Armadillo Sports
Wednesday?s 6-pack:
? Seahawks fired DC Ken Norton Jr; there have to be scapegoats.
? Kansas 67, Oklahoma 64? Sooners lost four of their last five games.
? Davidson 63, VCU 61? Wildcats are 15-3, haven?t lost since November 18.
? Dayton 68, St Bonaventure 50? 12-6 Flyers are least experienced team in country.
? Kansas State 66, Texas 65? Wildcats were an 11-point underdog.
? Florida State 79, Duke 78 OT? Duke lost two of three true road games.
Quote of the Day
?I think what will help us is to run out of a tunnel and play in front of fans. I think it?s hugely demoralizing to our guys to play games in empty arenas when there?s 80,000 people at the Rams game yesterday.?
UCLA basketball coach Mick Cronin, whose Bruins play at Utah this week
Wednesday?s quiz
Scottie Pippen?s son plays for Vanderbilt; where did Pippen go to college?
Tuesday?s quiz
Ben Simmons played his one year of college basketball at LSU.
Monday?s quiz
Tommy Maddox was the Steelers? QB before Ben Roethlisberger.
*******************************
Wednesday?s Den: Mid-week musings??..
13) October 2008, I went to the Tennessee-South Carolina football game in Columbia; game was at night, we sat in lawn chairs in a field all afternoon, watching a big-screen TV that was in the luggage compartment of a Winnebago. There was a satellite dish on the bus. Fun day.
Three things I remember about that day:
? Had Church?s fried chicken for first time; it is great fried chicken.
? I had never met the guy who owned the Winnebago; he owned arcades throughout the south. At one point, he looked at me and asked, ?Where you from? You talk funny.? I told him New York and asked him to pass me some more fried chicken.
? We spent about an hour that day discussing the merits of a QB who was still in college; my friend knows more about football than I do, but on this point, I was right.
Matthew Stafford is a really good quarterback.
12) I was very happy for Stafford Monday night; he gets the monkey off his back with his first playoff win, now he can just relax and win some more games.
11) Rams 34, Cardinals 11:
? Rams led 14-0 before Arizona had a first down.
? Murray threw a horrendous pick-6 to make score 21-0.
? Rams were 6-13 on third down, Cardinals 0-9.
10) These are the top two seasons ever by an NFL receiver, in terms of yardage:
a) 1,964 yards? Calvin Johnson 2012
b) 1,947 yards? Cooper Kupp 2021
Two great receivers having great years; the common thread?
Matthew Stafford was the QB for both of those teams.
9) Kupp had 848 yards after catch this season, 78 yards more than anyone else.
8) Las Vegas Raiders fired GM Mike Mayock after three years as GM; Raiders were 25-24 in Mayock?s tenure. Hope he goes back on NFL Network; he does good work analyzing players.
7) Last 11 times the Dallas Cowboys were in the playoffs, they fell short of the Final Four, the conference championship games. Last time they made the Final Four was 1995, when Barry Switzer was their coach and they won their third Super Bowl in four years.
Will they let another team hire Kellen Moore as their coach or will they fire Mike McCarthy and make Moore their head coach? Interesting decision.
6) I?m officially sick of the Manning family; enough already. Eli never said a freakin? word when he played; now you can?t shut him up, unless his brother is yakking.
It?ll be interesting down the road when Eli Manning comes up for the Hall of Fame, how his 111-111 regular season record will be judged. He won two Super Bowls, but 111-111 isn?t a first ballot Hall of Fame resume.
Jim Plunkett won two Super Bowls, also had a .500 regular season record; he ain?t getting into the Hall of Fame. Manning will get in, but shouldn?t get in on the first ballot.
5) QB Hunter Johnson was Clemson?s 3rd-string QB in 2017, then transferred to Northwestern, where he played four years. Now he is going back to Clemson, where I?m assuming he?ll be the Tigers? QB next fall. College quarterbacks have become nomads.
4) Miami 85, North Carolina 57? Yikes, ugly loss for the Tar Heels, who are now 12-5, 4-2 in ACC play, but only 2-5 against top 100 teams.
3) Iona 86, Monmouth 85 (OT)? Rick Pitino?s Gaels are 15-3, 7-0 in MAAC; at some point this coming spring, some big $$$ school is going to come after the 69-year old Pitino to be its hoop coach. Would he leave Iona to venture back into the big time?
2) Timberwolves 112, Knicks 110? Couple minutes after this game ended, maybe two minutes after, Karl Anthony Towns(Minnesota?s best player) is standing on the court, talking to someone on a cellphone. Never saw that before.
1) We live in a fickle society; there is the old saying ?We?re with you win or tie, but we?re not that crazy about tie? Teams that win get praised or ignored; teams that lose, well everyone should be fired/traded.
Hell, Bill Belichick was taking grief on social media last weekend. Guy made the playoffs with a rookie QB this season; that doesn?t happen a lot, but he hasn?t won a playoff game the last three years, so the natives are restless. Forget the six Super Bowls he won; that was all Brady.
I once was an assistant high school basketball coach; guy I worked for is a great guy, he said something that stopped me in my tracks. We won our first game of the year, lost our second game by a lot, and couple of the players didn?t react to it very well.
The head coach says in the locker room after the game, ?Well, it didn?t take long for the rats to start jumping off the ship? Had to hide my face, it made me laugh, but he was right. We live in a fickle society.
