Southern Cal

To the East Coasters watching the game: Yes, this is the typical quality of Fox Sports West play-by-play crews. There are a couple of posts that should be written comparing Fox announcers to either West Coast pick-up basketball (a similar emphasis on flash over ability) or Fox News (unapologetic bias towards the home team) by better folks than I.

I only got to see the second half, but this was a game where a previously cohesive Carolina team reverted to the freshmen most of them happen to be. The poor shooting, panicked late-game play and the endless turnovers killed this teams' chances. I don't know if it's a coincidence the second half slide started with Terry's unlucky consecutive fouls - he could be a much more important on the court influence than I (or the Fox Sports crew) have previously considered.

The optimist in me wants to believe this is a good wake-up call, bringing an overachieving team back to earth and providing time to fix glaring problems before the conference season begins in earnest. The errors were ones of exuberance and hustle, rather than tenativeness, at least. It's hard to find the bright side in this performance, however. Here's to the home stretch going better.