Monday’s Den: Wrapping up a sports weekend…….

— Ohio State 73, Purdue 69
Buckeyes fired their coach Wednesday, pull a big upset four days later.
Ohio State was 2-9 in its last 11 games, coming into Sunday.
Purdue was minus-8 in turnovers (14-6), shot 3-9 on the arc.

— Seton Hall 68, St John’s 62
Johnnies led 38-19 with 3:09 left in first half.
St John’s lost 8 of its last 10 games, blowing halftime leads in last three. After the game, Rick Pitino wasn’t happy with his team’s defense.

— Utah 70, UCLA 69
Utah scored off an offensive rebound at the buzzer for the win.
Utes had lost their previous six road games.
UCLA’s last three games (2-1) were decided by total of six points.

— South Florida 90, Florida Atlantic 86
USF led by 25 with 8:38 left, hung on for dear life.
Bulls won 17 of last 18 games, after a 2-4 start.
USF leads Charlotte by a game, FAU/SMU by two games.

LY, South Florida coach Amir Abdur-Rahim led Kennesaw State to a 26-9 record, made the NCAA’s; this year, his Bulls are 19-5, 12-1 in AAC in his first year at USF. Previous four years, Bulls were 45-62, 21-47 in conference games. Great coaching job.

— SMU 106, Memphis 79
Mustangs led 58-36 at halftime; dismal effort by Memphis.
Tigers lost six of their last nine games, after a 15-2 start.
SMU won its last six games, is 19-7, 10-3 in conference games.

— Niagara 80, Quinnipiac 66
Niagara has won its last eight road games, longest active streak in country.
Purple Eagles made 9-17 on arc, 27-27 on foul line.
Quinnipiac lost its last two games, after a 19-4 start. 

Baseball Note of the Day: Players went 9-6 against the owners in contract arbitration cases this year, first time since 2019 the players had the advantage.

OF/2B Whit Merrifield signed a one-year, $8M deal with the Phillies.

Word of the Day: Subterfuge- Deceit used in order to achieve a goal.

— Rider 104, Manhattan 62
Broncs shot 77.8% from the floor, the highest shooting %age in a D-I game by any team since January 24, 2005.

— Thursday in Utah, Golden State’s Klay Thompson came off the bench for the first time since his rookie season, 12 years ago; he scored 35 points (13-22 from floor, 7-13 on arc) as the Warriors beat the Jazz, 140-137.

— LA Chargers are paying Jim Harbaugh $16M a year? Really? Wow. Sean Payton is the only coach in the NFL making more $$$ than Jim Harbaugh. John Harbaugh makes $12M a year.

— Four guys were teammates with both Michael Jordan and Lebron James:
Brendan Haywood
Larry Hughes
Jerry Stackhouse
Scott Williams

— Rangers-Islanders played hockey outdoors at Giants Stadium in New Jersey Sunday; they drew 79,690 fans, a day after the Flyers-Devils drew 70,328 fans in the same stadium Saturday night. 150,000 fans for two games; pretty, pretty good.

No way the NHL knew what a gold mine they had on their hands when they started these outdoor games. 

— NBA All-Star Game: East 211, West 186- Somewhere, some poor soul bet the under in this game, which had no chance of winning. None.

Teams combined to shoot 67-168 (39.9%) on the arc
Teams combined to shoot 96-121 (79.3%) inside the arc

— RIP to Charles (Lefty) Driesell, the great college basketball coach who passed away over the weekend, at age 92. He had a great career. 

Driesell coached at four colleges:
1960-69- Davidson- 176-65
1969-86- Maryland- 348-159
1986-97- James Madison- 159-111
1997-2003- Georgia State- 103-59

Driesell was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018; he made the Elite Eight four times, but his best team was probably his 1974 Maryland team, which was ranked #3 in the country but lost the ACC title game in overtime- back then, only one team from each league made it to the NCAA’s.

Today, that team would’ve been a #1-seed in the tournament, but they didn’t even get in- they won the NIT very easily that season. Bad timing; NC State had David Thompson that year.

Driesell was known as much for his personality as coaching; he promised to make Maryland “the UCLA of the East” back when the Bruins won the NCAA’s every year. He won a lot of games and he was fun to listen to.

RIP, sir. 

Author: Armadillo Sports

I've been involved in sports my whole life, now just write about them. I like to travel, mostly to Las Vegas- they have gambling there.