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.

Game Five: UTEP 82, Robert Morris 54

"Thanksgiving! But there wasn't any rest for any of us. I just feel like I'm working all the time, between studying and practice. Even with Thanksgiving, we still don't have any time off. We ate Thanksgiving dinner at Coach Ballard's house. Some of the boosters brought food. It was okay, but no great shakes compared to Mom's cooking. I'm extremely homesick.

So why am I writing about food and not the game? Well, the game was a laugher. Coach Ballard cracked the whip on us again and we took it out on Robert Morris. We went through them like wood through a wood chipper, and we could have led the game by forty points if we wanted to, but Coach Ballard made us cool our jets. Toya (LaToya Lloyd) and I spent time on the bench to keep it from being ridiculous. We were up 45-20 at halftime.

I didn't get a lot of looks. We concentrated on passing the ball around before finding the open man. I only took 14 shots in this game, but I got fouled a lot, and I got 29 points, most of them on the free throw line. I don't know how good Robert Morris is supposed to be, but that was a cake team.

Coach Ballard finally had something good to say. She said it was the best basketball we played all year.

We were looking forward to playing Stephen F. Austin, a team on the other end of Texas, but Idaho upset them in the opening game. We play Idaho in the final game of our mini-tourney. I know we can't overlook Idaho. But everyone knows that after the Idaho game, the next game is on the road. In Las Cruces, New Mexico. A rematch against the damned Aggies. We want revenge."

--Brenda Dean



Ever have one of those games where you know the outcome from the opening tip? UTEP led 15-2 to start out the game, and they just kept extending the lead. The biggest lead was 51-22 in the second half, a 29 point lead.

I began moving starters onto the bench and forced myself to take two ADVANCE cards whenever rational. It really could have been a bigger win, but there wouldn't be any joy in that, and Dean already had scored 39 against a team. She scored 29 in this game, and was 9-for-11 at the free throw line. That was really enough.

Note Robert Morris's ball movement stats for the first half. Four assists, no steals, no blocks. It was like the reverse of the UTEP-NMSU game. UTEP hit 49 percent of its free throws and the Colonials only hit 29 percent. UTEP was dominant. Nothing to do but make the cards for the Vandals and play the conclusion.

(* * *)

So how did I determine that Stephen F. Austin was upset by Idaho? More on that later.

(* * *)

Figuring out injuries is going to be hard. In all versions of the game, players have an injury rating. Generally during the game, a Z Result will occur, and you'll get a reading like "Home G1 is injured. Consult player card for injury rating."

In older versions of the game, there was a card that told you how many games the player would miss - they would miss the rest of the game in which the card had been drawn, plus X number of games. The value of X would depend on the player's injury rating. I believe - but can't be sure - that later versions of the Fast Action Deck would determine a variable number of games depending on the player's injury rating.

So not only do my cards not have injury ratings, I don't have the little card that tells you how to determine injuries. All I have is a section of the Cardmaker Spreadsheet, namely a small section of data on the "Work" tab to give me a clue as to how to treat injuries.

So here's the version I'm using. This version is based on 30 games = one college season.

Games Played By Player - 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.

Also note: The 1993 version of the Statis Pro Basketball rules states that a player cannot be forced to miss more games in a season than she missed in real life. Let's say that you have a player who played 28 games in real life. She's played every game in the season except two - one where you left her on the bench and another when she drew an injury result. If there are more games left in the season, and she were to get injured again, the expected result would be "miss current game and the next game". However, that would cause her to fall below 28 games. You can simply ignore the injury result and have her miss the current game only.

Of course, due to individual use, you might use players less than they were used in real life. In those cases, I think that the above still holds true: the player misses only the current game, because they've already missed more than their real-life number of games simply because you've chosen not to play them as often. The player should not be further penalized.

Game Four: New Mexico State 76, UTEP 68

"I should have known better. We win three games, two against good teams and I think this is going to be easy. Coach Ballard finally lets up on us after all those punishment practices, but she tells us that we're playing New Mexico State, the friggin' Aggies. UTEP hates the Aggies. We play two games with them every year, and they're not even in our conference.

All week long, it's 'New Mexico State this' and 'New Mexico State that'. It's in the Prospector, 'come see UTEP against the hated Aggies'. So we come out of the shootaround, and what kind of crowd is it? The same old sorry-ass crowd we always have. When I played in high school, we had bigger crowds that this for some games. If this game is so goddamned important, how come we can't get no love?

We see the Aggies. They don't look like much. Then they come out and they are on fire, they are beating us up like a bowling ball beats up pins. Everyone's trying to find me open, and I can't hit anything. I went, what, 9-for-35 for the game. I got 20 points, but -- hell, I should have had 30. Coach Ballard just lets me have it. Oh, she doesn't say anything in the locker room to me directly, but she's shouting at halftime in the locker room "Why don't you stop looking for #13! (me) She's not hitting anything!"

We're down by 23 going into halftime. The crowd is just quiet. The Aggies know they can win, and the only thing that kept us from losing by 23 was that the Aggies just ran out of gas. That, and that everyone finally stopped looking for me and found #55 (LaToya Lloyd) instead. Toya had 22 points. But it wasn't enough.

Their bigs just crushed us. #33 (Elise Connery) was knocking balls out of the sky. They got thin and matched #3 (Apryl Fieldson) against me and she just lit me up. She scored 11 points on me coming off the bench. I couldn't stop her. I was gassed. If I could have defended her we'd have kept it close. Our bench sucked. We sucked.

I go into that locker room and I'm crying. I've got a towel on my head. Everyone else is just staring into space, and Ballard hits that locker room like a hurricane. She said, 'if you cared as much as #13 does, you'd have won'. Great coach. Thanks for nothing. Make everybody hate me.

It's the march of the dead out of the locker room. No one is saying anything to anybody. Mackie (Immaculata Suarez) and I don't talk much back in our dorm room. She didn't even come off the bench, but she feels just as bad as I do."

--Brenda Dean



Agh. What a stinker of a game. For quite some time, I didn't believe that I got the balance between teams right and that UTEP was destined to win every game this year. Well, I guess that theory has been disproven. Even with 12 Team Index points, UTEP was awful.

I would say that the game fell apart in three directions:

1) Pearlie Kalis and Iorrie Molinero from UTEP both have secondary ratings that are higher than their field goal ratings. To me, this indicates a player who is a lot more comfortable with taking her own shot - shooting right after the action phase - than with waiting for the ADVANCE. UTEP's guards have poor defensive ratings, and that gave Kalis and Molinero all the more reason to light things up.

2) Dean shot very poorly. I don't think I've seen so many numbers in the 60s through 80s in my entire life. It seemed that everytime Dean put something up, it ended in disaster for UTEP.

3) Elise Connery of New Mexico State. Her block rating is "12", which means that any ball coming even close to her is going to get batted out of the sky. She led NMSU in rebounds with 13, assists with 5 and blocks with 9. UTEP doesn't have that kind of blocking power, and only blocked two shots the entire night.

4) Bench points. 29 for NMSU vs. 13 for UTEP. Apryl Fieldson went 5 for 6 against Dean, and the only time she missed was when Dean fouled her during the shot.

During the first half, NMSU shot 58 percent. UTEP shot 32 percent. That was the game right there. The hole was so deep that UTEP couldn't dig its way out of it. All of UTEP's Index Points were spent fending off defensive fouls and forced rests in the hope that Dean could find her way back into the game. But she couldn't. NMSU went up by 25 at one time in the second half, and that's when everyone started heading for the exits.

Up next. The UTEP Invitational. UTEP vs. Robert Morris. Stephen F. Austin vs. Idaho. I won't play the second game, but I will play the first one.

The Lord Taketh Away....

...after the Fresno State game, my initial schedule had Winston-Salem State scheduled as UTEP's next opponent.

How good is Winston-Salem State? Well, they don't even belong to a conference, and the list of independents in women's basketball is a pretty poor one - after Utah Valley and CSU Bakersfield, the quality bottoms out into #258 and below. Winston-Salem State is ranked #334 out of #341. They are 3-22 so far this year. I was looking forward to having UTEP whup up on someone.

Then, I found out about New Mexico State University. The football battle between the schools is called the "Battle of I-10" and it's so important that unlike most football rivalries, they award two trophies. The schools are only 38 miles from each other.

Even though NMSU and UTEP don't belong to the same basketball conference, they play each other twice a year anyway. I had NMSU down for a visiting game, and I'd have to pencil in a home game for them. Goodbye, Winston-Salem State.

On the other hand, I've learned a little bit more about the new Statis Pro Basketball rules that came out in 1993 or so. The game set that I've been using has a Team Index that's strictly based on home winning percentage. The 1993 rules, on the other hand, have two indices - a Home Team Index and a Visiting Team Index.

Let's take a look at UTEP. UTEP, under the old rules, has six Home Team Index points. No matter who their opponent is - whether it's Connecticut or Winston-Salem State - UTEP always get six points.

However, under the new rules, UTEP gets 4 Home Team Index points and -1 Visiting Team Index points. We look at New Mexico State's numbers - 4 Home Team Index points and -10 (minus 10) Visiting Team points. (As it turns out, New Mexico State hadn't won a game on the road all year until their last game, but I created the card set before NMSU got its first home win.)

We now use the formula:

Home Team's Home Index Points - Visiting Team's Visiting Index Points = Game Team Index Points.

If the Game Team Index Points are positive, they belong to the home team. If the final result is negative, the points belong to the visiting team.

Therefore the Game Team Index Points are equal to: 4 (UTEP) - (-10) (NMSU) = 4 + 10 = 14. All of which, in theory, belong to UTEP.

However, teams can only have a maximum of 12 points. UTEP will therefore have 12 points to play with - six in the first half, and six in the second. But I'd rather have 12 Index Points than six any day of the week. The Lord taketh away, but the Lord giveth.

New Mexico State Card Set

Before I post anything else, we have to get the next set of cards up....and you can't write about UTEP without writing about their rivals down the road, New Mexico State.



The great thing is that New Mexico State is in the WAC conference, and since recent opponent Fresno State is also in the WAC, I can just use the adjusted UTEP cards from the last game.

1981 vs. 1993

Frisco del Rosario, a basketball writer and Statis Pro fan, pointed out that the game doesn't give you the option of ignoring a foul on some players and letting the player take the foul on other players - once you get a drawing of "Defense Foul" against your team, you can't decide, "oh, I'll see who took the foul, and if it's someone good, then I'll burn the Index Point, else not". You either have to spend the point to ignore the foul regardless of who the foul belongs to, or you take the foul.

I didn't see this rule in my copy of the rules or written on the game board. The game board lists how Team Index points can be spent:

two points: call for a steal
two points: ignore a forced rest
one point: rebound to high player on your team
one point: ignore a defensive foul (what we're talking about above)
one point: ignore a charging foul

..but it says nothing about how to ignore a defensive foul.

Then I realized...there are actually two sets of rules for Statis Pro Basketball. One came with the first version of the game, and the second comes with the game versions sold after 1993.

As it turns out, I have both versions of the rules stored as .pdf files. And sure enough, in the 1993 rules, it states that when spending points to burn off defensive fouls, you have to burn the point without finding out which player was fouled.

Frisco also pointed out that the team index points have to be proportionally spent for each half - if you have six total home index points, you need to spend three in the first half and three in the second half. (This is an alteration of the NBA rule which states those points have to be divvied proprotionately per quarter.) As it turns out, this rule isn't in the '81 rules, but it is in the '93 rules.

In the future, I'll be using the 1993 rules for both ignoring defensive fouls and spending team index (home field advantage) points.

I'm wondering if I should be altering UTEP's team index to create a Home Index and a Visitor Index. There was only one index in the 1981 rules; there are two (a Home Index and a Visitor Index) in the 1993 rules. I'll be posting about trying to determine the right amount of Home Index points for college basketball in a future post.

Game Three: UTEP 74, Fresno State 72

"What a game. It's 2 am and I'm high. I'm stoned on basketball. Fresno State came to El Paso, and they were tough. They could shoot, they had a lot of energy, and #22 (Amie Havener) could really rush the basket.

They played us close. It was touch and go the whole first half, and we were up by one, 38-37 at halftime. I was in a zone in that early part of the game, and I was just under 20 points. Everyone was simply looking at me and I knew that if I was open, someone was going to find me. I went wild. I got 36 points against Fresno State. Had nine rebounds. I wanted 10, because a double-double would be cool but I got beaten up enough under the basket. Move me to the #2, coach! Don't make me play forward!

Patty Clark got suspended for fighting in the game, and Martie (Marta Jaworski) was playing center. She wasn't hitting anything, but she kept getting those rebounds for us - she ended up with 13. We kept trying to fight Fresno State off, and we led by ten at one point in the second half, but they caught up with us and put that press on us. Forced a couple of turnovers, and I was to blame for one of them. #44 (Iesa Blumenfield) hit a shot with six seconds left to tie the game at 72-72 and Coach Ballard is drawing up this play which is as confusing as hell. I'm just nodding my head, trying to pretend that I know what was going on. I just don't want to go into overtime, because I'm out of gas, chucking up bricks near the end.

So we have the last possession and Josie (Josina Costa) takes the inbound and passes the ball to Marta. Marta is looking for Josie again under the basket but can't find her. So Marta, who hasn't hit a shot all night, fires a mid-range jumper with like half-a-second left and she just plants it! Everyone jumps right off the bench. The pep band starts playing "Shadows on the Mountain" and Fresno State's coach is challenging the shot, saying that time expired when Marty hit it.

The band keeps playing "Shadows" while the refs look at the video. Marty took the shot with 0.7 seconds left. The basket is good and the band breaks into "Miners Fight". It was great to have such a great game, but I don't think I was the star. When Marty hit that last second shot, she was the star."

--Brenda Dean



My wife asked me what I got out of playing a card game when video games existed. The above is what I get out of a card game.

I've played very few Statis Pro Basketball games like this one, where the game is very tight all the way through and you feel as if you're slogging you're way through the game. With UTEP up by 10 late in the half, Fresno State began to come back.

There is an option called "PRESS" in the Fast Action Deck. The defense can state they are pressing, and for that offensive possession, the offense must read under the "PRESS" option. Two out of three times, UTEP lost the ball and Fresno State began to turn it on. With just a few cards left, Iesa Blumenfield took a shot off the secondary and hit it, tying the game with just two cards left.

The first card was "Pass to Center" under the ACTION phase, so Marta Jaworski had to shoot off the SECONDARY phase. And with the last card of the game...the shot result is "22". Two points. Game over.

I needed all of my six Home Field Advantage points. I decided this time that I would use those points to keep Brenda Dean from fouling, if a foul ever indicated that Dean got the foul. Dean was hot in the first part of the game, scoring like twelve of the first thirteen points. Down at the end, with two Home Field points yet, Williamette Moss got a forced rest. I could either ignore the forced rest or lose my points or sit her down.

I sat her down. Smart decision.

I had started the game and played it early in the morning during the week before work. By the time Frisco Del Rosario commented on Amie Havener's ability to shoot the three and get the offensive rebound, I was in mid game and I started back up with an offensive possession. I gave her a 3-point attempt, and she missed the shot, I flip over the card, and under rebound, it said, "Offense F1" - Havener. Is that weird or what?

If you look over the box score, you'll notice that both sides took a lot of field goals. I was really trying to give everyone as many 3-point shots as possible, something I've been a little weak on in past games.

Furthermore, Dean got very close to a 40-point game. You don't see 36-point games much in women's basketball. However, playing as the UTEP coach, the great part of the game wasn't Dean's 36 points - it was Jaworski hitting that shot with the final card. That was just sweet.

Fresno State vs. UTEP Card Sets

I'm going to post the card sets for the next game, a home game against Fresno State.

Fresno State's cards are based on their current stats in the WAC conference. All player names have been changed.



As for the UTEP cards, all the "good stats" (except free throws) are altered by a factor of 1.104, as Conference USA is about 10.4 percent better than that WAC based on RPI conference strength.



This should be a good game. Fresno State comes from a weaker conference, but they're the best team in that weaker conference. Furthermore, they shoot better than UTEP does but they are only 10 players deep. A lot of factors - team defense, shooting accuracy, forced rests - should come into play. I'm hoping this is a good game.

Game Two: UTEP 82, CS-Northridge 56

"We were just glad to have everyone back on the team. We were waiting for a team from California, and it took us a little while to get warmed up. They were up like 7-6 before we started to pull away. We were up ten, then twenty. It felt kind of good, like we were back in high school again and playing one of those schools that didn't care much about basketball.

My problem was that I was cold getting started - but I got warmed up. I dumped 15 on them, and I could have hit them for more if I didn't have foul trouble. Me and Martie, we fouled out. The only bad thing about the game was that Patty (Patricia) Clark got in a fight and got thrown out of the game. Why do they always want to pick on us? I don't get it.

Coach is pissed off again. We get into too many fights. She's going to make us suffer. I'm already exhausted."

-Brenda Dean



This is the second time I've had players ejected for fighting. These kind of results are just...ridiculous. I'm simply going to ignore the Z result that says, "Fighting between F1s - each ejected." From now on, I'm going to read this result as "F1s are forced to rest for the rest of the game. If next card is 81-88, players are ejected for fighting."

How many fights can you remember in women's basketball? The answer is not many. Clark will be suspended for the next game against Fresno State. Hopefully, these kind of results won't cause problems.

'Forced Rest' is a card result that forces the indicated players to rest for the rest of the quarter. (In the college games's case, for the rest of the half.) The result is supposed to mimic those cases where a coach is dissatisfied with the player's performance, and forces them to sit on the bench.

UTEP shot 43 percent, and CS Northridge shot 35 percent. However, the real edge came in rebounding firepower. UTEP could just get the ball whenever it wanted to. The game stats at least looked like college stats, and that counts for a lot.

Or did they? My bookkeeping was okay, but I wonder if I used all of the cards I needed to. The problem is that a standard Fast Action Deck has 180 cards, but a college half needs 300 cards. Which means that after you go through the 180 cards one time, you need to reshuffle that deck and deal out 120 cards to finish the half. This should leave a mini-deck of 60 unused cards - and when you have multiple decks running around (discard deck, drawing deck, and cards-not-to-be-used deck), confusion is easy.

I really need to purchase Phil Graham's 300 card neck. No. I really, really need to purchase Phil Graham's 300 card deck. But until some money can float by, I'll avoid spending it on minor hobbies.