If you had taken upon yourself to briefly survey the lines for Wednesday, you should have come upon two glaring look-ahead situations. UCF vs Houston, and St. John’s vs Uconn. Let’s delve further into the circumstances surrounding each game.
UCF @ Houston -12
The Houston Cougars have nothing to play for. Their regular season offers no NCAA tournament aspirations, barring an unforeseen and historical end to the season. The schedule is a senseless cloud with but a single ray of light protruding through its smog, until the bright hopes of the CUSA tournament arrive. That ray of light is the Memphis Tigers, serving as the only climactic game on their schedule. A win against Memphis would be one of the most dramatic moments of the last ten years for Houston. Any other games are trivial, meaningless, merely excuses to commiserate their sense of pride.
Today was their look-ahead situation. With Memphis scheduled for Saturday, they had to endure 40 minutes of overcoming a dreadfully non-incentive task in facing UCF. As 12 point favorites, the value of UCF as underdogs here was conspicuous. And what happened? UCF won 78-71, a gorgeous payout on a ML underdog.
I resign myself to bang head against hall for not having the presence of mind to profit from such an obvious situation. While I did notice the game, there was that occasional un-welcomed intuition that accompanied my state of dotage. And I doted myself right out of an easy winner. Live and learn. FML
St. John’s @ Uconn -10
Connecticut’s season has been a disappointment thus far. An underwhelming 11-6, with a relatively bad loss @ Michigan, the imminent fringe NIT team. Even though Uconn plays #2 Texas @ home following conference foe St. John’s, it is hard to define this game as a look-ahead situation. A loss to St. John’s would dim their tourney hopes to a higher degree than a loss to Texas. One would think, certainly amidst coach Calhoun’s recent temporary leave of absence, the Huskies would encapsulate their performance in a desperate, must-win conference game, exerting a wholly energetic effort.
Connecticut, intently focused, in dire need of any serviceable conference victory, won 75-59.
I jovially entertained the notion of playing St. John’s on my twitter page, but after that gave it no further consideration, once I weighed the implications on both sides.
It might be considered an exercise of indignant futility to give consideration after the fact, but identifying and isolating games in the future can be realized when studying in retrospect. Unfortunately, time operates on a linear irrecoverability spectrum, but not irrecoverable to the point of implementing formulas uncovered from past contingencies.
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