2.22.06 v. Utah Jazz
After last night’s bad loss to the Indiana Pacers, Our 29-24 Hometown Hornets take on the 25-28 Utah Jazz tonight at 7:00 in the Ford Center. The game is on Cox. There may be a few tickets still available, but, if so, not many.
The Hornets 5 game win streak got snapped last night, but we do have our 7 in a row win streak at the Ford Center intact, and are 9-2 in the last 11. Our road record dropped to 11-16 or, if you count the Baton Rogue and Norman games as “road”, 12-17. Our loss to Indiana, combined with Memphis’ 94-88 win over Toronto, dropped the Hornets to 7th in the current Western Conference playoff standings. But with a win tonight, and a loss tonight in the Memphis @ Houston game (Houston has been playing very well lately), we'll be in 6th position again (and Memphis plays @ Dallas tomorrow night). So, vis a vis Memphis, I think the Horents are in good shape if they take care of business tonight.
Now, to the game at hand. Our kissin’ cousin, the Utah Jazz (“cousins” because each has a New Orleans component in its family tree, “kissing” because each team has different other roots – Charlotte (Hornets) and New Orleans (Jazz)), is a very good team. This will be the 1st of 3 meetings with the Hornets this season. We play again on Saturday, 2/22, and close with the last regular season Oklahoma City home game on 4/14.
After their 103-83 loss tonight in Salt Lake City to Chicago, the Jazz are now 25-28 and are 2nd in the Northwest Division of the Western Conference : Denver (29-26), Utah (25-28), Minnesota (23-30), Seattle (20-34); and Portland (18-33 before last night’s late game). Depending on the outcome of tonight’s late game between 24-28 Golden State @ Sacramento, they will either hold or be tied for 9th place in the playoff standings.
Their schedule for January thorough current looks like this:
As you can see from the above, the Jazz have had some impressive recent road wins – they’ve beaten the Lakers twice (at home and on the road), Detroit, Washington, and Philadelphia. So, this game serves up yet another occasion for the OKC Home Town Hornets fans to do the job which we’ve done so very well and enjoy doing so very much – BE THERE and yell these guys on to victory for a 7th straight Ford Center victory!
In Utah’s last game (last night at home v. Boston), these were their starters and points scored:
Mehmet Okur (#13, 6-11, Turkey; 17.8 ppg, 9.4 rpg, 2.5 apg – 15points); Andrei Kirilenko (#47, 6-9, Russia; 15.7 ppg, 8.4 rpg, 4.1 apg – 17 points); Keith McLeod (#25, 6-2, Bowling Green; 6.9 ppg, 1.7 rpg, 2.3 apg - points); Jarron Collins (#31, 6-11, Stanford; 5.8 ppg, 4.7 rpg, 1.4 apg – 2 points); Milt Palacio (#3, 6-3, Colorado State; 6.8 ppg, 2.1 rpg, 3.1 apg – 15 points). In this part of the country, we are also familiar with Greg Ostertag (#00, 7-2, Kansas; 2.9 ppg, 4.3 rpg, 1.1 apg – played 4 minutes, did not score).
When at home, the Jazz play in the beautiful Delta Center, 19,911 capacity. Like Oklahoma City, the Utahans support their team well – almost as well as we do – they are 10th in the NBA averaging 18,208 before last night’s game. This is where we’ll be playing in our next game, Saturday 2/25, in beautiful downtown Salt Lake City.
After tonight’s game, the Hornets travel to Salt Lake City (2/25), to Portland (2/26), to Seattle (2/28), and to the Clippers (3/1), before returning home for a single game on 3/6 to host the Phoenix Suns.
GO HORNETS!
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