Armadillo Sports
Thursday’s 6-pack:
NFL teams with best turnover ratio:
+12- Indianapolis
+10- New England
+9- Buffalo, Green Bay
+8- Arizona, Tampa Bay
+5- Minnesota, NJ Giants
+4- Dallas, New Orleans
Quote of the Day
“)Notre Dame) Players, largely fed up with the distant, CEO-type approach of Kelly, made it abundantly clear throughout the day to Swarbrick and to anyone else who would listen that they wanted 35-year-old defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman to become their next head coach,”
from The Athletic
Thursday’s quiz
Which actress played Anfernee Hardaway’s mother in the basketball movie Blue Chips?
Wednesday’s quiz
Brett Favre played his college football at Southern Mississippi.
Tuesday’s quiz
Arizona Cardinals are the only NFL team hasn’t tried a 2-point conversion this year.
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Thursday’s Den: Doing some thinking out loud
13) NC State 104, Nebraska 100, 4OT:
— Four players were ejected in a fracas.
— Nebraska led by 14 with 9:31 left in regulation
— Only the fifth 4-OT game in the history of ACC basketball.
— Free throws: NC State 32-42, Nebraska 11-15
— NC State’s Seabron played 57:00— he scored 37 points, 12 rebounds, was 17-20 on foul line. He took more foul shots than the whole Nebraska team.
12) Been watching a ton of college basketball; I’m wondering if home court advantage is going to be bigger than usual this season, since there were no fans last season— playing in front of hostile crowds isn’t that easy, and fans might actually might little more zealous this season, after having to stay home last winter.
Something to watch as we move thru pre-conference play.
11) Cincinnati 59, Miami OH 58:
— Bearcats had the onions to play a pre-conference road game, and barely survive it.
— Miami led by 8 with 12:37 left.
— Cincinnati was 2-10 from foul line.
10) Next time someone says Mike Krzyzewski is the best college basketball coach ever, remind them that Duke hasn’t won an ACC regular season title since 2006. He is a great coach for sure, but when John Wooden was coaching UCLA, there was no conference tournament- he had to win the Pac-12 regular season title, just to get into the NCAA tournament, and he won seven national championships in a row, ten in all.
9) Duke alum Marcus Stroman announced on Twitter that he’ll be pitching for the Cubs next year; Stroman is 61-60, 3.73 in 173 career starts. He threw 179 innings LY (10-13, 4.35), after opting out of the 2020 season. He got $71M from the Cubs on a 3-year deal.
8) Taysom Hill will start at QB for New Orleans Thursday night against the Cowboys. Hill is this generation’s Tim Tebow; more of a runner than a passer. He went 3-1 starting at QB for the Saints last year, his only NFL starts at quarterback.
7) Notre Dame hired defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman as their new coach; he was the defensive coordinator at Cincinnati from 2017-20, has never been a head coach.
Interesting that Kelly will have to hire two coordinators at LSU, since Freeman/Tommy Rees both elected to stay at Notre Dame.
6) Georgia 82, Memphis 79:
— Memphis led by 5 with 4:19 left.
— This is a bad loss for Memphis; Georgia had lost four games in a row.
— Tom Crean wins his 400th game as a head coach.
5) North Carolina 72, Michigan 51— Wolverines looked terrible; UNC outscored them 43-24 in second half.
4) Washington State 51, Arizona State 29— This is a final score; ASU is now 2-6- they’ve lost five games in a row. Sun Devils shot 21.1% from floor in this game.
3) About 10 or so years ago, I was sitting at an AAU basketball tournament at Siena College; guy sitting next to me was a great coach at the Division II level, and I knew him to say hello to, so I picked his brain a little bit, asked him what he looked for while evaluating talent.
“What is his college skill?” was his reply. He told me that he considered getting loose balls a skill, just like passing or shooting or defense. Learned a lot that day, and I appreciate it.
2) I’m watching The Bodyguard on TV late Tuesday night; excellent movie, but it was on a commercial station, and there were A LOT of commericials during the movie, so I had to look it up. Movie is 2:09, the time slot it was in was four freakin’ hours!!!!
— Movie is 2 hours, 9 minutes
— With 1 hour, 51 minutes of commercials.
Yikes.
1) I’m concerned that the geniuses who run baseball are killing the golden goose; Texas is going to pay their 2B/SS a combined $57M a year for the next seven years, so you can’t tell me they’re not making money, but now a lockout is underway, and who knows when it will end.
Players are making a fortune, owners wouldn’t be in it if it wasn’t profitable, but some of the owners don’t try to win- they throw scrub teams out on the field and expect fans to still some to the ballpark and pay lot of money to watch cruddy teams play.
Get in a room and find a middle ground, before it is too late.
