Maddux Sports Blog

I’m always intrigued by how teams respond to losing a star player. There have been so many injuries to stars in the NHL this year that there are lots of interesting examples. For one, Vancouver has played their last four games without all-World goalie Roberto Luongo. Their backup is Andrew Raycroft, a guy who has bounced around and was chased out of Toronto despite their goalie struggles because he was playing so poorly. You’d expect a fall in performance then, but that just isn’t the case – they were just 6-6 with Luongo, but they are 3-1 with Raycroft. Even more surprising, Raycroft has allowed just two goals in those three wins. Atlanta is another interesting case. Ilya Kovalchuk is by far their best player, and he was off to a good start, but now he’s out of action for several weeks. The team lost the last three games with Kovalchuk in the lineup. They lost the first one he was out for as well, but then bounced back and have won two in a row. The natural reaction would be that a team built around one star would struggle without that star, but the Thrashers won a high scoring game in Montreal tonight. Interesting stuff, even if it is anecdotal.

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It is not a good time to be a referee. Or at least a bad referee. We have seen bad calls happen at at least the same rate as usual, but league’s are doing something about it. First, the SEC announced this week that  they have suspended the crew that made the bone-headed mystery calls against Arkansas in the Florida game. Now, MLB has changed their policy for selecting the World Series umpire crew. Typically they include at least one ump making his World Series debut so that they can add to the total of experienced World Series umps in the league. The large number of very poor calls in the playoffs so far, though, has forced them to get nervous about the situation and attempt to ensure the best refereeing they can get. To do that they are reportedly going to establish a crew made up mostly of crew chiefs, and entirely of veteran, experienced umpires. That won’t mean that there won’t be problems, but it is nice to see the league take things seriously and try to do something about it – at least until they can get a workable instant replay system in place.

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It is not a good time to be a referee. Or at least a bad referee. We have seen bad calls happen at at least the same rate as usual, but league’s are doing something about it. First, the SEC announced this week that  they have suspended the crew that made the bone-headed mystery calls against Arkansas in the Florida game. Now, MLB has changed their policy for selecting the World Series umpire crew. Typically they include at least one ump making his World Series debut so that they can add to the total of experienced World Series umps in the league. The large number of very poor calls in the playoffs so far, though, has forced them to get nervous about the situation and attempt to ensure the best refereeing they can get. To do that they are reportedly going to establish a crew made up mostly of crew chiefs, and entirely of veteran, experienced umpires. That won’t mean that there won’t be problems, but it is nice to see the league take things seriously and try to do something about it – at least until they can get a workable instant replay system in place.

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The sports world is always good at producing news that makes you go ‘huh?!?’. There is lots to choose from that fits into that category today:

- Jay Cutler has spent a fairly long interview finding all sorts of ways to tell the world how much be respects Josh McDaniel. Among the head scratching quotes: “Just the brief amount of time I was able to spend with him, he’s impressive. He knows a lot about offenses, he knows a lot about getting guys open and scoring points, as everyone’s seen when he was in New England”. Remind me again why Cutler fought so hard and like such a baby to get away from the team? By the sounds of that quote t sounds like the right thing to do would have been to suck it up and be a part of things there. It’s not like he landed in a significantly better place offensively in Chicago. Bizarre.

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The NCAA is ridiculous. Yet again, they have chosen to punish a school in a way that does nothing to actually deter schools from doing things wrong. I’m talking, of course, about Memphis’ moronic punishment that was handed down yesterday. If you missed it, the school has been forced to vacate all 38 wins from two years ago – the year they lost in the championship game to Kansas by blowing the last couple of minutes of the game then tripping up badly in overtime. They will also be on probation for three years, though they lose no scholarships or postseason eligibility during that time. There are a couple of violations at issue, but the main one is that Derrick Rose likely wasn’t eligible for the season.

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This US Open may never end. It’s reasonably entertaining, but it is so inconsistent and the weather is such a factor that there will be an asterisk the size of my head beside the name of whoever wins this one. At this rate Monday golf seems like a lock, and Tuesday could even be a possibility if things don’t change. I golfed on Friday with a woman whose boss paid a ridiculous amount of money to golf with Tiger Woods at a charity event. On Tuesday. It would be crushing to miss out of something like that. Of course, Tiger might not be in much of a mood to golf on Tuesday given how he has played so far, so maybe missing out would be a lucky thing.

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Cal State Fullerton picked a very, very bad time to hit the skids. Not only were they the second seed in the College World Series, but they had a relatively easy draw as well – Arkansas is red hot, but they slumped badly heading into the postseason, and Virginia had never been in the CWS before. Two bad games, though, and it’s back to Fullerton for them. They lost a wild one to Arkansas for their first lost in the double elimination tourney, then waited too long to wake up and mount a comeback against Virginia today. They were heavy -280 favorites today, so people who could find a reason to back Virginia are happy campers right now. A best-of-one tournament like this is very hard to handicap, but it is brilliant to watch and it deserves more coverage and respect than it gets (though the coverage has improved infinitely recently).

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So long, Tim Floyd. One of the slimiest coaches in basketball has reportedly resigned from his post at USC. He’s embroiled with a scandal over allegations that he personally paid an associate of O.J. Mayo so that Mayo would choose to attend USC. He hasn’t admitted to doing anything wrong, but this resignation is the next best thing. It was only a couple of months ago that Floyd declared his love to USC and chose to stay instead of taking the job at Arizona, sp this is a relationship that soured quickly. Now USC has to find a good coach at an awkward time, and they can’t afford to screw it up. The search won’t be made any easier by the sins of Floyd – no coach would be eager to jump into a school that could be hit by sanctions. I’ve never been a fan of Floyd, and this is just a clear sign that I can trust my instincts.

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I love college football for a lot of reasons, but one of them is how quickly things can change. Take Boston College, for example. Two years ago they were totally secure in their quarterback situation with Matt Ryan – probably the best QB in the country. Now their QB situation is an absolute shambles. It was already going to be ugly, but things got really bleak yesterday. Dominique Davis started four games as a freshman last year, and he was likely to be the starter at the beginning of this year. He was the only quarterback on the team who had ever thrown a college pass. Now he’s gone. He was suspended by the team for academic reasons, and the situation was serious enough that he decided to transfer instead of sticking it out and fixing the problem. Now the Eagles have just two guys -redshirt freshman Justin Tuggle and junior college transfer Codi Boek . I already wasn’t at all optimistic about BC in the ACC this year, but his only serves to further cloud their prospects in my eyes.

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I find myself writing about Kentucky basketball way more than any single program deserves in the offseason, but so much of what is going on there is just so compelling that I can’t help it. It’s rare that a team goes through such a complete overhaul in an offseason, never mind an iconic program like this one. The program found itself in the news three different times yesterday, for three totally unrelated reasons:

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