— We lost one of our greatest actors Monday; Robert Duvall, who has 388 acting credits on IMDB, passed away at age 95. What an epic career he had, from the sportswriter in The Natural, to Frank Burns in M*A*S*H (the movie), the race car pit boss in Days of Thunder, a musician in Tender Mercies, and the father of a great poker player in Lucky You.
Just a great career. RIP, sir.
— Memo to ESPN: Your Monday night college basketball schedules suck; Syracuse isn’t good anymore, stop putting them in stand alone games. (Houston-Iowa State game tonight was really good)
Back in the day, ESPN had Big Mondays, which were good
7:30- Big East game
9:30- Big 10 game
midnight- Big West game
The smaller leagues out west would be good with a national TV game on Mondays.
— Big West conference tournament will be fun to watch; they are the 11th-ranked league right now, their highest rank in the last 30 years.
Here are the last few tourney champs:
2025- Cal-San Diego
2024- Long Beach State
2023- Cal-Santa Barbara
2022- Cal State-Fullerton
2021- Cal-Santa Barbara
2019- Cal-Irvine
2018- Cal State-Fullerton
2017- Cal-Davis
2016- Hawaii
Last nine tournaments, seven different champs. Competitive league.
— Michigan Wolverines’ basketball team has six student managers, guys who help out the team by doing lot of the little things that make life easier for coaches/players.
In his college days, Michigan head coach Dusty May was a student manager at Indiana.
Long time ago, I was a student manager in college, but I was our team’s only manager, being a Division III team. Big-time coaches who were student managers:
Will Wade, NC State
Mark Daigneault, Thunder
Frank Vogel, head coach of four NBA teams
Buzz Williams, Maryland
— World Series of Poker will be in Las Vegas, from May 26-July 15; I went to this once, watched people play cards for about a half hour, then realized it isn’t that much fun to watch if you can’t see their hole cards, and watch the decisions they’re making.
Picture a big gym jammed with card tables; the only sound is chips clicking together, unless one of the players goes all-in on a hand, then they called a hand-held camera over to film the hand.
— Dodgers’ utility guy Tommy Edman (ankle) will start the season on the IL; he’s played for the Dodgers for two years, and they won the World Series both years.
— San Diego Padres signed GM AJ Preller to a multi-year contract extension; Padres made the playoffs four of the last six years. Preller has run the San Diego organization since late 2014; this year Craig Stammen will the Padres’ 6th full-time manager in 12 years, which seems like a lot for a team that has been winning.
— Famous birthdays, February 17th:
Dick Bosman, 82
Jamie Easterly, 73
Rene Russo, 72
Neil Lomax, 67
Lou Diamond Phillips, 64
Michael Jordan, 63
Jerry O’Connell, 52
Kelly Carlson, 50
Case Keenum, 38
Sony Michel, 31
— NBA All-Star Game was good to watch; the players actually tried. Not sure if the new format helped, or the fact that President Obama was sitting in the front row, but when players who are that good are competitive, it is fun to watch.
— Baseball needs to market itself better; MLB Network should host a 12-team fantasy league, with celebrities/former players the team managers, and the league could have a weekly show, featuring a different celebrity every week.
The show where they draft the team would be great TV.
— Iowa State 70, Houston 67
Cyclones were down 10 with 7:09 left in the game.
Iowa State survived shooting 11-22 on the foul line.
Iowa State just beat Kansas/Houston in a 3-day span, both at home.
Iowa State has a player Nate Heise; his sister is on the Olympic hockey team.
— Marshall 84, South Alabama 80
Marshall shot 18-46 on the arc, 12-17 (70.6%) inside the arc.
Thundering Herd led 47-35 at halftime.
Both teams are 9-5 in Sun Belt, in a 4-way tie for first in loss column.
— Duke 101, Syracuse 64
Duke shot 12-20 on arc, scored 1.57 points/possession.
Blue Devils are shooting 60.8% inside arc in ACC games.
Syracuse lost seven of its last ten games.
— Stony Brook 72, Drexel 69
Stony Brook outscored Dragons 9-2 over final 2:08 of the game.
Seawolves have won seven of their last nine games.
Drexel is shooting 65.9% on foul line (#349 in country)
— Boston U 85, Colgate 58
Azmar Abdullah shot 8-8 on the arc, scored 26 points in 31:00
Colgate shot 11-37 (29.7%) inside the arc.
Colgate slips to 10-5 in Patriot League, four games behind first place Navy
