Santoro: One Caleb loses, but the next is almost sure to win

Sports Fodder:

Caleb Martin, who played two seasons for the Nevada Wolf Pack (2017-19), didn’t win an NBA championship with the Miami Heat. And Martin was not as effective in the NBA Finals against the Denver Nuggets as he was in the Eastern Conference finals against the Boston Celtics. But Martin clearly further established himself as a productive, effective and meaningful NBA player on an elite team against the Nuggets. Martin was ill in the first two games against Denver, suffering from migraines, body aches and chills, and it showed. He was 2-of-10 from the floor and scored just six points in the two games combined. The Heat started him in Game 1 and put him on the bench the final four games of the series. But Martin recovered over the final three games and was solid, scoring 31 points with 13 rebounds and draining three threes. His 37 points and 22 rebounds against Denver are the most by a former Pack player in an NBA Finals (JaVale McGee had 32 points for Golden State in 2018 and 10 rebounds for Golden State in 2017, both against Cleveland). Martin’s 142-plus minutes (in five games) against the Nuggets are the most by a former Pack player in the Finals for a career. McGee played 77-plus minutes in eight games for Golden State over two Finals.

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Martin struggled at times against Denver because he attracted so much national attention against the Celtics, scoring 135 points with 22 3-pointers. The Celtics basically ignored him and allowed him to roam free and take open shots. The Nuggets, though, clearly noticed what Martin did against Boston and were not going to allow it to happen in the Finals. “It’s definitely a different scouting report, for sure,” Martin told the Miami Herald during the Denver series. “I get a different feel out there. I’m kind of being a little bit more of a priority.” The key to Martin becoming a full-time starter in the NBA is whether or not he can become an offensive force when teams are focused on him.

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The next Caleb that Nevada fans will be concerned with is USC Trojans quarterback Caleb Williams. The Pack plays at USC on Sept. 2 (roughly 80 days away) to open the 2023 season. Williams, who passed for 4,537 yards and 42 touchdowns last year, will be the first active Heisman Trophy winner (2022) the Pack has ever faced. Kyler Murray, who won the 2018 Heisman while at Oklahoma, played briefly against the Pack for Texas A&M in 2015. Maybe a Wolf Pack defensive player can intercept a Williams pass and ask the Heisman winner if he would sign it after the game, the way Dre Greenlaw of the San Francisco 49ers did to Tom Brady of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last season.

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Greenlaw’s 49ers, though, beat Brady 35-7 last December. What are the odds of the Wolf Pack beating USC 35-7 in September? There’s a better chance of the Oakland A’s choosing Reno over Las Vegas as their next home. The Pack is 2-10 against Power 5 teams on the road to open a season in its history. And both wins were against California, a Power Five team in name only. The Pack allowed 30 or more points in 10 of those dozen season-opening road games against Power 5 teams. The Pack has also been outscored 480-190 in those 12 games. We’re not saying the Pack, armed with a 10-game losing streak when it steps into the Los Angeles Coliseum on Sept. 2, simply cannot beat USC. But we are saying 35-7 is asking a bit too much. How about 58-55 because, well, that’s about how many points it might take for the greatest victory in Wolf Pack history in any sport.

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The Pack is 0-5 against USC with all of the games played between 1920 and 1929. The combined score of those five games is 164-14. And one of them (1922) was just 6-0 when USC scored in the final two minutes. The last time the two schools met on a football field the players wore leather helmets with no facemasks, just 20,000 fans were in the Coliseum and the Pack lost 66-0 to the USC second and third-string players. The Los Angeles Times wrote the next day, “The Wolves of Nevada proved to be only little sheepies in disguise.”

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How much has college football changed since 1929? There are some slight differences, even beyond the leather helmets. USC will pay Nevada $1.6 million to come to Los Angeles in less than three months. The Wolf Pack in 1929 would have gladly suffered a half dozen or so 66-0 losses for a total of $1.6 million. Heck, they would have played the games without helmets at all. Think $1.6 million is a lot of money now? Well, it’s worth one 66-0 loss. But that’s it. USC quarterback Caleb Williams, for example, is going to get $2.6 million this season from his Name Image Likeness deals. It’s not college football anymore. It’s a television show. Football fans are simply numbers in the Neilsen ratings.

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The Wolf Pack will return to USC in 2027 unless, of course, the Pack wins on Sept. 2 and USC finds another patsy instead. When you pay a team over a million dollars, after all, you expect a guaranteed victory. It’s like when you spend $500 a night for a hotel and expect the air conditioner to work. Same thing. The Pack is merely a functioning air conditioner for schools like USC. The Pack will also go to Penn State in 2025, UCLA in 2026 and Ohio State in 2029. It’s the Pack’s Seven-Figure Payout Tour, sort of like Madonna’s The Virgin Tour in the 1980s.

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The Nuggets will likely become one of the most forgotten champions in NBA history, sort of like in the 1970s with the Golden State Warriors (1975), Portland Trail Blazers (1977), Washington Bullets (1978) and Seattle Super Sonics (1979). This was one of the most mediocre NBA seasons in history with no team losing fewer than 24 games for the first time since 2000-01. Before that it was 1978-79. The best team Denver beat in the postseason was the underachieving Phoenix Suns. The Heat never should have even been in the Finals. Denver also beat the mediocre Minnesota Timberwolves and Los Angeles Lakers in the playoffs. This Nuggets title is not the start of a dynasty. It’s a one and done.