tripmeistersports

NCAA Hoops

Okay, folks, the big dance begins today. I will be following up my predictions with what I imagine will be some form of gloating. Though likely that will come in the form of hiding myself for shame and ignorance of the whole college round-ball circuit.

futebol
It stinks. It all stinks. Mourinho should be hounded out of the game or at the very least brought up on disrepute charges. Anders Frisk resigning should have been the last straw. Mourinho is bad for football. His coaching credentials should be suspended until he can learn to play nice.
I hate Chelsea right now, not because I envy their money, but because they are the epitome of nouveau riche. All flash. Well, all flash and 1-0 wins. Thirteen of them this season does not speak to me of a team that is thrilling to watch. If we thought Arsenal's 1971 double-wining team was dull, just look at the sub-par performances these multi-millionaires have put in for about half of the season.

I don't think that there's anyone at Chelsea who will be able to say they came by this year's silverware as honestly as Guillit and Vialli's five trophies (FA Cup 1997, 2000; League Cup 1998; Cup Winners Cup and Super Cup 1998; Charity Shield 2000). So let's not start calling this incarnation of Chelsea "great" just yet. Those Chelsea teams (Petrescu, Poyet, DiMatteo, Zola, Vialli and Hughes in particular) were great to watch, this one just isn't.

beisbol

well, the time is at hand - the baseball season is only a few sleeps away and, much as I'm becoming acutely aware of the post-season pain that comes with being a Braves fan, I'm almost hopeful of a good run this year. Some impressive pre-season performances and a little spring-cleaning of the roster has us in good shape I think. Perhaps this really could be the year.

gridiron

Well, the season's over a while ago now, but there are the trifling matters of the curret free-agency period and the draft (next month). There have been some big trades (Randy Moss to Oakland, Kevin Carter to Miami and Plaxico Burress is still looking for a new home). Here in Atlanta we let go of Jay Feely (K) brought in Pro-Bowl nickelback Ike Reese from the Eagles and retained the kick returning services of Allen Rossum. Not to metion switching Chris Mohr for Toby Gowin (Jets) in teh punting department. I wish that Peerless Price would have stepped up last year so we could have traded him (as of right now, it would cost more to pay his guaranteed bonuses and trade him than it would to keep him until the end of his contract) but he didn't so I can only hope he gets his hand/eye coordination back before Labor Day.

hoops

Let's not let it be said that Atlanta don't blaze a trail in basketball. After the wholesale trading of major talent for minor payrolls last season, the Hawks have cunningly proceeded to chase a tearing down season with something other than a rebuilding season. Yes, the NBA basement club is at 11-53 with a win percentage of 0.172, and you might ordinarily think that a bad thing, right? Well, you'd be wrong. At this point in the season, finishing dead last is what it's all about. Getting that coveted #1 draft pick is where it's at. And this year it's the precocious talent that is Chris Paul of Wake Forest most likely to go first. I'll talk more about him in the NCAA section.
The Hawks do have a couple of bright spots on their roster, though: Josh and Josh (Childress and Smith), two outstandingly gifted rookies who, along with Chris Paul or Marvin Williams, will give the Hawks the fight they need to make a run at conference champio next year...then after that, who can tell.

pucks

There's no pro-hockey this year since the league and the players association couldn't reach an agreement on whether there should be a salary cap or not. Turns out that the players think not. Who's surprised at that?

NCAA

Okay, let's talk about the college football first. Dawgs died a death, failing to overcome Tennessee when it was there for the taking, and needed to beat the undefeated Auburn Tigers and have other results go their way to stand any chance of a good bowl game. They lost 6-24.

The Southern Cal Trojans turned over the Oklahoma Sooners in the national championship game, which Auburn can feel cheated out of because, with an idetintical perfect record, they would have put up a better fight than the Sooners who succumbed 55-19.

Kudos to Heismann winning USC QB Matt Leinart (who threw 5 TD passes) for saying that he was going to stick around and finish his last year at school before going into the draft.

And now the basketball.
After the excitement and heartbreak of last year's NCAA Championship game, watching Tech put up a spirited fight but crumble under the weight of UConn's offense, last weekend we all got the deja vu feeling again.
In the ACC (regional conference) championship game, Tech (seeded fifth), who had beaten a #1 seed UNC team to face #3 seed Duke in the final. It was close, but in the end Duke edged it 64-69.
However, the good showing gave Tech the #5 seeding in the Alberquerque regional playoffs for the NCAA tournament this year. You might well ask how Tech (W19L11) can get a #5 seed while the Colonials (W22L7) only get a #12 seed.
Well, it's all about the conference you play in. Tech play their regular season in the ACC, which boasts some of the toughest teams in the land: Wake Forest, Duke and UNC, seeded 2, 1 and 1 in their respective regional brackets. Or, to put it another way, two of the top four in the nation and three of the top eight. The Atlantic Ten Conference, home of GWU, has only one representative in the tourney. And that will be a very short adventure.

Predictarama
Chicago Regional.
No surprises. There's a reason Illinois is ranked #1 in the country and they will prove it right up to the final four.

Alberquerque Regional
I'm betting that Tech can beat Louisville in the second round but that they will fall in the third round to #1 seed Washington. Wake Forest will surprise us all by crashing out against Gonzaga in the third round, too. Washington will beat Gonzaga to advance to St. Louis.

Syracuse Regional
The big match-up will be UConn vs UNC in the Elite Eight round, with little in the way of surprises getting #1 and #2 seeds to meet each other.

Austin Regional
Duke will make a second round exit when they unexpectedly get narrowly beaten by Stanford, leaving the way wide open for Kentucky, who will stomp on Syracuse to reach the Final Four.

So...Illinois v Washington, UNC v Kentucky (UNC won 91-78 in December). I think UNC will beat Kentucky again and then go on to show its pedigree by blowing out the Illini by a double-digit margin, thanks in no small part to the irrepressible forward, Marvin Williams. Who then, hopefully, will be headed down I-85 from Chapel Hill to Atlanta to sign for the Hawks.

And that's it. That's everything.

So here we are again. Hello September.

After my little rant in February, how do we think the various seasons ended for my clubs?

Manchester United. Never recovered from the loss of Rio Ferdinand and wound up winning the FA Cup. Better than I'd hoped, homestly.

Atlanta Braves. June 25th. Sitting third in the division, 5.5 games back From the Marlins and 1 game behind the Phillies, Atlanta were 33-39, six games behind .500 baseball. Not a commanding position. Not the position the Bravos are used to. But then something happened. Russ Ortiz led them to a 5-0 win over the Orioles. Then a come-from-behind (0-7 in the sixth) to win 8-7 the next day. Atlanta picked themselves up, dusted off their hat and stood there, spinning their six-guns.
It's the bottom of the eighth right now. Braves are 5-1 up in Philadelphia and I don't doubt that this is going to be another W. 77 and 54. In the last 59 games the Braves have only dropped 15 of them. Now sitting back at the top of the division 8.5 games ahead of Florida and, after tonight, 12.5 games ahead of the Phillies. The magic number is 23. Any combination of Braves wins and Marlins losses that adds up to 23 will see the Braves clinch the division again. 31 more games to play.

Mostly it's been down to good fielding and first-rate base-running, rather than explosive batting and three 40+ home-run outfielders. And that makes me happy. That makes me believe that this team can actually make a post-season run.

Happy birthday, by the way, to Shea Logan Jones. A chip off the old Chipper, born yesterday.

Georgia Tech made it all the way to the final game in March Madness, beating most people's predictions of a much earlier exit. They succumbed, or rather capitulated, to a devastating Duke in the first half, going in with a 22 point deficit. To their credit they came out fighting and, eventually, had it back to 8 points but time ran out. Regardless, Paul Hewitt and his team came back from the Alamodome as heroes.

On the ice the Thrashers kind of just tailed off into nothingness. Try again starting next month.

By March it had become obvious that the only thing keeping the Hawks from finishing dead last
was a grim determination to screw themselves over in the expansion draft as well as the regular season. Good job. Mission accomplished.

The gridiron season is about to start. NFL in ten days, College in four. Falcons will be taking on the 49ers in San Francisco while the Bulldogs will be pitting their wits against Georgia Southern in Sanford Stadium.

This is where I get to shout out to Jim Mora who has been coming to my little coffee house for a couple of months now.

Life has been far from satisfactory as far as sports are concerned. What with my boys conceding six goals in the last two games to scrape a last minute win over Everton and an unlucky loss to Middlesbrough I'm, like, here...and happy is, like, way the fuck over there, a long, long way away.

footy
P3, W2, D0, L1, F9, A8, GD0, Pts6.

That's United's League record since Rio Ferdinand started his suspension on January 20th.

Prior to that United were:
P22, W16, D2, L4, F40, A15, GD25, Pts50.

And with only counting the games Rio played in:
P20, W15, D2, L3, F39, A14, GD25, Pts47.

Of those 20 games, nine of them were clean sheets for Tim Howard, who Rio apparently gets along famously with.

This is terrible. I'm, for the most part, a realist, and I can see United losing two, possibly all three points to Fulham, City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Blackburn and Chelsea before the season's out; not to mention Cup games against Porto and City in the next two weeks.

You can close my season now, I'll take third at this point.

beisbol

Ah, the Braves, surely there must be some joy to be had with the mighty twelve-in-a-row Braves...

As it turns out, not so much of the having of the joy.

Right now we have Ortiz, Hampton, Ramirez and...who...? We've got another two starting pitchers in there somewhere, haven't we...?

Sure we have - we've got Jaret Wright who's had two separate operations on his shoulder. That won't change his pitching, though, will it? And we have John Thompson, late of errr...no-one, who says "I'm not here to replace Greg Maddux". Well, John, you just better be here to replace Mad Dog because we need a pitcher who can win fifteen games this season. I'm not expecting the same range of pitches, but I'm expecting that you're going out there to win with whatever you have in that throwing arm. Then we have the unremarkable Trey Hodges, Paul Bird and last (and least) Jung Bong whose ERA is consistently over 5. And all of those guys blew leads as middle relief last season.

So we have some choices for starters, but the bullpen is, if it were possible, even weaker than last year. The only highlight for me is that Will Cunnane signed a one-year deal which should see him take over from John Smoltz as the guy to close the coffin on a great many teams.

Come April 6th we'll see if the Braves have the right stuff to finally get back to post-season success or if this will be another season of being the big fish in a very little pond.

pucks

The Thrashers continue to free-fall.

After his crash in September, it was January 22nd that Dany Heatley next put on a pair of skates. On Boxing Day he watched the team for the first time this season as they beat division leading Tampa Bay 3-1 in Atlanta. They've only won twice since.

Two wins in twenty-one games. Two wins since Boxing Day and a winless streak of ten games. No wins in seven since Dany started playing again. They're all but out of the playoffs (even though it's still a statistical possibility).

There are twenty-four games left in the season. I don't want to think about it.

But maybe the EA Sports curse isn't done with the Heater just yet. Perhaps it's working its voodoo on the rest of the team. Who knows...

hoops

Finally....

A week ago the Hawks logged wins against Boston and Minnesota. Consecutively. They become the final team (by several weeks) to record two victories in a row, putting to be a terrible, terrible record.

They're still second bottom of their conference and don't look like getting above that position.

shortball

For those who are uninitiated, the Arena Football League is like a minime for the NFL.

Imagine a 50 yard field (inside, of you would) and a smaller line of players, but everything else more or less the same.

Scores can be incredibly high. On opening day, the Georgia Force lost 54-28 against the New York Dragons. Tomorrow there's a game against Tampa Bay Storm. I'm going to try to get to a game or two before the end of the sixteen game season in late May.


So, as you can see, my sporting life is a bed of roses right now. An inordinate number of pricks and it stinks of shit.

gridiron

Superbowl was today. Pats vs Cats. North vs South. New England vs Carolina.

After a disappointing first quarter and the majority of the second quarter with both teams playing to 3-and-out before punting on too many occasions (the Patritots had a chance for a field goal on thier first posession of the game and sent it wide to the right, then had another field goal chance charged down), it was New England who put a touchdown on the board first.

With 27 minutes elapsed and still no score (a Superbowl record) Deion Branch caught a five yard pass in the endzone and we were, at last, out of the blocks.

On the next drive Carolina were stuck with the ball on their own five yard line. A minute and fifty five seconds later Steve Smith is catching a 39 yard Jake Delhomme pass to make it (with the point after being good) 7-7. The second longest drive in Superbowl history.

So there's a minute left on the clock. You'd think it was good for a half-time score. But no, it wasn't done yet. The Pats drive down the field and wonder of wonders, with fifteen seconds left David Givens is catching another five yard pass from Tom Brady in the endzone. 14-7 for the Pats. Got to be half-time now, right?

Nope. Jake drives down to the 35yard line and with no time left on the clock, John Kasay kicks a 50 yard field goal to make it 14-10 at half time.

Then there was the half-time show. It was a dull and uninspired affair that prompted the NFL to make an official statement about the half-time show. It read:

"We were extremely disappointed by elements of the MTV-produced Halftime show. They were totally inconsistent with assurances our office was given about the show. It's unlikely that MTV will produce another Super Bowl halftime."

So they didn't get that P. Diddy, Jessica Simpson, Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake and Kid Rock would be possibly terribly bad and, more likely, potentially inappropriate. And that last thing happened right at the end when Justin, doing a duet of some kind with Janet, pulled a flap on her costume to expose one of her breasts. Not to be prudish about it, but these artists appeal mostly to an 8-17yr old demographic, many of which would be tuning in for the game or just for the half-time show. Having a middle-aged never-was sister of a child molester show her boobies is not really entaertainment, prime-time or otherwise.

So, the second half...

Both offenses went to sleep for the third quarter, but in the fourth Antowain Smith ran in to complete a 70 yard drive and put the Pats further into the lead at 21-10

The response? DeShaun Foster running 33yards to get it to 21-16 and Jake failing to make a 2-point conversion pass.

Then, five minutes later in the play of the game, Muhsin Muhammed rounded out an 85yard passing play (the pass was about 50yards) to get the Cats ahead 22-21 for the first time in the game. Again, Jake tried a 2-point conversion and failed.

Then, on the next drive, Tom Brady makes a short pass to Mike Vraebel and a 2-point conversion run by Kevin Faulk puts the Pats back in front 29-22.

So what happens now, with two minutes left on the clock...?

Jake drives the Cats 80 yards makes the TD pass to Ricky Proehl, Kasay gets the point after and, with 1 minute left, we're tied at 29.

And so we're thinking it's probably going to be the first Superbowl ever to go into OT.

Until the (thus far) disappointing Adam Vinatieri steps up with four seconds left in the game. The kick, from 41 yards, sails through the uprights and breaks the hearts of confederates everywhere, despite making the game the highest scoring 4th quarter in a Superbowl.

32-29.

I really wanted the win for Jake. He was responsible for some great pass plays. That's not to play down MVP Tom Brady's part in the game. Sure, he was good. But DelHomme was better, even if the numbers don't seem to bear it out.

But, like the commercial during the game said, as of tomorrow, we're all unbeaten again.

So I guess it's time for a rundown of tonight's sports...

footy
The USA were held to a 1-1 draw against Denmark in Los Angeles. The standard of the refereeing was appalling with some monobrowed Mexican referee having the game decided by two penalties which seemed to be for no reason at all. Landon Donovan did himself no favours at all by trying to go round the goalie before finishing...every single frigging time. At least three times Jen and I yelled at the TV for him to hit it first time over, under or around the goalkeeper, surely scoring the goal(s) which would have secured a win for the USA.

But he did't and it was 1-1. Now onto the other stuff...

hoops

Damn, the Hawks are shit. I don't even want to talk about it.

pucks

The Thrashers finally got out of the nine-game winless rut they've been in, thumping Carolina 5-2. Maybe they've still got what it takes to put together a run to the post season, especially with the Heater due to return in a couple of weeks.

gridiron

There are only two results today - but they're the NFC/AFC Conference Championships, and they decide who's going to be in the Superbowl.

In Foxboro, The New England Patriots beat the Indianapoplis Colts 24-14, with cornerback Ty Law picking off three Peyton Manning passes.

In the other game, a veritable dullfest, The Pathers of Carolina beat the Philadelphia Eagles 14-3, Ricky Manning showing that if Ty Law can make three interceptions, so can he.

The Superbowl is on February 1st and my money is on Jake Delhomme leading the Panthers to victory. Delhomme is a rags-to-riches story.

Drafted by the Saints he was almost immediately fared out to the European NFL since the Saints had Kurt Warner playing QB. After a couple of difficult seasons trying to force his way into Frankfurt and Amsterdam, he came back to the US and signed with Carolina. In the season opener this year, Delhomme was the backup QB and, with almost half of the third quarter played and Carolina down 17-0 in Jacksonville, Delhomme was called form the bench.

Carolina won 24-23 and Jake hasn't been second choice since.

The Partiots are favored by bookmakers to win by seven points in Houston on 2/1. I'd be looking at Carolina winning by more than fourteen - but either way it looks like it's going to be a matter of which defense gets settled in first.

Nascar starts next week. I won't be covering it.

footy

Fucking Wolves.

0-1 at Wolves. I fear I shall never hear the end of it.