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The Daily Digest for Friday, March 14, 2008 |
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March 14, 2008 |
≡ The Daily Digest ≡
 Petros: Does this look like Robbie Cowgill to you? |
= To Our Readers =
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= Tonight’s Menu =
>> New Orleans, La.: While ESPN is promoting the Sunday match between the streaking Rockets – winners of 20 straight – and the Lakers, Los Angeles will have its hands full tonight with 43-20 New Orleans. The 45-19 Lakers lead the West by just one game, but the Hornets are way down in fifth . . . and just 1 1/2 games behind! The Lakers have won six of eight against New Orleans and are a slight two-point favorite tonight. The over-under is 210, so the lakers are supposed to win, 106-104.
>> Atlanta, Ga: The 21-42 Clippers – now with Smush Parker in tow as their reserve point guard – will face the slumping 26-38 Hawks, who are now 1-6 with Mike Bibby as their point guard since coming over from Sacramento. However, Atlanta is just a half-game out of eighth (and a playoff spot) in the Eastern Conference. The Clippers may not have center Chris Kaman available (bad back), but have won seven of the last nine meetings with the Hawks, but it doesn’t matter. Atlanta is a 10-point favorite, with an over-under of 198, so the home team is supposed to win, 104-94.
>> Los Angeles, Ca.: In the Pac-10 Tourney at Staples Center tonight, 29-3 UCLA is an 8 1/2-point choice over 21-10 USC (over-under 128: UCLA 68, USC 60) while 25-6 Stanford is a two-point choice over 24-7 Washington State (over-under 116: Stanford 59, WSU 57). Stanford has won eight of the last 10 from the Cougars, but has lost two of its last three games.
= L.A. Stories =
>> What’s Bruin:
See our daily blog on UCLA sports at LATimes.com!
>> Scene and Heard @ the Pac-10 Tournament:
There was plenty of action around and off the court at the Pac-10 Tournament at Staples Center the last two days, especially for yesterday’s quarterfinal round with four games played between noon and 10:30 p.m.
The crowd for the first session that started at noon was remarkable, even with local teams USC and UCLA playing in the first two games. The announced attendance was 17,394 and between the two games, there might have been that many people there. The crowd was larger for the UCLA-California match than for USC-Arizona State, but tonight’s semifinal with USC and UCLA in the first game should draw quite a few folks.
If you didn’t make it to Staples, you might have caught some of the USC-Arizona State or Washington State-Oregon games on the radio on KLAC AM 570. If you did, you were treated to some of the strangest play-by-play banter of all time with Matt “Money” Smith and Petros Papadakis – normally the drive-time team on the station – calling the action and discussing current development in American culture, such as:
= Just before the start of the second half, Papadakis noted that talking about Washington State’s top players – such as Derrick Low and Kyle Weaver – made him think about the greatest Cougars of all time, like those profiled in the E! documentary “25 Hottest Cougar Tales” about older women who date younger men.
= Smith noted that WSU forward Robbie Cowgill has his eyes set wide apart on his head. Papadakis asked if Cowgill’s look was “like the eyes on a hammerhead shark.”
= For no apparent reason, Papdakis blurted out “I don’t like you” to Smith midway through the second half.
It’s not likely that Chris Roberts, who handled the play-by-play on the UCLA-Cal and Stanford-Arizona games, was quite as wide-ranging in his commentaries. Smith, by the way, did quite a nice job actually calling the games, when he wasn’t bantering with Papadakis. The game action actually provided a better-than-dead-air respite between the riffs on the size of player’s heads and whether they should have moustaches or not.
There’s a large press corps attending the tournament and they were well fed before each session. The Pac-10 turned out a lunch spread with salad (choice of three dressings), hamburgers, hot dogs, breaded chicken breasts, chocolate chunk cookies and chocolate brownies and soft drinks. For dinner, the attending media and various tournament officials inhaled two types of salad greens (and two dressings), three different pastas – linguini pesto, penne marinara and lasagna – a selection of wonderful garlic-rubbed rolls and a giant carrot cake for dessert. There wasn’t much left at the end.
= Panorama =
College Hoopla:
>> Tulsa, Ok. Oral Roberts claimed its third straight Summit League title with a tight 71-64 win over Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) on Tuesday night, but lost one of its Eli the Eagle mascots.
Eli and IUPUI’s Jawz the Jaguar got into a tussle during the first half of the game after a dance contest during a time-out. Jawz had his arms around Eli and pulled him to the ground in a video which has been entertaining fans on YouTube.
ORU suspended the male student wearing the Eli costume for the rest of the school year, but the student’s name was not released.
College Gridiron:
>> Washington, D.C.: The U.S. House of Representatives, behind the times as always, just passed a resolution which congratulated Kansas for winning the Orange Bowl and “having the most successful year in program history.”
As the Kansas City Star reported, that didn’t sit well with the members of the Missouri delegation, but they didn’t vote against it. Instead, they voted “present.” Said Sam Graves (R-6th District) of the of the Jayhawks’ season – which included a loss to Missouri – “The Tigers had a better one . . . As a Mizzou grad, it’s hard for me to vote for anything that has the words ‘congratulate’ and ‘Kansas’ in it.” The Border War continues . . .
NFL Extra Points:
>> Knoxville, Tn.: They say you can’t coach speed and there will be no one who will be as fast on the football field as former world 100 m record holder Justin Gatlin. He worked out for NFL scouts on Wednesday at the University of Tennessee “Pro Day.” Gatlin was among 14 former Tennessee players in the closed work-out. Although Gatlin has appealed his four-year suspension for doping from 2006, he’s not assured of any future in track & field. If he wins his appeal – based on whether a 2001 suspension for taking prescribed medicines for attention deficit disorder – he would be eligible to compete in the U.S. Olympic Trials and could make the U.S. Team and defend his 2004 gold medal in the 100 meters.
All around the World:
>> Brisbane, Australia: Streaking at sporting events has been going on since the fad hit the U.S. in the early 1970s. But few such incidents had an ending like the one in Brisbane last week.
A male streaker ran across and around the field during a tense match between Australia and India, but was sent flying by a shoulder tackle from Australia’s 6-1, 207-pound Andrew Symonds as the crowd gasped.
As always, these things aren’t over when they’re over. According to the Australian newspaper The Age:
Symonds could face a serious punishment if the International Cricket Council decided that he breached section 4.2 of the player’s code of conduct relating to a physical assault of a rival player, an official or a spectator.
It carries a ban ranging anywhere from five Test matches or 10 limited-overs international up to a life ban.
“The spectator is expected to be fined $3,000 (Australian) for invading the pitch - but faces a possible jail term for wilful exposure.
>> Bormio, Italy: Since it’s not a Winter Olympic year, not that many people are watching, but the United States fielded champions in the men’s and women’s overall World Cup for the first time since 1983.
Free-spirit Bode Miller clinched the World Cup overall title after his closest rival, Switzerland’s Didier Cuche decided not to compete in the slalom – an event he prefers to skip – at Bormio and will compete in only one more race this season. The World Cup title vindicates Miller’s decision to train on his own, away from the U.S. Ski Team, and gives the American ski federation another reason to sign an aspirin sponsor since it will have to decide in 21 months whether to allow Miller on the Olympic team for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.
In the meantime, 23-year-old Lindsey Vonn finished in the top 15 and her friend Maria Riesch of Germany didn’t finish today in Bormio, giving her the title. It’s the first time Americans have won both divisions since Phil Mahre and Tamara McKinney did it 25 years ago.
>> London, England: The British betting site Totesport.com ran a poll which asked for the all-time top individual rivalries in sports history. Although obviously tilted toward British fans, the results were interesting.
The clear winner was the 1970s fight series between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, which garnered 26% of the vote. Next was Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe in tennis (17%) and Alain Prost and Aryton Senna in Formula One racing (12%).
The middle-distance rivals Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett came in fourth and others recognizable to American fans include Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova in tennis (7%), Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer in golf (7%) and boxers Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns (5%).
~ Rich Perelman
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