RELEASE THE HOUNDS!

Doggy-Smile, Holmes:  As Monty burns, the Dawgs are in Baskers-ville, after biting back the Bears to become Big Dance-bound, while it’s elementary that Cal should still be a sure lock

What’s brown and black, and looks good on a trojan?  A Doberman Pinscher.  And another cockeyed classic canine query:  Who let the Dawgs in?  The answer is:  Cal let the Dawgs in.  The Washington Huskies are going to the NCAA Tournament, after escaping Staples Center with a 79-75 victory over Mike Montgomery’s Golden Bears on Saturday afternoon.

 Today is Selection Sunday, but now it’s Cal, not Washington who is a tad nervous.  With UW locking up the Pac-10’s automatic bid, Cal will need to get an at-large berth.  And even though Cal won the Conference for the first time in 50 years, there is no absolute guarantee that they will get the invite.  While many experts see Cal as making it at around a #12 seed, there is at least one major source who thought that Cal will now be watching March Madness on Demand, since only one team from the weak Pac-10 should be included in the Dance.

I think Cal will make it — just like I thought that they would beat the Huskies.  All I know is if they don’t, they will scream bloody murder, and they will forever despise UCLA Athletic Director Dan Guerrero (for being the head of the Selection Committee). 

The Bears COULD have taken it out of the committee’s hands, but they blew a 5-point lead in the last 6 minutes of the game.  Cal Star Jerome Randle had an off-night:  Cal’s fate was sealed by his lay-up that got blocked, and by his vulnerable ball-handling.  In the end, after Randle finally made a Three which cut UW’s lead in half, Cal got the ball back, and Randle had it, but it got knocked away, and then he was fouled with 4.4 seconds left. 

He made the first free throw, and intentionally missed the second.  Cal’s Jamal Boykin might have gotten the rebound with a chance at a game-tying putback, but to Monty’s chagrin, the Refs called a Lane Violation on Randle.  On a free throw, the rebounders can enter the Key when the ball leaves the shooter’s hands, but the shooter himself has to wait for the ball to hit the rim, and Randle didn’t.  An apparently fuming Montgomery implied that this infraction never gets called, and to call it in this situation was bogus, at best.  Washington made the two ensuing free throws, and that was that.  After a thrilling, see-saw game with 16 lead-changes in the 1st Half alone, and a 15-0 scoring spurt — by the losing team — Washington plays on.

After all the surprises (and mediocrity) in the Pac-10 this year, it now looks distinctly like the two Preseason favorites will be the only two teams representing the Conference in this year’s NCAA Tournament.

And speaking of REPRESENTING, Nikki Caldwell’s Bruins BeatSC and SCumbag Michael Cooper — at Galen — in the Pac-10 Women’s Tournament 59-53, and will get the honor of being Cardinal-bait on Sunday at 3:00pm in the Tourney Final.  Even if #2 Stanford, who is 30-1, kills the Bruins, it’s still extremely satisfying to oust the trojans, err, “Women of Troy,” especially after Cooper’s infamous “Bleep UCLA” comment, and especially the way it went down.

The Bruins started out strong, and built a double-digit lead in the 1st half, but sc went on a big run, made it very tight in the 2nd half, and finally took the lead.  SC made 5 Three’s after the break, to ZERO for UCLA.  It went down to the wire, when Bruin Darxia Morris missed 4 straight Free Throws, including “The Hat Trick” — all 3 for a foul on a Three-point shot attempt.  Not to rag on Morris — Darxia was coming up huge for UCLA down the stretch, having made 3 of the last 4 UCLA baskets before the Charity Stripe troubles, and, she did make one clutch free throw after the 4 misses.

But it was a Dr. J-like play by Bruin Markel Walker that put the Bruins up to stay.  With the score tied and 1:40 left, the Bruins cleared out for Walker, who made a couple of fakes, the second one so wicked that it freed her up for a drive to the hoop.  She swooped in and laid the ball up softly with one outstretched arm.  The ball bounced softly on the rim, started to fall out, but then rolled back in for the bucket.

Walker then further buried the WoT, when she rebounded her own miss, and instead of going back up, passed it back out to use more clock.  Then it was UCLA’s Doreena Campbell who SANK 4 straight free throws to send Cooper home with another loss.  Campbell:  Mmmm, mmmmm, good.  And there are a few select letters in a can of alphbet soup that I’d like Cooper to eat.  And who knows — UCLA upset powerful Stanford in the 2006 Pac-10 Final, so maybe, since they seem to be on a roll, they can do it again.  Especially if they find extra gameday motivation like they did on Saturday:

After the sc game, the Bruins gave credit to none other than Rick Neuheisel, who gave the team a pep talk at Halftime.  He apparently was enthusiastic about the Bruins leading SC, and told them to not let off the gas.  They implied that they were impressed that a big-time Football Coach would get involved with Women’s Basketball, and they wanted to win even moreso because of his taking so much interest in their success.  Hopefully, this experience will further instill in Caldwell, her players, and lots of UCLA fans the importance of beating usc at every single sport, and in all walks of life, especially when it comes to doing the right thing (like teaching Cooper a lesson, year after year after year).

If you are wondering why a Rivalry Game like this didn’t earn a big headline or even its own article from me, it’s NOT that I didn’t care deeply about the eventual outcome, or that I don’t fully support Coach Caldwell and her student-athletes.  The problem is that when I feature their success, especially against troy, I inevitably receive flak from across town, about how I have to glorify the Women’s team, because of the failure of the Men’s teams in the two major Rivalry Sports.  Plus, my “friends and followers,” on the whole, don’t seem to care about Tennis, Soccer, Track and Field, Water Polo, Volleyball, Softball, Women’s Basketball, or even Baseball, for that matter. 

Hey — If I really wanted to make the majority happy, I’d probably just stop writing altogether, and just post photos, like these:  Here are 18 more captioned, enlargeable photos of the UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON CHEERLEADERS, in honor of Lorenzo Romar’s Holy Huskies further “desecrating” the Pac-10 Tourney Crown (by keeping it out of Westwood).  But first, two notes:  I promised someone that I would post some photos of the Bruins’ CHEER SQUAD, specifically, and I still promise that I will, right after I share some more from the more topical and “newsworthy” Pac-10 Tournament.  And #2:  I don’t want anyone to think that I’m taking a comedic stab at the Girls of the Washington Cheer Squad, when I call them Huskies or Dawgs.  I wouldn’t waste all this bandwidth sharing these photos if I didn’t think the girls were hot, or at least, attractive.  It’s not like they are trojans, and even then, I don’t usually stoop quite that low, as to show the ugliest pics I have of Song Girls.  After all, even the Ten’s on the UCLA Spirit Squad take some bad photos every now and then, so posting ugly sc shots wouldn’t really be “fair.”  And I’m all about justice.  And by the way, the WARNING from yesterday still stands:  If you are easily offended by racy photos of non-UCLA Cheerleaders, please go away.