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(As always, not that you care)

I dutifully watched this one, as the hype remains that these are two teams that can make deep runs in the tournament. Plus, it gave me a good excuse to finally slide out of work for the day. Also, as a Grizzlies fan* there was the whole Greg-Oden-might-come-to-Memphis-if-the-fates-allow thing. What I saw:

—Oden is already a premier defender. Then again, you knew that. But watching him (and I had not really watched him since late December) again, he simply erases the middle. I have not seen a college center that dominant defensively since Patrick Ewing. His stat line of only four blocks doesn’t tell the story. Many times Wisconsin wouldn’t even test the middle, and on the occasions they did, he altered at least another dozen or so shots. Imposing.

—That style of Oden’s, coupled with a young OSU team, leads to some games that are throwback low-scoring. The final today was 49-48 (OSU winning with 3.9 seconds to go). It didn’t help that Wisconsin loves them some low-scoring games as well. Actually, the final score here was emblematic of what the Big 10 has become in basketball. Deadly boring. A quick glance at some sample scores from the league this year reads like a when’s when of the peach basket era:

58-46, 68-45, 56-50, 60-49, 55-40, 51-43, 59-50, 57-46, 57-50, 59-49, 59-44, 53-51, 48-37, 54-42.

Yuck. I guess you can make the conference of good defenses argument, or the Bo Ryanization of the conference argument, or the Odenization of the conference argument, but too many games in that conference this year have been like watching paint dry. Outside of Ohio State and Wisconsin, I won’t be trusting any of the teams that make the tournament from the Big 10. And I wonder when the conference will return to having the legitimate league wide talent that made it the premier (and, let’s face it, exciting) conference that it was in the late 80s and early 90s. I remember games where the teams flew up and down the floor. Those days are a distant memory at this point.

—Note to OSU Coach Thad Matta…the five second rule doesn’t apply to gum that has fallen out of your mouth. The CBS cameras caught Matta inadvertantly losing his gum, picking it up off of the basketball floor and putting it back in his mouth. Nasty. Don’t do that in the future.

—It was a physical as hell game today to boot, with a ton of contact that wasn’t called. If the calls tighten up in the tourney, as they often do, both of those teams are going to potentially have problems.

—One last Billy Packer note: hey, Billy? When you get on one of your self-important rants and say that Oden can’t be compared to Lew Alcindor or Bill Russell by comparing their college averages to Oden’s and finding Oden’s wanting, you might want to mention that it is impossible to do an apples to apples comparison since Alcindor and Russell didn’t play during freshman eligibility years. I am guessing if Oden were to be insane and stick around to his senior year, his numbers would be comparable. As it is, he clearly owns the floor now and needs to prove nothing at this point. The NBA awaits.

*One of three remaining