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.

Game Eleven: #7 Baylor 73, UTEP 58

"Everything I worried about happening happened.

It hurts even to write about this game. I should have known that it was going to be a crappy game when Toya (LaToya Lloyd) went down in the first 20 seconds. She twisted her left ankle and went off the court limping. That made it all the tougher.

So that left the rest of us to fight off Baylor. We were able to hang with Baylor - for nine points - then Baylor hit the accelerator and before we knew it, we were down by 11. They just knocked us off the boards like a windshield wiper hitting a fly. Without the boards, we had to shoot and Coach Ballard tried to keep Baylor away from me - my job was to kick it out to the guards. It didn't matter because I couldn't play forward, I still can't play forward, I feel like a fool at the post. Those Baylor girls play to your back and they put their elbows right into you when you back up into them.

I got frustrated. I fouled. I spent most of my time on the bench. Baylor kept taking swipes at me. I scored seven points. Seven god-damned points. It was a nightmare. #34 (Williamette Moss) didn't score in the entire game. We just had no power to score from close range at all.

First Baylor was up by 11. Then by 15. Then at one time they were up by like, what, 24 in the second half? I think they put it on cruise control, but even on cruise control, they were tough. There were four fouls on me and I came in the second half because we were desperate. Ten second laters, I had my fifth foul. Coach Ballard said a swear.

We walked off that court as whipped as a team can get, and in front of friggin New Mexico, which suddenly turned into the biggest Baylor fans in the world. I am beginning to hate the state of New Mexico with a passion. I still cried at the end of this game, but not as much. Those fans just got to me."

--Brenda Dean



Egad. This looked pretty much like a #4 vs. #12 game in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. These games go like this:

a) #12 is coming off being the best team in their conference. They think they can hang.
b) They hang for about five minutes.
c) Reality sets in.

For UTEP, reality sat in and Brenda Dean was particulary ineffective. Without LaToya Lloyd, this left UTEP to rely on its reserves. The problem was that Baylor's starters were just so good that alone they scored 65 points against the entire UTEP lineup. (As you can tell, Baylor's bench players only score eight points.) Three Baylor players didn't even shoot.

To add insult to injury, Letell Hanson also was injured near the end of the game. Nothing serious: both Lloyd and Hanson will be out one game, and Idaho State will hopefully not be a formidable opponent.

It's very hard writing so long after the fact - the game is just a vague fuzzy memory. I can at least tell you how the ratings have changed for UTEP. It hurts UTEP that they lost the game but it helps that they've played such a tough team.

AP Poll RPI: 53
Coaches Poll RPI: 41

UTEP actually moves up in the Coaches Poll RPI, which puts more weight on strength of schedule. They actually move up one spot in the poll - whereas in the AP Poll RPI, UTEP drops five places.

In the alternate game, I have New Mexico defeating Idaho State. This sets up New Mexico vs. Baylor as the headline game (which I won't be playing) and puts UTEP vs. Idaho State in the consolation game.

An Update

Just a word. I have not forgotten about my Statis Pro Basketball project. As a matter of fact, I've been regretting not having the chance to play. "Put me in, coach!"

Last week, I was in New York for a little while. This weekend, I'm in Kentucky. Work has been very very busy. But trust me, we will see UTEP play Idaho State. My desk is still dedicated to the game.

Maybe I'll have to take some desk pictures.

Neutral Courts

Up next for UTEP - a game against #7 Baylor on a neutral court, this time in New Mexico.

First, Baylor's card set.



As you can see, Baylor's impressive stats look even more impressive when you multiply them by that 1.203 factor which signifies the strength of the Big Twelve vs. Conference USA. My rule of thumb is that anyone who is shooting in the "fives" - whose field goal range on the card starts with 11 and ends up somewhere in the 50s - is a force to be reckoned with. There are two or three good players on Baylor who have that kind of shooting ability. Add to it the fact that that 1.203 factor boosts rebounding as well and Baylor is a team well deserving of its Top Ten ranking.

The only hope for UTEP is that Baylor's shooters do poorly and they get a few forced rests to take them off the courts. Other than that, it might be a long game for UTEP. On the other hand, I said the same thing about Missouri and UTEP had no trouble with Mizzou.

(* * *)

The next thing for me to figure out was "how do you handle a neutral court"?

My first notion was to simply remove Team Index points as a factor. This way, neither team could call on its special and mysterious powers to ignore forced rests and fouls, to grab rebounds, etc.

However, if you look at the Baylor Card set above, Baylor has a Home Court Index of "9" and a Road Index of "7". UTEP has a Home Court Index of "4" and a Road Index of "-1".

The 1993 Statis Pro Basketball Rules introduced the idea of Home and Road indices. One subtracts the smaller of the numbers from the larger and the team putting pu the bigger number gets the index points.

If the game were at Baylor, Baylor would have 9 (Baylor Home Index) - (-1) (UTEP Road Index) for 10 Team Index Points.
If the game were at UTEP, Baylor would have 7 (Baylor Road Index) - 4 (UTEP Home Index) for 3 Team Index Points. Even though UTEP still keeps its home court advantage in setting assignments, Baylor gets 3 points.

Since Baylor is still dynamite against UTEP either at home or on the road, it's unfair for Baylor to be deprived of their Index Points. Hell, they have Index Points even when they play in the hostile environment of UTEP.

The solution: for neutral courts one splits the difference of Index Points. What is between Baylor +3 points and Baylor +10 points? That would be Baylor +6 Team Index points, rounding down (3 + 10)/2. Baylor gets 6 Team Index Points on a theoretically neutral court. If it were the difference between, say, Baylor +10 at home and UTEP +4 at home, Baylor would get (10 - 4)/2 = 3 Team Index points on a neutral court.

There is one more advantage home teams get in the game: the visiting team is forced to put its player cards on the table first, and then the home team decides how it wants to position its players against the visiting team's players. On neutral courts, each team will swap duties. For the first half of the game, one team gets to choose the most advantageous matchups and during the second half, the other team chooses.

More on the outcome of this game later.

Game Ten: UTEP 74, Missouri 60

"We played our last home game of the season before going to New Mexico for their tournament. We know that Baylor is coming up next. We're not supposed to talk about it until after this game, so we wanted to get this game out of the way.

Missouri is around the bottom of the Big Twelve. If we couldn't beat the Tigers, we weren't going to beat Baylor, no way.

I don't know what it was, but I just had...swagger. I was c'mon-c'mon-c'mon-let's-play-this-game! I guess there was something really evil inside me because I caught the eye of #55 (Wanette Preus). Missouri was the opposite of Utah. A bunch of black girls and a few white girls. I said, "Hey #55! Mustache!"

She had a mustache. I can't deny it. She looked at me like, "say, WHAT?" And she walks toward me but the other girls pull her away.

I smiled. I got inside her head. #55 played about two minutes before they sat her ass right on the bench. She kept trying to find me and go after me, and her coach sat her down. We built up a big lead on Missouri, and we knew were were going to win. All of those Missouri girls went right after me, determined to teach me a lesson for hurting ol' #55's feelings. Bump and claw, bump and claw. #11 (Nita Clinger) said something to me before the half that I don't think I've heard anyone said. I was "#13! #13, you bleeding c__t!" The referee turned right around and slapped #11 with a big fat "T".

The second half we coasted. We were up by 20, but I shot for shit. 8-for-30 shooting. Those Missouri girls were wearing me out. We were up by over 20, Coach put me on the bench. Late in the game, Missouri turned on the press, and they kept it on. We sort of wore out at the end, but we were up by so much that the Tigers couldn't come back. We won by 14.

After the game, Coach looked at me and said, 'You better pick and choose your moments, Brenda.' I don't know what to make of that."

--Brenda Dean




I thought Missouri was going to be a lot tougher - Big Twelve team vs. C-USA team - but they proved to be surprisingly lightweight. Part of it was that Missouri got hit with two quick forced rests and one of them was Wanetta Preus, one of their better, high-stamina shooters. Missouri's lack of depth hurt them.

I remember a comment by Frisco Del Rosario when he wrote about an NCAA player that averaged over 6 turnovers per game. Unfortunately, Statis Pro Basketball does not factor a player's tendency to turn the ball over into the game. It sort of assigns turnovers equally, or at the least, turnovers are motivated more by opposing steal factors and random chance. Nothing inherent in the player's card tilts a player's chances of turning over in any particular direction.

The next team up is Baylor. In my universe, I have four teams invited to the fictional New Mexico Classic - UTEP, New Mexico, Idaho State, and some other low-ranked, unnamed team. However, the other team bailed out and there was a chance for New Mexico to get Baylor. So the question was: play the traditional New Mexico-UTEP game or give up the chance for Baylor.

Result: Baylor will play UTEP and New Mexico will get Idaho. New Mexico figures that UTEP will lose to Baylor, and then New Mexico gets to play Baylor after they beat Idaho. Win win for everyone - except for fans of the traditional rivalry game.

Next time, I'll build the schedule better and not forget that New Mexico-UTEP match.

As for the press, with UTEP up about 23 points, Missouri turned on the press late in the game. On the Fast Action Cards there is an option called "Press". If the defense calls for a Press, all Action and Advance phases are replaced with the results under "Press". Sometimes, the press fails and you get a result for the offensive called "Pass to choice, who scores". Other times, you get "Line Violation" or "Double Dribble", and you get the chance for a turnover. It was definitely true that UTEP was slowing down the game - UTEP doesn't run up the score - but that press really worked for Missouri.

AP Poll RPI: 48
Coaches Poll RPI: 42

UTEP will break into the next Coaches Top #25 poll - one of the 31 voters will put UTEP at the bottom of his or her list. One total vote for UTEP, to be listed in the scrap votes at the end under the 25th team. One vote, and hopefully, more to come.

Missouri Card Set

Here is the card set for Missouri:

Since it's a busy week this week, no snappy comments. Gaze at the glory that is Mizzou. The multiplicative factor is 1.204 of Big Twelve vs. Conference USA, so even weak teams in the Big Twelve become potential powerhouses.

Game Nine - UTEP 80, Utah 77

"I don't know how good we're supposed to be. I think we're very sloppy on defense at times - look who is talking! - but I was very happy to get that win in Salt Lake City. I had never been to Salt Lake City before and the team bus drove by the Mormon Temple. It was beautiful, it made me feel really religious.

Anyway, Utah looked like a bunch of Mormon girls. All tall blondes and only one black girl. We knew these guys were going to be tough and LaToya (Lloyd) was suspended and Marta (Jaworworski) was hurting. We hit the court and we start off with an 8-0 lead in front of the biggest crowd I've seen all year. So we're feeling really good but they catch up to us. They lead by three points at one time, and we're both racing back and forth. By halftime, we're in the lead, 42-39. They keep trying to slow the game down but Coach wants us to gun and they start playing our game. Big mistake on Utah.

The second half is just like the first. Sometimes we lead, sometimes they lead. It's going to come down to who has the last lead of the game. I get five fouls with about six minutes left and I'm sitting on the bench and praying. It's late and Utah is up 71-70. Annie Neal attempts a three pointer and #24 (Sharron Grogg) collides with Annie as she lets go. Annie misses the shot, and they call the Utes for the foul. Annie hits all three of her fre ethows. We're up 73-71.

We keep the lead. They put my roommate, Mackie (Immaculata Suarez) into the game and she finds Annie Neal's sister, Brianna under the basket. Bri hits the shot and gets the foul to put us up 77-73. Then Bri hits the free throw and I know that we've won this game.

Damn. UTAH AIN'T UNDEFEATED ANYMORE! We were all very happy for the win, and I named Mackie the Player of the Game for the way she dished to Bri when Utah was all over her. She doesn't get to play very much because she's a little shaky for being one of Mexico's best players.

I didn't need to see the Mormon Temple on the way back. The only thing I needed to see in Utah, I saw, which was a scoreboard that read 77-80. I don't know how we keep winning, but people better watch out for us."

--Brenda Dean



It was definitely a great outcome for UTEP. Not only did they manage to go to Utah shorthanded, but they managed a road win that really helps their RPI. Beating a team ranked 26-50 on the road is worth RPI bonus points. Therefore:

AP RPI Rank: #49
Coaches RPI Rank: #50

Not much more to say, except I'm sort of surprised how well UTEP is doing. The real UTEP was 4-5 at this time; it seems that Dean's presence has been at least four more wins. Two of UTEP's wins have come by three points or less - a 74-72 home win over Fresno State and this three-point home win over Utah.

There are three more games in the non-conference part of the season. In the first game, Missouri comes to UTEP in the last home game before the conference part of the season. In the final two games, UTEP attends the fictional "New Mexico Classic", where they play Baylor in the first round and the winner of New Mexico/Idaho State in the second round. If UTEP keeps winning, they might actually deserve an at-large bid.

Utah Card Set

This is the card set for Utah, which is UTEP's next opponent. UTEP will travel to Salt Lake City to play the Runnin' Utes.

This is also a very worrisome team. We're going to play the next game shorthanded. LaToya Lloyd has been suspended for one game on recommendation of C-USA for a fight during the Jackson State game. Marta Jaworowski is out for one game for an injury. Therefore, both teams have 11 players they can suit up.

The multiplication factor for Utah was 1.04, due to the strength of the Mountain West conference over Conference USA. They have four players with killer stamina and Elnora Bastien's accuracy is just ludicrous. After that, Utah has very weak depth. If Utah gets some forced rests or is forced to resort to the bench, we have a good shot. If not, it's going to be a long game.

Furthermore, Utah has a full 10 Team Index Points - 9 - (-1). If things don't go Utah's way, Utah can just ignore the results. Once again, our chances of winning on the road depend on a lot. If Utah has to burn off points quickly, it could be an even game; if Utah faces no adverse results they can take a lead and keep it.

One thing: Utah will help our RPI. Just by random chance - the Running Utes won 70 percent of their games - I have them as 8-0 going into this game. An 8-0 team vs. a 7-1 team should help build up my imaginary excitement.

Game Eight: UTEP 94, Jackson State 52

"This was our first game after final exams. Didn't do bad. Got two As and two Bs to make the Dean's List, but both of the Bs are in my major - psychology. Good Lord. What have I got myself into?

We were playing the Jackson State Lady Tigers. They managed to keep up with us for a little while, and led 6-2 at one point, and then tied 11-11. After that, we went on an 8-0 run and that was the end of the game. They hit a wall and #55 (Denita Ellies) couldn't do everything for them. She was the only good player they had.

How bad did it get? I was only allowed to score 12 points. Coach Ballard told me flat out that she wasn't going to let me break 40 points against these guys. After we went up 20 we started to pass it around, after we went up 30 we sat down #34 (Williamette Moss). Their guards couldn't defend and we were just pumping it into #54 (Brianna Neal). She scored 24 points and was the leading scorer.

We just crushed them. There were only a few interesting moments. Toya (LaToya Lloyd) got into a fight and they ejected her. Coach Ballard had a private discussing with her after the game. Toya said Ballard let her have it and I bet money she's going to have to miss the game against Utah. After the game we inducted her into UTEP's "Fight Club". It has five members so far, all players who have been ejected from games for fighting.

In the second quarter, Martie (Marta Jaworowski) went down with an ankle injury. It's not serious but she's probably going to miss the next game - I asked the trainer. Guess who Coach Ballard picked to play the five late in the game? Me! I never played center in high school. Hell, I never played forward in high school. And Coach says, "Go out there Dean and play the five." I look at her like "What?" and she just stares at me.

I went out there. Didn't do too bad. Had 15 rebounds and 4 assists this game. Thank God #55 has fouled out by that time, or I would have just looked stupid."

--Brenda Dean



Ah the glory of the box score. This was clearly UTEP's biggest win, and UTEP could have broken the 100 point barrier if they had tried. When UTEP goes up by twenty, I had UTEP deliberately use both ADVANCE phases. You could see what happened - UTEP had 23 total assists in the game, which is a rarity for a team that has players that create their own shots.

When UTEP went up by thirty, I pulled out a player. When they went up by forty, I pulled out another player.

And once again, you can see that there was another fight. I used my alternate rules. When the Z result called for fighting between both guards, I flipped the next card over and looked at the number under Foul Drawing. It was in the 80s, indicating that I would accept the fighting results. So new rule: If the result is between 85 and 88, I'll allow an ejection for fighting. Until then, we'll be shorthanded by two players for the next game with Utah, which is a road game: Lloyd will be suspended for one game and Jaworowski will sit out one game with an injury according to the new injury rules.

Note that in each of the two halves, UTEP had more rebounds than Jackson State did for the entire game.



Here is the RPI calculation for UTEP. UTEP moves up in the AP Poll RPI (because wins weigh more heavily) but falls in the Coaches Poll RPI (because quality of competition weighs more). Look at the Opponent RPI rank and you'll learn that UTEP's 7-1 win record is built on a foundation of sand.

Finding Statistics of Opposing Teams

I tried to come up with Alcorn State cards. Honestly, I did. But if you go to their Alcorn State women's basketball website, you will find a link called "statistics", click it and find...nothing. I had nothing to work with.

This left me looking for an opponent similar in strength to Alcorn State. I wanted to find another SWAC opponent, so I chose the next strongest in RPI - Grambling. Unfortunately, Grambling's statistics are a complete mess, with a single player having two or three different lines of stats because the player's name was spelled wrong and wasn't corrected in the databases, leaving two "different" players whose names only differ by a letter.

This is part of the problem with having 340 or so "major league" women's college basketball teams. Some, clearly, are more major than others. Some are "big time" programs like Connecticut and Tennessee, with nationwide fanbases and dedicated websites. Others are at best afterthoughts to comply with Title IX, and are barely recognized on their own small campuses. Most likely, keeping statistics isn't a problem for these schools because no one complained about the stats - no one bothered to look up their stats anyway.

This brought me to the next school, one even lower down than Alcorn State - Jackson State. At least, Jackson State has stats, even though the page has large blue borders on both sides and the black text spills across the page, making it hard to read without highlighting. (I just copied and pasted into notepad.)

There was one problem with Jackson State's stats: there was an Aundrea Woullard and an Aundrea Johnson, who I suspect are actually the same person. Not in my universe, they're not.



Jackson State, however, is a much weaker team than UTEP. Realtimerrpi.com has them ranked at #327 out of #340 teams. The SWAC conference is the weakest conference in women's college basketball, even weaker than the 10 or so remaining women's college basketball independent teams. Therefore, the UTEP stats were adjusted by a factor of 1.1797, their biggest adjustment so far.



This is the first time we can see UTEP's Team Index Points. They get +4 at home and -1 on the road.

I sense that I'm going to win this game. But even if I win it, Jackson State's crappy record (1-6) coming into this game is going to play havoc with my RPI. As it turns out, I made an error in last week's calculation: I lose -0.0024 because my median non-conference rank is in the bottom half of Division I. I misread that as "median conference rank". I stay at #73 on the AP Poll RPI but fall to #89 on the Coaches Poll RPI - the latter gives more weight to the quality of your opponents.

I'll redo the calculations after the next game.

Game Seven: UTEP 81, New Mexico 75

"This was our first road game of the year, and I suspected that this was going to be a mighty battle. The Aggies would have loved to sweep us in the season series, and they had a nice crowd. But there was a big difference between the crowd and the way the Lobos played. #33 (Elise Connery) killed us in that first game, but she was flat in this one.

Frankly, they really weren't much of a challenge. I think we were about five minutes in or something and we held them to no rebounds. We begin building a lead, but we can't get it above 20 points - I think it was 19 a few times. The final score was only because the Aggies got a little bit hot at the end, and because we had our second team in for a big part of the second half.

Toya (LaToya Lloyd) and I picked up four fouls after the second half and we sat out large parts of the game. I remember watching New Mexico slowly whittle that lead down in the last part of the second half, and there I am, squirming on the bench. I'm looking at Coach Ballard, almost screaming "Put me in!" but she just ignores me. LaToya goes in and I stay there. I could have screamed. Finally, with four fouls and late in the second half, Coach nods her head and I jump out onto the court.

One minute later, I have my fifth foul. Coach Ballard just give me a look that says, "See?" Hey, I'll just be happy with the win. Maybe that was the lesson. I don't know, I'm just so impatient."

--Brenda Dean



As you can see, Brenda had another good game. You can't laugh at 57 percent shooting. Look at the difference between this game and the first New Mexico State game and you can see the differences - not as many blocks, assists, or steals by NMSU.

I noticed the "Team Rebounds" stat on the "Pro Basketball Scoresheet", but I'm not keeping track of team rebounds consistently enough to make it a stat yet. Due to the fact that UTEP is performing better in the game in real life, I'm adjusting attendance by 2 percent upward, plus or minus a random factor of 10 percent. I also figure that Dean's high scoring ways should be providing some novelty.

(* * *)

With all of that, UTEP is now 6-1. This begs the question of how good is UTEP? With Brenda Dean are they good enough to be ranked for example?

How do we know? How can we know?

What we need is an RPI estimator. We need a mathematical formula that will let us plug in some simple inputs, then cross-check with one of the RPI sites and make some sort of comparison with other teams.

As it turns out, some people have done some mathematical analysis. Dolphin Sim came up with a formula in 2001. The formula is for men's basketball but we will borrow it. He provides two ratings formulas, and here they are:

RPI = 0.23*WP + 0.23*OWP + 0.54*OOWP

RPI = 0.27*WP + 0.46*OWP + 0.27*OOWP

where

WP = teams's winning percentage
OPW = winning percentage of team's opponents
OOPW = winning percentage of team's opponents' opponents

According to Dolphin Sim, the first formula is the more accurate one, as it is essentially a deeper analysis than the second one. The second formul is the more popular formula since the formula is more balanced towards what a team can control - a team can win its games and pick its opponents, but it can't pick it's opponent's opponents.

We'll use both. We'll call the first RPI formula "the AP formula" and the second formula "the coach's poll formula"

WP is easy. That's just .8571, or (wins + 0.5*ties)/games played.

OPW isn't easy. On the other hand, we'll estimate it by creating a list of UTEP's opponents and determine what a hypothetical W-L record for those teams would be based on the team's real-life records.

As for OOPW, unless you want to simulate the win-loss records of 340 teams...no? You don't? Me neither. What we do know that as we move down the recursion (opponents' opponents' opponents' opponents'....), this value approaches (all wins)/(all games), which should be around .500. So we'll just set OOPW = 0.5 by fiat and move forward.

We then

Here are the following adjustment values:

* +0.0024 if your median non-conference opponent's RPI rank was #50 or better
* +0.0012 for beating RPI #1-25 on the road
* +0.0009 for beating RPI #1-25 at a neutral site
* +0.0006 for beating RPI #1-25 at home
* +0.0008 for beating RPI #26-50 on the road
* +0.0006 for beating RPI #26-50 at a neutral site
* +0.0004 for beating RPI #26-50 at home
* -0.0002 for losing to RPI #170-255 on the road
* -0.0003 for losing to RPI #170-255 at a neutral site
* -0.0004 for losing to RPI #170-255 at home
* -0.0004 for losing to RPI #256-340 on the road
* -0.0006 for losing to RPI #256-340 at a neutral site
* -0.0008 for losing to RPI #256-340 at home
* -0.0006 for losing to a non-division I opponent on the road
* -0.0009 for losing to a non-division I opponent at a neutral site
* -0.0012 for losing to a non-division I opponent at home
* -0.0024 if your median non-conference opponent's RPI rank was in the bottom half of the league (#171 or worse in a 340-team league)

Note that we are talking about the median non-conference rank, not the average. The median is the RPI value that splits the conference into the upper half and the lower half.

Using the above, we calculate an RPI value for our UTEP team. We will use the RPI values provided by RealTimeRPI.com. You can use whatever RPI values please you.



The calculations seem to make sense. UTEP ends up ranked #73 using one RPI estimators and #82 in the other estimator. So far, with Brenda Dean, UTEP is probably the best team in Conference USA - but the league is strictly a one-bid league. Even so, at this level, UTEP should make the Women's NIT even if they lose the conference tournament. One big problem that UTEP has is that its opponents haven't done so well - even Iowa State is having a losing record!

UTEP's next team is Alcorn State - a team to which I'll assign a 1-6 record based on its 5-26 real life record. Alcorn State is ranked #327 out of #340 teams. It looks like UTEP might slip even if they win the game.

Game Six: UTEP 91, Idaho 60

"It's another day writing at 2 am. Too excited to sleep, and I've let Mackie (Immaculata Suarez) go ahead and sleep. It was a great day, and I let Mrs. Dean know way back home in the hills that her daughter, Brenda, set two records today. Brenda Dean (me) is the leading single-game scorer in UTEP history with 46 points. I'm also the leading single-game scorer in Conference USA history with 46 points. Or, I have at least a tie with someone who scored 46 points in a game about five years ago.

It's all a blur. I had about 22 points going into halftime, and we led 51-25. It was clear that Idaho wasn't going to give us any trouble, although they played really hard. We began rolling it up and as I began to creep into the 30s the media director started talking to one of the assistant coaches, who spoke to Coach Ballard.

Late in the game, Coach made it clear. "Get the ball to #13. Let's give Brenda the record." So every time I had an open look, or a half-open look, I slashed my way to the backet. Idaho began to worry that I'd score 50 points on them, and they finally put two men on me to deny me anything easy. I just couldn't get that 47th point.

Letell Hanson said, "Great game, 'Bickie D'" after the game. She had scored 23 points in that game and I felt she got overlooked by what press there was. Someone from the El Paso Times (who are great about reporting our games) asked me a few questions. There weren't many people at the game, and it was only covered by the Times and by some tabloid press. I just said I was happy to be here, happy to be healthy and hoping that I could do it again sometime.

We're going on the road next for a rematch with New Mexico State in New Mexico. It's our first road game of the season. That loss to the Aggies at home is the only blemish on our record. I want to drop forty points on the Aggies in New Mexico, and I want to win by forty too. "

-- Brenda Dean



Yep, it's true that Brenda Dean finally got her record (tying) game. I had to find an old copy of a media guide from Conference USA to confirm the record. Hopefully, now that I know how to use Dean - make sure that she's not forced to rest and make sure to use index points to burn Defense Fouls at the right time and I can keep her in the game for long periods of time, long enough for some amazing outcomes.

It's also true that I decided that Idaho would double team Dean once she got to forty points, as she got there with a nice amount of time left in the second half and there was a chance that she could make fifty. For Idaho, the double team defense - which lowers shooting by 10 points (in base eight) for anyone double team but boosts the unguarded man's shooting by 10 points - seemed to work very nicely. Dean indeed had a much tougher time shooting and Wiliamette Moss didn't get enough passes to pick up the slack. Maybe if UTEP had been less particular about getting the ball to Dean then Moss would have had better looks.

I worried that Idaho would run out of players with a player depth of only nine players - but Idaho didn't do too bad. A couple of players ran into stamina difficulty but it didn't become too ridiculous.

I think that I might have actually exceeded Dean's stamina by a couple of points - note that she had a double-double. My record-keeping might only be about 95 percent accurate, but really - the point of this is to enjoy one's self. I'm going to do my best to be accurate but I refuse to beat myself up over not being 100 percent accurate. The point is to get some enjoyment out of this while making things as "realistic" as possible.

So much to write about. Next up: UTEP's first road game, a rematch with New Mexico. I expect Dean to fall victim to both fouling and to forced rests, so UTEP could very well be swept in the season series. I've got NMSU at 4 - (-3) = 7 index points, which will make NMSU a tough road opponent.

Idaho Card Set

This will be the card set for Idaho when I play my next game. Since Fresno State, New Mexico State and Idaho are all in the same conference - the WAC - I'll just use the UTEP cards I created for Fresno State and used for New Mexico State.

I have some misgivings about this game. For one thing, there are only nine players on the Idaho squad with significant minutes. That means that there's not a lot of depth. A few forced rests, a few people running out of stamina and Idaho's in trouble.

I could have created a few other Idaho players that had minutes in the single digits...but I eschew creating those players. It's too much work to create a player with a Stamina of "1". I generally won't create a player at all unless their Stamina is two or greater.