Sunday, January 15, 2023

Wait ... what?

One of the best things about sports is that, for every pond-scum Trevor Bauer or maniac youth coach they spring on us, they occasionally reward us with a Too Dumb For the Movies moment. "Oh, come on, that's not targeting!" becomes "Wait ,,, what!?", and it's pure magic.

In varying degrees, this happened three times yesterday in three places.

 In Bloomington, In., your Indiana Hoosiers, unranked and looking like a face set on fire and put out with a track shoe, transformed into a real basketball team. The Hoosiers had lost three straight, two in embarrassing fashion, but yesterday they got 18th-ranked Wisconsin down there in Assembly Hall and beat them like a dozen egg whites.

The final was 63-45, and it wasn't that close. In the second half in particular, the Hoosiers got up in the Badgers' grills and stayed there, harassing Wisky into 32 percent shooting including 5 of 24 from the 3-point arc, which Indiana had defended not at all in a 19-point loss at Penn State Wednesday. 

Trayce Jackson-Davis did Trayce Jackson-Davis things. Jordan Geronimo put up  double-double. Jalen Hood-Schifino scored 16. And Indiana turned it over just eight times.

This might or might not have had something to do with the brutal three-hour practice Indiana coach Mike Woodson put the Hoosiers through Friday, having grown weary of watching them soil the game of basketball. In any case, his team didn't look anything like the pale imitation of the previous three games.

Meanwhile, in Knoxville, Tenn. ...

Fifth-ranked Tennessee played host to unranked and struggling Kentucky, which was coming off a three-point home loss to .500 South Carolina and a humiliating 26-point lamination at Alabama. So what happened?

Kentucky remembered it was Kentucky. That's what happened.

The Wildcats led by seven at halftime and won by seven, 63-56, a "Wait ... what!?" emergence from nowhere as startling as Indiana's. And yet ...

And yet, that was just the appetizer for what happened in Jacksonville, Fla., Saturday evening.

Whatever happened was, Trevor Lawrence came out for his first NFL playoff game and immediately stepped on a certain appendage. The former Clemson star with the flowing Ronnie "Sunshine" Bass locks threw three interceptions in the first quarter. He threw another before halftime. And before you knew it, the home team was down a 27-0 well to the Chargers.

That's when the game entered Too Dumb For The Movies territory.

Because here came Trevor Lawrence in the second half, and wait, what?! Somehow still in touch with his composure, the kid started completing passes all over the lot, and the Chargers' lead shrunk. First it was 27-7 and then it was 27-14 and then it was 30-14, 30-20, 30-28. And then Lawrence, who by that time had thrown four touchdown passes -- three in the second half -- was taking his Jaguars on a 10-play, 61-yard drive that ended with Riley Patterson's game-winning field goal as time expired.

It was like watching Rocky get pummeled by Clubber Lang and then coming back to pummel Lang in the rematch in "Rocky III", speaking of Too Dumb For The Movies.  Lawrence's first half: 10-of-24, 77 yards, one touchdown, four picks. His second half: 18-of-23, 211 yards, three sixes, no picks.

You couldn't sell that script on any movie lot anywhere in the world. Not a chance.

But, damn, wasn't it glorious?

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