The Sweeter 16

3-1 yesterday! I have to say that's not too shabby! I don't have time for a full post today, but here are my picks for tonight!

Ohio State 78 Kentucky 65

Marquette 69 North Carolina 65

Kansas 54 Richmond 50

VCU 70 FSU 59

There you go!

Have fun watching!

How Sweet It Is!

Welcome sports fans! How is your Bracket doing? Mine is damaged, but still intact! That could easily change today. Welcome to the Sweet Sixteen. The next two days have a lot of great matchups, but before that, how about the Tourney’s first rounds? So many great games! What usually stands out the most are the upsets. This year we’ve had some shockers like Louisville falling to Moorhead State and Pitt falling to Butler. Strangely those are both Big East teams. Maybe it’s really not that strange. I have to admit, the Big East is a little overrated. I think it’s more of a mind set. They are told that they are so amazing all year and they think they don’t have to try as hard because they are a class above all the others.  Whatever it is, it is apparent that they are not performing. There are only two Big East teams in the Sweet Sixteen. It’s a trend that we have seen for the past couple of years, but every year we get that bracket and put the Big East far every year. I think it’s about we learn.

                Today, the Sweet Sixteen starts. With all the terrible weather, I suggest to just stay warm on the couch for the next two days because there is some great basketball. With that in mind here’s how I believe the games are going to fall.

Thursday, 7:15 – Uconn V SDSU

A rising SDSU squad looks to take down Jim Calhoun and the Kemba Walker show. As good as SDSU might be, Walker and the Huskies are better than any competition that SDSU has faced. Plus, Uconn is on fire right now and could end up having a dream season!

Uconn 65 SDSU 60

Thursday, 7:27 - BYU V Florida

The winner of this game will win this entire region. To me, these two teams are clearly the best in this area of the bracket and both deserve the trip to Houston.  If Florida’s key players, Erving Walker and Chandler Parsons, out score/perform Jimmer Fredette, they win this game. As hard as it is for me to pick against the Jimmer, I think Florida hits a last second shot to win this game.

Florida 56 BYU 55

Thursday, 9:45 – Arizona V Duke

This game will be the most lopsided tonight. A strong, experienced Duke lineup will dominate the starting five of the wildcats tonight.

Duke 77 Arizona 61

Thurday, 9:57 – Butler V Wisconsin

Cinderella tries to keep dancing tonight. A Butler team that made it to the finals last year is back to take on the Badgers of Wisconsin. Butler will outpace the slower Badgers and beat them in a strong fashion.

Butler 66 Wisconsin 59

That’s it for today’s games! Tomorrow I’m going to look at the rest of the Sweet Sixteen. Later this week I am also starting my preseason predictions for the upcoming baseball season!

Thanks for reading!

MARCH MADNESS

March Madness is here! The brackets are out and there are not many surprises to me. The One seeds round out as Ohio State, Duke, Pitt, and Kansas. From the first look, there doesn’t seem to be any bad snubs. On further review there might be!

I encourage you all to go out and fill a bracket! As a reminder, the games start Tuesday with the First Four. You can find a bracket online anywhere. A good place to play though is ESPN’s Tournament challenge. They do all the scoring and it is all online! I hope you have fun and I assure you I will have more on the tournament in the coming weeks!

Thanks!

I'm Back!

Welcome back sports fans! An important family issue has kept me away for the past week, but I’m back with strength! Much has happened over the past week, so let’s make it a basketball week!

This is the week that seasons are ended, championships won, and tournament bids are solidified. It is merely weekend from Selection Sunday, but March Madness is in the air. Take for example just today; Uconn’s Kimba Walker sank a final second shot to beat the one seeded Pitt Panthers in the Big East Tournament. To me, this only shows the power of the Big East even more. Every team has a chance to win every game. They continually beat up on each other up to the “Big Dance” and the team that is victorious has the “best chance” of winning. That is not usually the case. The Big East Champion is usually so beat up at they can fall in the NCAA tournament. It is almost good to lose early. When your filling out your bracket, don’t forget about Pitt. They will still a force to be reckoned with late in March. One team you can count out is Villanova. They fell early in their conference tournament and were dropping games for a month before that. Well, I’m not going to get too far ahead of myself. I’ll save the rest of that for tournament time.

In other news, the Heat are crying. Sounds like a joke right? Well it’s not. Following the Heat-Bulls game, many Heat players were crying. More than likely from the frustrations they are now experiencing. After Lebron “took his talents to South Beach” he bragged about how many championships they would win. What it looks like right now, is zero. Nothing is working for them. The bench players are getting out scored by 20+ a game, they can’t beat any of the goo teams in the league, and they have shot 1-16 in game winning situations. The 1 is a dunk by Lebron James in the final seconds and they still lost that game. So overall it looks really bad for them, but this is only the first season. Look for them to work their way to getting some good bench players and gelling together. Before we know it, the Heat will be relevant and hopefully getting in to a Finals showdown with the Thunder, in let’s say oh, next year!

I’ll be back with more this week, but until then stay classy!

The Doctor Is In!

Change is sometimes a good thing. Recently we have heard much about college football and changes in its conferences. Now there are talks of changes in the NBA. Retraction seems to be the idea that keeps popping up. Essentially they would kick teams out in a way to get more star players on more teams. This got me thinking, what would I do to leagues to make them better? Looks like the doctor is in!

NFL: My prescription, to move some teams. With all these talks of lock out, they need some new markets to make money in. Two places I’m thinking of are Los Angeles and Grand Rapids. Los Angeles needs a football team. It is such a big market that the NFL could taken advantage of. All they would need to do get a new stadium in LA and move the Raiders back. I know that LA fans are very dedicated and that Al Davis might not agree, but it would be a great move for the NFL. Grand Rapids may be a harder case. They are one of the next candidate cities for a pro team and have a dedicated sports state. I feel that everyone on the west side of the state would go crazy for a team. Then the NFL could market the cross state rivalry between the Lions and the Grand Rapids team. I would take the Jaguars out of Jacksonville and put the new team in the AFC South. Now there are two new markets and loads of $$$!

MLB: My prescription, tweaking the schedule. No teams would be changed in this deal. All I would want is more day games and more inter-league play. The day game is a lost piece in the MLB. Baseball’s history is playing in the middle of summer in the middle of the day. It is so necessary for a great season! They could also take on the big issue of shortening the season with day games. More double headers = less days in a season, and less games in a season=more time for the post season. Now there are more viewers for the postseason and you can make more money because the World Series isn’t over shadowed by regular season football. More inter-league play would be more for fun and entertainment. We could all finally get to see how are teams are doing in retrospect to the whole league. The old days of baseball are gone and we can finally break this tradition and give meaning to mid season baseball.

That’s it for today, but tune in later this week for more changes in sports and the return of the Big 5!

Thanks for reading!

I Have MMS

March 13^th, 2011 is a sacred day for all college basketball fans. It is selection Sunday is when we franticly print off brackets and try to find the “winning formula”. Recently, I have been infected by MMS (March Madness Syndrome). I just want it to get here. Enough of all this speculation, let’s just start the thing! Many of us seem to live for those memories that could only happen in March, but you can’t help but think of what might happen. Will MSU make it this year, will BYU be a one seed and of course who will win are all WILLs that show up in early December. I have been thinking about these for the past few days. I can’t help but be a little hypocritical and make my own predictions. Let’s be real though people, these are just snapshots of a frame of time in college basketball. In a few days all of this could be wrong. There are still the last few crucial regular season games and of course the conference tournaments (Want to know an obsession? I do brackets for these just because I can’t wait any longer!). I know I called the Super Bowl right, but this is truly that hardest thing to call in all of sports! So don’t take any of these to heart and name the teams that I call the written word. So here we go:

#1 Seeds  

Ohio State- Big 10 Champions

Pitt- Big East Champions

Texas- Big 12 Champions

Duke- ACC Champions

#2 Seeds

Kansas- Loses in Big 12 Championship game

San Diego State -  Champions

BYU- Mountain West Champions

Notre Dame- Loses in Big East Championship game

#3 Seeds

Arizona- Pac 10 Champions

Purdue- Loses late in the Big 10 Tournament

Georgetown- Loses late in Big East Tournament

Florida- SEC Champions

#4 Seeds

Uconn- Loses late in Big East Tournament

Wisconsin- Loses late in the Big 10 Tournament

Syracuse- Goes on a big run in the Big East Tournament; loses late

Villanova- Loses late in the Big East Tournament

Are the Michigan teams in?

Michigan- Late losses and bad Big 10 Tournament force them OUT.

Michigan State- Late wins and good Big 10 Tournament, they are IN. (Don’t sleep on them in the big dance either!)

Thanks for reading!

An All Star of an All Star Game

             Nothing says amazing like jumping a car and dunking like a beast in front of thousands of your adoring fans. This is exactly what Blake Griffin did on his way to winning the 2011 Sprite NBA Dunk contest. This only makes me love this kid even more! He is making many of us eat our words about his first season. I never thought that this guy could be this good. Now my new favorite player in the NBA, Blake has made himself the rising star in the NBA. He combined with John Wall, DeJuan Blaire, and the rest of the NBA Frosh and Sophs gave us hope in the future of the NBA.

 At a time when NFL football may be locked out, it is a good time to be an NBA’er. I haven’t been a huge NBA fan for too long, but I can’t remember a year that I have liked more. The quality of your product is rated by how good your overall performance is. In terms of all the All-Star games, the NBA is by far the best. They have all the attractions that you need to fill up a good weekend. There is the skills contest, the 3-point contest, the sophomore and freshmen game, the celebrity game, and of course the game itself. The NBA gets an A+ for their effort to entertain me during their break. All other leagues fall short. The NHL gets an A, MLB gets a B+, and the NFL gets a D. The NBA just has so many features to this great weekend.

One of those features is the celebrity game. I was surprised to see that Bieber won the MVP award. It looked like he had some skills, but come on. Give that award to one of the old NBA guys, not some punk kid that makes fun of Tom Brady’s hair.

Anyway, back to something that matters. How about the rest of the NBA Season? That sounds good to me. This is what I think the Playoffs are going to look like:

East

1. Boston

2. Miami

3. Chicago

4. Orlando

5. New York

6. Atlanta

7. Charlotte

8. Philadelphia

Philadelphia v Boston (0-4) <--- Series Record

Charlotte v Miami (1-4)

Atlanta v Chicago (1-4)

New York v Orlando (2-4)

Orlando v Boston (3-4)

Chicago v Miami (4-3)

Chicago v Boston (4-2)

West

1. San Antonio

2. Oklahoma City

3. Los Angeles

4. Dallas

5. New Orleans

6. Portland

7. Utah

8. Memphis

Memphis v San Antonio (0-4)

Utah v Oklahoma City (0-4)

Portland v Los Angeles (1-4)

New Orleans v Dallas (1-4)

Dallas v San Antonio (2-4)

Los Angeles v Oklahoma City (3-4)

Oklahoma City v San Antonio (2-4)

NBA FINALS

Chicago v San Antonio (2-4)

Well there you go! I’ll revise it when the playoffs get here.

Thanks for reading!