Hello! Congratulations to South Dakota State for winning the WNIT. Congratulations to Fresno State for winning The Basketball Classic. South Dakota State, I knew you did what you did. Had to look up Fresno State. Just shows how great the NIT is, no matter what letter you do or don’t put before it.
In all seriousness, I better not get any heat from South Carolina fans. South Dakota State won this one, and you got a consolation prize. Don’t try to feed on a false narrative. The only one who’ll be corrupted is you.
Xavier Is Better than UNC and Kansas
There’s an exhibition game tonight in New Orleans, and it’s a lot of fun for those involved. Because it’s in New Orleans, I mean. Not a lot else going for it. You all know this already, because Xavier won the national championship last week, but for those wanting a second form of identification from this year’s best team, here you go, you narc:
- On March 22nd, Xavier beat Vanderbilt.
- On March 20th, Vanderbilt beat Dayton.
- On November 26th, Dayton beat Kansas.
and…
- On March 31st, Xavier beat Texas A&M.
- On March 23rd, Texas A&M beat Wake Forest.
- On January 22nd, Wake Forest beat North Carolina (blowout, too).
So, NIT fans in the chat, don’t take any guff tonight. You know who the real champion is.
Soup Streak Update
Unsurprisingly, eating ten frozen pizzas in seventeen days made me gain some weight. Less than you might think (you burn a lot of calories when you hardly sleep for a month), but gained some of the weight back that I’d lost. For right now, the Soup Streak is still paused—I ate too much soup at its peak, I can’t bring myself to reenter that frame of mind yet—but I’m drinking a lot of tea (nettle leaf tea still helps with allergies, don’t let big pharma keep that under wraps) and trying to exercise more, which isn’t hard to do compared to the last month. We’ll see where it goes. The best news out of this is that dairy must be great for your digestion because I ate all those frozen pizzas, felt fine, and then ate two bowls of raisin bran over the weekend and had to ask myself serious questions before entering the swimming pool. Dairy goes well for me, and thank God for that.
Joe Kelly, Friend of the Cubs?
I missed this last night, partially because I don’t get Marquee (except for via MLB TV and by the way I really need to figure out what my account status is with that for this year), but it appears Joe Kelly was involved in something Cubs-adjacent last night. What, exactly? Ryan Dempster’s talk show.
For those wondering, Joe Kelly did pitch to David Ross during their two months of overlap in Boston. September 2nd, 2018. Yankee Stadium. Six and two thirds scoreless (unless you count the three runs), six strikeouts, got the win. Also: September 8th, and September 14th, and September 21st. Overall, Joe Kelly went 3-1 pitching to David Ross, and no, I don’t think win-loss record is a great stat but sometimes it really does tell the story. Didn’t get much run support in the loss.
Longhorns Bounce Back
Texas rallied from six down yesterday in the seventh inning to take the rubber match in their three-game set with Oklahoma up at Globe Life Field (we’re talking baseball, not softball—no hate to softball, we’ve just been needling the baseball team and…enough of you read this site regularly to know what’s happening here). Credit to the Horns, who are now 3-4 against their biggest three rival institutions over the last ten days, with only two of the losses heartbreaking and one devastatingly annoying.
Maya Smart Wrote a Book
Maya Smart, a Harvard and Northwestern-educated journalist and writer whose husband coaches Marquette’s men’s basketball team (and was nice to us one time and mean to us zero times), is publishing her first book: Reading for Our Lives. It’s billed as a “literacy action plan from birth to six,” it’s a guide for parents looking to foster literacy in their children, it comes out in July, we may need to do another book club come August. Pre-order is available through the link right there in the first sentence of this paragraph.
The Wings Got Sens’d, Sanderson Comes to Ottawa
Great weekend for the Senators. On Friday night, the Senators beat the Red Wings 5-2. Mathieu Joseph sent in an empty-netter to finish a hat trick, Mads Søgaard got his first career win in his first career start, Josh Norris had a good night in front of his hometown crowd. Søgaard isn’t the most-hyped prospect in the system, but he’s a solid one, so you like to see him up and having success. Joseph’s vibes remain great. Good pickup on the vibes front, Pierre.
On Sunday, it was more of the same. Another hat trick—this time from Norris—three more points from Joseph (all assists), another 5-2 win over the Red Wings, this time back in Ottawa. There was a tribute before the game to the late Eugene Melnyk (you can watch it here), things got misty, the Sens went and beat a bad hockey team, which is something they cannot usually be trusted to do. Now just five points back of the Red Wings and Sabres for fifth in the Atlantic Division, which is meaningless in practical terms but would be fun to get to.
On Saturday, between the games, Jake Sanderson moved into town. The Sens’ top prospect, he’ll be living with Brady Tkachuk, who per Sportsnet spent the day playing street hockey with the neighbor kids and bringing Sanderson along to join Thomas Chabot at Nick Holden’s kids’ game. I hope he talked about his best plays in the street hockey game all day and made Sanderson tell him how awesome he was. I feel pretty confident that hope was rewarded.
Sanderson’s still recovering from hand surgery, but he might get into a game or two before the season’s over. Should be in the lineup next year, and hopefully that’ll be a good thing for the defense, which needs good things.
Burnley Hung in There
Not a terrible game from Burnley on Saturday, though they did lose 2-0 to Man City. Avoided getting smoked, even if they never appeared to have a chance. Norwich drew and Watford lost, but Leeds drew with Southampton, which didn’t help. Thankfully, Everton lost yesterday, staying just four points ahead of Burnley in the relegation race. The Toffees come to Turf Moor on Wednesday, Burnley could really use a win in that one.
One nice thing about where Burnley’s at is that their schedule the rest of the way, though busy with Covid makeups, doesn’t have too many obvious losses on it. There are trips to play Tottenham and West Ham, but everything else is either a home game or is against someone in the bottom half of the table. Road opponents are, in order, Norwich, West Ham, Watford, Tottenham, and Aston Villa. Home opponents are, in order, Everton, Southampton, Wolverhampton, Aston Villa, and Newcastle. Six more games in April, four in May, while Burnley’s doing this Leeds only gets three more home games—two of which are against top-three clubs, one of which is against Brighton—and Everton has to play seven of its last ten against top-half teams. So, while it feels rough right now, Burnley’s in a good spot to gain ground on each of those, provided they…well, Ben Mee isn’t supposed to play on Wednesday, and the team’s looked terrible in all four of its matches since the Brighton/Tottenham/Palace barrage of points. I don’t know. Probably getting relegated, but there’s a pretty clear path to survival. Wednesday is so important. Ugh.
Denny Hamlin’s Fine
Finally, as suspected, Denny Hamlin is fine. Won at Richmond yesterday in a low-key race where an aggressive tire strategy from his crew chief, Chris Gabehart, helped him come back and pass William Byron with ease in the closing laps. The only other big NASCAR news from the weekend was that Ty Gibbs got in another kerfuffle for moving someone in an Xfinity Race. This time, it was his teammate, John Hunter Nemechek. Gibbs’s bump wasn’t all that uncommon of a move, and it got him a win, but there was a big reaction, which prompts the question of whether Ty Gibbs looking like Draco Malfoy is hurting his popularity. Could be a great villain in the years to come. NASCAR better be down with marketing him that way.
***
Nothing going on tonight, so I’m going to go try to get that computer fixed that broke on the flight to Atlanta on NIT Second Round weekend, as well as the other one that broke two years ago that I never got around to bringing to Best Buy. Fingers crossed the first can be fixed quickly. Hoping to record some MilkTime episodes within the next five or six weeks.
