An advice column for people who live with people who live for sports
What happened on Monday, February 23, 2015?
Ducks win the battle of the birds: If you look in the newspaper today (or more likely the internet) you’ll see that the Anaheim Ducks beat the Detroit Red Wings 4-3 last night. If you look more closely, you’ll see that the game went to a shootout and in the shootout the Ducks scored two goals while the Red Wings scored only one. When two teams are tied going into a shootout, the team with more goals in the shootout gets one goal added to their total for the game. It’s not particularly accurate but it’s the easiest way to quickly show who won. Line: There were only two games on the NHL schedule last night. Luckily one of them was good!
NBA TV chose two close games to show: Last night NBA TV had a relatively rare double-header of games. I noted in my sports forecast that because NBA TV is a smaller brand than TNT or ESPN, the channels that usually televise NBA games nationally, they seem to be free to pick teams from smaller or less traditional markets. Lucky for them, both games they chose last night were decided by three points. The New Orleans Pelicans beat the Toronto Raptors 100-97 and the Memphis Grizzlies beat the Los Angeles Clippers 90-87. Line: Pelicans, Grizzlies, Clippers, Raptors — who the heck names these teams??!
Rankings hold true in Women’s College Basketball: There were two big-time matchups of top ten teams last night in women’s college basketball. In both games, the team with the better ranking beat the team with the worse ranking. Fourth ranked Notre Dame had little trouble with eighth ranked Louisville, beating them by 16 points. The game between second ranged South Carolina and sixth ranked Tennessee was a little closer — 71-66 — but the team that was expected to win, still won. Line: Upsets are more rare in the women’s game but neither of these matchups really had much of an underdog.
Kansas State surprises Kansas: I was going to write “shocks” but settled for “surprises” because in an in-state rivalry like the one Kansas has with Kansas State, it’s not actually incredibly unexpected for the underdog to win. Rivalry games often seem like they are governed by a different set of rules than other games. Emotion plays a bigger role vis-a-vis skill than in in non-rivalry games and sometimes that’s enough to upset the normal order of things. After Kansas State beat Kansas 70-63, the crowd stormed the court and there were some altercations between Kansas State fans and Kansas players and coaches. Line: I love watching underdogs win and seeing a few thousand happy students run onto the court is special, but I wish there was a way to get the visiting team off the floor before it happened.
