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Show Chalk Tak . . . Jack Talks About the Basketball Playoffs by Jack Hill "Follow the bouncing ball." With high school basketball over and the NCAA Regionals history, my eyeballs have just about returned to normal. . . just about! After four days of 3-A action, ac-tion, a couple of trips to the 4-A classic plus three great NCAA game? at the Marriott center, I relaxed and watched Skyline and Olympus on T.V. Saturday night. It proved to be slow down basketball, not much fun to watch. The paper's said that Skyline won. I went to bed when Jt was 18-18 at half-time. half-time. Friday, Skyline got by previously unbeaten Provo by two. There must have been 14,000 fans in Utahs' Special Events Center. This fan "bad mouthed" Skylines' Danny Vranes for three-quarters three-quarters of the game. He wasn't playing anywhere near the level of his press reports. But, in the end, his team went to him for the last shot. He delivered when his 18 footer split the strings at the buzzer. It sunk Provo for the second time in as many years in the semi-finals. NCAA Several months ago I bought a pair of tickets ($28 dollars worth) in anticipation of the Western Regionals. At the time San Francisco was ranked number one, UCLA number 2 and UNLV number 4. UCLA and UNLV made it to Provo along with my favorite team of boyhood days, the Running Redskins from Utah. Great basketball. Loved it! But a senile judge in Salt Lake, one who would issue an injunction against the sun coming up if an A.C.L.U, lawyer asked him, forced the game on T.V., even though it wasn't sold out. Now I know that there were many who thought "judge Ritter had done good." It was "fair to the T.V. fans." But was it fair to the 21,639 who bought tickets? Hey, I'm not down on T.V. fans, I'm one of 'em. But paying customers are what keep athletic contests alive to be on T.V. The "48 hour sell out rule" is good and right. Ritter was wrong. . . as the Denver court ruled, adding yet another reversal to his judiciary leading all-time total. UNLV Coach Jerry Tarkanian has assembled a group of running jumping players that play "my" brand of basketball. They can play defense and oh how they can shoot! It's hard to believe that he got all those players to Las Vegas without "bending" a few recruiting rules. That's what the NCAA thinks anyway. Tarkanians' last school, Long Beach State, just got off of a three year probation, starting the year Tarkanian left for Vegas. Don't "bet" that UNLV won't be next on the NCAA's bad boy list. "Follow the bouncing ball," what time do the games start on Saturday? |