Armadillo Sports
Sunday’s 6-pack:
Leaders in 3-point %age:
42.9%— South Dakota State
41.3%— Davidson
40.9%— Clemson
40.8%— Purdue
40.5%— UMass
40.1%— Colorado State
Quote of the Day
“He’s hands down the worst guy I’ve ever met in my life,”
Former Hawai’i football player Leonard Lee, talking about coach Todd Graham
Sunday’s quiz
Who was QB for the Chiefs, before Patrick Mahomes?
Saturday’s quiz
Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan played 44 games in the NBA for the Knicks, before he started his Hall of Fame coaching career; Donovan played his college basketball at Providence.
Friday’s quiz
Andrew Luck was the last QB to be the starter for the Indianapolis Colts two years in a row.
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Sunday’s First Den: Wrapping up a sports Saturday
13) Chiefs 28, Broncos 24:
— Chiefs ran a fumble back 86 yards for game-winning TD with 7:42 left.
— Denver kicked FG with 4:37 left; they never got ball back.
— Chiefs have beaten Denver 13 games in a row.
— Tennessee has to win Sunday to clinch #1-seed in AFC.
12) Cowboys 51, Eagles 26:
— Game was 17-17 at one point.
— Prescott threw for 295 yards, five TD’s.
11) You watch NBA games and see how incredibly skilled those guys are; then you watch college games and realize there is a very large talent gap. Thats why NBA teams have skill development coaches, because very few players coming out of college are NBA-ready.
If you like the NBA, I highly recommend a trip out west in the summer, to the NBA Summer League at UNLV. Lot of good reasons to do this:
— For $30 or $35, you can watch great basketball all day long, for several days.
— You see how many great basketball players there are who aren’t in the NBA.
— Lot of NBA players are there, watching; all the coaches, some of the owners are there. You can meet some people just hanging out in the lobby outside the two arenas.
— Arenas are air conditioned; it will probably be over 100 degrees outside.
— Going to Las Vegas is never a bad thing.
10) North Carolina hired former Auburn HC Gene Chizik as its new offensive coordinator; Chizik spent the last few years working for the ACC Network. He won the national title as Auburn’s head coach in 2010, when Cam Newton was his QB.
9) Hawai’i’s football program had 19 players enter the transfer portal; school held a 3-hour meeting Friday, to discuss coach Todd Graham’s future. Not too many people had nice things to say about the coach.
8) Upsets of the Day:
— Miami (+14.5) 76, Duke 74
— Missouri (+14) 92, Alabama 86
— Rice (+8.5) 85, UAB 80
— South Carolina (+6) 72, Vanderbilt 70
— Duquesne (+5.5) 78, UMass 74
— NC-Greensboro (+5.5) 72, VMI 56
— Northern Iowa (+5.5) 85, Missouri State 84
7) Pitt 69, Boston College 67— Pitt is 1-3 in ACC games; the four games were decided by total of seven points.
6) Seton Hall 90, UConn 87, OT
— UConn led by nine with 16:01 left.
— Huskies made 14-23 on arc, still lost.
— Seton Hall shot 59.1% inside arc.
5) Miami 76, Duke 74:
— Miami won its ninth straight game.
— Miami was +12 in turnovers (5-17)
— Duke played only six guys more than 7:00.
4) Missouri 92, Alabama 86— This was Missouri’s biggest upset win in the last 25 years.
3) Baylor 76, TCU 64— Baylor is first defending champ in 11 years to start following season 15-0. TCU led 40-31 early in second half.
2) Understood that certain people get paid to do Bracketology stuff on the Interweb, but right now, those ratings mean nothing, nada, zilch, bupkis. Waste of time.
It is January 9th; 50-60 teams either are or were just in a COVID pause. By time March gets here, things will take shape but right now, it is just people making up stuff, trying to get as many clicks as possible from people who surf the Web. Nonsense.
Start Bracketology after the Super Bowl.
1) You hear a lot about job interviews with football coaches at this time of year; back when Al Davis owned the Raiders, he would sometimes interview people he had no intention of hiring, he just wanted to pick their brains, to learn from them.
Lot of times, younger coaches must know they don’t have much of a chance of being hired for a particular job, but they need the experience of going thru interviews, so they’re well-prepared when an interview comes up for a job they really want., or can really get.
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Bonus List of 13: Baseball knowledge on a cold, winter day
It is cold out; I can’t stand winter, and a good way to feel warmer is to think about baseball. The Bill James Baseball Handbook was delivered yesterday. Here is some stuff I learned from that book, which is filled with numbers and knowledge.
Disclaimer: There are still several really good free agents on the market, so when the labor stuff is resolved, teams are going to add key players before the season starts. At least the teams who care about winning will add players.
13) Does the shift help or hurt and by how much?
Last year, teams shifted on 59,062 at-bats: shifts took away 4,802 hits, but there were 3,946 hits that happened BECAUSE of the shift, so the shift took away 856 hits for the season.
I’m hoping they ban shifts this year; hitters, especially guys with little less power, will go back to being gap hitters/line drive hitters, which makes for more action.
Padres were putting 3B Machado in right field when they shifted vs lefties last year; it is smart under the current rules, but the game is more fun to watch with more balls in play, more guys running the bases.
12) Seattle Mariners went 90-72 last year, had a really good season, but they were 33-19 in one-run games. Seattle actually allowed 51 more runs than they scored, but still won 90 games- that is very unusual.
May help explain why the Mariners added Robbie Ray, Adam Frazier to fortify their roster; they will have to be a better team than they were last year, just to win 90 games again.
11) Seattle’s AL West rival Angels went 25-14 in one-run games last year, and still finished only 77-85; loss of Mike Trout/Anthony Rendon to injury was obviously a problem, but their pitching isn’t good, even when healthy.
Noah Syndergaard pitched two innings the last two years; Halos added him and Michael Lorenzen to improve their pitching. It also gives the Angels another two-way player (Lorenzen) and Jared Walsh used to be a pitcher, too.
Here’s the thing: teams that excel in one-run games one seasons tend to regress the next year- LY’s 25-14 record will be hard to match. Can a healthy Trout/Rendon make up the difference?
10) San Francisco beat the Dodgers by a game last year; Giants were 31-17 in one-run games, Dodgers 24-24. Giants had oldest roster in MLB last year; can they do it again this year?
9) There were 63 home runs taken away by outfielders last year. Thats one of the most exciting plays in baseball; should more stadiums have outfield fences that are 8 or 9 feet high?
8) A’s bullpen fell apart late last year; for the season, they blew 28 of 67 save opportunities, and that was despite fact that Oakland relievers threw only 539 innings, less than any other team.
7) Toronto Blue Jays missed playoffs by one game LY; they went 3-9 in extra inning games.
6) Joey Gallo either walked (111) or struck out (213) in 324 of his 616 plate appearances LY.
5) If the universal DH happens and pitchers never hit again, the last hit by a pitcher (other than Shohei Ohtani) was Julio Urias in last year’s playoffs.
4) Eyebrows were raised when Marcus Semien signed with Texas for $25M a year, but one of the best abilities is availability, and Semien is always available.
He’s played 155+ games in five of last six full seasons, played 162-162 the last two. He hit 33-45 homers the last two full seasons; he is plus-hitter as a middle infielder.
Semien also sees lot of pitches; he saw 2,923 pitches LY, 106 more than any other player, and that helps every other hitter on his team.
3) Minnesota Twins were 53-53 vs right-handed starters last year, 20-36 vs lefties; they gave Buxton a boatload of money this winter, they’ll need a hell of a lot more than 61 games out of him this year. Miguel Sano has to hit better than .223. Josh Donaldson is 36; how much does he have left int he tank?
2) Arizona Diamondbacks converted only 44% of their save chances last year, lowest %age in last 20 years (other than the shortened 2020 season). Arizona added Mark Melancon and JD Wendelken to shore up the bullpen.
1) Colorado Rockies were 48-33 at home last year, 26-54 on road; how does that happen?
Over the last ten years, this was the 2nd-biggest difference between home/road records; the biggest difference?
2014 Rockies were 45-36 at home, 21-60 on the road. Go figure.
