Armadillo Sports
Thursday’s 6-pack
Pre-season top 6 in college baseball this season:
1) LSU
2) Tennessee
3) Florida
4) Stanford
5) Louisville
6) Vanderbilt
Quote of the Day
“……here’s the thing. If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker.”
Mike McDermott, Rounders
Thursday’s quiz
Since 2000, UConn has won four national titles in basketball; Jim Calhoun was coach for three of those titles. Who was the coach of UConn’s 2014 championship team?
Wednesday’s quiz
First time Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl, Brad Johnson was their QB.
Tuesday’s quiz
Mike McCarthy won a Super Bowl with Green Bay 12 years ago; he is 6-8 in playoff games since then.
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Thursday’s Den: Doing some thinking out loud…….
— Xavier 82, UConn 79
Xavier played seven guys; they led by 17 early in second half.
UConn was 1-13 on arc in first half, 9-15 in second half.
Huskies are 2-6 in last eight games, after a 14-0 start.
— Pitt 81, Wake Forest 79— Pitt was 18-37 on arc, 10-21 inside arc; their two leading scorers were 14-23 from the floor, with every shot a 3-pointer.
— Tulane 95, Wichita State 90 OT
Shockers led by 18 in first half, by 8 with 2:42 left in game.
Tulane has won six of its last eight games.
— Alabama 66, Mississippi State 63
Miss State led by 10 with 16:19 left in game.
Teams combined to shoot 8-43 on the arc.
Alabama has won nine in a row; Bulldogs have lost 8 of last 9.
— Texas A&M 79, Auburn 63
Aggies snapped Auburn’s 28-game home winning streak, which had been the longest in the country.
Texas A&M won eight of its last nine games.
— Furman 91, Samford 84 OT
Paladins were 27-34 on foul line, Samford 13-19
Samford led by 5 with 2:00 left in regulation.
Samford slips into a tie for first in SoCon with NC-Greensboro
— Rhode Island 75, Dayton 70
Scores like this are why the Atlantic 15 will be a one-bid league for first time since 2002.
URI coach Miller went 139-63 as Dayton’s coach from 2011-17.
— George Washington 92, St Joe’s 91 OT— Colonials have their first 3-game winning streak in five years.
— Odds to win the Super Bowl:
+260— Bengals, Eagles
+280— Chiefs
+320— 49ers
First time in 40 years that none of the final four teams is 4-1 or better to win the Super Bowl.
— Last time the spread for both conference championship games was less than 3 points was 1997, when Denver-Pittsburgh, Green Bay-San Francisco were the matchups.
— Last nine times the conference championship game was a #1-#2 seed game, like 49ers-Eagles this weekend, the #1-seed was 7-2 SU, 5-4 ATS.
Since 2003, when a #1-seed is playing a #3 or lower seed in the conference title game, the #1-seed is 6-4 ATS in those games.
— Conference championship games are the NFL’s Final Four; Dallas Cowboys haven’t made the Final Four since 1995. Dallas won Super Bowls in 1992, 1993, 1995, but nothing close since.
— New England Patriots did a smart thing and hired former Texans’ coach Bill O’Brien as their offensive coordinator; O’Brien worked for New England from 2007-11- he was most recently an assistant coach at Alabama.
— Tennessee signed football coach Josh Heupel to a contract extension worth $9M a year thru 2028. Heupel is 18-8 in his first two years coaching the Vols.
— There are ten teams in the Ohio Valley Conference; six of them are tied for first place, with 5-3 conference records. No one in the OVC is in the top 200; could be that the winner of the OVC tourney will make an appearance in Dayton, at the play-in games.
— It bothers me a little when people don’t say “thank you”. You do something nice, doesn’t take much to say “thank you”
— Tampa Bay Rays signed P Jeffrey Springs to a 4-year, $31M contract extension; Springs was 9-5, 2.46 in 33 games (25 starts) last year.
— Oakland A’s signed 1B Jesus Aguilar to a one-year, $3M deal; Aguilar had good seasons in 2018 and 2021— he hit .235 for the Marlins/Orioles last year.
— RA Dickey and Mike Napoli each got a vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Go figure.
— Don Mattingly played 14 years in the major leagues; he hit six grand slams, all of them in 1987, which was the most grand slams ever hit in one season. But he never hit a grand slam in any other season.
— Most career touchdown passes by a QB with 0 or 1 career playoff wins:
291- Carson Palmer (1-3 playoff record)
255- Sonny Jurgensen (0-0)
252- Kirk Cousins (1-3)
244— John Hadl (0-2), Andy Dalton (0-4)
227— Jay Cutler (1-1)
— I’m sick of the Manning family; Peyton, Eli, Archie, all of them. They do more commercials than Jennifer Garner and Kevin Hart. Eli Manning never said boo when he was playing; now he is everywhere on TV. Just go away.
— For some misguided reason, West Virginia is in the Big X Conference. Here is how far they are from their nine conference rivals:
Iowa State— 867 miles
Kansas— 903 miles
Kansas State— 984 miles
Oklahoma State— 1,089 miles
Oklahoma— 1,141 miles
TCU— 1,236 miles
Texas— 1,400 miles
Texas Tech— 1,470 miles
What genius thought this was a good idea?
