Jazz blow out Warriors; KG upset in Boston

The Utah Jazz defeated the Golden State Warriors 128-104 tonight in Salt Lake City. The game was a total beat down that was never in doubt. It was good to see the Jazz beat a team like the Warriors (21-53) the way that they should beat them. After a close win on Monday against the Knicks (26-48 and who for whatever reason always seem to play the Jazz close), it was nice to see a blowout against an inferior team. The Jazz next play at the Lakers on Friday at 8:30 p.m. MT on ESPN, espn360.com and FSN-Utah. It should be a good measuring stick game for how they sit in terms of the playoff race. The Jazz (50-26) remained a half-game behind Dallas (50-25) for second place in the Western Conference as the Mavericks won at Memphis (38-36) in overtime. The Jazz remain in third place in front of Phoenix (49-26) and Denver (48-27).

Also in the NBA tonight, this quote was delivered from Celtics forward Kevin Garnett with reference Thunder forward Kevin Durant: "I thought we were playing Michael f------ Jordan the way he was getting the whistle. Durant d--- near shot more free throws than our whole team." Durant attempted 15 free throws while the entire Boston team attempted 17 in Oklahoma City's 109-104 win in Boston. Garnett has a point, too. Players who are deemed at the superstar level often get preferential treatment from the officials whether it's Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, etc. This whole trend really took off in force during Michael Jordan's day, who although clearly a great player, definitely benefitted from numerous questionable calls. To be fair I didn't watch this game, but the stats do tell a story to a degree and I already think the NBA is by far the most poorly officiated of the four major sports leagues (although the umpires in baseball's postseason last year have narrowed the gap). Boston is 47-27 and currently in fourth place in the Eastern Conference; Oklahoma City is 46-28 and in sixth place out west.

In college hoops VCU beat Saint Louis 71-65 to win the College Basketball Invitational (CBI) by taking the championship series 2-0.

Funny SF Giants incident

Here's a funny thing I found from the San Francisco Chronicle's website sfgate.com. Apparently Giants pitcher Jeremy Affeldt mistook Buster Posey for Travis Ishikawa at first base. Posey is 6'1", from Georgia and right handed while Ishikawa is 6'3", of Japanese descent and is left-handed and was playing in left field during this particular spring training game. Pictured from left to right are Ishikawa, Posey and Affeldt. Pretty funny stuff if you ask me. Go Giants!

Possible NCAA Tournament expansion

Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said that he thought expansion of the NCAA Tournament from 65 to 96 teams is "probable." I think that expansion is a terrible idea. The Tournament has the right amount of teams as is. Expansion to 96 teams would significantly water-down the field and reduce the amount of excitement as well as making this a less special even than it is now. Teams that don't have great regular seasons would be included, we'd be arguing over teams with seasons like North Carolina and St. John's getting included in the field this year, when neither was deserving of admission. The regular season would lose a lot of its meaning as teams from BCS conferences may have to merely finish above .500 to be considered -- which is not the resume of a team that had a really good year. The only thing that could be a positive in my eyes is giving all the regular season champions an automatic bid as well as conference tournament champions, but this is by far outweighed by the negatives. I'm really hoping this expansion doesn't happen, but with the possibility of increased revenue with more teams being involved, my guess is that it will.

Late missed call dooms Rhode Island

I know I said I wasn't going to focus too much on the other tournaments in my last post, but I'm going to here. First, Missouri State beat Pacific to win the collegeinsider.com Tournament. In the CBI finals, VCU holds a one game to none lead in the best of three series with Game 2 Wednesday night. And in the NIT semifinals Tuesday, Dayton knocked off Ole Miss and North Carolina beat Rhode Island 68-67 in overtime. Rhode Island's Lamonte Ulmer had the ball with a chance to win for URI in overtime but was tripped and lost control of the ball. A foul should have been called which could have allowed the Rams to win the game. It's unfortunate that a game, even an NIT game was essentially decided by a missed call. Dayton (24-12, 8-8 Atlantic Ten) takes on North Carolina (20-16, 5-11 ACC) for the NIT Title (the 2nd most prestigous of the postseason tournaments) on Thursday at 5 p.m. Mountain Time. The game will be available on ESPN and espn360.com.

Brown, three others leave Runnin' Utes

Four underclassmen have elected to transfer from the University of Utah basketball program in the last week or so: Carlon Brown, Chris Hines, Matt Read and Jordan Cyphers. I have figured for a while that Cyphers would transfer since he didn't play at all the last 12 games or so of the season, even in blowouts. I liked his shot and felt he could have contributed if given more of a chance, but there must have been some sort of rift with the coaching staff that prevented him from playing. Read isn't too big of a surprise either, he didn't log very many minutes. I'm a little disappointed about Hines since he was starting to show promise toward the end of the year. I'm quite surprised that Brown, our leading scorer and best player has decided to transfer. It's a tough blow. He did seem unhappy with Coach Jim Boylen at times this year, and at times seemed to try to do too much so maybe him leaving will help improve team chemistry. I feel like I'm stretching a bit on that one, though. I didn't like that Boylen didn't have him starting much the second half of the season. It just seemed silly to me. I thought he was our best player. You should start the game with your best players on the floor. I don't know if this factored in, but it certainly didn't help persuade Brown to stick around for another year. Brown said "I appreciate the chance to be a Ute, but I think my playing style and skill set may fit better in another situation." I'll miss him around here, he was the one guy I trusted with the ball down the stretch in games, I remember a couple of huge clutch shots to tie games in the waning moments the last two years: a leaning bank shot last year at Utah State and a three this year at home vs. New Mexico. It'll be interesting to see how Coach Boylen does in recruiting. I think that will have a big impact on how the team does next year as well as how long Boylen himself sticks around. The final home game of the season against BYU was just embarassing, it was the worst performance I've ever witnessed from a Utah basketball team. Much more of that and a change will have to be made. But I sure hope next year will be a better one and I'm trying to be optimistic. We'll see what happens.

Butler in the Final Four

So I've been following the NCAA Tournament the last few weeks pretty religiously. I love college basketball so much that I even printed out brackets for the lesser tournaments: the NIT, the CBI, and the collegeinsider.com Tournament. But I won't bore you with details of those tournaments (the NIT is plenty, we don't need two even more watered-down fields with teams that can fight to be the 98th best team in the country). I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games here in Salt Lake City this past weekend. It was a pretty penny for a poor college student to attend, but I figured that there aren't always chances to see games this deep in the Tournament right here in my backyard. Butler upsetting Syracuse on Thursday was an awesome game, but somehow that paled in comparison to the Xavier-Kansas State game later that night. Xavier pulled even at the end of regulation by making three free throws when K-State fouled them on a three and forced double-overtime with an insanely deep three by Jordan Crawford. Unfortunately K-State won. Yesterday's game was really cool, though, with Butler holding off a late Wildcats rally and advancing to the Final Four in their home city of Indianapolis. Gordon Hayward really impressed me. He was solid on both ends of the floor and made some big shots throughout. He had a sick crossover in the first half followed by a three-pointer that was just amazing. Butler doesn't have all the flashy names and stuff, but it was very evident to me that they play hard. I thought their defense on Kansas State's dynamic guard tandem of Jacob Pullen and Denis Clemente was just terrific -- neither of them really had much room to breathe. Some blame the late double overtime game on Thursday for the K-State Saturday letdown, but not me. Butler clearly had solid film study and knew when and where these guys were coming off screens and hounded them all afternoon. And it's really cool that a so-called mid-major is now in the Final Four. These schools play basketball, too, and in the case of Butler, do so at a very high level. This was no fluke. These guys are the real deal as evidenced by them beating a 1 and 2 seed in consecutive games. I wouldn't be surprised to see them win a game or two next weekend either. And if any of you ever get a chance to attend a big-time sporting even like this, I would highly recommend it. The atmosphere was electric all weekend at the Energy Solutions Arena (aka the Delta Center) and the fans were treated to three outstanding games. Definitely worth the money and it's something I'll remember for a long time.

Welcome

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my sports blog! My name is Derek Payne (aka D-Pay), I'm in my 20s, live in Salt Lake City and I'm a senior at the University of Utah. I'm a huge sports fan. Not surprisingly, my favorite college team is the University of Utah Utes. I go to all the games and usually enjoy them, although basketball season was a tough one this year. Baseball is my favorite sport and my favorite team is the San Francisco Giants. For the NBA, the Utah Jazz is my favorite, in the NHL it's the Toronto Maple Leafs and for the NFL it's the Philadelphia Eagles. I'll try and be fair with my sports blogging, though it is extremely likely that there will be much more content regarding my favorite teams. Hope you enjoy reading my future posts. Feel free to peruse and comment if you feel so inclined. I'll try to respond to comments, but keep in mind that I'll be more likely to respond to ones that are polite and have fact-based arguments. Depending on the number of posts and the demands of my schedule I may not always have time to respond to all comments. Welcome everyone!