Thank god for excessively long Destin City Council meeting.

Had it not been for a lengthy council meeting last night that had me working until just about 11:00 p.m., I never would have caught the lion’s share of last night’s UCLA/Stanford game at Pauley Pavillion.

What I saw reinforced my opinion about UCLA; they are a talented team but not especially deep and not especially focused. They deserved to lose last night’s game but didn’t. More surprising to me was how good Stanford is.

Led by the best front court duo in America in twins Brook and Robin Lopez, the Cardinals are a good free throw shooting team, play pretty solid defense (though not great in transition as last night showed) and they aren’t turnover prone. Those are the qualities that help a team make a run deep into the NCAA Tournament.

Stanford is a team that could easily be a number one seed, particularly if they beat UCLA in the Pac-10 Tournament. Though, to win games in March, The Cardinal will have to put opponents away. Their inability to keep UCLA at an arm’s length cost them the game last  night and a share of the Pac-10 regular season title.

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