Welcome to Opening Day. I know the White Sox and Indians played on Sunday night, but to me that’s the equivalent of the play-in game. Today’s when baseball really starts. The season only gets officially underway when the President throws out the first pitch. It’s not quite that first Thursday-Friday of the NCAA tournament, but it’s up there.
Adam Vinatieri is no longer a New England Patriot. This is not really news. However, I found myself thinking about this painful situation when talking to my girlfriend the other day. She is also a Pats fan, but is not much of a sports fan. When she heard the news her first question was, “Am I still allowed to root for him?”
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If you think that the four days that make up the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament are the greatest days on the calendar — like Christmas, New Years, Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving rolled up into one, then Last Dance is right up your alley.
Last Dance centers around the 2005 NCAA tournament which culminated in the championship game between UNC and Illinois. It’s not a perfect book; hell, no sports books are, but it’s a good read and will show you a side of the NCAA tourney you haven’t seen before. The most interesting parts of the book are the history lessons it gives. |
Bruins Bully Bayou Bengals 59 – 45
The NCAA Men’s basketball Final Four has produced some of the most magical and memorable games in basketball history. That was definitely not the case in Saturday’s UCLA – LSU regional semifinal game in Indianapolis. The Oakland region representative, number two ranked UCLA Bruins seemingly channeled the mojo of John Wooden, Lew Alcindor, Bill Walton, and Reggie Miller while pounding the LSU Tigers for 40 straight minutes. A game what many said to be an instant classic was quickly turned into non-competitive rout with UCLA defeating LSU 59 to 45. The UCLA Bruins, who even went under my radar this season, came out and overmatched and outplayed a widely heralded Tigers team. LSU, sporting two future NBA lottery picks in Glen “Big Baby” Davis and Tyrus Thomas, looked fatigued and bamboozled against the Bruin defensive tenacity.
Barry Sanders retired from the NFL on July 28th, 1999. He was just 1457 yards short of the career rushing record. This opened the door for Emmitt Smith to capture the record in 2002. Oh, the injustice!
by Matt Wells
The high-flying Phoenix Suns combined with last night’s opponent, the Toronto Raptors, to score 266 points in a 140-126 victory for the Suns. This was done in regulation and it was done without their superstar center, Amare Stoudemire.
This tremendous output makes me ask this question: did the Suns really need Stoudemire to come back sooner than expected? The answer is a simple “no,” and they may have done Amare more harm than good by rushing him back.
Just a couple of weeks ago, people all across the world began analyzing the teams, watching Bracketology, and making their predictions on the NCAA tournament. After all of the dramatic finishes, the clutch shots, and the upsets, who could have possibly had these four teams in Indianapolis.
I know I didn’t.
So, after watching only one of my Final Four teams advance to Indianapolis, I will try to make up for my sub par predictions with a perfect Final Four. But with the way this tournament has turned out, perfect is a huge stretch for anyone.
With Opening Day on the horizon now is a perfect opportunity to break down the season ahead of us. Every year teams over achieve or fail to live up to expectations due to injuries or various ailments, causing predictions to fluctuate from reality, but hey that’s why they play the game.
I play on the varsity basketball team for Northland High School. We have a lot of talent, but the other schools in the conference are much bigger and have powerhouse basketball programs. We faced the best team in the conference, the Prentice Buccaneers, at home last night. One senior, an all-conference post man, had his season end in ruins.
There is a salary cap for players in the NFL and I think everyone agrees that it works to promote parity. However, there are no rules to prevent teams from spending freely on coaching staffs. Does this give them an unfair advantage?