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Orange Streak
Posted by pblackwell | 12/02/08
I dearly hope everyone's holiday weekend went well and that no one got hurt in the mad pursuit of bargains.
More importantly, it was my parents' 40th wedding anniversary, and we celebrated it back home, all the immediate family around. We've been spoiled rotten having a stable family life, and it's to their eternal credit. Bless them...
Now, to the sports. Just a wild guess that a lot of folks in Central New York, Notre Dame game aside, could not wait for the SU football funeral to end so that they could see how Jim Boeheim's latest basketball show would look.
So far, it's a winner. In the span of five days, the Orange held off Florida, rallied to beat Kansas in overtime in a hostile setting in Kansas City, then rallied again back home to oust Virginia...
CATEGORY: General Sports
TAGS: SU, basketball, college, football, BCS, NFL
Lifelong Dedication
Posted by pblackwell | 12/05/08
More than half of John "Buddy" Wleklinski's life has been spent attending, or working, at Christian Brothers Academy. You would be hard-pressed to find any person more attached to their school, coach or otherwise.
So Buddy got an appopriate tribute Friday night, as the brand-new floor inside CBA's gym was christened Buddy Wleklinski Court before the Brothers beat East Syracuse-Minoa 67-53 to move to 3-0 on the season.
Actually, the floor was in place long before Friday night. Back in October, when the NBA's Phoenix Suns practiced at CBA before their pre-season game with the Denver Nuggets at the Carrier Dome, head coach Terry Porter noticed Buddy's name on the floor.
As Buddy told it tonight, Porter said to him, "Ususally you are dead before you get something like that...
CATEGORY: Basketball
TAGS: CBA, Buddy Wlekinski, court dedication
Dynasty In Our Midst
Posted by pblackwell | 12/06/08
Put a couple of division or conference titles together these days, and someone is bound to stick the "dynasty" label on you, whether it fits or not.
But what do you possibly say about a girls high school cross country team that now possesses back-to-back-to-back national championships?
Well, other than say "wow", you call them Fayetteville-Manlius, respectfully, and watch as they zoom by you in the late-autumn mud.
So it came to pass on the first Saturday of December that the F-M girls, running as "Manlius Cross Country Club" in the Nike Cross Nationals in Portland, Oregon, made it a threepeat.
Even with one runner out and another ailing, the Hornets dominated proceedings with 66 points, the second-place team from California 69 points back...
CATEGORY: Running
TAGS: F-M, cross country, national champs, dynasty
Weekly Column: Time to Skip Ahead?
Posted by pblackwell | 12/07/08
By the time you read this piece, Skip Holtz might already be Syracuse University’s new football coach, if all the reading of tea leaves can be trusted.
If so, Holtz is a fine hire. The Son of Lou had two coaching stints under his famous dad – one at Notre Dame, the other at South Carolina. He’s also had a pair of head coaching gigs, too, both of them strong ones.
Holtz took over a Connecticut squad in 1994 that was still in what was then called Division I-AA, and thoroughly irrelevant. With hard work and energy, Holtz made the Huskies relevant, going 10-3 in his last season and setting the table for Randy Edsall and the rise to Big East status (and yearly bowl trips) that Connecticut currently enjoys...
CATEGORY: Football (American)
TAGS: SU, football, coaching hire, Skip Holtz, Turner Gill
What We're Left With
Posted by pblackwell | 12/09/08
By the magic of flawed humans and supposedly flawless computers, we're left with Florida and Oklahoma playing for college football's national championship.
Texas doesn't like it, but the Sooners are there, having dumped 60-plus points on everyone since that October day in Dallas - even though 45-35 ought to have mattered first, anyway.
A decade after leaving Gainesville for Norman, Bob Stoops gets a shot at ruining the Gators' dream of a second title in three years - but must do it in Miami, giving Florida a home-state advantage.
It might hinge on whether Sam Bradford or Tim Tebow has the better night. Bradford is great and productive, but Tebow is wondrous - look how he willed the Gators through that fourth-quarter comeback against Alabama in a fabulous SEC title game...
CATEGORY: General Sports
TAGS: BCS, Oklahoma, Florida, NFL, playoffs, Maddux
Doesn't Have to Be That Way
Posted by pblackwell | 12/11/08
With the looming end to Eric Devendorf's season at SU, the questions about whether this ruins the Orange dreams of a special season have already sprung up.
For starters, whether guilty or not, Devendorf put himself in a bad situation and has to pay the price for it. In these times, we're finding that the public has close to zero tolerance to athletes misbehaving in even the slightest manner. And this seems to go beyond slight.
The basketball puzzle remains, though. Short-term, it means more minutes and more chances for the likes of Andy Rautins...
CATEGORY: General Society
TAGS: SU, Devendorf, Holtz, Gill, scandal, Blagojevich, Obama
Weekly Column: Fiscal Responsibility, Anyone?
Posted by pblackwell | 12/14/08
Well, Congress has got to go to work again.
We have seen, once more, a corporation throw away tens of millions of dollars in pursuit of goals that were not attainable, using the wrong kind of business model and ignoring the trends happening elsewhere in their chosen profession.
Worse yet, this corporation, in the midst of a severe economic crisis affecting millions of Americans, continues its free-spending ways, completely ignorant to how this behavior might look in the minds of the general public.
Thus, given the fact that it bailed out the banking industry and AIG, and wanted to bail out the auto industry, Congress, if it wants to be consistent and fair with its behavior, will have no choice but to bail out the New York Yankees, too...
CATEGORY: Baseball
TAGS: Free spending, Yankees, economy, contracts
As the Orange Turns
Posted by pblackwell | 12/15/08
Karma comes in many forms. That includes a 60-foot shot that finds nothing but net at the buzzer.
Until Monday night, Cleveland State's most famous Carrier Dome appearance came in 1986, when Mouse McFadden led the no. 14 seed Vikings past Bob Knight's no. 3 seed Indiana Hoosiers in an NCAA Tournament first-round shocker. Not content with that, CSU won two days later and reached the Sweet 16, stopped only by David Robinson and Navy.
A mere 22 years later, the Vikings secured another moment of eternal memory when Cedric Jackson, from way, way downtown, banged home the winner.
So much for SU's no. 11 ranking in AP, and perhaps so much for the team's confidence with a Saturday-night trip to Memphis looming...
CATEGORY: General Sports
TAGS: SU, buzzer beater, Marrone, NFL, playoff race
Portrait of a Pioneer
Posted by pblackwell | 12/17/08
A man arrives in a big city as a decided outsider, determined to make a mark in life after much drift and uncertainty.
Through his own talent, hard work and charisma, he builds a grass-roots movement that shakes up the power structure, shows that people have the ability to change society for the better, and ultimately becomes a historic figure, using as a guiding principle the phrase “You’ve gotta give them hope.”
Sound familiar?
The movie “Milk” could not have arrived at a more opportune time in our history...
CATEGORY: Movies
Doing Just Fine
Posted by pblackwell | 12/21/08
A week from the start of Big East season, and maybe that bleak outlook people had when the original Eric Devendorf ruling went down and when Cleveland State hit that half-court prayer isn't so bleak after all.
From the get-go, the first judicial board decision, that Devendorf had to sit out of the rest of the academic year, seemed too harsh. No injury in the incident, no criminal charges - just a dumb thing done early in the morning.
Typically, that meant sitting out a few games, learning the lesson, then moving on. And that's what the appeal of the case ended up doing.
Everything about it was accepted. Devendorf knows he can't mess up again and will do a fair share of community service. He has to earn his way back on the team - but at least he gets the chance to do so...
CATEGORY: Basketball
TAGS: SU, Devendorf, suspension, Memphis
Ten That Matter
Posted by pblackwell | 12/23/08
How fitting that this mad, mad NFL regular season ends up with a Week 17 where more than half the games have some sort of bearing on the ultimate playoff field.
Much was settled last Sunday. Tennessee ripped on Pittsburgh - no last-minute drama for the Steelers this time - and the Titans have the AFC's top seed. No big stars, no real drama, just a great team where everyone has stepped up for 13-2.
In a Sunday-night classic, the Giants saw a magical Meadowlands wind gust blow John Kasay's game-winning kick wide left at the end of regulation. Then overtime, where Derrick Ward and Brandon Jacobs ran over Carolina.
Just a few feet from the top seed, the Panthers could fall all the way to the no. 5 spot, which figures in this topsy-turvy year. More on that in a moment...
CATEGORY: Football (American)
TAGS: NFL, last week, playoff drama
Crowned Too Soon?
Posted by pblackwell | 12/27/08
No one really believed in the Boston Celtics, circa 2007-08, until the very end, when it took out the Los Angeles Lakers' hearts in that Game 4 Finals comeback, then used a Game 6 blowout to wrap up NBA championship no. 17.
The Celtics did not rest once it picked up the rings and raised the banner. Instead, Gang Green jumped off 27-2, the best start in NBA history, and talk of a June rendezvous with all the laurels had already started.
Funny how a couple of games can make everyone sober. You just knew that, on Christmas, the Lakers were thirsty for payback, and were a not-too-shabby 23-5 going in, so losing that game wasn't a huge surprise.
What was surprising was seeing the Friday-night hangover at Golden State...
CATEGORY: Basketball
TAGS: Celtics, Lakers, Cavaliers, NBA
Weekly Column: The Unsung Heroes of '08
Posted by pblackwell | 12/28/08
In sifting through the incredible journey that was sports in 2008, the familiar stories, from the Giants’ Super Bowl upset to Tiger Woods at Torrey Pines to Nadal-Federer at Wimbledon to Michael Phelps, have been told and retold. Champions are toasted, villains are cursed, just as we do every year.
Yet I’m always drawn to the supporting characters in all these tales. Just as in a good book or movie or TV show, they may not get the spotlight, but their presence to the story is essential, or it just wouldn’t be the same.
So in looking back at ’08, here’s to those who, in their own unique way, helped paint the final masterpiece.
Here’s to Tom Coughlin, the pride of Waterloo...
CATEGORY: General Sports
TAGS: 2008, year in review, unsung heroes
Of Wreckage and Revival
Posted by pblackwell | 12/29/08
What ultimately defined the 2008 NFL regular season showed up, in vivid Technicolor, during the last Sunday of the season - those that were once putrid and now reborn, those that went from the penthouse to the abyss, and the Detroit Lions, who were bad enough before 0-16.
Start with the bad stuff. Once, Buffalo was 5-1, the Jets were 8-3 and in charge of the AFC East, Tampa Bay was 9-3 and ready for a run at the Super Bowl on its home field, Denver was 8-4 and one win from taking the AFC West crown, and New England and Dallas were rock-solid favorites to win it all.
Now look at the ruins. The Bills sank to a 7-9 rut and are crying for new leadership beyond Dick Jauron. It's now been a full decade since Buffalo saw the post-season, and the hurt in Western New York only grows...
CATEGORY: Football (American)
TAGS: NFL, homestretch, collapses, turnarounds, playoffs
New Approach, Same Voice
Posted by pblackwell | 12/30/08
Those who may have constantly read this blog in recent months will notice some vast changes as of this moment.
Due to some personal adjustments, this blog will now feature much more high-school coverage than before, and this should delight all our cnylink.com readers who come to this web site to get up to date on the latest happenings.
Sure, we will still comment on the main sports of the day, but only as part of the larger picture. And that change starts right now, with the aftermath of the various holiday tournaments.
In boys basketball, Henninger made it three straight Mayor's Roundball Classic titles, pulling away in the fourth quarter to beat Fowler Tuesday night at LeMoyne College as Corcoran topped Nottingham for third place. Kihary Blue took MVP honors...
CATEGORY: General Sports
TAGS: high school, holiday tournaments, big wins, SU, NFL
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