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March
2002 |
| TOPS |
BOTTOMS |
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March 31: The NCAA men's
college basketball final is set, with semi-Cinderella
Indiana playing top-seeded Maryland. Indiana
upset Oklahoma in one semifinal, while Maryland knocked off
Kansas. Neither game was particularly thrilling in a
tournament that has proven uneven. |
March 31: One more sign
that people take sports too seriously and as a
license for destructive behavior. This from the Associated
Press: ``Police in riot gear and riding horseback fired
pellets into a crowd of hundreds of celebrating Maryland
fans early Sunday, hours after the Terrapins advanced to the
national championship game About 10 people broke into
a police car and stole flares that they later lighted and
threw at officers. Other fans ripped up street signs and
paraded them around an intersection on Route 1 near the
campus.'' |
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March 30: The women's
college basketball final is set, with surprising Oklahoma
facing monster Connecticut on Sunday. Oklahoma
knocked off Duke in one semifinal on Friday, while
Connecticut stayed unbeaten by utterly dominating Tennessee. |
March 30: Forbes magazine
exposed the lies by baseball commissioner Bud Selig
that the sport is a money-loser. The magazine studied the
finances of all 30 teams and found they had a total
operating profit of $75 million last year, not a $225
million loss as Selig testified to Congress. "A few teams
are struggling, but baseball as an industry is in strong
financial shape," Forbes senior editor Mike Ozanian said.
Just one more reason to never trust a major league sports
owner who cries poverty. These guys are all
multimillionaires who didn't get to where they were by
backing losers. Baseball, of course, disputed Forbes'
findings. |
March 29: In a match
worth of a championship semifinal, Jennifer Capriati
outlasted Monica Seles in a three-set thriller that went to
a tiebreaker at the NASDAQ 100 in Florida. Capriati will
face Serena Williams in the finals. Sererna big beat sister
Venus in a lackluster straight-set match.
In the men's NIT (the consolation basketball tournament only
the players' families care about) Memphis rode the
superb play of freshman Dajuan Wagner to beat South
Carolina. Wagner is likely to turn pro and be a lottery
pick. |
March 29: Michael Jordan
says he may retire after this season. Then again, he may
not. Does anybody care? |
|
March 28: The Chicago
Cubs showed they are serious about making a baseball
playoff run when they acquired reliever Antonio Alfonseca in
a trade with the Florida Marlins. When healthy, Alfonseca is
a solid closer (he led the National League in saves in
2000), a need for the Cubs with Tom Gordon hurt. Among the
notables in the trade was pitcher Julian Tavarez (sent to
Florida), who last year got into trouble for
calling San
Francisco Giants fans a ``bunch of faggots.'' He later
apologized. |
March 28: Marat Safin,
the Russian tennis star known for his short fuse, was fined
$5,000 by tennis tour officials for using abusive language
toward a representative of the the Nasdaq-100 Open in
Florida. Safin is in the quarterfinals of the tournament and
plays top-seeded Lleyton Hewitt tonight. |
|
March 27: It's been a
blast watching the teams in the NBA West duke it out
for division titles and home court advantage. With each team
having about 12 games left, both the Lakers and Kings have
50 wins in the Pacific, while the Mavericks and Spurs each
have 49 in the Midwest. |
March 27: We've always
loved watching Mike Richter in goal, whether it be for the
New York Rangers or Team USA in the Olympics. So it is very
disturbing to see that he will miss at least two weeks with
a broken skull. Richter was hit twice in the face
mask in a game Friday against Atlanta. |
|
March 26: Form pretty
much held in the NCAA women's college basketball
regionals as three No. 1's won (Oklahoma, Duke and amazing
Connecticut). But Midwest top seed Vanderbilt lost to the
No. 2 seed Tennessee, 68-63, in the best game of the
regional finals. The key question as they head to San
Antonio is whether anyone can stay close to Connecticut
(37-0). |
March 26: Mothers, keep
your daughters out of Memphis on June 8. That's when Mike
``I Like Ears as Appetizers'' Tyson is set to fight
Lennox Lewis. As estimated 20,000 seats area expected
to be filled with the top ticket going for $2,500, proving
people will pay to see a freak show. |
| March
25: Kansas and Maryland rounded out the NCAA
men's college basketball Final Four by posting impressive
wins on Sunday. They join Indiana and Oklahoma in next
Saturday's games. After all the talk about seeding, we
have two No. 1's (Kansas and Maryland), a No. 2 (Oklahoma)
and a No. 5 (Indiana). So much for Cinderella. |
March
25: The Texas Rangers may not win the pennant this
year, but they have potential for being fun in a
dysfunctional sort of way. The Rangers will give ex-Yankee
Ruben Rivera a tryout. Rivera was cut by the Yankees after
stealing a bat and glove from the locker of teammate Derek
Jeter and offering them on eBay. The Rangers already have
Carl Everett, the poster boy for anger management classes
and John Rocker, the immigrant-hating homophobe. |
| March
24: Iowa State senior wrestler Cael Sanderson
made history on Saturday becoming the first NCAA wrestler
to go undefeated in four years of wrestling, claiming four
national championships. He will graduate this spring
with a final record of 159-0. The crowd in
Albany, NY, gave Sanderson a five minute standing ovation. |
March
24: The Toronto Raptors, 4 1/2 games out
of a play-off spot in the East, have essentially called it
quits for the season, opting for star Vince Carter to have
surgery on his left knee next week, which will keep him
out of play for the team's remaining 13 regular season
games. |
| March
23: Form held Friday in the NCAA men’s college
basketball tournament. Top seeds Maryland (a winner over
Kentucky) and Kansas (which beat Illinois) advanced and
will face the #2 seeds in their brackets, Connecticut and
Oregon respectively. Oregon is an interesting story--the
Ducks won the first tournament in 1939 and haven’t been
this close since1960. |
March
23: NBA stars keep on falling. Allen Iverson of the
Philadelphia 76ers broke a bone in his left hand and will
be lost for 4-6 weeks and maybe the season (including the
playoffs). If the latter is true, the Sixers’ season is
all but over. In other NBA injury news, Orlando Magic star
Tracy McGrady was taken off the floor in a stretcher with
severe back spasms (his status is unknown), and it was
announced that Toronto’s Vince Carter, who was hurt Feb.
7, will miss the rest of the season.
Michelle Kwan had a disappointing Winter Olympics
and her luck isn’t any better at the world
championships. Kwan stumbled during her short routine at
the world’s in Japan and sits third behind Russian Irina
Slutskaya and Japanese Fumie Sugari. Olympic champion
Sarah Hughes did not compete. Kwan stumbled during the
long program in Salt Lake and went from first to third. |
March
22: Indiana ended Duke’s reign as men’s college
basketball champs with a stirring 74-73 win. The Hoosiers
battled back from a 17-point deficit to stun the Blue
Devils. The ending was simply amazing. Indiana led by four
with 4 seconds left when Duke’s Jason Williams was
fouled on a 3-point shot that went in. But Williams, maybe
the college game’s top player, missed the free throw,
Duke Carlos Boozer got the rebound but had the ball
knocked away and Indiana won the game. Said Indiana
Coach Mike Davis: ‘‘We messed up a lot of [NCAA pool]
brackets. Just tear ’em up, throw ’em away.’’
Alexei Yagudin won the men’s figure skating title,
less than a month after winning the gold medal at the
Olympics. As AP reported, with the win, Yagudin became the
first skater to win skating’s four major titles in one
season: the Grand Prix final, European championship,
Olympics and worlds. |
March
22: In the story
that just won’t end, the University of Arkansas’
president upheld the firing of men’s basketball coach
Nolan Richardson. Don’t expect this to be the last
word--Richardson will sue and all the allegations and
slanders will resurface and set a fine example for an
educational institution. |
| March
21: It was nice to see Michael Jordan back in the Washington
Wizards lineup after missing nearly a month with an
injured knee. Jordan received an ovation from the crown
when he entered, despite the game being played in Denver. |
March
21: Jeff Kent swore up and down that he broke his
wrist while washing a truck (see March 19 below). But more
witnesses have come forward to say Kent actually fell off
a motorcycle while doing a wheelie, which would be a
violation of his contract. Kent stands to possibly lose
his salary for the entire time he is injured. As they say
in politics, te coverup is always worse than the crime. |
| March
20: Men's Olympic gold medallist Alexei Yagudin caused
a sensation Tuesday when he was awarded six perfect 6.0
scores during the men's short program at the world figure
skating championships in Japan. It was the most combined
6.0's and first 6.0 for required elements at a world
championship, Reuters reported.
The Dallas Mavericks beat
the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday as the NBA Western
Conference race heated up. It was only the Mavs' third win
against the Lakers in their last 45 meetings. It signifies
that the Lakers may not have a cakewalk through the
playoffs this year. |
March
20: In a very sad story from the NHL, a
13-year-old girl died from injuries suffered after she was
hit by a puck Saturday at the Calgary Flames-Columbus Blue
Jackets game. It is believed to be the first fatality ever
by a fan at an NHL game. |
March
19: Pavel Bure--who had a thriving gay fan club while
playing for Vancouver years ago, though we have no idea as
to his orientation--was traded from the Florida Panthers
to the New York Rangers. Bure should be able to provide
some spark to a Ranger team desperately seeking a playoff
spot. Wrote
one sportswriter from Canada's National Post about
Bure: "Bure's full, red lips, perfect cheekbones,
pale green eyes, and spectacular physique give him an
exotic, androgynous appeal."
Bure's response about his gay fans: "Why would
I have a problem? If people like you and treat you with
respect, that's great. That's how I treat them."
The NFL is close to
a sensible schedule change that would allow the Monday
Night Football schedule to be changed in the last month of
the season. This would allow for more important matchups
to get prime time exposure and spare us those games
between two 6-9 teams. |
March
19: There's no doubt that San Francisco Giants second
baseman Jeff Kent broke his left wrist on March 1;
the big question is how?
Kent said he was injured while washing his truck, but a
report in Baseball Weekly said he was hurt while riding a
motorcycle, a violation of his contract. On Saturday, Kent
said: `I hear that rumor is floating around. Sure. I guess.
However you want to write it, it's still a broken wrist." He
later told the San Francisco Chronicle, ``"I wish I had fallen off a
motorcycle. I would have been having more fun. This would have had some purpose. There's a lot of stuff in
my contract. The main thing in the contract covers motorcycle racing. I think
[the writer] is grabbing at straws." |
| March
18: UCLA is perhaps the most maligned men's college
basketball team in the country with coach Steve Lavin
being the chief whipping boy. A lot of the criticism is
deserved, as the Bruins often are disorganized, unmotivated
and outcoached. But credit needs to go to UCLA for its
105-101 double-overtime win over top seed Cincinnati on
Sunday, in what has been the tournament's best game by
far. Lavin has now made the Sweet 16 in five of his six
seasons. |
March
18: Six weeks ago the Minnesota Timberwolves
looked like a legitimate NBA title contender. But after
losing their seventh game in a row on Sunday, the T'Wolves
have the look of a team that will make an early playoff
exit. Mid-March is not a good time to go into a slump with
the playoffs just a month away. |
| March
17: Daniela
Hantuchova, seeded 18th, became the lowest seed to
win a women's tier 1 tennis tournament since 1980 with a
straight set romp over Martina Hingis.
There were some notable
accomplishments in Saturday’s NCAA basketball tourney
games. The highlight was Tayshaun Prince’s
career-high 41 points to lead Kentucky past stubborn
Tulsa. ... Kansas guard Kirk Hinrich played through a
badly sprained ankle to score 15 points as Kansas routed
Stanford. Hinrich wasn’t the key to the win as the
Jayhawks scored the first 15 points and never trailed, but
he was an inspiration. ... Oregon beat Wake Forest to
advance to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1960. ...
On the women’s side Erin Thorn made seven 3-pointers and
scored 28 points as 11th seeded Brigham Young upset
Florida, 90-52. |
March
17: Boston Red Sox fans may not get to see star
but ailing pitcher Pedro Martinez pitch Opening Day
on April 1. In an exhibition game on Saturday, Martinez
gave up six runs and six hits in four innings against the
Yankees. Afterward, he said his sore shoulder was fine.
But manager Grady Little told the Hartford Courant that
his ace was not a sure Opening Day starter. ‘‘If
Pedro’s ready to go April 1st he will. If not, we’ll
wait a couple days.’’ |
| March
16: Melanie Davis became the first woman to referee an
NCAA men's college basketball tournament game when she
worked the Illinois-San Diego State contest. ``I hope this
opens the door for other ladies to come in,'' Davis said.
``If not, I'm going to take this moment and cherish it.''
Davis was picked on merit, scoring high in the criteria
used to assign refs. |
March
16: Bobby Knight, ``The General'' turned once again
into a ``Buck Private'' with another first-round NCAA
tournament loss. Knight, the boorish, abrasive coach of
Texas Tech, saw his Red Raiders lose in an upset to
Southern Illinois. Knight, who last coached at Indiana,
has now lost in the first round five of the past seven
times. With him gone, what is ESPN going to talk about for
the next two weeks? |
| March
15: The NCAA men's basketball tournament
started with a its usual gaggle of upsets. We had two 12
seeds win, along with a 13, an 11 and a 10. |
March
15: So much for the claim that the Gonzaga
men's basketball team got screwed by their tournament
seeding. The Zags fell on their collective faces in losing
to Wyoming in the first round of the tournament. This was
quite a pratfall for a team that had many people saying
they deserved a higher seed; so much for that. |
| March
14: The Detroit Red Wings continue to be the model of
excellence in the National Hockey League. The Wings beat
Edmonton, 4-3, in overtime for their 47th win this season,
nine more than any other team. Detroit has a league-high
102 points and is the clear favorite to win the Stanley
Cup playoffs. |
March
14: On the eve of the NCAA Tournament, all's not well
with the Florida men's basketball program. Guard
Brett Nelson had his cheekbone broken during a fight
Tuesday with teammate LaDarius Harris at practice. Coach
Billy Donovan brushed it aside, telling the Associated
Press: `` Basically, what happened was, you had two players
playing very hard. Both guys' emotions got into it. There was an altercation there. It was quick. They're
both perfectly fine. They hugged each other when it was over with.''
Neither play will face suspension, which smells. Let's
see--two guys go at it and one gets a broken cheekbone. In
the real world, assault charges might be filed, but in the
big-money world of college sports it's a ``boys will be
boys'' mentality and nothing can get in the way of the
game.. |
| March
13: Siena men's college basketball team showed mediocrity
has its rewards. The Saints beat Alcorn State, 81-77, in
the play-in game to become only the second team with a
losing record to win an NCAA Tournament contest. The 17-18
Saints won their conference tourney last week despite
losing their last three regular season games. Look for
Siena to make a quick exit when they play 26-4 Maryland on
Friday. |
March
13: As if Washington DC didn't already have a
big enough circus with the politicians, here comes Mike
Tyson. The city's boxing commission granted the
ear-nibbler a license to fight, which makes it a good bet
he'll battle Lennox Lewis later this year. The commission
let the expected economic windfall of a Tyson fight
override his increasing bizarre and unstable behavior. |
| March
12: The Boston Celtics won their fifth in a row
on Monday to continue a great season that is helping to
erase a dismal past decade. The Celtics have a legitimate
shot to get home court advantage in the NBA East if they
keep playing like they have. |
March
12: While 65 teams were gearing up for the NCAA men's
college basketball tournament, one was looking ahead to
next year by firing their coach. Florida State fired Steve
Robinson, who went 64-86 in five years and had four
straight losing seasons. |
| March
11: Congratulations to Andre Agassi, who won
his 50th pro tennis tournament on Sunday by beating Juan
Balcells in straight sets to win the Franklin Templeton Tennis Classic. |
March
11: Get rid of college basketball conference
tournaments--they prove nothing, are anti-climatic and
are designed solely to make money. For example, Maryland
and Kansas each earned top seeds in the upcoming NCAA
men's tournament despite not winning their conference
tourney. Not that we don't think they deserve top seeds,
but what's the point of a conference tourney is a team can
lose it and still be rewarded? Seems like they solely
exists so ESPN can fill air time in early March. |
| March
10: The NCAA men's tournament gained 14 more teams,
including Arizona (a gutsy win over USC) and Connecticut,
which won a thrilling two-overtime game over Pittsburgh.
On the women's side, Oklahoma finally won the Big
12 title outright after capturing the conference tourney. |
March
10: A leftover note from Friday bears mentioning. In
being eliminated from the Atlantic Coast Conference
tournament, North Carolina finished a dreadful
season at 8-20. The Tar Heels, one of the proudest
basketball schools in the U.S., lost 20 games for the
first time. |
| March
9: Talk about peaking at the right time. After
visiting the Staples Center to watch the USC Trojans
dismantle Stanford, then beat Oregon, 89-78, it's clear
that they are ready for the NCAA tournament. The
Trojans are playing aggressive, no-holding-back basketball
right now and will be tough to beat in the tournament. |
March
9: The Los Angeles Times was offering papers for $1 at
Staples Center at the Pac-10 Championships. For that
dollar, you also got a placard that represented your
team. If you're a UCLA fan, the card reads, "GO
BRUINS." The L.A. Times' card for
Stanford: "GO CARDINALS." Which
isn't Stanford's mascot; it's CARDINAL. |
| March
8: Early in the NBA season the Portland
Trailblazers were doing everything to live down to
their reputation as a bunch of underachieving,
dysfunctional thugs. But under new coach Maurice Cheeks
the Blazers are now the hottest team in the league. They
have won 11 in a row and are a league-best 12-1 since the
All-Star break. They look to be a force come playoff time. |
March
8: Things must be pretty boring in baseball’s spring
training. How else to explain the silly mini-feud brewing
between Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds? ‘‘I
thought he was a good person, but now I have to believe
the negative things said about him by his teammates are
true,’’ said Sosa of Bonds. ‘‘I don’t know what
made him burst out like that,’’ Bonds replied.
Apparently Sosa was miffed when Bonds reportedly said the
Cubs slugger was ‘‘running his mouth’’ for saying
Bonds wanted him to break his season home run mark. We bet
they kiss and make up by Opening Day. |
| March
7: Judge Morris Braswell gets our vote for creative
sentencing. Braswell was deciding the fate of Michael
Shane Lasseter, whose sprint through Atlanta airport
security on Nov. 16 to catch a college football game shut
down the facility for three hours. Lasseter was sentenced
to five weekends in jail, 500 hours of community service
and the toughest penalty: banned from University of
Georgia football games for the 2002 season. That'll teach
'em. |
March
7: Scott Levins, a player for the Berlin Polar Bears
ice hockey team, gets the nod for cultural insensitivity.
Levins, a journeyman NHL player, pissed off by a penalty
against him ``made a stiff-armed Hitler salute and called
a referee a Nazi,'' according to AP. The Nazi salute has
been banned in Germany since the collapse of the Third
Reich in 1945. An investigation later cleared Levins of
making the salute, but he admitting calling the ref a
``Nazi'' and was fined. |
| March
6: We’ve always liked Charles Barkley, both as an NBA
player and now has a great analyst. He always calls it like he sees it and this was never more evident than
during a recent Miami Heat-New York Knicks telecast. As reported by an Outsports reader, a
newspaper reporter, ‘‘Barkley made a comment about how
‘muscular and ripped’ Jim Jackson [of the Heat] is. His co-hosts balked, saying ‘How can you comment about
another man like that?’ Bakley said he’s not ‘that way’
but if he was, there would be nothing wrong with it. The other two fell silent and Barkley just kept right
on talking.’’ Then, in this week's Sports Illustrated,
Charles rips Augusta National golf course for
lengthening and changing the Masters layout, saying it was
meant to prevent Tiger Woods from winning again. ``Jack
Nicklaus won the damn times, and he was hitting it past
everybody else, and they never made a change,'' Barkley
told Sports Illustrated. ``What they're doing to Tiger is
blatant racism.'' |
March
6: The New York Knicks have decided to extend the
coaching contract of Don Cheney, who is a robust 11-27
since taking over the job earlier this season. Gee, if he
had gone 5-33 Cheney may been named team president. |
| March
5: The Arizona State women's basketball team
made a statement Monday by defeating #2-ranked Stanford to
win the Pac-10 tourney. ASU snapped Stanford's 22-game win
streak and gave the Lady Sun Devils their most wins (24)
since 1982. |
March
5: Elvis has really left the building. The strange NFL
career of Elvis Grbac came to an end when he
announced his retirement after a nine-year career. This
quite a fall for Grbac, who was brought in by the Super
Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens last season to upgrade
their quarterback position. Instead, Grbac had a terrible
season, throwing more interceptions than touchdowns. He
was cut by the Ravens on Friday after refusing to take a
pay cut. |
| March
4: Ernie Els hadn't won on the PGA Tour in 18 months
and he had to hold off a furious charge from Tiger Woods
to capture the Genuity Championship in Miami. Els entered
the day with an 8-shot lead and saw Woods come to within a
35-foot putt of tying it on the 12th hole. But the South
African held on for a 2-shot win. |
March
4: Kobe Bryant and Reggie Miller were sent to
the NBA's equivalent of the penalty box for their fight
Friday night. Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers and Miller
of the Indiana Pacers were each suspended two games and
fined for duking it out at the end of their game two days
ago. Miller, who has a way of rubbing people the wrong
way, wouldn't let it go, saying Sunday: ``Kobe has other
issues he has to deal with. This had nothing to do with me
or the basketball game played on Friday evening.'' |
| March
3: The Seattle Seahawks rewarded one of the good guys
in sports by signing quarterback Trent Dilfer to a
four-year contract and guarantee him the starting job.
It’s about time Dilfer got some job security; he bounced
around from Tampa Bay to Baltimore (where he helped win
the Super Bowl) to Seattle (where he went 4-0 in starts
last season). Dilfer is 19-1 in his last 20 starts. |
March
3: Fox’s ‘‘Celebrity Boxing’’ tournament
keeps getting more absurd. On Saturday, Amy Fisher, the
‘‘Long Island Lolita’’ pulled out of her March 13
match against Tonya Harding, the ice skating knee-capper.
Fisher will be replaced by Paula Jones, one of the many
women in Bill Clinton’s past. Jones told the Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette she had only one fear: ‘‘My first
concern as a woman [is] messing my face up. I just got my
nose done, and I don’t want to mess it up.’’ |
| March
2: The IOC took a hard-line stance on Wednesday
concerning the potential doping of Austrian athletes at
the Winter Games. Blood transfusion equipment was found by
cleaners in a house rented to about ten members of the
Austrian Nordic team. Austrian officials have
claimed that the bags were for a radiation treatment of
the athletes' blood and not for doping. The IOC's
drug agency called the reasoning far-fetched and said that
any treatment or transfusion of blood was considered
doping. Austria won three Nordic Olympic
medals. |
March
2: Is this what happens to a black coach in the
south after one bad season and an outburst? Nolan
Richardson's contract has been bought out by the University
of Arkansas after Richardson made comments this week
about how unique he is as a black head coach in college
basketball. Many in the press also took some of
Richardson's comments out of context making him look like
an ego-maniac. Richardson's team has not missed the
NCAA tournament since 1985 and they won it all in 1994.
Richardson will be paid $500,000 a year for the last six
years of his contract. |
| March
1: John Madden has left Fox and will join ABC in the
booth for Monday Night Football at $5 million a year. It's
a good move for Madden, a top analyst whose act has gotten
stale the past several seasons with partner Pat Summerall.
Madden and play-by-play man Al Michaels have the potential
to be dynamic together. The Madden hiring means the firing
of Dan Fouts and comedian Dennis Miller, who made us laugh
but not enough these past two seasons. |
March
1: A week after leading Team Canada to the men's
hockey Olympics gold, Mario Lemieux's season is
over. The Pittsburgh Penguins star, who has suffered from
a painful hip all season, was told to not play lest he
never heal properly. Our last memory of Mario this season
was that big grin when he led Canada to its first hockey
gold in 50 years. |
