Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Tonight's dinner...Honoring Coach Cal


Baby back ribs -- Memphis style with dry rub!

Monday, March 30, 2009

Take cover!!!

There are numerous reports that it's only a matter of time before John Calipari accepts the Kentucky coaching job. All we can say is...


WATCH OUT!

Mark our words. In his second season he will have Kentucky in the Final Four. And within four years he will have at least one national title.

Putting someone of Cal's talents in a place like Kentucky, where he will be given EVERYTHING he wants and ANYTHING he needs, is akin to giving terrorists nuclear weapons.
k
Everybody had better frigging watch out and run for cover.


Sunday, March 29, 2009

Four Final Thoughts...

1. Tom Izzo's wife is downright scary looking...

2. The Human Turnover, Earl Clark, is off to the NBA and we couldn't be happier.

3. Still wondering how Jamie Dixon got DeJuan Blair just 9 shots against Villanova. And why his kids had no idea how to defend 'Nova with 5 seconds left in the game.

4. The Playmaker is on top of the 30 person March Madness pool. His father is...wait for it...number 27.


Saturday, March 28, 2009

I was working late ... again ... as I often do ... on weekends

This is classic. Can you say, Michael Scott?!?

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Random thoughts...

1. Cole Hamels is healthy! He threw 48 pitches yesterday and reported no pain. Let's be honest -- no Cole Hamels = no shot at getting back to the playoffs.

2. President Hussein's approval ratings continue to slip! It's clear that people are tired of him constantly referring to all the problems he "inherited." Instead, people want answers and solutions. Yet we end up with Timothy Geithner fumbling the AIG bonus mess. Even liberal columnists are saying it's time for Hussein to stop campaigning and to actually start governing.

3. Best chance for a March Madness upset this week?!? Take Syracuse over Oklahoma. The 'Cuse has too much size and better guards.

4. We are armed and ready for The Meeting! The head is shaved. The shirt is pressed. The shoulder bag is loaded with data. Tomorrow, we will go kick the sheeeet out of "important" people.


Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Survive and advance...

We knew the second round would be a difficult fight for Louisville. It's just that we expected Ohio State to be the one torturing us. Instead, it was Siena. But the Cardinals overcame Earl Clark's turnovers and rallied behind a monster game from T-Will for a 79-72 W. He had 24 points, 15 boards and 4 assists. Next up: Arizona.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Saturday night questions

1. Why did UCLA and Texas A&M even bother showing up for the afternoon games? Both teams were woefully outmatched. No surprise from the Aggies. But Ben Howland better get an infusion of talent into Westwood. The talent level on his team is awful.

2. Does LSU coach Trent Johnson have a clue? His Tigers were tied with mighty North Carolina, 64-64. The Tar Heels ended the game with a 20-6 run that saw LSU take poor shot after poor shot. The only thing worse than watching the Tigers hoist 20 foot jumpers was watching Johnson on the sidelines doing N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

3. Who is better than Oklahoma's Blake Griffin? Um, that would be no one. The sophomore had 33 points and 17 boards in OU's win over Michigan. That's right, 33 & 17.

4. Villanova and Duke head to Boston next week -- who will get the W?!? Our bracket says Duke. And at this point, we feel pretty good about that.


Friday, March 20, 2009

Friday afternoon mini-links

More Facebook vs. Twitter stuff!




k

President Hussein makes fun of Special Olympics

If W had done this, the liberals would be calling for impeachment!

Coach K tells President Hussein to stop doing the brackets and start fixing the economy



This is classic! He kind of smiles, but you can tell he does not like The Man!

Annual March Madness Day Off From Work...

Home today. We always take the Friday of the first round of March Madness off from work. Always have. Always will.

That's the good news.

The bad is that we got our ass kicked in yesterday's bracket.

We were a weak 12-4 on the first day. Even worse, we smoked crack and picked Illinois to advance to the Sweet 16 we stupidly picked Illinois to win its first two games and get to the Sweet 16. Alas, those frigging idiots lost to Western Kentucky. Ugh. (The only sliver lining is the fact that, yes, The Playmaker took the Western to win.)

Some have bemoaned the fact that yesterday's games were boring. Not us. We enjoyed watching (in the classroom) Memphis battle for its life against Cal State Northridge. Then we got home and watched Maryland beat Cal (as we predicted) in HD. The evening games were very good. Nova came back from 14 down in the second half to beat American. Michigan knocked out Clemson (wrong for us, right for The Playmaker). And UCLA (somehow) held on to top VCU.

Were there HUGE upsets? Not really. (Western over Illinois in the 5-12 game was the biggest.) Were there exciting games?!? You betcha. And for the one millionth time -- other than college football, there is nothing better on the sporting calendar than weekday afternoon March Madness games.


Thursday, March 19, 2009

Our Bracket...

March Madness starts today -- and this is what we forsee:

Midwest: No upsets in the first round, though we thought long and hard before we took Albert's BC Eagles over Southern Cal. In the second round, we have #6 West Virginia upsetting #3 Kansas. In fact, we also have Coach Huggs advancing past #2 Michigan State. Champion: Louisville.

West: The first round is chalk, but round two brings two upsets. We took #5 Purdue over #4 Washington and #6 Marquette over #3 Missouri. We love Coach Cal, but not enough to pick Memphis over UConn. Champion: UConn.

East: One minor upset in round one, with #9 Tennessee advancing past #8 Oklahoma State. (No, unlike the rest of the world, we don't have VCU upsetting UCLA.) Round two includes #5 Florida State over #4 Xavier. Villanova and Duke will be a whopper of game to earn the right to face lose to Pitt. Nova is tough, no doubt about it. However, over the last six weeks, we have developed a huge Man Crush on Duke junior Jon Scheyer. Hence, we have Duke moving on in a close one. Champion: Pittsburgh.

South: We have #9 Butler beating #9 LSU. Everything else is chalk until #3 Syracuse beats #2 Oklahoma. We are gambling BIG TIME on Ty Lawson's toe. If he can't go, North Carolina won't get past Syracuse. Champion: North Carolina.

Final Four: Wow -- four #1 seeds to advance to the Final Four?!? Not very daring, to be sure. However, it should prove to be perhaps the greatest Final Four in recent memory. Try as we did, we just could not convince ourselves that The Fighting Sons of Pitino will beat UConn. On the other side, Pitt has too many all around good players for the Tar Heels. On April 6, it will be Pitt 72 UConn 66.

Good luck in your Office Pool and enjoy the games today!



President Hussein's Bracket...

We don't like him as a President. (And we absolutely LOATHE his wife.) However, his love for March Madness can't be denied. We enjoyed watching him tell ESPN's Andy Katz his bracket picks. (If you're in the mood, you can click on his bracket for a larger view.)

March Madness


As the tournament starts today, North Carolina coach Roy Williams tells Bonnie Bernstein, "I could give a sheeet about North Carolina!"

Interesting. (And, of course, classic.)



Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Just the way we would have drawn it up...



Down by 1, you clear out for Andre Iguodala and let him take a...trey?!? Um, well, at least it went in! Biggest Win of the year for the 76ers!

(And why did Phillip not foul?!? The Lakers had one to give!)

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

We gotta play the Ohio State?!? Yikes...

We watched most of Sunday's Big 10 Championship game between Ohio State and Purdue. We have watched Purdue several times this season and we like them very much. (Our first glimpse of them was back in December when they pistol whipped Albert's Boston College Eagles.) However, Sunday was our first extended look at the Buckeyes. And we walked away from the TV thinking, wow, these guys are pretty good! Evan Turner (picture) is a nasty swing man. Purdue had no answer for him. He was virtually unstoppable when he took the ball to the hole. He ended up with 22 points and 10 rebounds. Undoubtedly, Coach Rick will call on T-Will (Terrence Williams) to check him. The Buckeyes also have two scoring guards in Jon Diebler and William Bedford Buford. Those two went off for 30 points and shot 7-13 on treys. The good news is beyond those three, there ain't much else. They don't rebound well. And the bench is non-existent


Will the top seeded Cardinals bow out in the second round?

The odds, of course, are against it. Plus, rotating his four guards (Andre McGee, Jerry Smith, Edgar Sosa and Preston Knowles) Rick Pitino can press the Buckeyes the entire game, tiring out the undermanned Buckeyes.

So, we do expect The Fighting Sons of Pitino to win. But we also expect the game to be close. A lot closer than we ever envisioned a second round match up to be for a top seeded team.


Monday, March 16, 2009

Chase Utley is back...

That sound you heard was the Mets crying!

Sunday, March 15, 2009

This guy is a joke

He's Mike Slive, the commissioner of the SEC and the head guy of the selection committee. After the brackets came out this evening, he sat down with Jim Nantz and Clark Kellogg. (This was after Nantz drooled over Kellogg for 10 minutes, pointing out that he correctly picked all four top seeds to make the Final Four last season. Wow! You don't say! You picked all top seeds to make the Final Four?!? Wow! Like, only 75 other people did that, too, last year. This is no knock on Kellogg. Rather, it's a witch-slap to Nantz, who is softer than soggy donut. After he was done with Kellogg, Nantz basically tried to open-mouth kiss Slive. What a tool.)

Alas, we digress.

Nantz, the hard hitting journalist that he is(n't), asked one (one!) hard question -- why did Memphis not get a top seed? Slive said it wasn't about Memphis as much as it was about the top four teams. What he should have said was the four real teams the Tigers played out of the high school level Conference USA, they lost to three of them.

Then Greg Anthony, the antithesis of Loser Nantz, came with the heat. He asked why only four mid major teams got invites. Slive's answer was that no one on the committee uses the term mid majors. Wow! What an answer! Anthony persisted, asking Slive what mid majors were supposed to do, since most big schools refuse to schedule them. This time, Slive said the committee looked at a team's entire body of work when considering them. Wow! Yet another great non-answer.

March Madness? Awesome.

Mike Slive and Jim Nantz? Frigging Losers who do nothing but waste our time.

(Oh, yeah...tomorrow we will take an actual look at the brackets.)


Saturday, March 14, 2009

Cards are Big East Champs!

Louisville 76 Syracuse 66

1. Terrible ball movement in first half.

2. Terrence Williams and Andre McGee penetrated the zone in the second half.

3. Jerry Smith and Earl Clark hit open shots.

4. Once they started scoring, the Cardinals' press was able to abuse an obviously exhausted Syracuse team.

5. E5 was a Frigging Beast on the defensive boards.



Saturday Night Special

Just got back from taking the fam to dinner at our usual Weekly Spot. As Saturday regulars, we are treated like royalty. Tonight that meant getting a table in prime location in front of the two big screen TVs. One had the Duke game, while the other had the USC one. Been a good day. The Playmaker's Sister won her final b-ball game of the season this morning. The W made us 10-3 for the season, good enough for first place. We then took The Playmaker to get a haircut -- short up top and shaved on the sides and in back. Then we played outside (football and hoops) for a few hours before stoking a fire and watching four hours of hoops on TV. (Please note our Tweet on overwhelmed North Carolina guard Bobby Frasor.) Now, we are resting up for the Louisville - Syracuse game in a few hours. We came across an excellent article last night. Written by UMass Guy Dan Wetzel, it focuses on the sleaze off AAU ball and the increasing presence of...wait for it...agents. (Shocking!) Click here to read it.

Friday, March 13, 2009

The Madness begins...

1. Great to see Kentucky bow out of the SEC in the first round, having lost to LSU, 67-58. We seriously have to wonder how much longer Billy Gillispie hangs around Lexington. It's just not a good fit for either side.

2. Shocking that Georiga Tech lost to Florida State. We're not high (at all) on Tech coach Paul Hewitt.

3. Conference USA is a frigging joke. The Playmaker (age 7, mind you) could start for any team not named Memphis right now (right now!)! We love Coach Cal. But if Memphis gets a top seed on Sunday, we will frigging go out and cap someone.

4. No, we did not make it up for the 6 overtime classic between Syracuse and UConn last night. (Fact is, most people who said they did are lying.) We will, of course, DVR it on ESPN Classic tonight for weekend consumption. The Huskies going down, combined with Pittsburgh getting pistol whipped by West Virginia, leaves the door wide open (wide open!) for Our Louisville Cardinals to win the conference championship Saturday night. And if that happens, we could possibly be looking at THREE Big East teams Bogarting number one seeds Sunday night. Oklahoma lost last night to OS-Who and its Traitor of a Coach, Travis Ford. Who else could get a top seed outside of North Carolina and the Big East trio of UConn, Louisville and Pitt?!? Maybe if Wake Forest somehow wins the ACC they could sneak in. Then there are the aforementioned Memphis Tigers. They are 28-3. Of course, that's not that hard when you play in Conference USA. Normally, they play a brutal out of conference schedule. Not so this year. Cal's Kids played Xavier, Georgetown and Syracuse. And that's it. Oh, yeah. They lost all three of those games! There is no way they deserve a top seed.


Thursday, March 12, 2009

That's what we're talking about...

The Fighting Sons of Pitino...

Louisville starts its Big East Tournament Tour today, with a noon game against Providence. The Fighting Sons of Pitino have never fared all that well in this tourney. And they sometimes struggle with afternoon games. Those two factors will most likely prove to make the game close -- at least for a while. Also, the Friars are still on the proverbial bubble and a HUGE win against the 5th ranked Cardinals will go a long way to getting an NCAA invite Sunday evening.

As we have said before, 30 points or more from Terrence Williams and Earl Clark almost always leads to a Cardinal W. T-Will has been on fire for the last month (and was recently named to the Big East First Team). E5, however, has been less than stellar over the same period. At times, he seems like a walking turnover. And we often wonder why Coach Rick does not simply order him to stay in the paint on offense.

Should When the Cardinals win, they will play the winner of Villanova and West Virginia tomorrow. That being the beauty of winning the regular season -- you don't have to mess with UConn or Pitt until the championship on Saturday night.

Go Cards! In Pitino We Trust...


Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Facebook copies Twitter...


Too good to be true?!?

"I find it hard to believe the Eagles won't trade for Boldin. Very hard."

So says Peter King of Sports Illustrated. Click here.

Oh-my-frigging-gosh! Please be right! Please be right!



Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Last night's dinner...

Grilled Salmon. The piece on top is marinated in a bourbon glaze. The bottom one has a honey mustard glaze. Both tasted fantastic, with the bourbon one being our favorite.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Three & out...

1. The Playmaker ended his basketball season on Saturday. He scored 12 points in a 40-22 loss. Playing a team of all 2nd graders, we knew it would be a tough game. Still, all was forgotten when the pizza and trophies were distributed after the game. Having the youngest team in the league (all first graders), we were proud to finish the season 6-6.

2. Wow -- there must have been some market for T.O. How else does one explain the guy signing with the...wait for it...Buffalo Bills?!? Just what every 7-9 team needs -- an aging wide receiver who drops the ball a lot, cares only about himself and bitches and moans constantly.

3. Your Philadelphia 76ers are sinking quickly. They lost last night to the mighty Oklahoma City Thunder. You know them right?!? They are the team that entered the game with a 16-46 record. And they beat the Sixers by 15 (15!) points. Wow. Now we're really happy they held onto Andre Miller to be the steadying veteran in the playoffs. It will be vital to have Miller around in the playoffs when Philly gets swept in the first round.



Sunday, March 8, 2009

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Is Tom Brady anorexic?!?

Sure looks that way in this photo with Matt "Where the women at?" Leinart. Good gawd, man, stop having your woman feed you grapes and start eating some red meat.



(Early) Saturday Morning Thoughts...

1. If we're the Celtics, we're not that worried about having to bang heads with Cleveland in the playoffs. Boston was in control of last night's game from start to finish -- minus Kevin Garnett, of course. They successfully doubled and trapped LeBron all night, to the tune of 5-15 shooting. And they were only too happy to let newly acquired Joe Smith hoist jumpers and dent the rim. Memo to Cavs: When mortals like Big Baby and Leon Pow, errrrr, Powe hurt you, you've got problems.


2. Enough with the Brian Scalabrine is injured and it's hurting the Celtics talk. Puh-lease! Scal sucks. Scal sucks Big Time. However, because he's white, goofy, willing to abuse his body, and always ready with a clever quote, some losers people actually think he is pretty good. If fact, he is not.

3. And leave Rajon Rondo alone. The third year Louisville native has turned himself into a damn good point guard this year. But, as Stef Djordjevic famously screamed at Coach Nickerson in All the Right Moves, "You are not God!" He's a great penetrator, rebounder and passer. But he can't shoot and he gets locked up in the post on D. What he is right now is one of the top five or six point guards in the league. But some people this week actually said he is a future Hall of Famer. Um...not so fast. And let's see how he does when he doesn't have KG, Fat Boy Pee Pee or Ray Allen to pass to on the wings. Oh yes, and we can't wait to see how much coin it will cost Danny Ainge to keep him.

4. Chan Ho Park was tough yesterday for the Phillies. He went 4 innings, striking out 3 and yielding just 1 run. He figures to take the fifth spot in the rotation from Kyle Kendrick, who has basically turned into a pu$$y.

5. Finally, if we find the person who's in possession of our beloved camera, we're gonna kick the sheeeet out of him/her. Of course, if we find it in our house beneath a pile of junk, all is forgiven!


Thursday, March 5, 2009

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Monday, March 2, 2009

Tonight's dinner...

Chicken thighs on the grill.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Can I have your autograph?

Brian Dawkins posing with a 16 year old fan Denver coach Josh McDaniels.

We missed Friday's episode of FNL*

*Our Wife fouled up the DVR...