Sports News Thursday

College basketball is in full swing (getting ready for March Madness)

• First, Cal Basketball
• The men’s team ends season with a loss against Stanford :( , but hopefully come the Pac-12 tournament, we can step it up and get some good wins, which will help us with our March Madness bid
• On the other hand, the women’s team continues DOMINATION of the Pac-12. Congrats to the Cal Women’s Basketball team on being Pac-12 co-champs and being bumped up a spot in national ranking (from #6 to #5)!!!!!! *
• #GOBEARS
• Now, the rest of the college basketball world
• the best part of college basketball are the upsets :)
• many ranked teams losing recently
• I’m pretty sure the stock for the University of Miami is really starting plummet after another loss
• Georgetown, Oklahoma State lose also
• Indiana lost to Ohio State
• Other than that, most of the top ranked teams are pretty steady as of right now, but we’ll see what happens when the conference tournaments begin
• for women’s college basketball
• it’s pretty obvious who will go really far in the March Madness tournament (UConn, Baylor, Notre Dame), but I think the fourth spot could go to several potential schools. I’m hoping Cal can make a run and take off either Stanford or Duke, and take that fourth spot in the Final Four.

*since I’m all about girl power, I will probably post about women’s sports often, hopefully raising some awareness of how badass some of these athletes and teams are. They deserve some type of recognition, even if it’s on some random blog.

The NBA standings are getting interesting

• mainly because the Lakers* are beginning to play some good basketball — it seems like the players are beginning to click, figuring out their roles (mainly Kobe turning into a prime distributor to add on to his scoring and defending)
• Lakers will probably go to the playoffs if they keep playing like they have been lately — knocking off the Jazz, but maybe not quite the Rockets
• The Heat just keep winning — finding various ways to win, with different players always stepping up
• also, Lebron is playing some really great basketball, you’d have to be blind to not see that; i wasn’t a fan when he decided to show The Decision, but I’ve definitely gained a lot of respect for him the past two years

*I am not a Laker/Kobe fan
**Go Dwyane Wade, Steph Curry, Jrue Holiday, and Kevin Durant

Soccer

• U.S. Women’s National team defeated Iceland in their first match of the Algarve Cup with goals scored by Rachel Buehler, Shannon Boxx, and Abby Wambach.
• Rachel Buehler (who is actually from the same town that I grew up in, she also went to the same high school as me in San Diego — TPHS) received her 100th cap at the game, and topped the milestone off with a goal (see here)- it’s even more special since she is a defender.
• Shannon Boxx proved that she’s still got it, even as one of the few veterans on the team (link)
• Also, Abby Wambach became one goal closer (thanks to an awesome assist from Alex Morgan) (link) to tying Mia Hamm’s team record of 158 goals. #chasingmia
• Way to go, ladies!
• MLS season kicked off a couple weeks ago!

Football (American)

• I’m just looking forward to finding out where Alex Smith is going to go
• And what the Chargers are going to potentially look like next season
• And where Cal football players will play (if they are drafted)
• LOL the Redskins hired AJ Smith (former Chargers GM) as senior executive — good luck to the Redskins, they’ll need it if they have AJ Smith on their team; AJ Smith was horrible when he was with the Chargers
• and LOL the 49ers released David Akers, as they should because he kinda sorta really sucked — missed many critical field goals throughout the season