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- Claret gets a draw: I watched some of the British Premiere League soccer game between Southampton at Aston Villa yesterday. Aston Villa was clearly outmatched but they scored first on a quick counter attack and were able to hold on the rest of the game for a tie. The best part was when NBC Sports Network put a graphic on the screen that explained Southampton was wearing yellow and Aston Villa was wearing “claret.”
Line: British soccer is not only great soccer, it’s also fun cultural tourism.
- Snow powered Bills romp: The football game between the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills that was moved to Detroit because of the crazy lake effect snow in Buffalo was extremely one-sided. The Bills beat the Jets 38-4.
Line: Was this game proof that NFL players would benefit from more rest between games and less practice? Or just that the Jets stink?
- Crabs edge Crayfish – The Baltimore Ravens beat the New Orleans Saints 34-27 in a game that went back and forth many times. This leaves New Orleans with four wins and seven losses on the year, which shockingly still puts them in a tie for first place in their division. Their division is so bad, it seems likely at this point that its division winner (and therefore a team that gets to host a playoff game) will have a losing record. The Ravens needed to win this game much more because all four teams in their division have seven wins.
Line: The Saints division is SO BAD at football.
- Black and Gold vs. Black and Gold: Two of the best teams in the Eastern Conference of the NHL for the last decade have been the Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins. They both wear black and gold and they both win lots of hockey games. Last night they played each other to a 2-2 tie in regulation time. In overtime, (five minutes where they play 4-4 instead of 5-5) the Penguins scored a goal to win the game, 3-2.
Line: Sidney Crosby passing to Evgeni Malkin in overtime is just what the Penguins fans want to see.
- The NFL in all its glory: Yep, another full, full day of NFL football. If you were out enjoying the weather, check out our Week 12 NFL One Liners to catch up on all the games.
- Major League Soccer semifinals: Major League Soccer’s semifinals are arranged as two game playoff series. Yesterday was the first half or leg of them in both the Western and Eastern conferences. In the East, the New York Red Bull lost 2-1 to the New England Revolution. After the Revolution jumped out to an early 1-0 lead, the Red Bull were able to tie the game up on a crazy scramble in front of the goal which involved a shot from a player lying on the ground hitting the cross bar and bouncing right to an open Bradley Wright-Phillips who headed the ball in. Jermaine Jones, one of the heroes of the World Cup for the U.S. this past year, put the Revolution ahead for good in the second half. In the West, the Los Angeles Galaxy beat the Seattle Sounders 1-0 thanks to a goal from Marcelo Sarvas and some clutch goalkeeping by Jaime Penedo.
Line: Did you know the MLS semifinals started yesterday? Probably not because there was so much American Football on.
What’s Next? The second legs of the semifinals are on November 29 and 30.
- Memphis stomps on another team: The Memphis Grizzlies are 12-2 and have looked like a dominant NBA basketball team so far this season. Last night they stomped on another very good team, the Los Angeles Clippers, in a 107-91 rout. They’re led by Spanish big man, Marc Gasol, who scored 30 points and had 12 rebounds in the game.
Line: Have you caught a Memphis game yet this year? They look seriously good.
- On any given Thursday: Well, it happened again. The most seemingly lopsided game of the week, the game I featured on my Do Not Watch This Game column because it was going to be so unfortunately one sided, turned out to be a close, exciting game where the underdog won. I gotta stop writing that column or at least I need to base it on something other than my prediction of which game is most predictable. The until last night winless Oakland Raiders beat the Kansas City Chiefs 24-20 on a rainy night in Oakland.
Line: Bad though they may be, the Raiders are professionals and their pride shone through last night.
- Better in Toronto: Crisis averted in Toronto, where two straight horrible losses for the city’s hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, may have created a true city crisis. Instead, they’re celebrating a 5-2 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning. And just like that, they’re fine. Their record is ten wins, eight losses, and two overtime losses. That’s fine, everybody chill out!
Line: Hey, the Maple Leafs are fine. Everything is fine in Toronto. Really.
- A new day in California Basketball: Everything is topsy-turvy in the NBA in California this year. The Clippers are way better than the Lakers, as they showed last night by beating the Miami Heat comfortably 110-93, and the Sacramento Kings are consistently good. The Kings beat the visiting Chicago Bulls 103 to 88 last night.
Line: Up is down, down is up, and the Kings and Clippers are good!?
- Another early season upset in college basketball: The Syracuse Orange dropped their first game of the year 73-59 against the California Golden Bears. This game was part of an early season tournament called the 2K classic being played at Madison Square Garden. Cal now moves on to the finals to play Texas.
Line: We’re used to seeing Syracuse play heroically in the Garden but I guess things have changed.
What’s Next: California plays Texas tonight in the finals of the 2k classic, at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN2.
- LeBron loses the ball and the game: The Cleveland Cavaliers had the ball, two points down, with six seconds remaining in their game against the San Antonio Spurs. Most of the time, that’s more than enough time for LeBron James to run down the court and get a good shot off. Last night, however, he stumbled a little while navigating around a couple Spurs defenders, and lost control of the ball. Game over, Spurs win — a familiar feeling for LeBron, who lost last year’s finals to the Spurs as a member of the Heat.
Line: LeBron just lost the ball. Seems like that wouldn’t of happened the last few years in Miami.
- Howard doesn’t play, Lakers win: The other nationally televised NBA basketball game last night was the Los Angeles Lakers at the Houston Rockets. The most compelling thing about the game was the potential of continued animosity between Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard. Howard missed the game with a knee injury, so that storyline withered. The Lakers beat the short-handed Rockets. This is their second win in a row after losing nine of their first ten games.
Line: The Lakers are on a roll! [said with a certain amount of irony because even two wins in a row only means they’ve won 1/4 of their games.]
- Creighton upsets Oklahoma: One of the fun things about writing about sports is making LOTS of predictions about games. Because of a natural human tendency to ignore uninteresting things and remember interesting ones, this means that when I get something right, it’s more memorable than nine other times I get something wrong. I got this one right yesterday when I said to watch out for a Creighton upset. Indeed, they came from 18 points down to beat Oklahoma 65-63.
Line: I told you so!
- Running rules the day in college football: One of the fun things about college football is that because the level of general athleticism is just slightly lower than in the NFL, a wider range of strategies are viable. Take the game last night between Bowling Green and Toledo. Toledo won 27-20 while running for 325 yards and passing for only 63. That type of play distribution, slanted so heavily towards running, is unheard of in the NFL, mostly because it simply wouldn’t work.
Line: 325 yards of rushing to 63 yards passing? And they won? Gotta love college football!
- Sloppy end for the U.S. in Dublin: The United States Men’s National Soccer team played its last game of the season yesterday vs. Ireland in Dublin. It did not go well. The team looked sloppy and disorganized and lost 4-1 to an Ireland team that wasn’t even playing its best players. In the American team’s defense, not only were we missing a bunch of our best players but even among the 23 players we had, we decided to not play four or five of the best because they have Major League Soccer playoff games this weekend. Still, losing to Colombia and then Ireland is not a happy way of ending a good year for U.S. Soccer.
Line: U.S. soccer still has a long way to go.
- Uh… Crisis time in Toronto: The story of the night in the National Hockey League was the 9-2 loss of the Toronto Maple Leafs at the hands and skates and sticks of the Nashville Predators. Toronto is perhaps the hockey craziest city in the world and they do not react well to embarrassing defeats from their hockey team, especially not to teams like Nashville, which, while good, does not exalt have a long hockey history like Toronto does.
Line: [If you live in Toronto] The sky is falling!! [If you live basically anywhere else] Did you see Toronto last night… oh boy, someone’s gonna get fired. [evil chuckle]
- The new rich in the National Basketball Association: The classically great franchises of the NBA are almost all having down years. The Celtics and Lakers are a combined 5-14 (five wins, fourteen losses) and that’s not a surprise. The Knicks are 3-9 themselves and only newsworthy because some crazy person lost his job and is following them around. The flip side of this is that there are some really exciting new teams rising to the top of the league. Two of those played last night: the New Orleans Pelicans and Sacramento Kings. The Pelicans beat the Kings 106-100.
Line: Whoever thought we’d be excited about the Pelicans and the Kings? But we are!
- Well that was easy: The two big match-ups in college basketball last night both turned out to be easier for the higher ranked team than expected. The Duke Blue Devils coasted past the Michigan State Spartans 81 – 71 and the Kentucky Wildcats routed the Kansas Jayhawks 72 to 40. It’s a long season, so things could easily turn around, but for now it looks like Duke and Kentucky are head and shoulders above almost everyone else.
Line: Tons of exciting games in college basketball yesterday, just not the biggest ones.
- Closer than expected, but still a Steelers win: I (and I think most other football fans) expected the Monday Night Football game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans to be a bit of a joke. We thought the Steelers would absolutely crush the Titans. That wasn’t the case, it was a close game, but the Steelers won anyway, thanks largely to an almost incomprehensibly good game from their running back Le’Veon Bell.
Line: The Titans made it interesting but in the end, it was the Steelers.
- Not a good day for NBA basketball teams starting with the letter ‘C’: The Denver Nuggets beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 106 to 97 and the Chicago Bulls beat the Los Angeles Clippers 105 to 89. Both those games were upsets with (only slightly in the Bulls’ case) less feared teams beating the more highly thought of team in their own lair.
Line: Good night for the road underdog in the NBA.
- Captains return: Last season, the Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Rangers traded their captains to each other. Last night, in their first game against each other in NY, both former captains, Ryan Callahan and Martin St. Louis stepped up and scored a goal for their new teams. Unfortunately for St. Louis and the Rangers, his was the only goal scored for their team while the Lightning scored four other goals to win the game 5-1.
Line: Nice symmetry in this game with both traded captains scoring for their new team.
- An early upset in college basketball: The college basketball season got started in earnest with a wild game between the Miami Hurricanes and Florida Gaters. The Gators were ranked seventh in the country but that didn’t stop Miami from going toe-to-toe with them and eventually winning on a series of last minute clutch shots.
Line: It’s early in the season but not too early to watch a really enjoyable game!
- Tons of NFL action: BUT, because I went to see a Stevie Wonder concert last night, I don’t have any recaps about the games written yet. From what I saw personally, the 49ers kinda lucked out beating the Giants, the Eagles got entirely smushed by the Packers, and Stevie Wonder’s voice is still a force of nature. NFL One liners coming later today!
Line: Dear Sports Fan is getting L-A-Z-Y.
- NASCAR crowns a champion: The NASCAR championship race (which we now know works like this) was yesterday. Kevin Harvik, one of the four drivers remaining who was eligible to win the championship, won the race yesterday. All he needed to do was to place ahead of the other three eligible drivers in the field of 53 but he went out and simply won the whole thing.
Line: There’s a nice symmetry to having the winner of the Sprint Cup also win the last race.
- Hello the Netherlands: There was a long list of soccer games yesterday and the day before between countries in Europe trying to qualify for 2016’s European Championship tournament. The Netherlands is a country that expects soccer success — at least almost-success. They’re one of the two best soccer countries (with Portugal) to never win a World Cup but they have lots of good finishes. Just this past summer they came in third in Brazil. So you wouldn’t expect them to have so much trouble just qualifying for this tournament but they have been. Going into their game yesterday with Latvia, their coach had publicly said he would resign if they lost. They didn’t. They won 6-0 and are now in much better shape to qualify.
Line: Nothing like a bit of Latvia to cure your soccer woes.
- Goalie gets offensive: It’s very rare in NHL hockey for a goalie to score a goal. It happens only once every decade or so when a goalie takes a shot at the opposing team’s empty net. More frequent but still rare is the goalie assist. San Jose Sharks goalie Antii Niemi got an assist last night in the Sharks 2-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Line: Goalie assists are like when a pitcher hits a home run in baseball — unusual and fun.
- Past beats future, present beats the Nets: The Chicago Bulls, whose chance to win a championship may be in the rear-view mirror thanks to Pau Gasol’s age and Derrick Rose’s inability to stay healthy, beat the young, up-and-coming, Toronto Raptors 100-93 in Toronto. Meanwhile, over in California, a team built to win now, the Golden State Warriors beat the visiting Brooklyn Nets 107 to 99. Could be some of my own fan’s pessimism, but I don’t the Nets are built to do much of anything this year… or any year in the foreseeable future.
Line: The Bulls beat the Raptors but Derrick Rose hurt himself again. That’s like three injuries in twelve games.
- High scoring college football games: In the two featured college football games last night, there were a total of 168 points scored! That’s a lot. The Cincinnati Bearcats beat the East Carolina Pirates 54-46 and the USC Trojans beat the California Golden Bears 38-30.
Line: I can almost guarantee that those were two of the five best college football games this weekend. Shame I missed them!
- A throwback NFL game: The Miami Dolphins beat the Buffalo Bills last night in a game that looked, at times, like football from 20 or 40 years ago. For the entire first half and a good portion of the second, no one scored a touchdown. It wasn’t bad offense, just really good defense, so this was enjoyable to watch. Then, in the third quarter, the Dolphins finally broke through on offense, scoring a touchdown, and on defense where they scored a safety after pressuring Bills quarterback Kyle Orton to take an intentional grounding penalty in his own end-zone.
Line: I love watching that type of throwback football where the defenses dominate the game.
- A furious friendly: Mexican soccer fans got the revenge they were waiting for by beating the Netherlands 3-2 in a wild soccer game. There was a loud section of Mexican fans who had made the trip to Amsterdam bearing signs with the slogan “No ay penal” referring to the controversial penalty kick awarded to the Netherlands in this past summer’s World Cup. Beating the Netherlands in an exhibition game may be weak revenge but its revenge nonetheless.
Line: If Mexico had played that aggressively in the World Cup, they wouldn’t have been victimized by a penalty call. They would have won by three goals.
- More revenge in hockey: The two national games yesterday both featured teams that have played each other recently in dramatic, seven game playoff series. In both the games, the team which had lost in the playoffs won yesterday. The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Boston Bruins 6-1 and the Anaheim Ducks beat the Los Angeles Kings 6-5 in overtime.
Line: Revenge is a dish best served cold. You know, like on ice… get it? get it?
- The NBA takes a trip to Mexico: The National Basketball Association held a regular season game in Mexico City lat night between the Houston Rockets and the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Rockets won 113-101 and it should probably be no surprise that one of the most brand conscious NBA players, Dwight Howard, had a big game. Howard has been criticized for being too happy-go-lucky but it’s hard to criticize him at all when he scores 22 points and gets 10 rebounds.
Line: Somehow when the NBA plays a game internationally it doesn’t seem like a gimmick the way it does when the NFL does it.
- New York/New Jersey teams win: An odd thing happened in the NHL last night, the New York Rangers, New York Islanders, and New Jersey Devils — three NHL teams within about 50 miles of each other, all played and all won. The Rangers beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 5-0 to end the Penguins long win streak. The Islanders beat the Colorado Avalanche 6-0 to one-up the Rangers. The Devils beat the Minnesota Wild 3-1.
Line: Good night for hockey in New York and New Jersey.
- Raptors put their claws down in the fourth quarter: The Toronto Raptors are the contenders for the Eastern Conference championship that no one is talking about. They don’t have the star power of the Cleveland Cavaliers or Chicago Bulls, plus they hide out all the way up there in Canada. They have the best record in the league so far this season with seven wins and only one loss. Last night, the young Orlando Magic were beating them through three quarters but the Raptors came out in the fourth and outscored them 32-17 to eek out a four point victory.
Line: Don’t sleep on the Raptors!
- Versatility helps Northern Illinois: At first glance, the college football game last night between the Toledo Rockets and the Northern Illinois Huskies looks like a close, exciting, but expected 27-24 victory by Northern Illinois, the school that’s won the last four division titles. Then you look a little closer and find out that the Northern Illinois starting quarterback was their fourth quarterback of the year because their first three all got injured and he’s actually a wide-receiver!
Line: I love it when teams are forced to switch a player to another position.
