No Comparison

It's one of the few sports where the argument is even valid.  Is college basketball better than professional basketball?  It's one of those questions which nobody seems to agree on.  You'll be thinking "of course college is better"  and you assume most other people do too.  But then you hear some people saying the opposite, and you wonder how it's possible.  Here's why NCAA Basketball is better than NBA Basketball.

-- Teamwork:  In the NBA, too many teams are focused on one or two superstar players.  Take the Cleveland Cavaliers before Lebron's departure.  Do you think anybody outside of Cleveland can name a player who was on that team besides James?  And after Lebron made his grand exit, the Cavs went from being a playoff team to one of the worst teams in basketball.  You won't find any team in College Basketball so centered on one or two players.  Pitt coach Jamie Dixon uses a ten-man rotation.  ten.  In Pitt's blowout win over DePaul, 5 players had double digits in points, and every player on the team had more than one rebound and more than one assist.

-- Parity:  No matchup is safe.  Anybody who has witnessed the upset of a top 5 ranked team by an unranked team knows that this is one of the most exciting moments in sports.

Playoffs:  This one is obvious.  the NCAA's 65 team March Madness tournament is like nothing else in sports.  You get the excitement, school spirit, and upsets of college basketball, all day-every day for a whole month.

Game atmosphere:  This one's a no-brainer.  NBA crowds simply do not compare to college student sections.  Take Pitt's Oakland Zoo.  You've got 1100 fans (literally) jumping up and down, screaming through the entire game; Constantly taunting the other teams players and exploding with every big play of their own.  In the NBA, you have people who rarely rise out of their seats, and applaud after 3 point shots.

It's Time To Pray

The Penguins enjoyed a solid victory over the Florida Panthers Friday night.  They saw a brilliant performance from Marc-Andre Fleury.  They got a tough, game-tying goal from Chris Kunitz.  They got third period goals from Matt Niskanen and Dustin Jeffrey.  But all of that is out the window, and all eyes are on Evgeni Malkin and his apparent injury.

At around the four minute mark of the third period, Malkin slid into the boards back-first.  That caused his neck to snap back and his head to hit the boards.  Uh oh.  Of all the players, it had to be Malkin.  Just imagine the riots that would have ensued if it had been Crosby.

He doesn't officially have a concussion, but will be re-evaluated on Saturday.  This would be a huge blow to the team.  It would force Brandon Sutter to center a line with James Neal.  James Neal has no chemistry with Sutter, which would probably severely damage Neal's production, which we saw in the 2011 season.

It's time to pray.

Here's a video of the incident

UNINTENTIONAL

"It's Matt Cooke, what else do I need to say?"

"You know who was involved. That's how it is"

"The cat's out of the bag.  You know what's up"

"Why would you hit a player like that?"

These are all quotes heard in the Ottawa Senators' locker room after their 4-2 loss in Pittsburgh.  During the game there was a very unfortunate incident involving Matt Cooke and Ottawa star player Eric Karlsson.  Here is the cut-and-dry walkthrough of what happened (and why it was really unintentional):

1.  Cooke went into the corner with Karlsson to try to get the puck from him.

2. Cooke pins Karlsson against the boards (completely legal).

3.  Cooke turns his head to the other way.  In addition, Cooke's left arm comes up to further block his           own vision.  Cooke had absolutely NO WAY OF SEEING Karlsson during this next portion of the play.

4.  Cooke's foot comes up inadvertently due to some shift of balance or something of that nature.

5.  Cooke's foot comes down on Karlsson's achilles, severing it.

There is no way Cooke could have known where his foot was going, because he had NO WAY OF SEEING anything to that side of him.

I'm sorry, Ottawa.  It sucks.  But he didn't mean to do it.  And, for the record, it IS possible to win without your two best players.  Just ask Pittsburgh.

Devils 3, Pens 1

A perfect storm came together tonight at Consol Energy Center.  Not the kind that the 18,658 had been hoping for (They beat the attendance record by ONE person.  Pretty sure it was me).  It was a perfect storm of poor play by the Penguins and impressive play by the Devils.

To start, Devils' goaltender Johan Hedberg (the moose) played totally lights out.  The Pens got a few great chances in the first period, but Hedberg made even better saves.  He ended up shutting down (in part) a Penguins comeback attempt.

The Devils are known best for their defense.  Nobody goes to a Devils game thinking "Gee, I hope we get to see that explosive offense".  The Devils like to get a lead in a game, and then lock it down defensively.  They got a chance to do that today, when the Penguins spotted them a three goal lead towards the end of the second period.  They promptly went into shutdown mode, and it paid off.  The Pens got a goal just 14 seconds into the third period, but that was it.

The Devils played very well, but the Penguins played an extremely poor game as well.  There seemed to be a lack of hustle or urgency.  They would dump the puck in repeatedly, and seem to be slow to get in after it.  They must be tired, however, as they have played six games in the past nine days.  They were thoroughly unimpressive on offense.  They always went back to the same strategy of having a defender, who was deep in his own zone, sling the puck hard to a player who was guarded near the other end of the neutral zone.  It worked well under a quarter of the time.  When they did get into the offensive zone, they always swung to the outside and sometimes turned it over.  Sometimes a player would be driving to the net, and they would pass it to the outside only for that player to take the unscreened, long range, outside shot which would be saved effortlessly.  

Pens 4, Islanders 2

The Penguins got some revenge tuesday night in Long Island.  They avenged last weeks ugly 4-1 loss to the Islanders on home ice.

Marc-Andre Fleury was the Penguins MVP tonight.  by far.  He was solid all night, and made at least two jaw dropping saves; One of them a signature MAF cartwheel getting the glove on the puck, and the other a great save with the left pad coming across the crease.

The Penguins were undisciplined tonight, no excuses.  They gave the Isles 7 power play chances.  I did however have a problem with the officiating .  See, the way NHL refs call penalties is very strange.  They sometimes purposely ignore penalties, either because that team has gotten called a lot already in that game, or they simply aren't feeling it.  Also, NHL refs frequently call penalties that really shouldn't be called.  This is the part I really hate.  They do this to "even-up" on other penalties in the game.  If one team gets a 5-on-3 power play chance, look for the other team to get some cheap calls going their way.  The problem in this game was the Penguins had 5 penalties called on them in the second period.  None of them had more than 2:00 between them.  My point is, if the refs are going to continue to use their arbitrary penalty calling style, they at least have to be unbiased and even.

Fortunately, the Penguins' penalty kill came up HUGE.  Brooks Orpik, Paul Martin, and Brandon Sutter were all standouts in their defensive play.  Only once or twice did the Isles get a high quality chance on the power play (of which they had 7).  Maybe they should stop putting Sidney Crosby out there for the face-off.  Joe Vitale can do the same thing at the same success rate.