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The Daily Digest for Monday, April 28, 2008 |
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April 28, 2008 |
≡ The Daily Digest ≡
 Gasol: will oppose Kobe in Olympic Tournament! |
= To Our Readers =
In addition to posting our regular daily column of news, observations and commentary, we now distribute The Sports Examiner DAILY, a .pdf-format newsletter – with bonus features – with the daily Tip Sheet that can be printed out to take with you or forwarded to your laptop to read later.
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= Tonight’s Menu =
>> Denver, Co.: The Lakers will try to sweep aside the Nuggets, up 3-0 in their best-of-seven, first-round series. No team in NBA history has ever won a series after being down 3-0 and the Lakers are 6-0 vs. Denver this season. Pau Gasol has been Los Angeles’ offensive star, scoring 22.7 points per game and shooting 63% from the field; he’s poised to win his first-ever NBA playoff series. The Lakers are 7-1 in April and are a five-point choice tonight. With an over-under of 225, the projected final is Los Angeles 115, Nuggets 110.
>> Anaheim, Ca.: It’s no surprise that the 16-10 Angels are in first place in the American League West. But that Oakland is also 16-10 is a stunner. Tonight, Chad Gaudin (2-1, 3.38 ERA) will face Jon Garland for the Angels (3-2, 5.04) at Angel Stadium. The Halos have to be feeling good after a 4-2 road trip to Boston and Detroit while the A’s are on a 7-2 run. But the Angels have won five of their last seven against Oakland and they’re favored to do so again tonight. It takes $120 to try to win $100 on the home team, but $100 on the A’s could return $105.
= L.A. Stories =
What’s Bruin:
>> Pasadena, Ca.: It was a pretty Saturday at the Rose Bowl and a surprisingly large crowd of 15,052 showed up for the UCLA Spring Scrimmage. They saw enough to be excited about the defense and be concerned about the offense.
After a series of kickoff and punting drills, new coach Rick Neuheisel used the referee’s stadium microphone to greet the crowd at 7:14 p.m., including this line: “This is the closest I’ve ever been to a referee without getting a penalty.”
Both of UCLA’s injured quarterbacks, Pat Cowan and Ben Olson, were introduced at midfield during the game and both were on crutches, a familiar sight for Bruin fans over the past two seasons. Junior transfer Kevin Craft looked the best of the three quarterbacks who did play, completing 11 of 24 for 95 yards and one touchdown to Gavin Ketchum. Craft was increasingly efficient as the scrimmage wore on. Redshirt freshman Chris Forcier was sacked four times and Osaar Rasshan had a hard time holding on to the ball, fumbling two snaps from center.
All together, the offense ran 85 plays and gained a net of 249 yards, a 2007-like average of 2.9 yards per play. But then, after all, these were the 2007 players on the field. One newcomer, former track sprinter Alex Pearlstone, caught a 24-yard touchdown pass from Rasshan on the final series.
In the absence of still-recovering Khalil Bell, Chane Moline for most of the carries at running back and found little room, with 16 tries and just 42 yards net. Christian Ramirez had 11 carries and 33 yards and fullback Trevor Theriot got a carry, gaining seven yards. For the first time in memory, the Bruins did not give the fullback position a single carry all season in 2007.
Talk of Troy:
>> New York, N.Y.: USC quarterback John David Booty appears to be satisfied with his selection by the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL Draft, but hopefully the offense won’t be too complicated.
According to a report posted on TheWizardofOdds.com, Booty and former Kentucky quarterback Andre Woodson had the lowest scores among quarterbacks on the Wonderlic test, with 14 points out of 50 possible. The leader was Louisville’s Brian Brohm, at 32, followed by Oregon’s Dennis Dixon at 29.
Then again, it may not matter. Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw reportedly scored a 15 back in 1970.
Thinking Blue:
>> New York, N.Y.: Vin Scully will receive the first Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award from Fordham University’s WFUV radio station, where Scully first started in radio in the 1940s.
Asked by the New York Post if there was a unique, life-changing episode in his career, he mentioned Marguerite Clark. Who was Marguerite Clark?
“She was a secretary at Fordham, a friend of mine. Senior year I went to her with Broadcast magazine. It was time to hunt for a job, and she was going to help me send out letters to radio stations, from Massachusetts right on down.
“When we saw the listing for ‘WTOP AM and FM, 50,000 watts, Washington, D.C.,’ I dismissed it. ‘That station’s much too big; it would never hire me. I’m just a college kid,’ I told her.
“Bur Marguerite said, ‘Why not? It’s only another three-cent stamp’ That’s how long ago it was.”
As it turned out, WTOP hired Scully as a summer replacement, the one hire the station made out of 54 candidates. He met his future Dodger broadcast partner Red Barber at the station and the rest is history. Thanks to Marguerite Clark.
= Panorama =
NBA Hoopla:
>> Dallas, Tx.: Don’t turn down the sound if TNT’s Reggie Miller is the analyst on an NBA playoff game. Here’s what he said about New Orleans’ Chris Paul during Dallas’ Game 3 win last Thursday:
“Chris Paul is garnishing a lot of attention from the Mavericks.”
Our office wag wants to know if Dallas “should defend him with a sprig of parsley?”
Hooping it Up:
>> Beijing, China: The U.S. women’s team lost to China in a shocking upset, 84-81, in the finals of the Beijing Basketball Test Event completed on Saturday.
The American team had throttled China, 86-61, two days earlier, but fell behind and at half and ran out of gas after taking the lead during the second half. This was a good American team with Lisa Leslie, Sylvia Fowles and Swin Cash among others and sets up an interesting Olympic tournament as the U.S. and China have been placed in the same preliminary pool.
>> Beijing, China: The draw for the men’s Olympic tournament was also held on Saturday with the U.S., Spain and China all placed in the same group, along with African champion Angola and two qualifiers still to be determined.
That puts Lakers teammates Pau Gasol of Spain and Kobe Bryant of the U.S. against each other in the first round on August 16. The American team will open against Yao Ming and the Chinese team on August 10.
“I would have preferred to have met Team USA in the final but this is what the draw has pulled out. It’s clear that Team USA is the team to beat,” Gasol said after the draw. “They have a great side, with a very defined project but if we want to win gold, we have to beat everyone. We know it's almost impossible to stop Kobe, but between all of us we will try.”
The Spanish are hardly slouches, having won the FIBA World Championship in 2006. Argentina leads the other group, which includes Australia, Russia and Lithuania along with two future qualifiers.
>> Geneva, Switzerland: The worldwide governing body for basketball, FIBA, is putting together a world championship of club teams set to be held for the first time in October of 2009.
The timing is interesting, since NBA clubs start their training camps in September and play a slate of exhibition games beginning in late September and through October with the season opening around Halloween. That means that if the tournament were held, say, from October 10-20, then NBA teams could compete.
FIBA announced that the site will be determined in June 2008 with eight teams to be invited: two from the Americas, two from Europe and one each from Africa, Asia and Oceania, plus a home-town team. Just a guess, but the tournament is going to be held in Canada or the United States in order to make sure the NBA teams don’t have far to go.
Maybe at Staples Center, with the Lakers as host and the Clippers as one of the two teams from the Americas?
Batter up:
>> Mumbai, India: Today’s big story in cricket is an 11-game suspension of Mumbai spinner (a kind of pitcher) Harbhajan Singh in the Indian Premier League after he slapped Kings XI Punjab bowler (also a term for a pitcher) Shanthakumaran Sreesanth after Mumbai’s loss by 66 runs on Friday.
The referee also fined Singh as well as Mumbai coach Laichand Rajput “for not doing enough to stop the incident.” Says the wag, “even soccer players seem macho compared to this nonsense!”
Rings & Things:
>> Seoul, South Korea: The Olympic Torch is nearing the end of its news cycle as it moves through Asia into some of the last stops outside of China itself.
In Seoul on Sunday, small groups of anti-Chinese demonstrators were vastly outnumbered by pro-China demonstrators who waved red flags and protected the Torch run en masse. There were clashes and the throwing of rocks and punches that ended with five arrests, but the 15-mile run was completed as scheduled, thanks in part to the presence of 8,000 police.
Unlike Western protests, which focused on Tibet and China’s support for the Sudanese government accused of atrocities in Darfur, Korean protestors focused on North Korean refugees living in hiding in China. The Chinese policy has been to repatriate refugees from North Korea. One North Korean defector tried to set himself on fire, but was stopped by police before he was able to ignite himself.
Today in North Korea, there were – not surprisingly – no signs of dissent and more than 50,000 people reportedly showed up to salute the Torch. There’s one more stop planned in Vietnam and then the Torch run will continue inside China itself for the remaining time prior to the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing on August 8.
Rassle Maniacs:
>> Greenville, S.C.: “As wrestling experts, we can’t judge the politics, but we can review how much smack they talked.”
That’s from The Sun of London, grading Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain on their cameo roles in last Monday’s “Raw” taping for the WWE. Obama was judged slightly better than Clinton, but McCain was the easy winner:
How are you, South Carolina? Finally, The Mac has come back to Greenville.
Looks like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama want to settle their differences in the ring. Well, that’s fine with me.
But let me tell you, if you want to be the man you have to beat the man. Come November, it will be Game Over.
And what are you going to do when John McCain and all his McCainiacs run wild on you!
You want to pull out of Iraq? Well I say no surrender. America can win the war against terror. I’m going to introduce Osama Bin Laden to The Undertaker.
You want to raise taxes? Well, I want a smaller government and bigger individuals.
You see, my friends, I believe America is the greatest nation in the world and Americans don’t watch wrestling because we’re bitter.
We watch WWE because wrestling is about celebrating our freedom. It’s about fighting to be the very best. So can you smell what The Mac is cooking?
Let me give you a little straight talk, WWE fans. You might need a ticket to the fatal four next weekend, but you don’t need a ticket to the cage match in November. All you need to do is get out there and vote. You decide the champion. You make the difference. And that’s the bottom line, because John McCain said so.
The Sun’s reaction: “We say – either McCain is a big wrestling fan or a very convincing actor.
“He managed to use catchphrases by The Rock, Ric Flair, Triple H, Hulk Hogan and Steve Austin – and even get a Mick Foley-style cheap pop in there at the start.”
The reality is undoubtedly that McCain has a speechwriter who is a WWE fan, but full credit to the candidate for taking advantage!
~ Rich Perelman
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