit on a fan. It's not known for sure what happened after that, but there was some police involvement. CBS.sportsline.com's wire read:

  The game wasn't pretty, and neither was the aftermath. Moments after the final horn, Oregon State senior center Kyle Jeffers had a confrontation with a fan and was briefly detained by police.

  Oregon State coach Jay John followed Jeffers and officers into a room off the court. Jeffers later joined teammates in the locker room and did not speak to reporters. John said his player had not been arrested.

  "I am just fighting for my guy," John said. "I didn't see what happened. I just saw my player being taken away. I wanted to see what is going on."

• Point of the story is despite their poor showing thus far in the season, the Zona Zoo seems to be on the rise and they're definitely having an effect on the game.
• I thought for sure after this game that if we played this way again we would get killed by Oregon on Sunday, then I saw that Oregon only beat Arizona State by five. It'll be interesting to see which Oregon and Arizona teams show up Sunday.
  

Nic Wise Moment of the Game: Nic's 'DNP' is the worst thing to happen to this blog since I realized I was illiterate in html. When Nic was not present at the pre-game shoot-a-round I assumed that he was simply putting the finishing touches on a chopped-n-screwed version of the Wildcats' introduction. Then when I could not find Nic on the Wilcats' bench it was like watching the second plane hit the World Trade Center, everyone knew this was something much more serious and no mere case of too much time in the training room. Nic was sited as missing the game for the ever-ambiguous "personal reasons," which probably means my friend Tarny was right and this has something to do with Paul Wall being in town for his Saturday night concert.

Sneaker Watch: Lots of new kicks: Mustafa Shakur white/navy Zoom Lebron IV...Daniel Dillon black Jordan Melo M3...Jawann McClellen and Jordan Hill some new black/red Nikes (damn student section, can't see shit from nine rows up)...Marcus Williams and Fendi Onobon all black Nikes (see McClellen and Hill's entry)