Everything about this upcoming NBA championship series is wrong. I mean, how does it work that someone named Magic plays AGAINST the Los Angeles Lakers?
Actually, a whole lot of folks were praying for something different, and they weren't exactly silent in those prayers. One couldn't go 10 minutes without seeing 23 and 24 getting debated for the sake of Vitamin Water, and those Nike puppets were even more omnipotent.
Both the Orlando Magic and Denver Nuggets were royally ticked off, and justly so...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: NBA, Finals, Lakers, Magic, preview

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Combine the four big team sports this week (baseball, softball, lacrosse in both genders), and it adds up to 16 championship games in Section III. And none might have been bigger than the first one.
When West Genesee and Baldwinsville got together to settle the Class A girls lacrosse crown at SUNY-Cortland, they concluded a season-long drama that began April 9 with the Bees being the first team to beat the Wildcats since 2006, then continued with WG winning the rematch May 19 in Camillus.
For the third and most important chapter, nerves hit the Wildcats early in the second half, allowing B'ville to run off five unanswered goals and seize an 8-4 lead.
Amazingly, the Bees would not score in the game's last 23-plus mintues...

CATEGORY: Lacrosse

TAGS: Section III, girls lacrosse, championship games

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Baseball fans all over Central New York rejoiced a year ago when the Syracuse Chiefs finally put real grass into Alliance Bank Stadium. Some high school teams got to enjoy the setting, too.
However, when the Section III finals rolled around, the Chiefs were in town, so the show went back to DeLutis Field in Rome - a nice place, for sure, but not quite the same.
All was free and clear in 2009, though. So they all came to the bank-backed ballpark on the North Side to hand out five Section III championship banners, and it certainly wasn't dull.
In fact, the closest game proved to be the first one, in Class AA on Tuesday afternoon. Auburn badly wanted to redeem itself for losing last year's final to Utica Proctor, but Cicero-North Syracuse had other thoughts...

CATEGORY: Baseball

TAGS: Section III, baseball finals, CNS, Mexico, Westhill, Hamilton, IHC

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That marquee proved quite crowded on Friday when three Section III boys lacrosse championships went on the line at Cicero-North Syracuse's Bragman Stadium - with familiar names seizing the prizes.
None is more familiar than West Geneseee, who built a good chunk of its local dynasty at the expense of Fayetteville-Manlius, which only made the Class A final more compelling.
WG was gunning for its eighth straight title. F-M was bent on ending a 16-year title drought...

CATEGORY: Lacrosse

TAGS: Section III, boys lacrosse, championship games

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As West Genesee, Carthage and Watertown all head to the girls lacrosse state final four next weekend after regional victories, the Section III softball titles got settled at Gillette Road. Four of the five titles went to new faces, with just one repeat winner.
Cicero-North Syracuse tried to repeat, but bitter rival Liverpool would not let them in a Class AA epic that took 10 innings to get settled.
Once, the Warriors led 4-0, and CNS stranded 10 runners while getting just one run in five innings. But Morgan Nandin's two-run single keyed a three-run, two-out rally in the bottom of the sixth.
They stayed 4-4 through the seventh, eighth and ninth innings...

CATEGORY: Softball

TAGS: Section III, softball finals, recap

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During these last couple of weeks, with high school Section III championships decided on all fronts, many different things stick in the mind. And they're worth noting...
- Westhill baseball's aggression and ingenuity.
No one wins 25 games in a row simply through dominant pitching or awesome power at the plate. The Warriors carry both of these traits, but on the base paths, they really have some fun.
You had two rare things in Westhill's Class B final win over Skaneateles happening back-to-back. Mike DeCarr hits a fly ball far enough to allow two runs to score on a sacrifice fly, Dan Karleski flying home from second base. Then Mike Mascari went all Jacoby Ellsbury by stealing home straight.
The great teams don't just settle for one or two runs...

CATEGORY: General Sports

TAGS: Section III playoffs, reflections

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All the other news surrounding the regional playoffs became secondary the moment Tuesday night's Class A boys lacrosse game ended.
Ithaca 6, West Genesee 2. Unless you were there, you just HAD to do a double-take seeing that result. This just doesn't happen, right?
Well, it hadn't happened before. Twenty-seven times, the Wildcats had gone into the regional round after claiming sectional titles. Twenty-seven times, the Wildcats had won, and gone on to win the state crown on 15 of those occasions. Often, Ithaca was the regional victim.
But not on Tuesday night...

CATEGORY: General Sports

TAGS: Section III, teams, lacrosse, baseball, softball, regionals

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What LaFayette wanted was to go to the state Class B boys lacrosse championship game undefeated. What it didn't know was that it would go there as the lone Section III hope for a state title.
The Lancers, now 23-0, got there by handling Penn Yan 10-6 in the semifinal round Thursday at an overcast St...

CATEGORY: Lacrosse

TAGS: Lacrosse, state semifinals, LaFayette, J-D

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It did not turn out to be a happy Friday for Section III teams at the state girls lacrosse semifinals.
Every year prior to this, at least one Section III team ended up playing on the final Saturday of the season. West Genesee had gone there five times - and always won, including the last two Class A championships.
To get the three-peat, the Wildcats had to, in the semis, beat the same Farmingdale squad it fought off in last year's riveting title game.
WG led most of the way, including an 8-6 edge with less than three minutes left. But Farmingdale's Melanie Raso scored twice in less than a minute to pull her team even, and Janine Hillier converted with 18 seconds left...

CATEGORY: Lacrosse

TAGS: State semifinals, girls lacrosse, West Genesee, Carthage, Watertown

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No doubt the good news has traveled up I-81 from Binghamton - Westhill's baseball team reigns as the state Class B champions.
From a purely technical standpoint, this wasn't a surprise, the Warriors were favored going into the state final four at Conlon Field, the same diamond where it had won its rain-delayed regional final over Chenango Valley.
However, the way Westhill got that crown just adds to a season-long legend that includes, among other things, 28 straight wins, a cycle and steal of home from Mike Mascari, Mike DeCarr driving in two runs through a sacrifice fly and Jack Ganley's perfect game.
It all looked to be over in the semifinals against Fredonia, as Westhill trailed 2-0 in the top of the seventh inning...

CATEGORY: General Sports

TAGS: Westhill, baseball, state finals, champions

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Friday night, around 10:30, everyone standing in Joe Louis Arena as the frantic final seconds of the hockey season tick off. One last shot by Nick Lidstrom..one last sprawling save by Marc-Andre Fleury...and Pittsburgh had beaten Detroit in Game 7 for the Stanley Cup.
Exactly 48 hours later, a far more subdued scene in Orlando as the NBA championship went to the Los Angeles Lakers in five games over the Magic. The game had been in hand for a while, but the end brought the same kind of satisfaction.
There are many angles to look at these title teams, but some similarities arise, especially the redemption of the biggest names in each sport after defeats in this same round a year ago.
At 21, Sidney Crosby should be too young to have to validate himself in any way...

CATEGORY: General Sports

TAGS: Penguins, Lakers, championships, Crosby, Kobe

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For all the complaints and hassles they get out of other parts of life, the good citizens of the New York City area are lucky in one respect – especially if they are golf fans.
Every few years or so, the United States Open comes to their neighborhood. In fact, it’s now four times in eight years, leaving those in other parts of the country (especially the Midwest) wondering what it ever did wrong.
But it’s one thing when the Open is played at an exclusive enclave like Winged Foot or Shinnecock Hills, where mere mortals rarely pass through the gates...

CATEGORY: Golf

TAGS: U.S. Open, Bethpage Black, preview

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Well, they're already bashing Lucas Glover, newly crowned champion of the United States Open, for everything from his anonymous status to his very small celebration on the final green once the darn thing was done.
That figures. Everyone came to Bethpage Black looking for something loud and dramatic, something to match the Torrey Pines epic of 2008 that can get replayed through the ages. Translation - something involving Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson.
Instead, they got rain, squeegees, more rain, Ricky Barnes in a painter's cap, more rain, a four-day tournament that required five days to complete, and a relative nobody from Greenville, S.C...

CATEGORY: Golf

TAGS: U.S. Open, Bethpage Black, recap, Lucas Glover

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Ed Thomas. The name sounds so ordinary, as did the place where he worked - Parkersburg, a small town in Iowa.
Being a football coach, it made sense that on this June morning, Thomas was in the weight room next to Aplington-Parkersburg High School, supervising a session with many of his players. About 30 were in the room.
Then, according to police, a 24-year-old named Mark Becker, who played for Thomas in his high school days, walked into the weight room and, with a gun, shot and killed Thomas.
The words "shocked" and "stunned" do not even begin to describe the emotions of people all over Iowa on this day...

CATEGORY: Football (American)

TAGS: Ed Thomas, Iowa, high school football coach, death

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The news hit here early this evening, and has remained numbing....Michael Jackson, dead, age 50.
In the hours since, with the blanket coverage you knew was coming, all I could come back to was that Jackson's life has no other template in reality.
Some bring up Elvis, butit's not the same. Elvis did get insular and isolated (thank you Memphis Mafia), but he didn't get abused as a child, didn't have siblings (his twin brother died just after birth), didn't get famous at 12 and didn't go through a criminal trial where his entire reputation got sullied.
Instead, the proper analogy lies in fiction, in celluloid film...

CATEGORY: Music

TAGS: Michael Jackson, death, reflections

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Come this weekend, we’ll celebrate America’s 233rd birthday with the usual patriotic pomp and circumstance – parades, picnics, pyrotechnics and the like.
As with most patriotic events, though, we focus more on the party details than the reason why we’re celebrating in the first place. That our nation has endured this long, with relative stability and one durable form of government, is extraordinary.
Naturally, some of us feel like, since it’s worked here, it must work everywhere else, too – or at least it should work, and if it doesn’t, we should do all we can to make that possible.
This explains, in part, the coverage of, and attitude toward, the recent Iranian elections, plus the aftermath that has involved mass protests and violent responses from the rulers...

CATEGORY: Commentary & Debate

TAGS: Iran, elections, resistance, America's role

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So we have now gone through six months of 2009. It must be that long, because now the president, honeymoon period long gone, is getting blamed for close to everything, including Bernie Madoff.
From a sports standpoint, though, it's been quite exciting, at least if you focus on the games and not the tabloid, celebrity-tinged storylines that get shoved in our faces from day to day. Not to name any names - Manny, Brett Favre...
Look at any big sport, and there's plenty to discuss, good and bad. Baseball will get its own special treatment in a future entry, so we'll turn to the other games...
First, the gridiron, where things happened that somehow didn't involve Favre...

CATEGORY: General Sports

TAGS: 2009, sports, first-half recap

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