NCAA Basketball Quiz: Name the 7 players in Duke’s rotation during their 2000-2001 title campaign that culminated in the 82-72 win over Arizona in the finals. Answer below.
March Madness
–For the archives, I just have to recap Thursday’s many nail-biters, as good an opening day as the tournament has ever seen.
3 Notre Dame held on to beat 14 Northeastern 69-65.
14 UAB upset 3 Iowa State 60-59.
14 Georgia State upset 3 Baylor 57-56 as the coache’s son, R.J. Hunter, hit the game-winning three.
11 UCLA upset 6 SMU 60-59 thanks to a highly controversial goaltending call on a Bryce Alford jumper that replay clearly showed did not have a chance of going in the basket. SMU’s Yanick Moreira, who tipped the ball, was distraught after but SMU shouldn’t have been in the situation it found itself in, starting off with a miserable 12 of 20 from the foul line. Alford, the son of coach Steve Alford, did have 27 points, all on nine threes.
“You know who should have kept his mouth shut after the refs handed his team a victory in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament?
“Bryce Alford of UCLA….
“(He) sounded like an idiot after the game saying that he had the best look at a shot that had no chance of being a basket, and that it was goaltending by that SMU kid, a hundred percent.
“If the kid does think he had the best look, he knows that best of all.
“After a big win for the Alfords, father and son, they both sounded like losers.”
10 Ohio State beat 7 VCU in overtime 75-72 as freshman guard D’Angelo Russell showed the nation why some NBA general managers are salivating with 28 points.
8 Cincinnati beat 9 Purdue 66-65.
8 North Carolina State beat 9 LSU 66-65 as well.
4 North Carolina held on to beat 13 Harvard 67-65.
–Friday was played more to form with the only upset being 11 Dayton over 6 Providence 66-53, though Dayton was playing at home. Actually, the Dayton contest was the very last game of the day and had the Flyers not prevailed, it would have been the first perfect day in the history of the opening round of the tournament…favorites winning all 16.
5 West Virginia and 12 Buffalo played an entertaining game with the Mountaineers prevailing 68-62, Buffalo coach Bobby Hurley’s first big game on the national stage. I hope Hurley stays there awhile. It fits him to a tee, as does West Virginia fit their coach, Bob Huggins, perfectly, your editor being a Huggins fan.
7 Wichita State beat 10 Indiana 81-76 as Shocker point-guard Fred VanVleet had 27 points and his running mate Ron Baker chipped in 15; the two going a combined 18 of 20 from the foul line. This win set up the much anticipated first game between in-state rivals Wichita State and Kansas since 1993, Kansas refusing to consider scheduling the Shockers.
For Virginia it was critical they saw some positive play out of Justin Anderson after his injury/health issues and he had 15 points, 5 rebounds in the Cavs’ 79-67 win over Belmont.
My San Diego State Aztecs got off to the start I wanted to see in besting St. John’s 76-64. The Aztecs’ Dwayne Polee II and Matt Shrigley hit 9 of 12 from downtown (though the rest of the team was 0 for 10) and the Johnnies, without suspended big man Chris Obekpa (failed drug test), didn’t have a chance on the boards.
St. John’s is a big deal in these parts, mainly because hoops fans remember the glory days of the Big East, but they haven’t been a top ten team since 1999-2000 under scandal-plagued Mike Jarvis and the glory days of Lou Carnesecca were way before that, 1981-91, with one Final Four, 1984-85. More often than not, the Johnnies flamed out in the first or second round.
“Anger directed at Chris Obekpa, of course, because it was the absence of the Johnnies’ most prominent interior stalwart that allowed San Diego State to roam at will in the paint….
“Obekpa chose his own fun over the company of his teammates, and that forever will be how he is remembered now, even if he is allowed back on next year’s team. His teammates, naturally, wouldn’t bury him, because that is their nature, because it would never occur to any of them to hang this one on him.
“(Coach Steve) Lavin, of course, went the other way. He wouldn’t pin the loss on Obekpa, because there were so many other culprits he could blame. Rysheed Jordan sat for 18 first-half minutes, for starters. That didn’t help. Sir’Dominic Pointer was heroic early, keeping the Aztecs from blowing the game open in the first half, but he went down in a heap and banged up his hip. That didn’t help, either.
“But Lavin – not for the first time – wouldn’t stop there, passive-aggressively referencing for the hundredth time the fact this class started with Mo Harkless (now with the Magic), Jakarr Sampson (now with the 76ers) and Amir Garrett (now playing baseball in the Reds organization).
“What’s the point? Sure, the Johnnies might have had a different result for these last four years if all of them had spent every moment here. But they didn’t. You know what? If you could transport 1985 Walter Berry through the time-space continuum and onto this roster, that would be a big boost for the home team too. It’s just as relevant.
“This is what it has come to for Lavin, a sad shell game, repeatedly reminding us of the nuclear winter he inherited from Norm Roberts. But you know what? It was Roberts’ players who gave him his only win in the Big East Tournament so far. The team Roberts left behind was far better than any team Lavin himself has yet assembled, surely more than the frighteningly empty coffers that await him next year.
Lavin is a good guy, but now it’s open season on him. As I mentioned at the top, though, it has been a long, long time since the program was really successful. Is it Lavin’s fault? One question. Why would a top recruit, unless they are home grown and feel compelled to play in front of friends and family, go to St. John’s?
Due to the lateness of the game, I didn’t stay up for the conclusion of Notre Dame-Butler, won by the 3-seed Fighting Irish 67-64 in overtime. What fans didn’t know until after the contest was over is that ND coach Mike Brey had lost his mother that day, having died in the morning of a heart attack at 84.
Brey said he spoke with his brother and sister, who were in Orlando, where his parents live, and they encouraged him to coach in the game.
Brey said he never thought twice about it, believing he owed it to his players and didn’t tell them until after.
Brey’s mother, Betty Mullen Brey, swam on the U.S. Olympic team in 1956 and once held the world record in the butterfly. She later became a swim coach at George Washington University.
Among the other games, the team some of us now want to lose, UCLA, beat 14 UAB 92-75.
8 Cincinnati didn’t have a realistic chance against 1 Kentucky though they kept it close for a half, falling 64-51.
After leading only 26-25 at half, 2 Arizona ran away from 10 Ohio State 73-58.
5 Utah handed the Big East another loss in beating 4 Georgetown 75-64.
4 North Carolina beat 5 Arkansas 87-78.
But the big story was 8 North Carolina State (which this year lost to lowly Boston College and Wake Forest) upsetting 1 Villanova 71-68.
Frankly, I’m running out of gas having had some other things to do today. I wasn’t able to see much of 7 Michigan State’s upset of 2 Virginia 60-54, but the bottom line was the Cavs sucked! 17 of 57 from the field (29.8%) and just 2 of 17 from downtown…plus only 18 of 26 from the foul line. They don’t deserve to move on with a performance like that. On the other hand, once again we saw an example of how good a coach the Spartans’ Tom Izzo is.
Seeing as I had Virginia and Villanova in my Elite Eight, I could rip up my bracket, but I held on a few more hours to see 1 Duke maul my 8 San Diego State Aztecs 68-49. SDSU shot just 19 of 58 from the field (32.8%) and when they did cut it to 7 in the second half, they choked and the Blue Devils ran away with it. Jahlil Okafor was a man among boys in scoring 26 on 12 of 16 shooting.
But at least my good words for Wichita State the past month looked better as the 7-seed Shockers whipped 2 Kansas 78-65. Good for Gregg Marshall’s boys. Suck it up Jayhawks. [All five starters for the Shockers were in double figures.]
–Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim held his first news conference since the NCAA came down hard on both him and the basketball program. “You have heard this story from the NCAA’s point of view. Today I want to share my perspective.”
The NCAA announced sanctions after a years-long investigation that found academic misconduct, failure to adhere to the school’s drug policy, and improper benefits, but Boeheim said the NCAA disregarded his side of the story and declined to meet with him a second time after an initial interview. He argued that the punishment, including a nine-game ACC suspension, plus the vacation of 108 wins, was too severe and didn’t fit the crime.
Earlier, Syracuse had issued a self-imposed one-year ban on postseason play before the NCAA acted.
Boeheim said: “We had one case of academic fraud after an extensive 10-year investigation,” as he then threw the football team under the bus, saying the NCAA found three instances of academic fraud in their program yet did not punish that team as extensively.
“This is far from a program where student-athletes freely committed academic fraud,” Boeheim said. “I believe the penalty is unduly harsh.”
But as the Washington Post’s Matt Bonesteel noted, “As for the program’s failure to adhere to the school’s drug policy, Boeheim’s explanation seemed rather flimsy.
“But he did add that Syracuse was one of the few schools in the country to actually have a drug-testing policy.”
So Boeheim and the school announced on Thursday that he will coach three more years, while the athletic director, Daryl Gross, was let go (resigned to take another position at the school). Boeheim’s hope is that longtime ‘coach-in-waiting,’ Mike Hopkins, would replace him but that’s the chancellor’s call.
Boeheim, acknowledging he’s 70, said, “Three years is probably longer than I was planning,” but he’s obviously hoping for a big final season or two after his punishment is over. Of course in order to do so he needs to convince recruits to not only commit to the ‘Cuse, but do so knowing he’s a goner and there’s no certainty as yet as to who their next coach would be, though the chancellor’s own statement this week strongly hinted he would go with Boeheim’s choice.
“How fitting that Boeheim flails and bullies as Dean Smith, a figure of another time, has been laid to rest. Smith is gone, and the moral imprimatur of coach as the molder of young men, father figure and mentor is gone too. If these men still do exist in the college game, they are the special exceptions. But Boeheim and his fellow Masters (of the Universe) are special too, for they are the world’s only CEOs who don’t pay their employees.”
–I have no problem with President Obama getting some friendly press for picking his bracket each year. He basically went chalk, picking Kentucky to beat Villanova in the title game. Kentucky beats Arizona and Villanova defeats Duke in the semis. [Well, not quite.]
He had no upsets above 12-seed Buffalo beating WVU, and 12-seed Wyoming beating Northern Iowa. He did have Iowa State in the Elite Eight as well. Sorry, Mr. President.
–The Washington Post’s John Feinstein was the latest to weigh in on the state of college basketball, which has often become unwatchable, though his prescriptions are the same as everyone else’s, including doing away with one-and-done and allowing high-schoolers to jump to the pros.
Feinstein also notes how atrocious the officiating has been. “Did anyone see the last non-foul call in the Louisville-UC-Irvine game? Louisville coach Rick Pitino said his team was trying to foul. Terry Rozier dove at UC-Irvine’s Luke Nelson and sent him flying. No call. There was also the ludicrous goaltending call at the end of the UCLA-SMU game. The shot was wide right!”
The biggest issue is the length of games and timeouts and my guess is the NCAA will have finally gotten the message. For starters, one easy fix is to simply not allow teams to carry over a timeout from the first half. And do away with the full TV timeout garbage immediately after a 30-second timeout has been called.
The other improvement would be to move the three-point line back. That’s a no-brainer.
–Speaking of length of games, how about the starting time of the Providence-Dayton contest on Friday night?! We’re talking the game was at Dayton, in the eastern time zone, and they tipped off at 10:53 p.m.! It ended at 1:08 a.m.!
West Virginia Coach Bob Huggins was asked about the subject. He paused and then replied: “Now you’ve got to remember this, it’s all for the betterment of the student-athlete.”
But Huggins isn’t laughing about the scheduling of the next round, where the Maryland-West Virginia winner plays Sunday night, and then advances to play Kentucky on Thursday in Cleveland. For starters, Kentucky has an extra day’s rest having played on Saturday, but there are others in the same bracket that are playing on Friday. So you have to go home for class on Monday after playing late Sunday night, and then leave again on Tuesday for Thursday’s game. All for the student-athlete.
–In the Division III men’s final, Wisconsin-Stevens Point won its fourth NCAA title with an easy 70-54 victory over Augustana in Salem, Va.
–On Friday, Russell Westbrook had his ninth triple-double of the season (36 pts., 14 ast., 10 reb.) in Oklahoma City’s 123-115 win over the Hawks; nine being tied for second-most in the NBA in the last 40 years…Michael Jordan having 12 in the 1988-89 season.
OKC is also just the fourth team in league history to go from nine games under .500 to nine games over in the same season. [Now ten over after a win over Miami on Sunday.]
—San Antonio (44-25) handed Atlanta (53-17) its third straight loss on Sunday, 114-95, as Tim Duncan had 12 points, 7 rebounds, 7 assists and 4 blocks.
–Hey, Deacon fans, have you been following Ish Smith, now on the 76ers? It’s the eighth team he’s played for in this his fifth season. Eight teams in five seasons! Most of us are shocked he has carved out this lengthy a career but now he’s getting a chance to play with Philadelphia and on Friday he had 15 points and 9 assists in a start against the Knicks, Philly winning 97-81. Ish still can’t shoot worth a damn but he plays a reliable point and he can dish.
—Steve Nash finally formally called it quits after 19 seasons. The two-time MVP had been out this season due to injuries and finishes his career with 10,335 assists, third-most in NBA history behind John Stockton and Jason Kidd. He announced he was walking away in a letter published on The Players’ Tribune website.
“The greatest gift has been to be completely immersed in my passion and striving for something I loved so much – visualizing a ladder, climbing up to my heroes,” he wrote.
Nash is the most accurate free throw shooter in NBA history, edging Mark Price’s career mark at 90.4 percent. He also made 42.8% of his threes (ninth best all-time).
But the Lakers stupidly signed an aging Nash to a three-year, $28 million deal in 2012, shipping four draft picks to Phoenix, and he played in just 65 of a possible 164 regular-season games the past two years.
—Diana Taurasi, one of the top players in the WNBA, also plays for U.M.M.C. Yekaterinburg (Russia) in the EuroLeague, the top women’s professional basketball league in Europe. And why does Taurasi and some of her WNBA compatriots play there? Because of the money.
As Charly Wilder of the New York Times reported the other day, the WNBA has a league maximum of $109,500, aside from modest bonuses, while U.M.M.C. pays Taurasi close to $1.5 million per season, as well as extraordinary perks she doesn’t find in the States, like a beautiful rent-free apartment, an interpreter, a driver, and private jets to games. The owner of the team is an Uzbek multibillionaire.
This year, Taurasi is sitting out the WNBA season, which further points out the shortfalls of the league.
–As reported by Kevin Baxter of the Los Angeles Times, players seem to be buying into the pace-of-game changes Major League Baseball is trying to install, such as mandating only 2 minutes and 25 seconds is allotted between half-innings, with a huge digital clock reminding players as the time ticks down.
Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly said he looked at some of the team’s games last season and found the time taken between innings was often 3 ½ minutes, so limiting it to 2:25 can shave off 18 minutes.
Commissioner Rob Manfred said, “In general, players are positive. Our players are very cognizant of the need of this sport to be responsive to fan concerns on topics such as this.”
But the real test comes in the regular season. Players are not being penalized in spring training games, but come next month, while they will initially receive a warning, flagrant violators can be fined up to $500.
But there is an inconsistency in the rules. Nationally televised games will have a between-innings time limit of 2:45.
–Chicago Cubs prospect Kris Bryant hit his seventh and eighth home runs of the spring on Saturday, including one off Seattle ace Felix Hernandez.
Bryant has more home runs this spring than the entire Miami Marlins team and actually hit a ninth home run in a “B” game earlier this week.
So the Cubs are under big-time pressure to make a spot for the No. 2 overall pick in the 2013 draft, with his agent Scott Boras speaking up on the topic. It’s the same old deal; if the team keeps him in the minors for a few weeks, the Cubs get an extra year of service time before he becomes a free agent after the 2021 season. If he’s on the Opening Day roster, he could become a free agent after 2020.
Bryant led the minors in homers last year with 43 as he divided his time between Double-A and Triple-A.
“On Monday, Rob Manfred, the new commissioner of Major League Baseball, got a chance to extricate his sport from a deepening moral quandary. Pete Rose, the disgraced onetime star of the Cincinnati Reds, petitioned Mr. Manfred’s office to be reinstated in the sport from which he was barred in 1989 for gambling….
“With each passing year, American society has evolved in ways that make Mr. Rose’s exclusion less fair. Since 1998, when Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris’ single-season home-run record, dozens of superstars have either admitted to steroid use (like Mr. McGwire) or been accused of it (like lifetime home-run king Barry Bonds).
Baseball’s venerable records, especially those involving home runs, are now frustratingly incommensurable between eras. Any individual steroid user you can name did more to damage baseball than Mr. Rose did, but none has been punished so harshly. Mr. McGwire is hitting coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Mr. Bonds has worked for the San Francisco Giants.
“Meanwhile, our ideas of right and wrong have changed. We do not share the century-old morality of Kenesaw Mountain Landis: He was obsessed with keeping bookies and mobsters out of baseball, but he was no less vigilant about keeping out blacks. When Mr. Rose began his career in 1963, you could smoke anywhere but gamble legally only in Nevada. Today, you can smoke virtually nowhere but gamble in dozens of states.
“The case for a hard line against gambling is as strong as it was a half century ago – stronger, in fact, since gambling has now corrupted politics through lotteries and campaign funding. But the leaders of America’s institutions, including its sports institutions, don’t see it that way. They push gambling….
“Mr. Rose, in other words, is being singled out. The author James Reston Jr., whose 1991 book ‘Collision at Home Plate’ was sympathetic to the ban, has recanted. ‘His banishment,’ Mr. Reston wrote last year, ‘feels almost medieval to me.’
“Mr. Rose’s punishment may have seemed logical three decades ago, in the draconian climate of ‘Just say no,’ ‘Three strikes and you’re out’ and the war on drugs. But in the world we now inhabit – one of steroid use and sports-sponsored gambling – it looks arbitrary and cruel, with about as much claim to our support as throwing someone in the stocks for flouting the Sabbath.”
–The Dallas Cowboys made a controversial move, signing defensive end Greg Hardy, formerly of the Carolina Panthers, who sat out all but one game last season because of legal troubles related to a domestic violence charge. Prosecutors, though, had dismissed the charges against him last month (after a judge earlier found him guilty of assaulting and threatening to kill his ex-girlfriend*), but the NFL could yet suspend him under its personal conduct policy.
*The girlfriend refused to cooperate with the prosecution so there wasn’t a jury trial, as Hardy had requested, and she received an out-of-court settlement instead.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said, “Greg is a proven and experienced player whose production has allowed him to play at a Pro Bowl level.”
The Cowboys would pay him $9.25 million in per-game, 53-man roster bonuses, which protects them if he is suspended by the league. He could earn close to $4 million more if he hit other incentives, including for sacks.
–Finally, we note the passing of the great NFL Hall of Famer, Chuck Bednarik, who died on Saturday at the age of 89. His family said he had dementia that was football related.
After being a two-time All-American at Penn, Bednarik played center and linebacker for the Eagles from 1949 to 1962, one of the last NFL players to play both offense and defense. He appeared in eight Pro Bowls and was first-team All-Pro from 1950-54. Bednarik was then inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1967. Two years later he was also elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.
Bednarik was a legendary tough guy. There is an iconic picture of him celebrating a ferocious hit on Giants’ star Frank Gifford in 1960, and in the ‘60 NFL championship game, in which Philadelphia defeated Green Bay and Vince Lombardi (his only playoff loss in 10 games) 17-13, it was Bednarik who tackled Packers’ fullback Jim Taylor just inside the Eagles’ 10-yard line as he appeared headed for a game-winning touchdown in the final seconds, then sat on top of him to keep the Packers from running another play.
“You can get up now, Jim, this game is over,” Bednarik told Taylor.
But Gifford didn’t get up from his hit in the closing minutes of the game at Yankee Stadium. He suffered a deep concussion as his head hit the turf and fumbled. Bednarik exulted, but maintained later he was unaware how seriously Gifford was hurt. He sent a basket of fruit to him at his hospital bed. [Gifford didn’t play again until 1962.]
Bednarik was huge for his era, 6’3”, 235. Former Eagles’ defensive back Tom Brookshier told Sports Illustrated in 1993, “Dick Butkus was the one who manhandled people. Chuck just snapped them down like rag dolls.”
Bednarik was born on May 1, 1925, in Bethlehem, Pa. His father was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia and worked at Bethlehem Steel.
After playing high school football, Bednarik joined the Army Air Forces and flew 30 bombing missions over Europe in World War II, so he didn’t begin his career at Penn until he was 20 in late 1945. In 1948, he finished third in the Heisman balloting.
Bednarik became known as “Concrete Charlie” for his offseason work as a concrete salesman and “60 Minute Man.” In that 17-13 win for Philadelphia in the ’60 title game against the Packers, he played 58 of the 60 minutes.
In Philadelphia magazine, Bednarik, who never earned more than $27,000, expressed disdain for today’s players.
“These guys today are a bunch of cocky SOBs,” he said. “Overpaid and underplayed millionaires. They stay there for three minutes and they’re sucking for air. God almighty.”
Golf Balls
—Matt Every has won only one PGA event, Arnie’s place at Bay Hill, but he’s now done it twice, back-to-back, after besting Henrik Stenson on Sunday.
–Yes, add 21-year-old Daniel Berger to the growing list of potential superstars. You see his double-eagle on the par-5 sixth hole on Saturday? A cool 4-iron of about 235 yards that barely cleared the water and then rolled into the cup for a 2. No one had ever had a double-eagle (albatross) at Bay Hill.
But then on Sunday, Zach Johnson double-eagled No. 16!
Lindsey Vonn
I still say she is Sportsman (Sportswoman) of the Year unless Rory McIlroy takes over the PGA Tour, or Mike Trout has a Triple Crown season…or Kevin Harvick finishes in the top five in every race on the NASCAR circuit.
“Roughly a year ago, at home in Colorado, Lindsey Vonn’s mornings were devoted to grueling gym sessions rehabilitating her twice rebuilt right knee. Vonn’s afternoons were spent with the leg enveloped in ice, a routine that had kept her out of consecutive racing seasons.
“Half a world away, at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, the Alpine racing community had conspicuously, and it seemed symbolically, moved on without the once dominant Vonn.
“Her heir apparent, Slovenia’s Tina Maze, won two Olympic races and Maze’s younger rival, Austria’s Anna Fenninger, collected two Olympic medals. An 18-year-old American, Mikaela Shiffrin, became the youngest slalom champion in Olympic history.
“Vonn, 30, saw the handwriting on the wall but vowed to erase it.
“ ‘The other girls are probably feeling pretty comfortable without me out there,’ Vonn said on the eve of her comeback this winter. ‘I think they’ll see that they can’t be comfortable anymore. It’s a new generation coming up, but they’ll definitely realize that the veteran is not gone quite yet.’”
So at the final races of the World Cup season at Meribel, France this week, Vonn won her seventh race in the downhill, gaining her the season-long World Cup downhill title. It was her 18th WC championship, including her four overall crowns. It’s the most World Cup crystals won by a woman.
But she wasn’t finished. A day after winning the downhill, Vonn captured the super-G title in winning the final race of that event! So she has 19 World Cup crystal globes, tying Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark for the most World Cup discipline and overall championships. Vonn’s victory was her 67th, a women’s record, with Stenmark holding the career mark with 86 (1975 to 1989).
Vonn has said she wants to continue until at least the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.
Meanwhile, Mikaela Shiffrin, now 20, clinched her third straight World Cup slalom title with a victory on Saturday at Meribel. It was her sixth win of the season, her fifth in slalom.
Lastly, Anna Fenninger of Austria successfully defended both her overall and giant slalom titles on the final day, edging Tina Maze. Fenninger entered the GS down 18 points in the overall to Maze but won the race while Maze finished third…as close as it gets.
Vonn and Shiffrin finished third and fourth in the overall standings; Shiffrin third in giant slalom. Super season for both.
For the men, Austrian Marcel Hirscher became the first skier to win the men’s World Cup overall title for a fourth straight year. Only Annemarie Moser-Proll has won more championships in a row – five in the early 1970s.
Norway’s Kjetil Jansrud won the downhill and super-G titles this season but he needed to place first or second in Sunday’s slalom to keep his chance alive at the overall. He had never had a top-10 in the discipline for more than nine years, however, so he opted out of the race, thus ensuring Hirscher would get the crown.
Ted Ligety was the only American male to finish in the top three in any of the World Cup disciplines for the season, finishing third in the giant slalom.
Premier League
1. Chelsea 29 games…67 points
2. Man City 30…61
3. Arsenal 30…60
4. Man U 30…59
5. Liverpool 30…54
6. Southampton 30…53
7. Tottenham 30…53
In Tottenham’s win over Leicester City 4-3, Harry Kane had his first hat-trick and now leads the Premier League with 19 goals.
Champions League
The final eight: Atletico v. Real Madrid; Juventus v. Monaco; Paris (PSG) v. Barcelona; Porto v. Bayern.
Hey, I have a Juventus shirt…might have to be a fair weather fan for a match or two.
“The moment that encapsulated the game came after about 40 minutes. Lionel Messi, Barcelona’s wizard in residence, had the ball near the sideline. James Milner, a sturdy Manchester City midfielder, approached.
“Messi caressed the ball with his foot. Milner tried to shuffle along. Suddenly, the ball was through Milner’s legs, Messi was off behind him and Milner collapsed onto his rear end, unable to stand up against Messi’s bag of tricks.
“Milner was far from alone. The image of a City player – an English one at that – felled by a superior European rival was an altogether fitting conclusion to the Champions League’s round of 16. Messi, the Argentine superstar, and Barcelona dazzled again. Manchester City is out again. And along with City’s hopes went those of the Premier League, which sent three of its four entrants to the knockout round only for all three to be summarily bounced.”
Barcelona won the aggregate 3-1 over two games. They thus advance to the quarterfinals for an eighth straight season.
Chelsea lost to Paris St.-Germain, as I noted last time, and Arsenal lost to Monaco.
—Brad Keselowski won the NASCAR Sprint Cup race this week at Fontana, Calif., as the amazing Kevin Harvick finished second; the eighth straight race going back to last season where Harvick has finished first or second. Richard Petty has the record with 11 straight in 1975. For Keselowski it was his 17th career win.
—College hockey’s tournament starts this week, 16 teams vying for the Frozen Four, but since Colgate and St. Lawrence aren’t in the field I don’t care that much. Steve D.’s Boston College squad is in, however, having just paid off another Wake-B.C. lunch bet this week at world famous Ferraro’s in Westfield (veal parm was delicious). Thankfully Wake doesn’t have a hockey team.
–We note the passing of Allen Jerkins, the Hall of Fame thoroughbred trainer. He was 85. For most of his 60-year career he was based at Belmont Park and he never had a winner in the Triple Crown series or the Breeders’ Cup. But he won more than 200 stakes races.
Here’s what Allen Jerkins was…he was known as the Giant Killer. Back in 1973, after winning the Triple Crown, Secretariat was beaten twice by colts trained by Jerkins.
Way back in 1962 and ’63, Jerkins’ colt Beau Purple scored three victories over Kelso, a five-time horse of the year. As Richard Goldstein of the New York Times notes, Jerkens’ Handsome Boy bested Buckpasser in the 1967 Brooklyn Handicap.
Jerkens won the Eclipse Award as the sport’s top trainer in 1973. The two wins over Secretariat came in the Whitney at Saratoga (Onion) and the Woodward at Belmont Park (Prove Out).
He was inducted into the National Racing Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., at age 46 in 1975, the youngest trainer ever chosen.
Richard Goldstein notes that Jerkens was the “son of a retired Austrian cavalry captain who ran a riding academy.”
Jerkens wanted to be a jockey after the family moved to Long Island, but he was too big and eventually at age 21 he received his trainer’s license. The same year he had his first winner at Aqueduct.
Allen Jerkens was a big name in these parts and I was well aware of him growing up, but I had no idea he only entered six mounts in the Triple Crown races – three in the Kentucky Derby and three in the Belmont (none at the Preakness).
In an interview with The Record of New Jersey, he once said, “My good 3-year-olds weren’t that good. They got better and came on at 4.”
—Wrestler Pedro Aguayo Ramirez, known as Hijo del Perro Aguayo, died from a blow suffered in the ring on Saturday. He fell unconscious on the ropes, apparently after receiving a flying kick from fellow wrestler Oscar Gutierrez at a bout in Tijuana. The match continued for almost two minutes before other participants and the referee realized Aguayo was seriously injured. He died shortly after at a nearby hospital.
The state prosecutor’s office said the cause of death was trauma to the neck and a cervical fracture. The state may opt to launch a manslaughter investigation.
“Seven people were hurt when an out-of-control chair lift stopped and then headed down the mountain backward, prompting riders to jump off (when they were at lower levels).” [AP]
None of the injuries were life-threatening, but it was estimated the lift went the wrong way for about a minute, traveling about 200 or 300 yards, before it stopped.
“One man who wasn’t able to jump off ended up going around the loading area and heading up the mountain on the other side,” said one witness who was standing in the lift line.
Sugarloaf had a serious lift accident in 2010 when five chairs fell 25 to 35 feet to the ground, injuring eight skiers. That lift was replaced the following year.
–Army Times had a story the other day on how elephants are being trained to sniff out explosives. New research in South Africa, involving the U.S. military, shows elephants excel at identifying explosives by smell, stirring speculation about whether their extraordinary ability can save lives.
A co-owner of a game reserve where three elephants passed the smell tests by sniffing at buckets and raising a front leg to show they recognized samples of TNT, said, “They work it out very, very quickly.”
Elephants have an advantage over dogs because they remember their training longer than dogs, according to the head scientist at the U.S. Army Research Office.
A professor at Colorado State University’s department of conservation biology who has studied elephants in Kenya said an elephant’s olfactory qualities are “recognized as being unparalleled.”
Well, since bringing elephants to mine fields isn’t practical, one thought is to have drones collect scent samples and then trained elephants would smell them and alert handlers to any sign of explosives.
—Director of Shark Attacks for Bar Chat, Bob S., notes that while many in America are focused on March Madness, “sharks remain focused on the prize.”
The other day off the Big Island of Hawaii, a 58-year-old man was bitten by a shark as he was snorkeling with his family. He suffered severe lacerations to his left forearm and an injury to his left thigh.
There were six shark attacks in Hawaii last year, all non-fatal, which was twice the historic rate, though there have been only five fatal attacks in the last 35 years. Of course we all know these ‘reported’ numbers are purposely misreported to protect the International Travel Cartel (ITC).
–Meanwhile, on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, a polar bear attacked a Czech tourist as he was sleeping in his tent. The fellow reported from the hospital that he was “fine. I have some scratches in the face, on one arm and on the back.”
The bear was eventually found by authorities and killed. The tourists were on Svalbard to view Friday’s total solar eclipse.
As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, “Lodging on Svalbard has been sold out for years for the eclipse, and visitors are reminded often that polar bears roam.”
—Michael Brown died. He was 65.
“Michael Brown was a 16-year-old classically trained music prodigy in New York in 1965 when he became smitten with the girlfriend of bassist Tom Finn, his band mate in the nascent rock group the Left Banke.
“Knowing there was nothing he could do about his infatuation with Renee Fladen without torpedoing a friendship and possibly their band, Brown took the only path left to an anguished musician: He wrote a song about her.
“ ‘Walk Away Renee,’ which Brown wrote with Bob Calilli and Tony Sansone, became the Left Banke’s first and biggest hit, topping out at No. 5 on the Billboard charts, and was an important early example of what came to be known as ‘baroque pop’ for its ornate orchestrations, melancholy emotion and classical instrumentation.”
The Left Banke had one other Billboard hit, the No. 15 “Pretty Ballerina,” also written by Brown, but then the band fell apart.
Top 3 songs for the week 3/25/78: #1 “Night Fever” (Bee Gees) #2 “Stayin’ Alive” (Bee Gees…yup, all Bee Gees all the time back then…) #3 “Emotion” (Samantha Sang)…and…#4 “Lay Down Sally” (Eric Clapton…tune hasn’t aged well…) #5 “Can’t Smile Without You” (Barry Manilow) #6 “(Love Is) Thicker Than Water” (Andy Gibb) #7 “I Go Crazy” (Paul Davis…he did some great tunes) #8 “Sometimes When We Touch” (Dan Hill… where?) #9 “If I Can’t Have You” (Yvonne Elliman…for a disco song, not bad…) #10 “Thunder Island” (Jay Ferguson…also not bad…I was wrapping up my sophomore year at Wake, one of the worst academic performances in the history of mankind…so I decide to sign up to sell books door-to-door in Oklahoma and Kansas the following summer…oh yeah…that was real smart…)
NCAA Basketball Quiz Answer: Duke’s seven-man rotation: Mike Dunleavy Jr., Shane Battier, Jason Williams, Carlos Boozer, Chris Duhon, Nate James, Casey Sanders.
Extra credit…Arizona’s six-man primary rotation: Loren Woods, Jason Gardner, Gilbert Arenas, Richard Jefferson, Michael Wright, Luke Walton (Eugene Edgerson and Justin Wessel played some, too).
This Final Four also featured Michigan State, which lost to AZ in the semis, and the Maryland team, led by Juan Dixon, Steve Blake and Lonny Baxter, that would win it all the following year.
