And we’re back… It’s amazing how real life gets in the way of things. Just when you get going and posting steadily, and you miss one game, and suddenly you feel like you’re 2 years behind everyone. Those fans of Lost or the new Price Caspian movie can relate. Time in the blogging world moves so fast, that if you step outside just for a bit, a lot had passed you by.

So we’ll start with the Bulls* (see what I did there?) that happened Tuesday night. I didn’t watch the game. I followed it on my phone and saw we weren’t shooting worth crap. An interesting quote from Sloan related to this a while back. I couldn’t find the exact quote, but it was something like if we don’t run the offense, then it doesn’t allow us to get back on defense and get into sets. So any time you see the Jazz get beat on the fast break, it was probably because they weren’t executing on offense. From some of the highlights (if you’re a Bulls fan) it didn’t look like they ran the offense well and as a result they shot poorly and weren’t in a good position to get back on D. The Bulls are one of the worst offensive teams in the league. They only score 96 points a game and we gave up 108. I’ll let My Utah Jazz give their feelings and poor Frank Layden Admirers suffer most fans’ lament. And surprisingly, no boasting post from Matt at Blogabull.

So after that loss, we had a real chance of going 0-4 on this road trip. We always seem to struggle against Milwaukee and NJ. And we know about Boston this year. Just think where the Jazz would be had they had a .500 December and won at least 2-3 games that we dropped to LAC, MIN, and CHI. Now we’ll be lucky to move up with the way everyone else has played. We better grab home court in at least the first round though because we suck on the road.

And we almost started out 0-2 after tonight’s game. The Jazz returned to their normal selves, taking a 40-26 lead after the first. But then the Jazz suddenly stopped playing D and got abused by another PF in Charlie Villanueva to the tune of 26 & 9. And then we got Charlie Bell dropping 24 on us. He of the 7 PPG average this year. And despite giving up the lead, the Jazz were up one going into the fourth. That’s where they collapsed. The Bucks built up a 11 point lead with 4:45 to go. But behind 2 blocks, 3 steals, and some good free-throw shooting down the stretch, the Jazz made a furious comeback and took the lead on a Boozer layup with :46 left. They held on to even up the road trip at 1-1.

I won’t go over the stats, but you can find them here. The Jazz will have to be happy if they can finish 2-2 on this roady. They need it just to stay where they are in the west seedings. And really, to have any chance of moving up, they need to get two wins in Beantown and the soon to be moving to Brooklyn team. Daunting, yes. But in order to get home-court for the first round, we’d have to overtake NO, SA, or Houston. NO is the closest; they’re within 1 1/2. And the other two are 2 games ahead. And this late in the season, 2-2 on the road trip isn’t going to cut it.

Utah has something like the fourth easiest remaining schedule in the west. So if you’re not winning the games against the Bulls and others, it makes those big games that much more important.

So now a day off until we try to exact revenge on the Cs for our last home loss. Let’s hope the Jazz play up to this game like they play down to the teams they should beat.

Other recaps:

• Biased Fan
• My Utah Jazz
• Brew Hoop

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