— St John’s 81, UConn 72
St John’s wins its ninth game in a row.
Loss snaps Huskies’ 18-game winning streak.
Red Storm was 22-31 on foul line, UConn 5-12
Game was 39-39 at halftime.
— RIP to the great QB Sonny Jurgensen, who passed away this week at age 91; he led the NFL in passing five times in an 18-year career, for the Eagles/Redskins. In his career, Jurgensen threw for 32,224 yards, playing in an era when teams didn’t throw that much. RIP, sir.
One of the first NFL games I remember was in 1966; I was six years old. Washington beat the Giants 72-41…..
Washington ran a punt back for a TD, scored two defensive TD’s
The two kickers were brothers; Pete/Charlie Gogolak.
Giants outgained Washington 389-341, but had six turnovers.
In a game with 113 points, both teams had 100+ penalty yards.
— There is only one QB in NFL history who is eligible to be voted into the Hall of Fame but isn’t in the HOF, who has won a Super Bowl, and also won an MVP award…….Joe Theismann.
— LA Rams are bringing in Kliff Kingsbury in to be an assistant coach next year, which should help their offense, which is already really good.
— World Baseball Classic will have 36 players who were major league All-Stars last year.
— 38-year old 1B Paul Goldschmidt signed up to go back to the Bronx this season; last year, he hit .274 with a .731 OPS in New York.
— Way back in 1976, Ted Turner bought the Atlanta Braves for $12M; he sold the Braves in 2007, for $450M. Pretty good deal.
— OF Michael Siani has played in 160 games the last four years, for the Reds/Cardinals. He’s had an interesting off-season:
November 6th- Braves claimed him off waivers.
December 10th- Braves designated him for assignment
December 12th- Dodgers claimed him off waivers.
January 21st- Dodgers designated him for assignment
January 23rd- Bronx claimed him off waivers.
January 28th- Bronx designated him for assignment.
Spring training starts next week……
— Was disappointed to hear that Buck Martinez retired as a TV announcer this week; he was very good on TV, teamed with Dan Schulman on Blue Jays games.
— Famous birthdays, January 7th:
Burt Hooton, 76
Rolf Benirschke, 71
Carney Lansford, 69
James Spader, 66
Rick Neuheisel, 65
Chris Rock, 61
Billy Joe Tolliver, 60
Juwan Howard, 53
Steve Nash, 52
Ashton Kutcher, 48
Matthew Stafford, 38
Shedeur Sanders, 24
— Last week, Portland Pilots had so many players sick, coach Shantay Legans was playing on the scout team during practice; he tore his achilles. Not ideal.
This week has been better for Portland; they upset Gonzaga as 21-point underdogs, ending a 20-game losing streak against the Zags.
— AAC is doing their conference tournament a little different this year; only 10 of their 13 teams will be in the conference tournament.
— Referee DJ Carstensen has officiated 56 games this season; he played college ball at Utica College in the early 80’s, when the Pioneers made a run at becoming a Division I team. Their coach was Larry Costello, who had coached the Milwaukee Bucks when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a rookie.
Back then, I was student manager at Albany, at the time a really good D-3 program; we played Utica every year, but when they went D-I, we didn’t beat them. Carstensen was a good player.
— Chicago Bulls are 24-28 this year, on the bubble for the last playoff spot in the East; they’ve traded away seven players, and brought in seven new players in an almost complete overhaul of their roster.
— Belmont 68, Ill-Chicago 62
Belmont was 13-31 on the arc, Flames were 3-18
Second loss in row for UIC, after an 8-game win streak.
Belmont has won nine a row, leads MVC by two games.
— There is a woman skiing in the Olympics with a torn ACL; didn’t think that was possible, but it obviously is. She is wearing a knee brace, but still, jeez, she must be very, very tough.
