Don't blink while watching this team

Hot-shooting 'Dogs rampage through tourney

By Darrell Copeland III
The Collegian

Ah, so that’s what that big arc is for. In case there was any doubt as to what the 3-point line was for, the Fresno State basketball team decided to remind us all anyway — over and over.

The postseason-eligible Bulldogs took the floor for the three-day Fresno State Tournament this weekend and swept right through its competition, winning the championship finale 82-51 over the UC-Irvine Anteaters.

And the Bulldogs have already made 3-pointers quite fashionable, connecting on 26 of them in the three games in three days round-robin tournament on 76 attempts.

“My surprise was a little bit wondering after three days of playing , you wonder if you have the legs, you wonder if you’re have the energy,” Fresno State coach Steve Cleveland said.

Sleep easy, Coach Cleveland, if the Bulldogs have that much energy in the final game of three, then two games a week spells mighty big danger for Fresno State’s future opponents.

Despite the dominant performance from the Bulldogs, you are still left wanting more. As good as they are, you think they should be better.

Take Saturday’s game against last year’s NCAA Tournament qualifier South Alabama, were the 73-63 victory seemed OK, but the shooting statistics that you’d think would back it up weren’t.

“I thought [Saturday] was the worst we had ever played offensively as a team,” Cleveland said.

That would play into the you think they should be better theory perfectly.

“One night we may all have the hot hand and some days we all may struggle and we just have to lock it down on defense,” Fresno State senior Quinton Hosley said.

There is almost a glass ceiling hovering over their heads, except the crack is about to shatter. It’s like driving a car around on a frozen lake of ice, it’s bound to break sometime.

The potential for this team seemingly has no limits.

“I’m thinking last year, if we had 15 points from Quinton and Ja’Vance [Coleman] total last year, that we weren’t gonna win that game,” Cleveland said.

Such was the case in the game against the Anteaters, where sharp-shooting newcomer Eddie Miller picked up the slack, while doing most of the 3-point arc reminding for Bulldogs fans in attendance.

In fact, at a given point in the second half, you could have went for a quick refreshment and it would’ve went something like this.

“I’ll have a large soda please,” You’d say. Upon sitting, you would’ve noticed the 20-point lead go to say, 30 points, most likely due to one of Miller’s 3-pointers.

In fact, you could say Miller was quite the unconscious one.

(Why do they call it unconscious when you can’t miss on anything resembling a shot. It seems like if anything, he definitely knows it was going in, and how it was doing so.)
As inconsistent as the weekend went for the Bulldogs, it was blowout victories galore.

And of course, they reminded us of what that 3-point line was for again.

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