Cavaliers 88, Celtics 77: Road horrors continue

Minutes into the game, Livan Hernandez and the Minnesota Twins watched another ball sail over the wall for the other side. Boston's Manny Ramirez made it a league-most 42 home runs allowed by the Twins, who just shrugged off the early deficit and went back to playing the way they always have. Hernandez won again, Craig Monroe contributed another big hit, and the Twins beat the Red Sox 7-3 to win the four-game series and improve to 14-7 at home.

So much for small ball. Craig Monroe went 2-for-4 with two of light-hitting Minnesota's three home runs and four RBIs, and the Twins hung on for a 9-8 victory over the Boston Red Sox last night. Joe Nathan gave up two runs in the ninth, but won a showdown with pinch-hitter Manny Ramirez by getting him to ground out to shortstop with the tying run on second base to pick up his 12th save in as many chances.

So this is the dangerous path the Celtics have chosen to take to a 17th NBA title: 16-0 at the Garden, 0-12 every place else. Geez, talk about rolling the dice. Apparently these Celtics are slow learners, or too cocky, or maybe not as good as we thought. The general feeling was that after being pushed to a full seven games by the Hawks because they couldn't win a game in Atlanta, the Celtics had smartened up. They knew the Cavaliers were better than the Hawks, so they'd better suck it up, take care of business at home and take one, finally, on the road.

It seemed as though everyone was anxious for Ray Allen to knock down a shot in the first six quarters of the conference semifinals except Allen himself. Doc Rivers talked on the day off between Allen's scoreless Game 1 and Game 2 about how the Celtics needed to create more chances for him. After he finally broke a scoreless run that spanned nearly 59 minutes over two games, Rivers and Kevin Garnett both said that was a focus.

The Brandeis University softball team won the ECAC Division III New England tournament championship in dramatic fashion yesterday, as the Judges defeated Keene State College, 6-5, in the championship game by scoring three runs in the bottom of the seventh inning.

Bentley outfielder James Roche has been named the Baseball Freshman of the Year in the Northeast-10 Conference. He's the first Falcon to receive that award since Jeff Hudson a decade ago.

For the first 12 minutes of last night's Game 2 against the Cavaliers, the Celtics looked like a foreign team to the sellout Garden crowd. For the next 36, the Celtics became the familiar crew that has given the Boston faithful nothing but defensive dominance over the first six home games of the playoffs. The Celtics held the Cavaliers to just two baskets in the second quarter and 27 points between the second and third combined as they rebounded from a painful start for an 89-73 victory and 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinals.

Now comes the hard part, or will it be different this time? The Celtics are only days removed from their last 2-0 series lead and somehow, mysteriously, that one went the max. Last night, they slapped the Cavaliers up and down the floor, going up in the series 2-0 with a 89-73 breeze. After their O-For-Atlanta debacle, maybe the Celtics just might settle for a split in Cleveland, with the intention of setting up a game on the parquet that could plop them into the Eastern Conference finals next Wednesday.

In a matchup of hard-throwing right-handers, Boston's Josh Beckett got the best of Detroit's struggling ace, Justin Verlander. And Beckett reached a milestone along the way, too. Beckett had eight strikeouts, including the 1,000th of his career, to lead the Boston Red Sox to a 5-1 win over the Detroit Tigers.

It's kind of like Maine. As in, ``as Maine goes, so goes the nation.'' That's how the Cleveland Cavaliers feel about LeBron James. As James goes, so go the Cavs? Where's that getting the underdogs in the Eastern Conference Semifinals?