Armadillo Sports
Wednesday’s 6-pack
Odds to win the NBA championship:
4-1— Phoenix Suns
11-2— Golden State, Brooklyn
6-1— Milwaukee
13-2— Philadelphia
10-1— Miami
18-1— Utah, Boston
Quote of the Day
“Success is found in the mud. And the only way to effect positive change is to get your hands dirty.”
Cooper Kupp
Wednesday’s quiz
Where did Trae Young play his college basketball?
Tuesday’s quiz
Matt Ryan played his college football at Boston College.
Monday’s quiz
Last time a Pac-12 team won the NCAA Tournament was 1997, when Arizona won.
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Wednesday’s Den: Mid-week musings……..
13) You’ll have to excuse me if there are mistakes in this article today; left my house at 3:15am Tuesday, got to my hotel room in Las Vegas 13 hours later. Long day; I don’t enjoy flying much anymore, but Southwest does provide free movies on their Wi-Fi, so that helped some. For some reason, can’t sleep on planes.
First vacation in 29 months; good to get closer to normal.
12) By the way, my hotel room has Pac-12 Network, which is only time I ever see it, since DirecTV does not have it. 13 different home shopping channels, no Pac-12 Network. Terrific.
11) St Bonaventure 52, Virginia 51— Bonnies played four senior starters 40:00 each; one guy got in foul trouble and only played 28:00. What the hell are they going to do for players next year?
Why has no school hired Mark Schmidt as their coach? Six SEC teams changed coaches already this spring, and Schmidt still lives in Olean, where he is 268-172 in 15 years. The last eight years, Bonnies are 95-45 in league games. Pretty damn good.
Go get a map, find Olean, NY; draw a 100-mile circle around Olean, and see how many big cities you find. 74 miles from Buffalo, 116 from Rochester. Not exactly basketball hotbeds. What Schmidt has done with the Bonnies is remarkable.
10) Was surprised to hear that this is the last year the NIT Final Four will be in New York City; there was a time, back before even I was born, where the NIT was bigger than the NCAA’s. In 1950, City College of New York won both tournaments, and the NIT was the bigger deal.
9) Speaking of the coaching carousel:
— South Carolina hired Chattanooga coach Paris LaMont.
— Louisiana Tech coach Eric Konkol bolts to Tulsa.
— SMU coach Tim Jankovich retired; he was 24-9 this year, doubtful he got fired, but they also haven’t made the NCAA’s the last five years. Wealthy boosters tend to be impatient.
8) CBI tournament, where the final is 2:00 Wednesday afternoon:
— NC-Wilmington 80, Northern Colorado 64— Seahawks are 26-9, 18-4 in games decided by 7 or less less points. Before this season, UNCW had four losing years in a row.
— Middle Tennessee 85, Abilene Christian 69— Quick turnaround for the winners; MTSU is playing third day in row Wednesday, day game after a night game.
7) Does playing in the NIT, CBI help a team going forward? Getting on ESPN has to help some, but seems that teams like St Bonaventure, a very experienced team that fell just short in their conference, often do well in NIT/CBI-type events, then they almost have to regress the next season, since they’ll have whole new rosters.
6) We talked some about Dodger announcer Rick Monday last week; he was also a pretty good outfielder. Reader Glenn points out that Monday hit 11 home runs off of Hall of Fame hurler Tom Seaver, more than any other player. Impressive.
5) Major League Baseball announced some rule changes Tuesday:
— Rosters will be 28 guys until May 1st.
— Extra innings will start with a runner on second base.
— If your DH is also the starting pitcher, he can stay as the DH after he is done pitching, which is obviously called the Ohtani Rule.
4) Detroit Pistons lost 119-115 to Portland Monday, ending a 12-0-1 run ATS; they’ve lost six of last seven games SU, but have been keeping games closer lately.
3) 31 baseball players wound up heading to contract arbitration; all of those cases will be heard after the season starts, which shouldn’t cause too much of a problem, should it? (joke). Six of the 31 players play for the Mets.
2) If the NBA playoffs started today (they do not) the play-in games would be:
— East: Atlanta @ Toronto, Charlotte @ Brooklyn
— West: New Orleans @ Minnesota, Lakers @ Clippers
1) Was sitting in the Aria Sportsbook Tuesday night, reading the baseball over/unders, and odds to win it all; good Lord, the A’s are 80-1 to win the World Series. Who in their right mind would wager on the A’s to win the World Series? I have a better chance of dating Sharon Stone than the A’s do of being a contender this season.
