— College basketball refs travel a lot, and they bank a lot of $$$.
Ref named Keith Kimble worked a game five of the last six nights:
Dec 28- UCLA @ Oregon State
Dec 29- Arizona @ California
Dec 30- Ohio State vs West Virginia, in Cleveland
Dec 31- Washington State @ Colorado
Jan 2- Chicago State @ Kansas State
Lot of NBA players don’t like playing games on back/back nights, but refs who are twice their age work five games in six nights, in five different states.
Go figure.
— Colorado State 76, New Mexico 68
Two of the four best teams in the Mountain West met in the conference opener.
New Mexico star House was in foul trouble, only scored 14 points.
Colorado State was 18-21 on foul line, Lobos were 4-11.
— St John’s 86, Butler 70
Red Storm is off to a 10-4 start under Hall of Famer Rick Pitino.
St John’s has made the NCAA’s three times in the last 20 years (last time in 2019).
St John’s starts four seniors; they shot 59.6% inside the arc.
— Purdue 67, Maryland 53
Purdue is 13-1 against schedule #9, but they’re suspect until they win in March.
Boilermakers are shooting 38.9% on the arc (#14)
In last year’s NCAA’s loss to #16-seed FDU, Purdue was 5-26 on the arc.
— North Carolina 70, Pitt 57
This was first time in 70 years that UNC’s first true road game came in January.
Tar Heels have played a tough schedule (#18), but had five neutral court games.
Pitt was 5-29 on the arc; they’re 0-3 in the ACC, 0-5 vs top 100 teams.
— Wyoming 75, San Jose State 73
Visiting Spartans led by 17 in first half, 47-35 at halftime.
Wyoming was 23-25 on foul line, San Jose 9-12.
Wyoming is 8-0 giving up 73 or less points; they gave up 78+ points in all six losses.
— Bowling Green 92, Eastern Michigan 90 OT
EMU led by 14 points in first half.
Bowling Green star Hill was 13-17 on foul line; EMU’s whole team was 9-14.
Eastern Michigan only played seven guys, in an overtime game.
— Daily baseball trivia: Zack Greinke was the last pitcher to bat in a World Series but not hit 9th in the batting order; he hit 8th in Game 4 of the 2021 World Series. Greinke went 1-2- he was taken out after the 4th inning.
— Word of the Day– Precarious- dependent on chance circumstances, unknown conditions, or uncertain developments.
The fates of most NFL teams are precarious; there’s a fine line between winning/losing.
— Summit League/Big Sky Conference are having a basketball challenge this weekend; best game of the lot appears to be South Dakota State at Weber State. Good mid-major basketball, will be interesting to see which league comes out on top.
— When ESPN first started up 40+ years ago, one of the first leagues that let them show their games was the Sun Belt Conference. These days, the Sun Belt is still a decent league; they are the #17 league this year, partially because they have 14 teams now and the bottom teams have been dragging the league’s rating down some- they were the #14 league three of the last five years.
ESPN would be wise to set aside two hours a week to show a weekly Sun Belt game; their games are on ESPN+, but putting them on ESPNU would thank the league for helping ESPN get off their feet 40 years ago.
— Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper was fined $300,000 by the NFL after he threw a drink at Jaguar fans after the Panthers lost 26-0 in Jacksonville Sunday.
Tepper is the wealthiest owner in the NFL, worth over $16B; fining hm $300,000 is like fining me $3.
— 2024 NFL Draft has lot of interesting quarterbacks in it; one of the TV networks needs to get Jon Gruden out of retirement to do those pre-draft interviews he did with the QB prospects- he is he best at that kind of stuff.
— Hard to believe that in lot of states, high school basketball still doesn’t have a shot clock; five starts are adding the shot clock next season. Basketball without a shot clock is a totally different game, often a lot less fun to watch.
— They drew 47,313 fans in Seattle Monday for the outdoor hockey game between the Kraken and the Vegas Golden Knights. NHL has struck gold with its stadium series games.
— In the college football national title game Monday night, Michigan is favored by 4.5 points over Washington, with a total of 55.5.
