Tonight's the night. Not the night to see if the Bruins can follow up Tuesday's important victory at Carolina. People want to see what, if anything, the Bruins will do about star center Marc Savard suffering a potentially season-ending concussion the last time they faced the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Amid all the spectacular memories Bentley senior guard Jason Westrol has had in a Falcon uniform, one of the few true regrets happened last year when his team blew an 18-point lead in losing the Division II East Regional final against C.W. Post. Sensing painful history starting to simmer, he singlehandedly made sure it didn't repeat, as he took over in the second half of last night's 81-69 triumph against the University of Philadelphia in the D-II East title game at Stonehill College.
From the Rolodex of the mind ... Here's something that nobody saw coming: the Knicks going into Dallas and snapping the Mavericks' 13-game winning streak, and doing it up big, 128-94. Ex-Celtic Bill Walker had 16 of his 23 points in the fourth quarter and was 5-for-8 on 3-pointers for the game. Feel free to insert the Bob Lobel bromide, "Why can't we get players like that?"
Some things we knew about Celtics newcomers Nate Robinson and Michael Finley. Some things have already been a bit surprising.
Josh Beckett and John Lackey are both off to strong starts in spring training, but there's a bog difference. Lackey will begin the season as the recipient of the five-year, $82.5 million contract that the Red Sox gave him to move over the winter, while Beckett will be playing under the final year of a four-year deal worth $40 million - this season under a $10 million club option.
You can always take out your driver's license to identify yourself. But what if you're on a basketball team, with so many moveable parts, all of them required to play in sync to be successful over the long haul? Sometimes that's a little trickier, a team trying to identify itself. It takes time. The players may have their names sewn on the backs of their jerseys, but it's not identification enough.
There are 241 games left in the 2009-2010 NHL season, which ends one month from today.
As the games and minutes pile up, Kevin Garnett has lost some athleticism but is learning to make up for it with guile.
Maybe you don't think they're title-bound, particularly. You have doubts, with some substantiating evidence. The Celtics, Bruins and Red Sox won't win a championship this year, and neither will the Patriots next season. The first decade of the new millennium was rich in stardust, full of confetti and glorified with duck boat parades. Six championships. Our cup runneth over (except Stanley's).The view has changed.
If the Celtics had a plausible explanation for what happened to them against one of the worst teams in NBA history yesterday at the TD Garden, they weren't sharing it after the game. If they can't figure one out, it means things are even worse than they appeared as the supposed NBA title contenders shuffled off the court with heads down and pride battered following a 104-96 loss to the laughingstock Nets.
