Big Lead Sports Bar

3/15/2007

Morning Wrapup

It's a busy week in the Pittsburgh sports world. New arena...red hot hockey team...NCAA men's tournament...NCAA women's tournament...plenty of things to take our mind off of the pending baseball season. So let's dive right in.
The Penguins beat the Devils by a count of 3-0 on Wednesday night, which means they took down the top two teams in the Eastern Conference in a 27-hour span. And on this night, no overtime was necessary.
Jarkko Ruutu, Shootout Christensen and Jordan Staal lit the lamp for the Penguins, who passed Ottawa for 4th place in the Eastern Conference with Wednesday's win. Jocelyn Thibault picked up the 37th shutout of his career, the first since a 2003-04 goose egg while with the Blackhawks.
Mike Rupp, Devils bench...Devils bench, Mike Rupp.
Gary Roberts: great at hockey, great at introductions.
Meanwhile, the Pitt Panthers are getting ready for their postseason debut at 9:40 PM Thursday night on CBS. Panther Nation has already arrived in Buffalo for the first-round matchup against Wright State.

Aaron Gray, doing his part to make eBay dreams come true for a few die-hard Panther fans.

Pitt looks to avoid the 3-14 upset that took the postseason life of No. 3 seed Iowa last season. If you happened to miss it, be sure to check out the Deadspin Pants Party preview of the game. Pitt Blather has had great info all week, including the official ESPN forecast:

Wrapping up the men's tournament goodies is Maxim's College Coach Look-a-likes gallery. Some inspired work here, including Gary Williams of Maryland and Moe Szyslak of Moe's Tavern.


Now we move to the women's tournament, with the first-ever mention of ladies' hoops in Mondesi's House history. And all it took was Pitt hosting the NCAA tournament while playing there.

With a win over James Madison in the first round, the Pitt women would likely face 1-seed Tennessee at the Pete. This is being billed as the biggest women's basketball event to ever hit Pittsburgh, and it's hard to argue. UT is led by legendary coach/54-year-old cheerleader Pat Summitt.

I'm happy for Pitt that they're potentially hosting such an intriguing matchup, but why must a one-seed be forced to play on the home court of an 8-seed? I mean, everything the NCAA does usually makes a lot of sense, but they're losing me here.

The most exciting Pirate news of the day: Andrew McCutchen must be really good, because he already has a baseball card worth $800. As George Costanza was known to do, I'll end this on a high note---a rarity in any column mentioning the word "Pirate".

5 comments:

Rave said...

also note that in the Womens NCAA Tournament, The Robert Morris Colonials will be playing for the first time ever. They won their NEC tournament and get to play NC State for their troubles.

Unknown said...

Am the only one who is going to need to take some Tylenol or drink heavily during the Pitt game tonight? The combination of looking at that sky blue floor and listening to the rather annoying Kevin Harlan gush about DeShaun Woods leads me to think St. Pat's in Market Square shouldn't be the first time Pitt fans should get bombed this weekend.

tecmo said...

drinking heavily. oh and espn.com describes dashaun wood as a "blur". wtf does that mean?

http://psamp.blogspot.com/



mini ponies rule

tecmo said...

to be fair, he did say best tv ratings for a city w/o a team, but still, his argument is totally crap. the fans in kc never really cared about the pens the way pgh fans do. one comment on one of the message boards was a plea to start www.mykcpredators.com. pretty jaded for a city that was soooo interested in the pens

John M. Setzler, Jr. said...

I'll have to keep my eye on McCutchen baseball cards :) I shot the photos used on his cards with the Hickory Crawdads, which I got autographed along with a print of the photo used on his first card in Hickory :)