The End...For Now?

I've decided to close the blog for the time being.

One of the problems with Statis Pro Basketball is that you have to purchase the card sets, and if there are no manufacturers making card sets you have to make them yourself. This is a laborious process, and the return of enjoyment I'm getting on it is diminishing.

Second, I'm realizing just how many games I'm going to have to play to replicate a full college season. Not quite one a week, but fairly close to that. With my busy life, it's very hard getting a game in every week and I'm starting to resent the time the game takes out of my personal life. Once again, there's a diminishing return.

Third, there's the fear that I'm going to fall behind and when that happens, collecting these old statistics is going to become more and more difficult.

Fourth, the blog doesn't have many readers. A few people bump into the blog by accident, but in general, the number of readers - including accidental ones - I get in a day can be counted on the fingers of two hands - sometimes one hand - sometimes none. With all of the output and with so little "input", there's not really much to buoy this project during this down time - unlike with a much more successful blog I write.

Therefore, I have decided to stop putting so much energy into this project and just let it lie dormant. It might be picked up again in a new format if some of the technical difficulties can be solved. However, the project simply has too much going against it, in terms of its difficulty, in terms of the time it takes, in terms of the decreasing enjoyment and lack of interest others have in it.

I think I'm going to try something else for a while. If any part of this blog has amused you - thank you for reading.

Game 21 - UTEP 76, East Carolina 65

"We look our longest road trip of the season. I'm writing this at the airport. The minute the game was over, we packed up our crap and headed straight for the biggest place in North Carolina that had an airplane.

Actually, I didn't feel lost in Greenville. Two of my friends came to see me from high school ball. We were all on the same team. It was about a seven or eight hour drive for them, and they'd both have to ride on the interstate all night, just to get back home the next day, but it was worth it to see them again. I hope my high school coach doesn't find out. Coach, just don't notice those "Brenda is the Best" and "We Love UTEP #13" signs if you have a secret TV feed to the game that the public doesn't know about. (I really didn't want them to drive that far, but I couldn't stop them.)

Coach Ballard told me all week, "watch out for Princess Abair", "watch out for Princess Abair" and I've heard so much about what she does that I'm sick. "You lapse on defense, Dean, and Abair's going to light you up!" We've really been working on defense, because the Pirates can put the ball up.

So I say hi to my friends, we meet for forty minutes before the game. (Until Coach Ballard calls me back into the locker room.) When we come out, it's a nice little crowd, but not so big that I could lose either of my friends. "Plenty of empty seats."

Anyway, Letell Hanson hits a 3-pointer to put us up 8-6 and for a long time we never look back. We come out hard in a pure zone and they look really tentative. They say a good zone looks like a man to man and we were doing all the right switches. We started to pull head, slowly, and had a 23-13 lead early on.

But East Carolina is dangerous. Abair steps back off that 3-point line like it was electrocuted. She doesn't make use of every inch of space; she'll take those shots a foot off the line, and she hit one that must have been from NBA distance. East Carolina closed back within single digits.

We had a 10-2 run at one point in the first half and at one point we led 41-25. We were playing well enough, but East Carolina was really pushing us off the boards. We had like 12 rebounds in the first half and they had 11. The Pirates closed to within 41-29.

Coach told us straight up. "You're not dominating. It's your free throws that are keeping you in it. (We were 10-for-13.) You're still reacting to them. You have to play your game and have faith in your game. It's UTEP basketball that's going to win this. The other team never knows what's coming!"

In the second half, our faith would be tested. We got cold on the court but East Carolina was still knocking them down and made adjustments, mixing up a pressure defense with a weak side trap whenever we tried to pass the ball. East Carolina started to close in. #12 (Serena Backes) hit a couple of 3-pointers. It was a 10-0 run I was told and the Pirates closed to 52-48.

Tia Ownby was pretty good out there. She hit a little midrange jumper that tied the game 56-56. We were now just hanging in there. "Have faith!" Coach said. "Spread them out, make sure you communicate, avoid the trap."

We were up 63-61, and East Carolina just fell apart. We went up on a 10-2 run, and led 73-63 going into the final few minutes. East Carolina looked busted. They failed the gut check. We passed it and got the win.

There were three pretenders. Now there are just two. There's us, there Southern Miss and there's friggin SMU. All 8-1 in conference. We're going back home feeling better about ourselves. Maybe I can turn this into a psych paper. Abair had 15 points, but I had 18 - not that I look at such things."

--Brenda Dean



This was a very tight game, and played out pretty much as our narrator said it did. UTEP's shooting sagged to 34 percent in the second half which gave the Pirates space to come back. But the Miners made a run as the game was down to the final minutes, and East Carolina just imploded.

Also: the head coach of East Carolina picked up two technical fouls before that final run. Maybe East Carolina didn't have a deep "coaching bench" and without the coach the team just fell apart. Whether Sharon Baldwin-Tener - the real coach of East Carolina - has ever picked up a technical foul is left as an aside.

Oh yes, and the final AP RPI rank and Coaches RPI rank.

API Poll RPI: 48
Coaches Poll RPI: 40

Up next: Marshall, back in El Paso.

East Carolina Card Set

I wonder if I'm going to be able to keep up this project for much longer, so don't be surprised if it just disappears one day. The problem is that...well, real life is the problem. You know that. If I got paid for doing this, it would be great, but I'm not, so....

The game using these cards has already been played. One of the things I noticed about this card set - how well East Carolina was at shooting, particularly center "April James".

Game 20 - UTEP 79, UAB 59

"Sometimes, there are games where you feel like you're going to win even coming in. We went to Birmingham, Alabama to play the Blazers. When we hit the court, the Blazers obliged us by picking up four fouls in the first two minutes. When I heard those whistles and counted the fouls, I turned to Toya (LaToya Lloyd) and asked 'do you believe this?' She said, 'I think the pressure just got to them.' And two minutes weren't up yet.

We couldn't really build a big lead on them, but we remained in control. Even when UAB worked it down to one possession, we still felt in control. We hit the half 31-28 and Coach Ballard just kept saying, 'Don't lose your focus. Play your game. They're playing quality ball, but heart is going to tell." I decided that I was just going to play with some heart, and I scored eight points as the second half got underway - a couple of threes, both from the top of the key helped.

The closest they got was 48-45. We began to pull away. We were up by 10 and Josina Costa helped us get a little run late in the second. The Blazers were gassed. They just couldn't handle our defense. We held them to like 30 percent. I even picked up four rebounds on them, and my defense sucks."

--Brenda Dean



Once again, I've forgotten to include assists-steals-blocks by half. If anyone at all is reading, my apologies.

As it turned out, Dream would score the most points of the game with 18. At some point in this process, I need to count up player stats. She had a 25 point game against SMU, a 25 point game against Tulsa...hmm, for some reason I thought Dean was fading but I think she's coming on strong. A good game all around.

With this game, we've ended eight games in Conference USA. I have a way of determining who wins the games I don't play out, but I don't think the method is working. Here are the Conference USA standings half-way through the season.



So how do you get four teams tied with 7-1 records? How do you have two teams with 0-8 records? It boggles the mind. It seems like the superior teams are just not being challenged.

The Blazers' 3-17 record, however, hurts UTEP in the rankings. They'd be ranked a lot higher if they played a tougher schedule.

AP Poll RPI: 50
Coaches Poll RPI: 41

Up next - the very tough East Carolina team, which is 7-1 in Conference USA - at least in my universe. In the real world, they were 8-8 for the year which proves that my system is broken.

UAB Card Set

UAB means "University of Alabama at Birmingham". Not much to say about the UAB squad.

However, when looking up some information about UAB on Wikipedia, I found out the following:

The UAB Blazers, in effect, started their entire athletics program with the creation of a men's basketball team in 1978. Setting the standards high from the start, UAB hired former UCLA, University of Illinois and Memphis head coach Gene Bartow. Known to many as the "Father of UAB athletics", Bartow led the Blazers to almost instant success.

What I didn't know is that Bartow was the successor to John Wooden at UCLA. It's amazing what you can learn when you're having fun.

Game 19 - UTEP 67, Memphis 49

"We flew into Memphis on Thursday to begin a big road trip. We play five out of the next six games on the road. Our next opponent is Memphis, and we know that Memphis isn't very good. But after we lost to SMU at home, Coach Ballard warned us about this road trip and to take every opponent seriously. So we do.

The new ESPN polls are out and I look at wherever UTEP is. I could be playing for Connecticut or Tennessee, and I wonder how things would be different if it weren't for the accident. That loss to SMU made us lose 16 votes in the Coaches' Poll. Only two coaches think we're a top 25 team. We're off everyone else's radar, and a win against Memphis won't impress anybody.

The upperclassmen say that every time we go to Memphis the coaches take us somewhere to see something important or fun if we have time. The university considers this part of a culture-building exercise. We went to see Sun Studios because it was relatively cheap - you don't think that the university is going to pay for that but the students could pay for it out of their pockets. (We had some, uh, "help" in paying for it.) Toya (LaToya Lloyd) said that she was tempted to cut a few records herself. Toya and Wilhelmina Moss started making up a blues ditty on the spot. I don't think the other tourists cared for their singing.

We got to play at the FedEx Forum. We were the first game of a double-header with the men's Memphis team. It was their last scheduled game there this year and some of the men's fans took the opportunity to watch us. I wonder how many were paying attention and how many were waiting for the men's game. (My guess: 5/95).

Seems that their coach must have told them to play hard defense and not take too many shots - to slow us down. Coach Ballard was telling us that she wanted more ball movement, and that Toya and I are were to try to find someone for the dime. So they were playing slow, we were playing slow and it was a slog.

I knew what kind of game it was #35 (Letell Hanson) hit a 3-pointer to start the game and picked up the foul too. We never lost the lead from the first basket and we charged out to a 13-4 lead. We led by 23 points at one time, 57-34.

That was when Coach told us to slow the game down even more. "Let's not blow these guys out." Coach said it because Memphis was just a bunch of slow girls. That roof would have to cave in for us to lose this game. She wanted touches after "1001, 1002". We tried to get a passing game going and Memphis scored the next 14 points because they knew we were still trying to figure it out. They closed to 57-49.

But Toya - who hadn't scored a field goal all night - woke up in the end when we were all in the bonus. She scored like 8 points in the last five minutes of the game, two baskets (one for 3 points) and some free throw shots.

Next up is Alabama-Birmingham. No plane for us, we get in a bus. I should have bought a harmonica to play on the trip so that Toya can practice her blues. How many notes can I learn before we get there?"

- Brenda Dean



Well, there you have it from the horse's mouth herself. Dean only ended up with 10 points in this game, but she shot 4 for 7 and had 3 rebounds and a steal. Letell Hanson's 20 point game was rather surprising. As for Memphis, they shot themselves out of the game - they only hit 14.8 percent of their shots in the first half and only hit 27.7 percent for the game. This game would probably lead to one of those perplexing interviews coaches give - really, what can you say when you've hit less than one of the five shots you've attempted. (Lyn Yeats had a 6-for-22 night, she took 22 of Memphis's 54 shooting attempts.)

Here are the final results in both polls - what each poll would look like if it included all positions instead of the Top 25, and if it were maintained on a game-to-game basis:

AP Poll Rank: 49
Coaches Poll Rank: 39

Not good enough quite yet to get in at-large in the NCAA Tournament. The Miners need to win a few more games to do that.

Memphis Card Set

I've looked up the roster on the Memphis women's basketball web site, and it looks like a lot of the players represented on this card set (with phony names) are already gone. Some graduated, some just...disappeared. The big news about Memphis this year is Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, a devout Muslim player who keeps her body covered. (Some Muslim sites argue about whether her dress meets Islamic standards. Some religious people love to argue about things like that.) Abdul-Qaadir will probably get more questions about her dress and her religion than questions about what she brings to the court in skill.

Anyway, Abdul-Qaadir isn't represented in this card set. Maybe next year.

P. S.: "Lyn Yeats's" free throw numbers are exactly what is represented on the card. She makes Shaq look like Steve Nash.

Game 18 - SMU 87, UTEP 74

"Everyone has gone out to do something with the rest of their day. I'm sitting in front of a psych book at the laboratory looking up some stupid statistical program. No one really knows who I am. I know they don't, because no one said something like, "bad loss". No one here really cares.

SMU was favored to be the top finisher in the CUSA and they wanted to prove it. Coach Ballard said, "For the Mustangs, this is a statement game." Last year, we won the CUSA regular season title but the Mustangs won the tournament. They came out and they played us hard. Usually, we can outrebound a team but not SMU. The way they matched up against us - that game went by like a rocket.

I got matched up against Ashlee Schuch. She said, "so you're the hillbilly senstatation."

"Bite me, bitch." We went at it. Shit, you should have seen what she got away with. You should have seen what I got away with. I was both popping elbows, shoving from the back. She wouldn't even get riled. She would just come right at me, daring me to stop her whenever we matched up in the Zone. And she came at me a lot.

We were tied in the first halff and then they started a run and we we went down by eight points. That's what Coach said, I wasn't looking up at the score. I was trying to run coach's double wing trap but Schuch slid right out of it. I couldn't run it but everyone else could and we managed to make our way back to a halftime tie at 42-42. "Defense, #13. Defense!" was what coach was telling me but I was still thinking about Schuch."

I got caught tapping Schuch's elbow when she was getting the shot off. I said something to the ref that I wouldn't want my mother to hear. I got T-ed up. They hit the shot. I was so dazed by the technical that I double-dribbled, and I don't think I've double dribbled since I was in 7th grade.

I snapped out of it and I answered with the 3-pointer. It was sweet. We began to wake up and we took the lead but they came right back at us. One of their players, #14 (Gowans) went down but SMU didn't stop.

Then...we just fell apart. I think we were up 66-63 and they went on a 12-0 run. We couldn't shoot, and SMU spread the floor on us. They started to move that ball around and whenever we were one-on-one with someone, they just had a few more inches. They could either get the midrange jumper or find the open man for the shot. I looked at everybody, and we were all just fish-eyed.

We closed it to 77-71, but they were on a roll. With about two minutes left, I fouled out. "Why aren't you talking?" Coach screamed at everyone else while I walked back to the bench. She didn't even acknowledge me. "You better learn to help each other or they're going to eat you alive in the tournament!"

It was over. SMU was high-fiving each other and celebrating on our own court. I had 25 points. I shot 10-for-30. Schuch had 24 points - she shot 10-for-14 and went 3-for-4 in 3-point shooting.

Hardly anyone was there. Coach Ballard let us have it. "Don't you dare look at me. I wasn't the one out there who wasn't communicating. I wasn't the one who let SMU shoot 56 percent on us. I wasn't the one who was out there not fighting for possessions. You better look at yourself and find the answer for that."

We're all trying to blow it off and pretend that it doesn't matter. But it does. Coach will kill us tomorrow. The season goes on. We won't go undefeated in C-USA. And I'm here stuck in the psych lab, hurting all over."

--Brenda Dean





It was a tough game, and I was actually surprised to see UTEP lose a game. After you build up a 15-2 record with your cards - UTEP had won six straight until this game. It just goes to show you that even if you tilt the table in your direction, it is very hard to go undefeated at any level of college basketball.

UTEP now goes on the road for three straight games, playing the next four games against opponents from the eastern United States. If the tournament started today, UTEP would be in third place. Four teams in C-USA get first round byes; the rest of those teams have to play an opening round game.

Here are the new ranks:

AP Poll Rank: 50
Coaches Poll Rank: 35

Up next - the Miners go to Memphis. Memphis is 6-12 and is 0-6 in CUSA play.

SMU Card Set

Still working on the season. UTEP faces SMU. This team - with the names changed that is - went to the postseason WNIT, so for a mid-major, they're good.





UTEP plays SMU twice this year. First at home, and then at both their and SMU's final game of the season. UTEP faces the daunting challenge of playing SMU during SMU's Senior Day, and I'm sure the game will be important for determining who goes where in the C-USA tournament.

Game 17 - UTEP 75, Tulsa 67

"We figured that we weren't going to have very much trouble with Tulsa. Tulsa had a really good player named Jazmin Beddow who could ball, and sometimes I wondered why Tulsa wasn't better that it was. The problem was that their fronts couldn't play any defense. They played that 7-11 defense - you know, put your hands up and remain perfectly still. Coach Ballard said that Tulsa wouldn't set a screen if their lives depended on it and they didn't look sharp on tape.

So we got off to a 17-10 lead. We had 17 points and we were just keeping them right off the boards. Tulsa didn't have a single rebound, offensive or defensive - they'd shoot, we'd pick up the ball and then we'd try. We were making it look really good - we were up 26-12 before they got a rebound - and they kept sending us to the foul line. We didn't notice that Tulsa was sneaking up on us, but they had closed the gap to six points at the end of the half and we went into halftime 36-30.

But when they came out in the second, they rolled out. Marcie Palin came out strong and she scored two buckets early on. (Never trust that name, you know.) Tulsa tied it at 38-38 with a bucket by Palin and she got the And One. That put them up 41-38 but Letell (Hanson) hit the 3 at the top of the arc and tied it back up.

After that, we were in a fight for our lives. Tulsa smelled blood, an upset on our home grounds. The game was getting physical - Patty Clark went out when she hurt her hand and went back on the bench in the first half - and we were just throwing everything at Tulsa that we could think of. Tulsa was setting screens. I think it's sick when these crappy teams have a good run, and then all of a sudden they remember their fundamentals.

At one point, we were leading 68-61 when Palin closed it to 68-64 with the bucket and drawing the foul. She would score 25 points on us. Down 70-64, and with the clock running down, they were going to have to one of us to the foul lines.

"Put it in #13's hands," Coach said. Those were my hands.

So Tulsa put that press on at the end and they sent me to the foul line twice. They managed to close the game to four but I hit all four of my shots, including the last two shots of the game that gave us an eight point lead and killed a comeback.

We're 5-0 in conference. I'm starting to become very aware of that, and everyone else is starting to be aware of it, too." I dread this game with SMU coming up. Coach is going to work us like dogs.

--Brenda Dean

(* * *)



I think it's been about two weeks since I played this game, so I don't remember much about it. I don't keep a shot-for-shot record, but I do scribble notes. What you read above is basically recounted from the notes, and I can't vouch for its accuracy. Maybe Brenda wrote that diary entry after the fact, I don't know.

Okay, so it's been busy. I'll give you an idea of how the C-USA looks right now. UTEP leads 5-0 in conference, followed by East Carolina, Southern Mississippi and Southern Methodist, all of whom are 4-1. Memphis and Rice are both 0-5 in conference.

After the Southern Methodist game - the next game on the schedule - UTEP goes on a long road trip, playing five out of six games on the road, including the longest road trip of the year against East Carolina on the road.

The current rankings:

AP Poll RPI: 41
Coaches Poll RPI: 31

This was a slide backwards in the Coaches RPI. Obviously, there's no such thing as a game-per-game RPI. This just gives you an idea of where the team stands at any particular moment. There won't even be a new poll until after the SMU game.

(You know, maybe I'm too invested in this thing....)

Tulsa Card Set

Okay, here's the Tulsa card set. I'm trying to catch up with some of my recordkeeping - this little side project isn't dead yet.

Game 16 - UTEP 59, Tulane 53

"I was rooming with Toya (LaToya Lloyd) now. We were sitting in a hotel room in New Orleans, thinking about our first C-USA road game against Tulane. It's a long, long flight from El Paso to New Orleans, longer than I thought it was going to be. She said to me, 'So do you think Debra Rodgers will say hi to us?'

Debra Rodgers was a host of ESPN women's basketball. I said, "What, you think she'll fly in to see us?"

"Yeah. I think so. The game's gonna be on ESPN2."

Oh shit. Toya was right. I didn't even know! So I'm calling my family like crazy on Toya's cell phone, saying 'Turn on the game! Turn on the game! I'm gonna be on ESPN2!' I hoped I had a better showing in my second game than in my first one, because I want to play in the W someday. If it's still around, that is.

We drove by the football stadium. I remember when I was in high school, and I turned on the TV, and instead of a stadium there was one big pond full of water, its outlines marked by the stadium. The bus took us through some damaged parts of New Orleans. They still hadn't cleaned everything up. It was spooky, and knowing that we were going to be on national TV set me on edge. I like to drink a can of Mountain Dew and have a Snickers bar before a game; when we tipped off I was going to be caffeinated up.

We get to the basketball arena and Coach is telling us how important this is. 'You know that playing at UTEP is tough for other teams. Well, you won't be a championship team unless you can win on the road. They're telling each other, 'not in our house'! Well, you have to go out there and face that. Ladies, there are a lot of things that you can't control. But you can always control effort. I want to see effort."

So we go out there all fired up...and nothing.. We fall behind 6-0. Then 8-0. Then 12-0 and Coach Ballard calls time out. She looks at us and she says, 'Don't make me hickory switch you back to El Paso. You got yourselves into this mess, now go out there and get yourselves out of it. Don't expect me to call a time out for you every time you're facing adversity."

It didn't look like we were going to pull out of it. We were down 22-10 and we were in a lot of foul trouble. Going over the back. Being out of position to get the ball. Before we knew it, Toya was sitting, Patty Clark was sitting, and I was sitting.

Then, we went on a 9-0 run to close it to 22-19. We were way over the foul limit - we had 12 fouls in the first quarter - but we managed to fight our way back to a 24-23 game at halftime.

Coach held Toya out after halftime. She held a lot of us out, including me. Brianna (Neal) wasn't hitting any thing, but we had Antonia Martynau out there at shooting guard, and she pulled our bacon out of the burning fat. She hit a couple of back-to-back 3-pointers that had everyone on the bench on their feet and waving towels. Then she hit the next basket. Eight straight points from Marty, and we took a 10-0 run ot lead 35-26.

We were still having foul trouble, though. We were going to be over the limit again, and they brought it back to 43-41. I was back on the court, and my job was just to dish the ball to either #34 (Williamette Moss) or our designated second scorer. Tulane wasn't going to go away. Toya got hit with her fifth foul, and we were down our starting point guard.

Down 49-46, I managed to hit a 15 point jumper and drew the foul. I made the free throw to put the Miners up 52-46 and we were starting to edge forward. This was going to be close, because Tulane still wouldn't give up. We were up 57-53 and Tulane would get the next possession, but they were pressing us anyway. #34 drew the foul and hit both shots. Tulane couldn't make anything happen in the final 30 seconds despite two attempts at a long ball.

We did it. 59-53. We wouldn't have to play the Green Wave ever again - until we played them in the post-season tournament, and I hope we didn't."

--Brenda Dean



The jump Tulane got early in the game made me think that UTEP was doomed even before they started. Tulane had three Home Index points and UTEP was getting in a lot of foul trouble. So would the limitations on visiting UTEP be enough to win the game for Tulane.

Answer: No. I don't count offensive rebounds but UTEP outrebounded Tulane 38-29. Furthermore, despite going to the free throw line 26 times, Tulane could only hit 14 shots from the stripe. If Tulane had been more accurate at the free throw line and had a few more rebounds, they could have made a game of it. C'est la vie. Brenda's happy, and I'm happy.

Up next: UTEP goes back to El Paso to play Tulsa, which is 1-3 in CUSA - and 3-13 overall.

AP Poll RPI: 41
Coaches Poll RPI: 29

Hey, you look good when you're 14-2 on the year. But will UTEP ever crack the Top 25 in either poll?

Game Fifteen: UTEP 72, Houston 61

"I had been looking forward to this game since they announced it. Coach Ballard told us that Houston would be tough. 'They come out and give it all they've got. You know how tough that game was when we played those former Houston players. They call them the Cougars because they bite and claw at you. If you want to be conference champs, you'd better beat them on your home court, cause they might be too tough to beat at home. They take it right to you.' Normally, that's just Coach talking, but I believed it.

This was going to be a nationally televised game. And we definitely had an audience for it. It wasn't as if we filled up the Don Haskins Center, but I can tell you that there were more there than at one of my sold-out high school games. This would be the first time my parents got a chance to see me play on TV, and I knew that my extended family would be watching. It would be on ESPN2. Two teams with at least 10 wins playing for position in CUSA.

I was still suffering from that poke in the eye I got from the Rice game. I tried out some of those clear goggles, but they don't do much for your peripheral vision. At least, my eyes would be protected this time.

Anyway, we hit the court and we get lucky because Houston gets into foul trouble early on. Their coach took a T straight up and I had no idea why. Someone said she stuck her tongue out at a ref, some said that she said something that the ref didn't like and we took a 1-0 lead...because I shanked the first free throw. I guess I was nervous, huh, but those goggles were ignorant.

We take a lead in the first half, but #35 (Letell Hanson) goes down. Brianna (Neal) was ready to hop right in there. I played pretty well in the first half, but I had problems with those goggles, and the doctor recommended that I play with some sort of eye protection. I couldn't see those Houston girls moving around me, and when we went into the 2-3 I looked pretty sorry.

We took a 35-25 lead at the end of the first. Early in the second, I almost collided with a Houston player, and Coach takes me out. 'Can you see in those things?' she said.

'Not really well,' I admitted. I almost ran right into a screen, and there was a lot that I couldn't see coming.

'You've had enough. I shouldn't have put you out there, but you wanted to be out there,' Coach said. 'So you sit.'

So there I was during the second, sitting next to Mackie (Immaculata Suarez), with who I've had bad blood. We didn't say a word to each other. All I could do was watch. Houston wasn't going to go down easily, and they stayed within single digits of us in the second half. They started closing back. Up 57-54, we gave up a couple of fouls and before we knew it, Houston had tied us 57-57.

We were on f***ing knife edge, because I didn't want to lose to nasty Houston in our house. We were leading 64-61, and then Tony (Antonina Martynau) sinks this off-balance shot, and #12 (Shanna Jetton) draws her fifth foul. We held her to two points.

That sparked us. We were on a roll and the Cougars didn't score another point all afternoon. Mackie got out there and Coach just told her to dish the ball, and she did what she was told. Tony was on fire. She scored 15 points. Our starters only scored 31 points, everything came off the bench in that game. Their monster center, Woelfle, tried one last shot with time expired and Patty Clark just f***king blocked it! Reject!

I wanted to score more than nine points. But that game was great. When we play them at Houston, they'll come with everything they've got."

--Brenda Dean



Some trivia for this game and a reference to one of the 1993 rules of Statis Pro Basketball.

UTEP only had 3 Team Index points. (4 Home Index for UTEP - 1 Road Index for Houston). Obviously, UTEP would have to conserve its points. However, the technical foul earned by the Houston coach in the first half took away an Index Point from UTEP! Why? According to the rules, a technical foul can be considered an attempt by a coach to work over the refs, and the refs begin giving the team the benefit of the doubt.

What happens when the home team has no Index Points left and the visiting team earns a technical? According to the 1993 rules, the visiting team gains an Index Point of its own! If you know that the home team is holding on to an Index Point, and if you're head by about five or more late in the game, I can imagine some player deliberately provoking a technical foul to strip away that Index Point.

So how is UTEP looking in the rankings?

AP Poll RPI: 46
Coaches Poll RPI: 34

UTEP has four votes in the Coaches poll, but is not ranked, obviously. UTEP isn't ranked in the AP poll, either.

In the next game, UTEP will be on the road against Tulane. See the previous card set if you want to look at the cards. UTEP killed Tulane 90-52 in their first meeting of the year.

The 3,680 attendance is UTEP's biggest attendance of the year - but you know in women's basketball that attendees sometimes masquerade as empty seats.

Houston Card Set

UTEP invites Houston to El Paso, Texas for a game that will televised (in our little Imaginationland) on ESPN2. All of Brenda Dean's friends back home will get to see her.



Look at Racquel Woelfle's "Block = 13" rating. They also sort of have their Brenda Dean-like play maker in Debora Fehrenbach with a stamina of 24. Unfortunately for UTEP, everyone on the Houston roster is healthy. This ought to be "a good 'un" as UTEP is both teams are 2-0 in C-USA conference play, UTEP is 12-2 and Houston is 10-4.

Game Fourteen: UTEP 69, Rice 51

"There are certain things I can't say. But this has been a horrible week. It's been a horrible week at school. These psych labs are just going to kill me, the coach doesn't like the fact that practice has to be rearranged to accomodate my psych lab. I am the only UTEP player majoring in psych.

It's been a horrible personal week as well. And I'm definitely not talking about that, no way, no how. Just to say that someone who I thought was a very close friend turned on me, and then tried to turn the team on me. I don't think it worked, but I know who my real friends are now.

I thought I could work this out on the basketball court. I don't think that we really took Rice all that seriously. #4 and I (Deborah Scheller) were matched up against each other. Well, she had a hair up her butt and she was out of control. Probably by accident, but she stuck her finger in my eye when she was waving those arms of her around.

The ref didn't see it, and I went down. I left the court with no points scored and 18:23 left on the clock in the first half. I didn't return to the game. They sent me to get my eye checked out later on.

I guess Rice got bold and they took an 8-4 lead. Coach Ballard let the team have it. "Get your asses in the game!" she said. We went on a 10-0 run and that put us in the lead again. We didn't look back.

But we couldn't blow out Rice. We should be knocking a team like Rice senseless, but they hung in there. We scored the first four points of the second half to lead 37-26...but Rice went on a 10-0 run to close the game to 37-36.

Then we got serious. We didn't blow Rice out by forty, but we kept the at length for the rest of the game. Coach Ballard said that was an ugly win. Ugly-ass win, and I could only see it out of one eye. But we'll take it.

So they managed to get in touch with an eye doctor, one special visit to the office later...and they checked out my eye. I had some swelling due to a tiny cut. Some antibiotics, and two days of ice packs and ibuprofen and my vision should clear up completely in time for the Houston game. I can hope.

Our next game is at home against Houston. I'm going to wear goggles. This game is going to be on ESPN 2. Everyone I know back home in Pulaski County will be watching that game. Just let me loose, God."

-- Brenda Dean






It's been a busy week and as you can tell, there haven't been any recent posts. The dramatic touches come from a book that I might write someday. So there you go, maybe it will be interesting.

Anyway, without Dean on the court no one dominated. Only four players broke the 10 point barrier, and the top scorer on each team only scored 14 points. However, UTEP picked up 40 rebounds and that did it.

I went ahead and used the secondary rating for Rice players when the Secondary rating was better than Field Goal rating. It didn't help Rice.

Brenda will be back for the Houston game just in time. (She had a Z Injury result, as you can guess.) Here are the current RPI rankings:

AP Poll RPI: 50
Coaches Poll RPI: 42

Playing the 4-10 Rice hurt UTEP's strength of schedule, but UTEP still gets two votes in the Coaches Poll. Houston is 10-4, so a win should raise all boats.

Rice Card Set

UTEP will play Rice next, and I wanted to post the Rice card set.


A few things to notice:

1) Look at the low field goal ratings. I think only one Rice player shot over .400 all year.
2) Virtually every player is better on "secondary" than they are on "action". My strategy for Rice will be to have the players shoot immediately unless someone like T'wana Gobbi (assist = 52) is holding the ball.
3) The rebounding ratings are also generally row. No shooting + no rebounding = bad team.
4) In particularly, look at the -10 Road Index. Rice didn't win a single game at their opponent's court all year (they were 1-1 on neutral courts).

Game Thirteen: UTEP 90, Tulane 52

"I think everyone was nervous with the beginning of conference play. Coach Ballard emphasized that this Tulane team was going to be tough, and that the beginning of conference play was always tough. "This is going to be a brand new season," she said in the locker room before the game.

Do you ever dread something and then when you get there you find out it was a bunch of nothing? That was what this game was. Tulane couldn't hit shit. We started off on a 12-0 run and there was no comeback. Coach said that we could beat Tulane at the boards if we tried, and we made them pay for it anything they tried to get close to a rebound. I'm looking at the little piece of paper they give us and they had like, what, seven rebounds or something in the first half? That's weak.

All they could do was foul us. I heard their coach screaming about the calls, but they were just frustrated. They didn't go to the line at all in the first half. Zero for Zero, baby. At halftime, it was 44-14 and this one was in the bag.

#35 (Letell Hanson) hadn't taken a shot all during the first half, so they let her loose, and she went 4-for-5 from behind the 3-point line. Sweet. At the beginning of the second half, Coach sat me out. 'I want you to score those big points against a good team. You're going to probably be the first person I sit out when there's a rout," she told me. I had 20 after the first half, and only when our starters and scrubs were getting tired did they put me back in in the second. I scored 18 points - 38 overall - and two off my personal best. And I didn't even play the whole damned game. If you would have kept me in full time, Coach, UTEP would have got 100 points."

--Brenda Dean



I was truly surprised by the magnitude of the rout. Tulane wasn't too bad in Conference USA, UTEP was facing a conference opponent for the first time, Tulane had a couple of players who could really shoot. I never expected something of this magnitude. UTEP pretty much slowed down the game through the back half of the first half and a big part of the second, with the only rule being, "if Brenda Dean gets open, let her shoot it."

It's the first time I've seen a team go 0-for-0 at the free throw line during a half. Tulane had 7 rebounds in the first half, and 9 rebounds in the second. Patricia Clark had 12 rebounds all by her lonesome. Tulane shot 23 percent in the first half and with no rebounding power, they had no chance.

It was getting ugly in the back part of the second half. Tulane's players were in deep foul trouble - two fouled out - they had one injured player and two players with forced rests. Two players had used up their stamina and there was the real danger of an all "no stamina" team on the court. I was thinking about some exception to allow the rested players to come back on the court, with the limitation that they could only shoot on secondary.

My house rules for stamina are a bit tougher than the regular rules for Statis Pro Basketball.

a) A player who has run out of stamina may not shoot, even from secondary. If the ball ends up in the players hands after the second advance phase (a "must shoot situtation"), then I treat it as time expiring or the ball being lost in come other way. The player is not charged with a shot attempt.
b) The rebound rating of such players is lowered by five.
c) The defense rating of such players expands to +5.
d) Players who have run out of stamina may neither steal nor block. However, they can still assist.
e) Players who have run out of stamina may not take part in double-teams.

A few noted about the boxscore. First, there is no half-by-half breakdown of assists, steals, and blocks. I simply forgot to do it.

Second, note the attendance as "not recorded". Here's how I'm treating attendance. I take attendance right off the real-life UTEP-Tulane boxscore. I'm assuming that "not recorded" means that the attendance was one of those few-hundred-people affairs and that UTEP's media director decided not to print it.

I do some randomization based on the defense number. For every game that UTEP wins in my game that the real-life UTEP didn't win, I generate a random two digit number. If the number is between 01 and 25, I give UTEP an extra one percent boost in attendance. (UTEP's attendance should now run around 103 percent of normal.)

I don't want to get into some sort of advanced metric for attendance. I'd rather just do it on the fly. After all, I want to have a life outside of this game.

Oh yes, and the current UTEP RPI rankings:

AP Poll RPI: 47
Coaches Poll RPI: 34

Hey, a few more wins and we might break the Top 25 on the Coaches Poll.

Tulane Card Set

We're getting ready to enter conference play, and the Tulane cards are ready to post.



As it turns out, for the first time, the "injury rule" actually came up with an injured player. Jennifer Jiles will be injured during the UTEP-Tulane game, which will reduce Tulane's active roster down to ten players.

Game Twelve: UTEP 86, Idaho State 60

"We made it back from New Mexico. Two major observations.

One: the players from Idaho State are -- well, not that I'm saying that I'm gay, I just want to make that clear -- they're pretty. I thought we were playing a bunch of cheerleaders. It was a very whitebread team, everybody had long straight hair and looked fantastic. We looked like a bunch of bums next to these girls. They were fine. They even smelled good.

I'll get to the other observation later. We didn't have LaToya (Thomas) and Letell (Hanson), so we started the sisters, Brianna and Anna Neal. We got off to a slow start. I wasn't hitting anything, and Idaho State led 10-5 at one time. We caught up to them, and after we went up 14-12, we went on an 11-2 run to lead 25-14.

So we thought we had the game in hand, but they came back to within three points, 29-26. I was sitting on the bench with two fouls. We managed to take a nine point lead into halftime, 43-34.

We couldn't knock them out, though. We were up 56-44, and then Idaho State went on an 8-0 run. They got to within 56-52 and I was really wondering if we were going to blow this game.

It didn't happen. We were ahead 67-55, and Antonina Martynau hit a 3-pointer. Then I hit a 3-pointer, we were up 73-55, and it was smooth sailing. I think that pair of back-to-back threes snapped the back of Idaho State.

That leads to my second observation. I don't like not scoring. I just figured it out. I'm selfish. I would rather have the ball than not have it. Sitting on the bench when I get into foul trouble just kills me. I fouled out - again - so I'll hear it from Coach Ballard, who didn't seem too happy about our win and really took the joy out of our celebration.

I think that everyone knows about me, because I can tell by the way they defend me that they know my weaknesses. Okay...make that three observations...."

-- Brenda Dean



UTEP finally gets its 10th win as the last non-conference game of the regular season ends. After this, it's all CUSA teams, and then the CUSA tournament, and then (hopefully) a spot in one of the two postseason tournaments.

Yes, Idaho State had two players foul out, but only in the final part of the game. The Bengals lack of depth didn't seem to hurt them very much. As for the Miners, the points and rebounds were spread around quite nicely. Five players scored in double digits, and three players rebounded in double digits. Williamette Moss and Marta Jaworowski each had double-doubles.

A big help for Texas-El Paso was the fact that they only had four personal fouls in the last half. Then again, UTEP won by 26 points, so maybe even if UTEP had fouled 14 times they would have still won the game.

Here are the poll results, if polling were completed after this game:

AP Poll RPI: 52
Coaches Poll RPI: 41

UTEP's next game is a home game against Tulane. I have Tulane as 8-4; their real-life record was 8-5. Hopefully, a win over Tulane might get UTEP closer to a Top 25 spot, at least in the Coaches Poll.

The great thing about playing the conference part of the schedule: no longer will opposing schools need to be adjusted by strength of conference.

Idaho State Card Set

Here are the Idaho State cards. Idaho State is UTEP's next opponent, as UTEP lost the first round of the tournament semi-finals to Baylor and New Mexico beat Idaho State:



The adjustment factor for UTEP's cards is 1.0860 - the ratio in conference strength between UTEP's C-USA conference and the Big Sky conference of Idaho State. Here is the resulting UTEP card set:



(* * *)

A few facts about the game and the rosters:

a) Note that Idaho State's roster only has 10 players on it - and in order to give them as much as a 10-player roster, I had to allow a player with Stamina = 1 (which I suggest that no one do, because it violates the spirit of the game).

b) I now have to write a little bit about injury. With both LaToya Lloyd and Letell Hanson suffering one game injuries, they won't be playing for UTEP. Annie and Brianna Neal will be starting as a sister duo at guard. The question becomes, "How do you determine injured players for the other team? After all, if you're allowing your own players to be injured, who's to say that the other team isn't suffering from injury problems?"

I've noticed that the Z Result - Injury result seems to affect at least one of teams on the average of every other game. That means a 50 percent chance of drawing the card (*) during any game, which means that a team has a 25 percent chance of having an injury affect their roster.

Since the current injury chart I'm using looks like this:

Games Played By Player During Season: Injury Result

5 or less: Current game + 4 games
6-14 : Current game + 3 games
15-19 : Current game + 2 games
20-28 : Current game + 1 game
29-30 : Current game only.

This means that we only have to look at the last four games or so. Any injuries before the last four games would have "healed". Therefore the procedure is

1) Find something that can generate a number between 0 and 100. Each number is associated with a time period associated with the opposing team: "four games ago", "three games ago", "two games ago" and "one game ago".
2) Generate a number four times.
3) If the number falls between 01 and 25, that means that the opposing team had an injury during the assocated time frame.
4) Allocate the injury.

It's #4, "allocate the injury" that I'm going to leave up to you. Frankly, I list all players of the enemy team by stamina, add up total stamina, assign each player a percentage, and then use that 01-100 generator. My random generator is a BA II Plus Texas Instruments calculator, you might decide to use 10-sided dice, or use an Internet random generator.

Once it's determined who had the injury - if any - cross reference the table above to see if the injury is long enough to affect the player during the current scheduled game.

As is turned out, no Idaho State player suffered an injury. What a pity.

c) Index for UTEP at home: 4 - (-3) = 7 points
Index for UTEP away: -1 - (-1) = -1 + 1 = 0 points

We will divide by two and round down on the neutral court. UTEP will receive 7 / 2 = 3.5, rounded to 3 Team Index points.