InGameNow

SUNY Geneseo’s Scott Morton: Amazing Basketball Finish

December 3rd, 2008 | By InGameNow Posted in NCAA BB

This video doesn’t even capture it all:

Scott Morton had run down the court and drained a pull up three pointer with 10 seconds to go - for the one point lead. Then he had this game winning tip - as Suny Geneseo was unable to call a timeout:

Who says Blue Devils make bad Pros?

November 30th, 2008 | By Jack Newhouse Posted in NBA, NCAA BB

The New York Knicks beat the Golden State Warriors 138-125 at MSG.

Chris Duhon set a Knicks team record with 22 assists. Duhon broke Richie Guerin’s team record of 21 assists previously set on December 12th, 1958. His line for the night, 12 pts, 22 ast, 4 reb.

Corey Maggette put up huge numbers for the Warriors. He shot 12-20 from the field and ended up with 32 pts, 12 reb, 2 ast.

Coach Mike Krzyzewski and the Duke Blue Devils take a lot of heat for not performing well in the NBA. Last night, former Blue Devils Chris Duhon and Corey Maggette proved otherwise.

Does One Game Really Make A Difference?

November 2nd, 2008 | By Steuart Martens Posted in MLB, MMA, NBA, NCAA BB, NCAA FB, NFL, NHL, Uncategorized

What do the numbers 12, 16, 82, and 162 mean? Well, simply put, they are the number of games played in college football, professional football, basketball, and baseball.  While the numbers are all different, the end result that each team wants from those numbers is the same. Of the number of games they play, they want more of those games to end up as wins instead of losses, so they can continue on into the playoffs and hopefully walk away as a champion.

The other night while on the InGameNow site, someone mentioned how big it was the Knicks beat the Heat, in the first game of the season, and that it will completely define the Knicks season.  I find that hard to believe with 81 more games still on the schedule. But it got me thinking, how important is every game for our major sports, and so we’re going to break this one down.

College Football

College Football is the most unique of the major sports, in that your ranking, based on polls, determines your success in the postseason.  Now, in order to actually qualify for a bowl, only six wins are needed, so as long as a team can get themselves there, they are in good shape.  For the more prestigious programs with bigger trophies on the mind, six is a gimme number to them. Their success is defined by ten or more wins, and for some of the top tier programs, it has to be a perfect season. One loss can easily lower them from the polls and remove all semblance of hope of a national championship.

While it may be a flawed system most (myself included), no other sport highlights the fact that no matchup is guaranteed, and taking a day off to rest is just not part of the picture. Each game matters, and the teams perform up to those standards day in and day out.

Professional Football

Next up is the NFL, with 16 games in 17 weeks, and with only four playoff spots between the 16 teams in the conference, competition is tight. However, there are those teams that end up head and shoulders above the rest, and as the playoffs creep closer, upon clinching themselves a spot in the playoffs (usually, if its early enough, they’re also adding in home field advantage and maybe a bye week as well), choose to rest their weary starters and save their legs and strength for the post-season run.  For those good teams, they usually begin to do this around week 15, become extremely more prevalent during week 17.  However, I think this trend is going to start being bucked pretty soon.  Teams like the Indianapolis Colts, who since 2002 have been a playoff fixture, have had the habit of resting their starters around week 16 and 17, as well as the bye week, and what did they get for it? From 2002-2005, the Colts could not make the Super Bowl, and on three occasions from 2000-2007, they have been knocked out in their first appearance.

Now, during this past season the New York Giants had the opportunity to rest in the last week, but, due to the nature of the game (vs. Patriots in regular season finale, who were undefeated at this point), they chose to play their starters not just for a half, but for the entire football game. Sure, some got hurt, but what came of it? They kept their motivation and camrederie up through three straight road wins on their way to defeating the Patriots in the Super Bowl. It is that hope that we begin to see 17 straight weeks of challenging football, and not the current 15 and a month’s worth of rest for our better teams.

Basketball

Now, for some teams, winning every game matters (see Chicago Bulls 72-10 record), but for others, it’s not bad to sit a starter or two after a long road trip swing. Then you have the playoff factor.  Teams like the Spurs are extremely conservative during the regular season, banking on the fact that they will do enough in their division to earn a top four seed, while teams that have already been eliminated decide to use that opportunity to showcase players no one has ever heard of, and rest weary starters to save them in the hopes of making a playoff run next year.  For example, the Miami Heat, clearly eliminated last year, decided to place Dwyane Wade on the injured list, to let him heal up for a shot this year, and give the team a greater chance at a good draft pick.

Remember, in basketball, the team with the worst record gets the greatest number of chances at the top draft pick.  So, the top teams can take a day or two off during the season, and the bottom of the rankings give up as soon as they can. Doesn’t leave too many games the fans will see actual action, unless you’re a middle of the road team. Those are your daily grinders in the NBA.

Baseball

We save the longest for last (much like this blog), and let’s be perfectly honest, there is no way each team is going to put 100% effort for all 162 games. It is extremely common to see a team take some days off throughout the year because some personnel have to rest. The number of games combined with some west coast road swings can make a huge difference, and unless you’re closer to the playoff run at the end of the season, when you have your September call ups around anyways, how much are you going to care about losing a random game in June and in August. Sure, it has the potential to bite you in the butt at the end, but the teams are going to concern themselves with the present, especially if they know they will need the freshest bodies for a playoff run.  Finally, add into the fact that once again, your guaranteed teams are going to use September to rest the weary and give new faces a shot at making their case for next year, and its painfully obvious baseball is not a sport where every game matters every day.

So there you have it, four sports, and the importance of each game every day in their respective league.  Makes it a little more obvious why some sports are bigger during the regular season than the playoffs, and others fans don’t really pay attention to until it’s postseason time.

Bielema on the Coaches Hot Seat?

November 1st, 2008 | By Steuart Martens Posted in InGameNow, MLB, NCAA BB

Everyone seems to be talking about all the coaches on the hot seat this season and the degree of heat which they’re experiencing. Several of the lists are very in depth, including coaches at non-BCS schools such as Wyoming and New Mexico State.

And then there’s Bret Bielema at Wisconsin. Now, this hasn’t really received much attention or discussion. But I believe it was just after the Wisconsin loss to Michigan when I started seeing fans in discussion forums saying that Bielema needs to be fired. Then I found a blog dedicated to firing Bielema–www.firebretbielema.com. On the post “Welcome Badger Fans,” there was a very interesting comment that was—surprise—anoymous, lamenting that Bielema can’t beat Michigan when Appalachian State and Toledo can.

Hold up—if the loss to Michigan is why some Wisconsin fans suddenly want to see Bielema gone, then Wisconsin fans need to realize a few things.

First, Michigan’s losing to Appalachian State had little to do with Michigan being a good or bad team. College football fans can laugh at that loss all they want to, but most fans know that Appalachian State was better than at least half the FBS teams were last year…and still are. Otherwise, analysts and pollsters wouldn’t have wanted to make sure Div I-AA schools could get ranked in the top 25 polls. Truth be told, Appalachian State probably could have beaten Wisconsin last year, especially if Michigan hadn’t handed all of college football a public service announcement about taking Div I-AA schools for granted.

Second—um, Wisconsin fans…your team did beat Michigan last year (same year Michigan lost to Appalachian State), ending their eight-game winning streak. It also basically killed their chances of going to the Rose Bowl (and don’t say Michigan could have gone if they’d beaten OSU, because thinking they could beat OSU was a stretch). What more can you ask for?

Third, Michigan is deplorable this year. They shouldn’t have lost to Toledo, but anybody with half a brain who watched the Michigan games before that one should have thought maybe they would. But it’s not as if Toledo could beat Michigan any other season. Plus, when Wisconsin lost to Michigan, the Badgers were overrated. Whether it was at Michigan or not, that fact would have come out sooner or later. Most people just expected it to come out a week later than it did.

Finally, teams just lose games that don’t make any sense to lose sometimes. Frankly, Illinois should have beaten Wisconsin this season, but the Badgers pulled that out. How can you complain about losing to Michigan—or losing, period—when Wisconsin also beat Illinois, lost to Iowa, and was supposed to lose to Penn State and OSU? Similarly, the losses Wisconsin had last year were all understandable and unsurprising—Illinois, PSU, OSU and Tennessee. Don’t forget that in 2006, when the Badgers went 12-1, Michigan and Arkansas were the only tough teams Wisconsin faced—no OSU—and the win against Arkansas in the Capital One Bowl wasn’t exactly convincing.

If the fans’ problems with Bielema also include his not having better quarterbacks on hand than Allan Evridge and Dustin Sherer, starting 0-4 in the conference and having to hear for two seasons that there are games Wisconsin is “supposed to lose,” that’s understandable. If some Wisconsin fans truly believe Wisconsin is better than all those things, then that’s not a far-fetched belief. But considering the majority of former Wisconsin head coach Barry Alvarez’s records at Wisconsin, some fans are either expecting a little too much from Bielema and Badger football or are a little too peeved about losing to a struggling but talented Michigan. There is no question that blowing a 19-point lead against an awful offense is ridiculous. But if the Michigan game is the only focus for Wisconsin fans, then they have vision problems and need to find more reasons to justify firing Bielema. Alvarez had records like Bielema had last season and probably will this season, and he was around for a while. It’s perfectly fine to want more than that, but remain realistic and give Bielema some time.

Athletes are underpaid and I DO feel sorry for Paul Peirce

November 1st, 2008 | By Steuart Martens Posted in InGameNow, MLB, MMA, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA BB, NCAA FB, NFL, NHL

If there’s one thing I cannot stand, it’s the winy sports fan. And the biggest wine of them all is the ridiculous beef that 90% of sports radio callers have and that’s the professional athletes are overpaid.

Well get ready to wine I think they should be paid more!

This nerve got struck again most recently after I read Bob Ryan’s Wednesday morning column where he called Paul Peirce’s Championship acceptance speech rambling, embarrassing, [and] self-indulgent. Not incredibly out of line, especially for this town, but when a few Boston radio hosts came to the defense of Peirce, saying that it was in no way embarrassing, especially after all that Pierce has had to go through with this team, both personally and professionally, all hell broke loose.

There is obviously going to be a lot of hate thrown at any athlete who cries on national television. It’s just sports for Pete’s sake! Grown men should only cry in bars watching sports or at home by themselves watching Rudy or Field of Dreams. Peirce was obviously going to get it for that, but after the Ryan comment along with the subsequent defense, out came the crazies. The common thread of the the argument came: Why am I supposed to feel bad for a guy making MILLIONS of dollars to play a SPORT??

Well you had no problem throwing every other emotion their way throughout their playing careers. You love them, you DESPISE them. You call them a superstar, a bum, a god, a cancer on the locker room, but you never call them human. To you, the salary makes them immune to pain, suffering, or any sympathy for hardships big (being stabbed within an inch of your life) or small (countless mediocre seasons). You don’t owe them anything because they have EVERYTHING.

This is often the battle cry of the very people that spend all day listening to sports radio at work, then come home to watch ESPN, go to the computer to check their fantasy lineup, before heading off to the arena to spend 5 times what they spend at the grocery store to watch sports. Apparently there are no mirrors in crazy sports fan town because you are your own worst enemy. I continually appalled by the lack of self-awareness it takes to call up a SPORTS radio station and complain that it’s just a game. If it were just a game to you, then you wouldn’t be listening to people talk about games. It’s okay to admit that you think sports are important. You’re not the only one.

Which brings me to my next point: the money. I guess I can understand why a guy who’s making pennies on the dollar to do hard labor can get pissed off seeing a guy complain about not feeding his family on multi-million dollar deals, but it’s not like they are asking for anything out of the means of the owners. Sports are a multi-billion dollar industry and the players are not the only people who feed their families off of its profits. Although they are the most crucial aspect of the cash cow that is professional sports. For example, Major League Baseball took in $6.075 billion in 2007 while only paying out just over $2 billion to the players. That leaves 2/3 of the profits to go to non players, who make up a considerably smaller portion of the overall MLB payroll. Is there any great injustice over how much money Jerry Jones or Al Davis or George Steinbrenner make? I mean is what they do any less of a game than the players?

For those of you who didn’t catch Peirce’s speech (as most of the sports radio callers admitted they hadn’t before they called to complain), you can listen to it here. And yes, it is self indulgent and he does ramble a little bit longer than he probably should, but that’s why I loved it and why I thought it was the furthest thing from embarrassing. Because I have been a Celtics fan from Peirce’s drafting up until now and I did feel bad for this guy. He was and is a superstar, one of the best in the league and he could have gone elsewhere and probably made more money, but he didn’t. He stuck through it even after a local rap group tried to kill him. He stuck through it as the organization continued to make horrible moves and trade away top commodities for mediocre talent. He stuck through terrible stretches of bad play with young, unproven teammates. The bad play did not, however, hurt the Celtics organization as fans, like myself, stuck by the team even through a 22 year championship drought for the League’s most storied franchise.

I felt bad for Paul, not out of sympathy, but because I went through it with him and it is sweeter because of the hard times. I know that if I had been up there, I would have rambled just as much and talked about how my father taught me to be a Celtics fan and how I idolized Larry Bird even though I don’t remember him ever winning a championship or how Red Auerbach is an honorary member of my family although he’s never met any of us. I got a little choked up watching him because I think he does understand that we went through it all with him. That’s why the fans continued to cheer throughout the rambling because we got it.

I hate to say it, but I felt a tinge of this same feeling last week as I watched my beloved Red Sox fall to the Tampa Bay [Devil] Rays. I have little to no respect for the Tampa fan base with their ridiculous cowbells and F-List celebrities and horrendous stadium, but as I watched in horror as they piled ontop of David Price, the TBS broadcast cut to Carl Crawford running in from left field. He did not make a straight B-Line to the mound, but rather sort of galloped in sideways, jumping up and down like a freakshow towards the fans. If he had not been Carl Crawford, a player I greatly admire and have often wondered why he remained with such a terrible organization, I would have rolled my eyes and turned off the television, but I know that that stupid, self-indulgent slapping of his chest was genuine and it wasn’t embarrassing as Mr. Ryan would probably suggest. It was what sports is all about. The player and the fans living in the moment. And they both got it.

7 Plays Dumber than DeSean Jackson

September 16th, 2008 | By Daniel Posted in NCAA BB, NFL

Jocks. Who doesn’t love them? Ok don’t really answer that; but who doesn’t love the down-to-earth mistakes that show their occasional hubris and overall boneheadedness? Last night, Eagles WR DeSean Jackson treated us to one of the stupidest moments in NFL history for celebrating his touchdown reception about 18 inches too early. A word of advice to Jackson: you are not Usain Bolt–save the celebrating for after you cross the line.

Of course, Jackson’s play was not of huge consequence (although some of the staunchest Cowboys haters were hoping for a goal line stand, just for karma). There have been plenty of bonehead plays before his. We at IGN reviewed some of the best in recent sports history:

7 - Leon Lett’s Fumble Recovery
It is widely accepted that with his bonehead play, DeSean Jackson has officially entered the Leon Lett Club. For some reason the king of bonehead plays is not on youtube as of this writing, but in Superbowl XXVII (Jan 1993), Lett was fortunate enough to recover a fumble against the Buffalo Bills and take it to the house…except he put his hands out to celebrate in the last 10 yards before approaching the end zone and one of the Bills players caught up to him and knocked the ball out of his hand. Although it was in the Superbowl, the play was of no consequence as the Cowboys won handily.

6 - Leon Lett. Again. The very next season.
This time was not in the Superbowl, but it did cost his team the game. On Thanksgiving Day 1993 during a snowstorm in Dallas, the Cowboys were leading the Dolphins 14-13 and simply needed to run out the clock if the Dolphins miss their field goal. Well, the FG was blocked and the Cowboys started celebrating–except Lett tried to pick up the ball and proceeded to fumble it, which allowed the Dolphins to regain possession and kick another FG as the clock ran out.

5 - Jose Canseco uses his head
During his 1993 stint with the Texas Rangers, Canseco allowed what would’ve been an easy out against the Cleveland Indians to be an easy score. He lost a fly ball in the lights as he approached the warning track, and the ball missed his glove and bounced off his head. In a sport that is so heavily based on statistics, it’s safe to say that Canseco led the league that year in assists.

4 - Fred Brown, Georgetown
Not to be confused with Downtown Fred Brown about 10 years earlier, this Fred Brown played alongside Patrick Ewing in the early 80s and came to a 1 point game in the 1982 national championship game against a UNC squad that included Michael Jordan and James Worthy. UNC went up 63-62 with 15 seconds left. Brown took it up the floor for the final posession and for no explicable reason gave the ball to James Worthy. Dean Smith gets his first NCAA title.
Start watching at about 2:50

3 - Chris Webber, Michigan
Yes, not one but 2 of UNC’s championships have come at the expense of some other idiot. At the pinnacle of Fab 5 fame, Chris Webber sealed his fate of never winning a NCAA title by calling timeout in the last seconds of the 1993 championship against UNC. Only problem: they didn’t have any timeouts left, which gave UNC the winning free throws. Instead of even trying to live this down Webber took the bull by the horns and named his charity foundation Timeout, which probably sounds better than Tyra’s Assets

2 - Delfi Geli, Alaves
If you don’t follow euro soccer allow me to explain the stakes. Liverpool FC was playing Deportivo Alaves for the 2001 UEFA Cup, which is kind of like saying Florida State was playing Oklahoma in the Bowl game for all the Americas. Anyway, after playing a relatively high-scoring 4-4 game, Alaves’ star Delfi Geli managed to score an own-golden-goal (golden meaning it was sudden death OT) defending a free kick. Top put this in American terms, it would be as if Leon Lett had fumbled in his own end zone to give the Bills the game-winning touchdown in Superbowl overtime.
Start watching @ 3:40

1 - DeSean Jackson in high school
Yes, the only thing truly dumber than DeSean Jackson now, is DeSean Jackson in high school. In this all-star game he did a flip at the 1 yard line to celebrate his td, not only proving that he has nothing in common with Usain Bolt, but he is no Shawn Johnson either.