Random Thoughts from the world of sports

I've been completely swamped with work and life lately. Going on vacation for four days really gets in the way. Instead of looking way back and finishing my thoughts on the Big Ten weekend, I'm just going to touch on some highlights from sports and entertainment from the last week or so. Just some random thoughts in not particular order.

- One of the best parts of going to the Big Ten Tournament is the people we meet and see year after year. There are two older guys that sat in front of us the first year of the tournament. One a Wisconsin fan, one a Michigan State fan. We see them every year and it's always good to catch-up. This year we met a couple from Champaign, IL that were Ohio State fans. We drank a couple beers with them one day and then ran into them the next. As we were leaving Sunday, he gave me his business card and promised to buy me dinner if I was ever in Champaign for any reason (even if it was with a bunch of Spartans for a football game). Great guy. Saturday night we met a guy and his son at the bar. The dad was almost the same age as my dad and his son was about my age. Turns out my dad and the other guy had very similar life experiences. We ended up talking with them (and the guy's other son) for close to 3 hours after we stopped in the bar for "one last beer." Since then I've traded multiple texts and have become facebook friends with one of the sons. Good times for all and definitely people we'll look forward to seeing again next year, if not sooner.

- The first day of the NCAA tournament was unbelievable. The first day had more excitement than some first weekends. The number of close games were unbelievable and I've never been so thankful for my internet connection at work. CBS and the NCAA have teamed up to stream every game across the internet in real time. There were actually times Friday and Saturday night when the internet stream was ahead of my cable at home. To add to that, there were three games that went into overtime the first day. 8 other games were decided by less than 10 points. That doesn't even include 14th seed Ohio blowing out 3rd seed Georgetown. It was an unbelievable day of basketball. There was no way the rest of the weekend could top the first day, but it sure came close.

- The Big Ten is again proving why they're one of the top conferences in the country. They have three teams in the sweet 16, more than any other conference. Everyone spent the year talking about how great the Big 12 and the Big East were this year. Even though both conferences had more teams in the tournament, they each have two teams left, while the Big Ten sits with 3.

- Injuries are playing a major role and teams are finding ways to get through them. Purdue lost the heart and soul of their team when Robbie Hummel went down for the year with a knee injury the last week of the regular season. While they had lots of talent around Hummel, he was the guy they always counted on for a big shot or a big rebound at key moments of the game. While E'Twaun Moore and JaJuan Johnson have been good all year, they've stepped it up even more during the NCAA tournament. On top of that, Chris Kramer, once considered to be only a defensive stopper for the Boilermakers, has proven he has some offensive ability as he's picked up some of the slack from Hummel being out. Kramer has averaged 13.5 points per game, more than double his regular season average, and he made the game winning shot, in overtime, to get Purdue to the sweet sixteen.

- While speaking of injuries, the discussion should start and end with the Michigan State Spartans. Late in a very physical game in the opening around against New Mexico State, Chris Allen went down with what is described as an injury to the arch of his foot. Come the second round, the Spartans knew they needed a big game from much-maligned junior Durrell Summers. Summers has often times found himself in Tom Izzo's dog-house this year. He's struggled to be consistent on both ends of the floor and when he's not scoring, his defense seems to struggle. If you're not going to score, you have to play defense for Izzo. If you don't play defense, you're going to find yourself on the bench, and that's exactly where Summers has spent a lot of time late this year. Then came the NCAA tournament. He started the game against New Mexico State on fire, scoring 10 of MSU's first 12 points, helping the Spartans jump out to a big first half lead. In their second game of the tournament, Summers was on a mission. Summers was 10-14 over, including 6-8 from three point range, on his way to a season high 26 points. In a game when Kalin Lucas went down with a torn Achillies tendon, Summers hit big shot after big shot. It was also a game where Allen tried to come back, but only played 4 minutes of the game. While everyone will forever remember Korie Lucious' shot to win the game, they never would have had that opportunity without the play of Summers in the first 39 minutes of the game.

- Draymond Green is a complete beast. The competitive drive he has rivals anyone who has ever played at MSU, and I include Mateen Cleaves in that discussion. There are times that I feel his emotions get the best of him if MSU is losing, I think he will continue to mature and put it to good use. He also has an aggressive streak. He will not be pushed around by anyone and he's not afraid to mix it up a little. There might even be times where he should use this more to his advantage because he will intimidate some people. Coach Izzo sees his leadership qualities. Izzo named him a co-captain of this team in the middle of the season when it seemed we were lacking some leadership. That allowed the already outspoken Green to speak without stepping on anyone's toes. As a captain, it's just job to bring the troops together when times are tough. On top of that, he wants the ball in his hands when it matters most. With 20 seconds left in the game against Maryland, down one, Green hit an 18 foot jumper from the wing. Then, after Maryland went back down and scored to retake the lead, Green almost demanded the ball be inbounded to him. Here's a guy, who at 6'6" and 235 lbs, brought the ball up the court and had the frame of mind to not be the hero, but to pass to a wide open Korie Lucious for the game winning three (we'll just ignore the fact that he almost hit Delvon Roe in the head with that pass). The guy is a gamer who wants the ball in crunch time. You don't see that often in college sports, but I think Green is going to be a special player for MSU (if he's not already).

- Delvon Roe and Korie Lucious have the two coolest tattoos on the MSU basketball team (At least that I've seen). Roe has a "Gruff Sparty" on his upper arm. As if that wasn't cool enough, the fact that he got it before he even enrolled at MSU makes it even better. The guy wants to be a Spartan and is proud of it. Not bad for a guy from Ohio. As for Lucious, he's sticking to his Milwaukee roots. Lucious has the old Milwaukee Brewers logo (the one with an "m" and "b" blended together to look like a baseball glove) tattoo. On top of that, after hitting the game winning shot, he was in the stands later wearing an old school Brewers hat. Awesome.

- The Detroit Red Wings are playing some of the best hockey they've played all year. They're 7-2-1 in their last 10 games and are solidly in the playoffs now. With 10 games left to play, they're in 8th place in the West, two points behind 7th place Colorado and 4 points ahead of 9th place Calgary. They're also 4 points behind 6th place Nashville, but Nashville has played one more game at this point. On top of the playoff position, there have been a couple games lately to prove that the Wings have a lot of fight in them. Against Edmonton last week, they were down 1 in the final minute of the game, but Brian Rafalski found room to score from in close with 0.2 seconds left on the clock to force overtime and guarantee a point for the Wings. The next night at Vancouver, with overtime winding down, Henrik Zetterberg scored with 1 second left to win the game before going to a shootout. For anyone that's seen the Wings in a shootout this year, it's huge that they won the game without having to go to a shootout. Finally, you have last night's game between the Wings and Pittsburgh. Not only did the Wings win the game 3-1 (Zetterberg is still hot having 2 more goals last night), but they managed to frustrate Sidney Crosby all night long. All his frustration came out at the end of the game when he gave Zetterberg a couple of cheap cross checks at the final buzzer. Not only did Zetterberg fight back, but goalie Jimmy Howard (who I can't say enough about) was the first one to jump in and defend Z. Most goalies would pull away from that situation, but you can see how much Howard cares about this team. I was glad to see him go after Crosby and hopefully people around the league will see Crosby for the whiner he is with his actions at the end of last night's game. That's just not how a star would behave. You'd never see Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Steve Yzerman, or any of the star players from the last 10 years be that much of an idiot at the end of a regular season game.