In Case You Missed It…

NCAAB

It seems a small cluster of teams is starting to separate themselves from the pack.  Baylor, Gonzaga, Kansas, San Diego State, Dayton, and Duke seem to be a half dozen of the teams that could bring home the NCAA title over the next six weeks. This week’s sleeper how about Maryland who all of a sudden seem to have put it together?

All of the above with the exception of San Diego State ( Plays today on CBS Sports Network ) handled their business. Louisville suffered their second crushing defeat this week.  The wheels have come off when at the beginning of the week they were competing for a number one seed in the tournament.

Final Scores

• Gonzaga 89 Pepperdine 77
• Baylor  70 West Virginia 59
• Kansas 87 Oklahoma 70
• Dayton 71 Umass 63
• Duke 94 Notre Dame 60
• Maryland 67  Michigan State 60
• Clemson 77 Louisville 62

XFL

DC continues to look like a tough out as they easily handled New York 27-0. Cardale Jones was 23-37 for 276 Yards and two touchdowns. Richard Ross ( 95 yards receiving ) DeAndre Thompkins ( 6-92-1 ) and Eli Rogers ( 5-49) completed a balanced offensive attack. Rogers who was playing despite the death of his mother left immediately after to be with his family. The defense is loaded with players who took snaps in the NFL. Former Ravens safety Matt Elam ( INT) and Rahim Moore (Denver Broncos ) recovered a fumble. New York benched quarterback Matt McGloin for the second half. McGloin pointed fingers everywhere but himself for the offensive woes. DC travels out west next week to face LA.

Seattle 17 Tampa Bay 9

The defense was the name of the game or was it lack of offense? Either way, Seattle used a huge 4th quarter stop as Tampa had the ball 1st and goal from the one-yard line and could not find pay dirt. The good news an XFL record 29,172 fans turned out to see their team win. Former all everything for Navy Keenan Reynolds was on the receiving end of a 68-yard touchdown paid which helped seal the deal.

NBA

Best Dunk Contest Ever. Both Derrick Jones ( Archbishop Carrol Radnor PA ) and Aaron Gordon deserved to win. Jones got the trophy which in my opinion the judges got wrong . Gordon jumped over the 7’5 Taco Charlton on his final dunk. Again both players deserved to split the title. The real winners, the fans.

Three Point Contest – Buddy Held
Skills Competition was dominated by big men with Bam Adebayo

PGA

I know two people who would be excited to see Joel Denman (who is two strokes off the lead ) play the round of his life today. He will have a monumental task as the names ion front are a who’s who of the top 20 in the world. Denman entered the tournament as a ( 210-1 ) shot  The team at Edge has a few tickets on him to win as we had a feeling. Rory Mcilroy is playing some of his best golf as the world number one looks to close out the tournament later today on CBS.

NHL

The story of the day was traffic:  The Coors Light stadium series was supposed to be another amazing spectacle by the NHL as these outdoor games continue to remain extremely popular. But nightmare stories of ticket holders waiting up to 4 hours to get through traffic to get into the game. The Kings won on the ice 3-1 over the Avalanche.
In other actions, the leaders all won as Tampa &  Boston increased improved their positioning heading into the stretch run. Locally the Flyers did  not have enough firepower to hold off Tampa 5-3

UFC

Jan Blachowicz knocked out Corey Anderson and immediately called out Jon Jones for the title. He may have to wait a while as I see a Reyes rematch in the cards next for Jones.

Wagers

Our first just terrible day yesterday. I let the numbers dictate where we went.  I hear these experts telling the public they have their own “system” etc. When I cross-reference the games on these so-called systems the only thing I find is none of the games have anything in common. I also have started a story on these pay for picks services. This will be an honest, time-consuming story as I try to expose what I already know.

These people are scam artists!

The people we bet on are as imperfect as us. Toss in when you are betting on college these are kids. Remember what you were doing at 18-19 years old? Each game has its own narrative. It has nothing to do with 100 similar games in the same situation etc. I spent more time looking at over 60 games yesterday analyzing them from every angle  I could only to yield far fewer results.

Going forward we will go back to what works. Not trying to find every opportunity, but focus on a small group of games. 1-0 is just as good as 10-8. I believe if you want people to trust you, you have to be an open book. And our goal is to kill it in the NCAA tournament. You can only be great if you fail, get up and learn.

Now you may be saying you are still up for the week why so dramatic? Its because we value our readers and take this seriously. We will never win every game or every day but if you sit and learn from the losses you get better. Lesson learned yesterday…

On to today check back later for plays!

Have a great  Sports Sunday!