We’ve reached the second week of November, which means that yes, believe it or not, the college basketball season is right around the corner. As Isiah Thomas’s FIU Golden Panthers get eviscerated by North Carolina tonight, the journey to the Final Four will officially be underway. There are prohibitive favorites to square off in Indianapolis in early April — Kansas, Kentucky, Villanova, Duke, and Texas immediately spring to mind– but what of the talented teams who are not projected to make it to the Final Four? Which teams have the ingredients necessary to make a deep run in March? Join me after the jump as I analyze three surprising candidates to make the Final Four. Read the rest of this entry →
An up and down day yesterday for Philadelphia has made for a rough Monday, but nothing like Miranda stopping by to cheer us up. The Eagles destructed the Giants, but alas, the Yankees prevailed over the ever-reliable Brad Lidge. Game 5 of the World Series is tonight, with Cliff Lee taking the mound against A.J. Burnett to keep the Phillies alive. So let all the Phillies fans and Yankees haters pray together tonight for a Phillies victory. No fucking way I want to see the A-Rod’s centaur ass jumping around for joy in Philly. Now on to the jams…
Eh forget it, it’s too easy. Instead, how about some hockey highlights from the week?
Atlantic-Pittsburgh has the best record in the NHL at 9-1, the Rangers are also off to a good start (7-3) but that isn’t as impressive anymore because they started the past two seasons the same way and still went home early at the end of the season, Philly’s tailed off a bit from a strong start and is now 4-2-1 (sorry, Mech), New Jersey is playing like a Jacques Lemaire team because they are (still 5-3 though) and the Islanders finally won a game.
Southeast-Washington is, predictably, off to a good start at 5-2-2, Atlanta (surprise!) is right behind them at 4-2-1, as I already mentioned, Tampa Bay is playing strip hockey and the Bolts, Carolina, and Florida have won 7 games apiece.
Northeast-apparently it’s 2007 all over again, as Buffalo is in first place at 5-1-1 along with Ottawa at 6-2-2 (the NHL points system, there’s nothing like it,) Boston is playing .500 hockey (4-4-1) and Montreal has won 4 of its first 9 games, picking up where they left off last year. Oh and Toronto still hasn’t won a game.
Central-Give or take a couple switches in the specific order of the records, the Central Division looks more or less the same as it did when the playoffs opened last spring. Chicago and Columbus are in the top 2 spots with 5 wins each, Detroit and St Louis are 3-3-2 and 4-3-1 neither outright great nor downright awful, and Nashville’s in the cellar at 3-5-1.
Northwest-Colorado’s off to a 7-1-2 start that’s inexplicable except for the fact that Craig Anderson’s been playing even better than he did last year when he was Florida’s goalie, Calgary’s off to a slightly more plicable 6-2-1 start with help from Dion Phaneuf’s team high 5 goals, Edmonton’s a very solid 6-2-1, thanks to Dustin Penner remembering that he actually knows how to score goals, Vancouver’s 4-5 in large part because they didn’t pick up their first road win until a 3-2 victory at Chicago on Wednesday and Minnesota is still suffering from the aftereffects of having been coached for the better part of a decade by Jacques Lemaire and is thus 2-7 and tied for fourth fewest total goals in the NHL, with 18.
Pacific-San Jose’s 5-4-1, which isn’t as big a deal as it normally would seem for the same reason the Rangers’ start isn’t as impressive as it usually would be, Dallas is 4-2-4, Phoenix is 6-5-2, which would be nicer if they weren’t drawing home crowds of 6-9,000 people a night, and in a reversal of the usual SoCal hockey status quo, LA is 6-4 while Anaheim is 3-4-1. Not too many must-watchers this coming week, though Philly plays Washington on Tuesday, which is always fun.
On a cold and rainy day, what better than Alessandra Ambrosio in a swimsuit to warm you up an get you ready for the weekend? We have a pretty serious sports weekend coming up, so let’s get to the previewing.
In the most important games of the weekend, we have the Yankees and Angels returning to the Bronx, fighting for the right to face the Phillies in the World Series. The Angels were able to extend the series thanks to the superb combination of timely hitting, Girardi’s terrible bullpen management, and Brian Fuentes keeping his shit together long enough to get the save. Saturday night we get the great pitching match-up of Joe Saunders and Andy Pettitte. I see Pettitte getting his record 16th postseason win as the Yanks win a tight one for the AL Pennant.
As for tomorrow and college football, we have a couple good match-ups. BYU hosting undefeated TCU is the standout game, as a TCU win gets them a whole lot closer to a BCS berth and greatly adding to the BCS clusterfuck. TCU gets the win on the road as Max Hall get buried. As for some of the other good games, I for some reason like my Wolverines to upset Penn St. at home, and Iowa and Texas to hold up surprisingly close upset efforts from MSU and Mizzou respectively.
As for the best NFL games of Sunday, Vikings @ Steelers and Bears @ Bengals are tops. I like the road teams taking the wins. Now on to…
Speaking Sputnik is, well, speechless. Here are the juicier excerpts from the Week 6 NFL QBs’ diaries.
Dear Diary,
Call me greased lightning because I sure as HELL struck twice! ESPN calls me a hero; Ray Lewis should just call me “Sir” because we got out of there with a W thanks to my GUN! YEAH! I mean, I might as well have told Longwell to sit himself down so I could kick the game-winning field goal! I could have done it! Flacco looked really depressed after the game so I told him– hey no big, kid. He doesn’t know it yet, but I’m going to give him and Stafford lessons on how to be Gunslingers one day. It’s going to be so sweet having my NFL brethren respect me! JaMarcus texted me today, but I don’t know, man, he shredded that Philadelphia D like he was a Pit Bull; he doesn’t need me to improve his Rocket Arm. Life coach teaching me proper use of semicolon for weekly ESPN column on myself. Favre out.
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We’ve reached the second week of November, which means that yes, believe it or not, the college basketball season is right around the corner. As Isiah Thomas’s FIU Golden Panthers get eviscerated by North Carolina tonight, the journey to the Final Four will officially be underway. There are prohibitive favorites to square off in Indianapolis in early April — Kansas, Kentucky, Villanova, Duke, and Texas immediately spring to mind– but what of the talented teams who are not projected to make it to the Final Four? Which teams have the ingredients necessary to make a deep run in March? Join me after the jump as I analyze three surprising candidates to make the Final Four. Read the rest of this entry →
Alessandra, Welcome to Last Call
