Vancouver 5, Boston 4 (SO)

 

Well, it had to happen sooner or later - the Bruins suffer their first OT loss.

Tied 4-4, Boston went into OT behind four goals by Geekie, Zacha, Jeannot, and Peeke, but no one scored in the OT period. After a dozen shots on goal in the shoot out, the Canucks finally managed to get one in, and Geekie's final shot was stopped. 

The Bruins are now 20-15-1 with 41 points, fourth in their division. They play again tomorrow (7:00 pm) against Ottawa (17-13-4).  

 

Celtics 112, Raptors 96

 

Hah! No Brown, no problem! The Celtics beat the Raptors in Toronto without Jaylen (non-covid illness) behind Pritchard's 33 points and 10 assists. Garza and Gonzalez double doubled as well, with Garza scoring 12 points and 10 rebounds and Gonzalez scoring 10 points and 10 rebounds. Hugo got some serious minutes off the bench tonight, playing for 27:49, and the team was an astonishing +33 when he was in the game. I'd also like to point out that Boston out-rebounded Toronto 55-37 in this win (see what happens when you rebound?). Formula for winning: Gonzalez + Rebounding = Success!

That's two in a row for the Celtics and they're back in second place, 2½ back from the Knicks.

The go back home for one more game before Christmas, and for their holiday gift they get a Monday night match against the Pacers (6-21).  

  

CFP First Round: Oregon vs. James Madison

 

To no one's surprise, Ole Miss decisively beat Tulane, 41-10, giving me my first consecutive pair of wins this season and setting up the Rebels-Bulldogs rematch next week. My record "improves" to 4-6. Also and for the record, teams with interim head coaches are now 1-3 on the season.  

The outcome of tonight's Ducks vs Dukes game is as inevitable as was the Ole Miss takedown of Tulane. No. 5 Oregon (11-1) will beat No. 24 James Madison (12-2), will cover the 21½-point spread, and will advance to face Texas Tech in the quarterfinals, so I took the Ducks over the Dukes. 

Any questions?

 

CFP First Round: Ole Miss vs. Tulane

 

It looks like my pick was correct and Miami will be beat ATM in the early game today - they're up, 10-3, with 1:44 left in the game, but anything can happen. It's a windy day in College Station, and there's been few long passes and four missed field goals. But should the Hurricanes hold on, I'll finally break my three-game losing streak and improve to 3-6. Still disappointing, though. 

Meanwhile, No. 6 Ole Miss (11-1) will win this game. They're 17½-point favorites but I'm still picking them to beat the spread. No. 20 Tulane (11-2) is only in the CFP as the fourth conference champion (AAC) and they've already lost to Ole Miss, 45-10, during the regular season. 

My only trepidation, of course, is Lane Kiffen. The Rebels head coach left Ole Miss to coach over at LSU, and teams with interim HCs are 0-3 so far this bowl season. Tulane's HC, Jon Sumrall, will be with the team today, although he's accepted the job at Florida and will be leaving after the postseason (i.e., after this game).     

The winner will face Georgia in the quarterfinals. Georgia's already played - and beaten - Ole Miss earlier this season, 43-35, in Athens, so after facing Alabama in both the regular season and the SEC Championship, the semifinal will be the Dawgs' second rematch game of the season. It will also be the Rebels' second rematch. Has that ever happened before - two teams facing each other a second time both playing in their second rematch of the year? I doubt it. Rematches are rare as it is, and it's ever rarer for a team to have two rematches in one season, but I sincerely doubt that second rematch has ever been between teams that both already have one previous rematch under their belts. History, man, history.

But that's still off in the future and hasn't happened yet. Ole Miss still needs to get past Tulane today.to get to the Bulldogs and the semifinal.

CFP First Round: Miami vs. Texas A&M

Yesterday morning, still freshly buzzed from my previous night's Arkansas State-over-Missouri State win, I wistfully mused that I might go 3-0 on my Friday picks and improve my season record to 5-3. As it turned out, I went 0-3 and my record plummeted to a shameful 2-6.

I suck at this.

Last night, after Oklahoma ran out to a dominating, 17-0, early lead over Alabama, the Tide finally woke up, scored 17 points of their own, and remined everyone why the Sooners are called "Choke-lahoma" with a 34-24 win. Not only do I take another loss with my picks, but the Crimson Tide successfully exploited their "Alabama exception" and advanced in the very playoffs they don't really deserve to be in anyway. At least they didn't provide those plaintive Notre Dame fans a "see, I told you so" and an "it should have been us in that game" opportunity. My only consolation is Alabama will lose in the next round against Indiana. 

Also, fuck Choke-lahoma. They've been fucking me up in the bowls for years now. They lose every year I pick them, and then they win every year I pick against them. You had ONE JOB, Sooners - to beat Alabama like Georgia did in the SEC title game and prove their 10-3 program doesn't belong in the CFP, and you couldn't even do that. You're a disgrace to the Southeastern Conference and I never even wanted you in there to begin with!

Also, the haters are already saying that the SEC is only 1-1 in the postseason, which is true but also ignores the fact that no other conference has beaten the SEC yet.

That may change in the next game. Today, the No. 7 Texas A&M Aggies (11-1) of the SEC will play the No. 10 Miami Hurricanes (10-2) of the ACC. The Aggies are favored by four. However, A&M are from the sorry-ass state of Texas - it's right up there in their name, they don't even try to hide it - and Texas teams fairly reliably lose when they play out of state. Also, Miami has ex-Georgia Bulldog QB Carson Beck, and although he still throws those annoying interceptions, he's still got some dawg in him. I'm taking Miami as four-point underdogs.

ATM went undefeated during the regular season until their final game against rival Texas, but they needed a miracle comeback to beat unranked South Carolina and only three of their wins were against ranked teams - No. 20 LSU, No. 22 Missouri, and, ahem, No. 8 Notre Dame. The Hurricanes beat Notre Dame, too (who hasn't, lol), as well as South Florida and Florida State, both of whom were No. 18 at the time of the games, and No. 22 Pittsburgh. However, they inexplicably lost to unranked Louisville and SMU (a Texas team), too, so there's that.  

There are no significant opt-outs (this isn't the Pop Tarts Bowl), but ATM's offensive coordinator has left to take a job at Kansas State and their defensive coordinator has left for Kentucky. Interim coordinators will fill in and these aren't head coach vacancies, but teams with interim HCs have gone 0-3 so far this bowl season.

I'm taking Miami because I still have some sentimental fondness for Carson Beck and a deep-seated contempt for all teams Texas. Regardless of who wins, either team will lose in the next round against Ohio State.

Kick-off's at high noon.

Celtics 129, Heat 116

 

The Celtics didn't have one single underperforming quarter tonight and they matched their opponents in three-pointers and rebounds, and it won them the game! Mr. White had 33 points with 9-14 three-point shooting and Mr. Brown had 30 points with 2 of 4 from downtown.

See? That's how you win in the NBA.

Celtics play tomorrow night up in Toronto (7:00 pm). Let's win that one, too!

CFP First Round: Alabama vs. Oklahoma

 

Memphis, you let me down. Here I thought we had an understanding - I picked you three years in a row but now you go and disappoint me, losing to NC State, 31-7, in the Gasparilla Bowl. My picks are now 2-5 on the season. I'm going to have to seriously rethink our relationship.  

As for tonight's First-Round Playoff game between the No. 8 Oklahoma Sooners (10-2) and the No. 9 Alabama Crimson Tide (10-3), at last!, some real football and hot SEC-on-SEC action. However, I loathe (hate, despise, abhor) both of these teams, although choosing which one to cheer for was surprisingly easy this year.

First of all, Notre Dame fans, whiny little bitches that they are, do have a legitimate beef that they should have been in the 12-team CFP this year. But it's not Miami that kept them out as per their complaint - the Hurricanes deserved a playoff berth, too. No, it's the Alabama Crimson Tide that doesn't belong there.

On Week 15, at the end of the regular season, Alabama, Notre Dame, BYU, and Miami were ranked numbers 9, 10, 11, and 12, respectively. Notre Dame and Miami were idle that week, but No. 9 Alabama played No. 3 Georgia for the SEC championship. Alabama got blown out, 28-7, and finished the game with -3 rushing yards. 

But the CFP Selection Committee, rather than drop Alabama down in the rankings for their loss, kept them at No. 9 and leap-frogged Miami from No. 12 to No. 10, and dropped Notre Dame from 10 to No. 11. Both teams were idle that week, and with the automatic bowl bids in the playoff seeding, the Irish were excluded from the postseason.

For the record, I can't stand Notre Dame - I hate them even more than I hate Alabama and Oklahoma - but still, there's no denying they got screwed. With Alabama's loss (BYU lost that week, too), the Week 15 rankings of Alabama-Notre Dame-BYU-Miami should have become Notre Dame-Miami-Alabama-BYU in the Week 16 final rankings, with Alabama the odd team out in the seedings. 

The Steering Committee (and Alabama backers) claimed that a loss in a conference championship game shouldn't count against a team in the final rankings. That makes no sense - what better indication is there of how well a team plays against elite competition that the conference championship games? And if they don't count against a team, why was BYU dropped from No. 11 to 12, and why did Ohio State drop from No. 1 to 2 after losing to Indiana in the Big10 championship?  

No, it's really just another Alabama exception rule - losses don't count against Alabama in conference championship games, but they do against everyone else. And that's why it's easy for me to choose to cheer for Oklahoma in this game - the Tide doesn't belong here. And even though I don't like them, Notre Dame does (although God knows there's more than enough unwritten "Notre Dame exception" rules to go around).

As stated above, I don't like Oklahoma either, but at least "Choke-lahoma" fairly reliably beats Texas teams when those teams dare to cross the Red River and play out-of-state teams. Also, as everyone knows, this is a rematch game and the Sooners beat the Tide, 23-21, earlier this season. Even though it's hard to beat any team twice, and 'Bama had the advantage of a revenge factor working for them, I still won't be cheering for them in this game.  

The Sooners are 1½-point favorites in this game. This actually should be the only first-round playoff game that's actually competitive - Texas A&M-Miami  tomorrow might be interesting too, but the other two games have 17½- and 21½-point spreads.

The winner of this game will go on to lose to Indiana next week.

Gasparilla Bowl: NC State vs. Memphis

Jesus fucking Christ, Kennesaw State! You give up a TD on the kick-off return on the first play of the game, and then proceed to fall behind 34-0 by the half. You start the second half with a pick-6, you missed the PAT on your sole TD, and on your final drive for a redemption TD, you fumbled the ball in the red zone. Embarrassing. The final score was 41-6 and now I'm 2-4 on my picks. Damn!

Let's move on from Myrtle Beach down to Tampa, where this time every year all of America wonders, "what the hell is a Gasparilla?," and then forgets the question and moves on with their lives before learning the answer. This year's Gasparilla has the unranked NC State Wolfpack (7-5) of the ACC as 4½-point favorites over the unranked Memphis Tigers (8-4) of the AAC. ACC, AAC, at least we finally have a game without a Sun Belt or CUSA team.    

For the last two years, I've won twice with picks of Memphis and lost twice with NC State. I'm no dummy (despite the 2-4 record) and can recognize a streak when I see one, so I picked Memphis here as the 4½-point underdog. NC State hasn't won a bowl game since 2017, losing in their last five appearances, although they did upset No. 8 Georgia Tech,48-36, during the regular season this year.  

Memphis head coach Ryan Silverfield was hired by Arkansas and won't be coaching this game. So far, teams with interim coaches (South Florida and Misery State) have been 2-0, so that has me worried. OTOH, the Wolfpack has at least nine players either injured or opting out, as opposed to Memphis' three injuries.

To be brutally honest, though, I'm not terribly invested or interested in this game, other than what it does to my win-loss record. To me, it's just the game between Kennesaw State's fiasco and tonight's Alabama-Oklahoma game, the first game of the year that actually matters. 

Myrtle Beach Bowl: Kennesaw State vs. Western Michigan

Goddamn, they start these things early! Even in Bible Belt Conway, South Carolina, 11:00 am is an ungodly early hour to be attending a football on a Friday morning. I'm watching this one at home with the first cup of coffee still in my hand.

Part of the reason for my slow start was I was up late last night watching the Xbox Bowl become more interesting than it needed to be. Missouri State scored 21 points in the fourth and a game that had seemed like a lopsided, runaway win for Arkansas State up to that point wound up getting competitive. While it could be argued that a close game is more interesting, a blowout win is very comforting when you're down, 1-3. The answer to 24D in today's New York Times crossword puzzle ("bad place to be while gambling") is "in a deep hole," and that's exactly where I found yesterday. But last night, my pick, the Arkansas State Red Rockets, held on and won and now I've improved to 2-3, and if I run the board and sweep all three games today, I could be 5-3 by midnight. But I'm getting ahead of myself. One game at at time. 

I've been to Myrtle Beach many times because I had a client in Conway in the way-back years before I retired. I've visited the beach, but I'd never vacation there. Talk about Redneck Riviera! I've never before or since seen such a wonton display of corpulent obesity as all those rotund white bodies rolling around on the sand beneath the white glare of the unforgiving Sun. Pure horror show. Add to that all the hyperactive, ill-tempered children, the fast-food franchises bordering endless miles of road, the ever-present ticky-tack t-shirt and souvenir shops, and the ubiquitous Confederate flags, and it's hard not to be repulsed. Look, don't get me wrong - I love the South, it's been my home for some 45 years now, but just not . . . this.

Myrtle Beach Bowl - freaking out relocated Yankees since 2020.

The game will feature the Western Michigan Broncos (9-4) of the MAC against the Kennesaw State Owls (10-3), the CUSA champions making their first FBS bowl appearance. They've made the FCS playoffs in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021 before moving up to the FBS last year, and then won their conference title in their second season. Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta, and a certain audience in Atlanta can't help but notice that seemingly every other dancer in the city's many strip clubs all say they are students at Kennesaw State. Maybe it's true, maybe it's a convenient cover story. I don't know, but people got to calling Kennesaw State, "Stripper U." Mind you, I bring this up not to slut-shame sex workers or adult entertainers but only to illustrate how surprising it is to Atlantans to see the Owls rack up a 10-3 record, win the CUSA championship, and playing in a certified bowl game.

The Broncos are four-point favorites and I'd be tempted to take those points if this were a hockey game (Western Michigan is ranked No. 7 nationally in the USCHO college-hockey rankings). But this ain't hockey and this ain't the frozen Midwest, so I'm taking the Owls as four-point underdogs. The Broncos may be the MAC champs, but I want to cheer for the local favorites and I think the odds makers may be overlooking the Owls' strengths.

Ominously, I've lost with my picks in the last two Myrtle Beach Bowls so my track record here's not good, but hey, third time's the charm, amirite?

Oilers 3, Bruins 1

 

Pavel Zacha scored in the first quarter to tie the game up, but former BU Terrier Quinn Hutson scored what turned out to be the game-winning goal for Edmonton in the second as the Oilers beat Boston, 3-1.

Can't win 'em all. 

Xbox Bowl: Arkansas State vs. Missouri State

I'm down 1-3 in my picks so far this season so it's time to move on from all those Sun Belt and Conference USA teams and start playing some real games that people actually care about. But what the hell is this? The Xbox Bowl, a new bowl, is pitting another Sun Belt team (Arkansas State) against CUSA (Missouri State) tonight. Does it ever end? How many schools are in these godforsaken conferences?

The Xbox Bowl was invented as a replacement for the Bahamas Bowl (RIP) and is the first new bowl introduced since the Fenway Bowl in 2022. It's played in Frisco, Texas, and at first I thought this was just the Frisco Bowl with new sponsorship, but no, the Frisco Bowl will be played in this same stadium next week. 

So tonight we have the Arkansas State Red Wolves (6-6) against the Missouri State Bears (7-5). The Red Wolves are 1½ point favorites and I picked them to cover the spread this evening. I won with them as 6½-point underdogs to Bowling Green in last year's '68 Ventures Bowl (they won by 7), although I lost with them two years ago as a 1-point favorite over Northern Illinois in the 2023 Camelia Bowl (now ISIS Salute to Veterans or whatever); they lost that one by 2. 

On the other hand, this is the Bears' first-ever bowl appearance, so why would I risk a pick on them? Further, Missouri State head coach Ryan Beard left the team for the Coastal Carolina head-coaching job, and look what the loss of a coach did to South Florida last night. These two teams are both relatively healthy. but Missouri State has four players in the transfer portal.

Kick-off is at 9:00 pm Eastern time (7:00, Texas time). C'mon Red Wolves, Daddy needs some marks in the Win column!

I'm 1-3!

 

Oh, that's right, now I remember - I suck at this!

Four games into the 2025 bowl season, I'm 1-3 on my picks. I won my first game with the Washington Huskies over Boise State, but it's been nothing but losses since then. First Troy going down to Jacksonville State on Tuesday in whatever they're calling the Camelia Bowl now, and then last night, back-to-back losses by South Florida and Louisiana.

I really thought I had a sure win in The Cure Bowl with South Florida. The Bulls were second in the FBS in points (43.0) and yards (502) per game, scoring over 48 points in seven of their games. They beat Florida during the regular season and briefly held the lineal championship belt and Georgia's 2021 and 2022 championship rings before losing to Miami. Sure, their QB opted out of the game, but so did Old Dominion's, and yes, their head coach left for Auburn, but still, Old Dominion? 

As it turned out, South Florida got shut out the entire second half and their normally sure-fire kicker, Nico Gramatica, went 1-for-3 on field goal attempts. South Florida QBs got sacked four times and threw four interceptions, and before I knew it, I was 1-2 on my picks this season. 

Then it got worse. I picked Louisiana in the '68 Ventures Bowl as 3-point favorites. The Delaware Fightin' Blue Hens were in their first FBS season and their biggest win this year was probably against UConn (9-3). They lost to Colorado (3-9) and only got invited to the '68 Ventures because there weren't enough other 6-6 teams in the FBS to qualify for bowls. Sure, Louisiana lost their last three bowl appearances, but they beat the spread in one of those and they won the three bowls before that. Surely, they'll return to their winning ways in Mobile, right? 

Right?

Wrong. Louisiana trailed, 20-3, midway through the third quarter, but completed a field goal to make it 20-6 heading into the fourth. They added a TD in that quarter to make it 20-13 with 8:00 left. They started their final drive all the way back on their own 7-yard line with 1:41 remaining, and advanced the ball down the field on a drive that included a 32-yard completion and an interference call on Delaware. A TD would have tied the game and force an OT, but of course, if they scored they would have gone for the two-point conversion to win the game (but lose to the spread). So even as I cheered that final drive, I knew that I had already lost. Louisiana reached the 7-yard line, and then threw a pass into the end zone. Incomplete. On third down with 0:02 left, another pass into the end zone got broken up by Delaware.

1-3.

I've had it with these Sun Belt and Conference USA teams. I'm a Georgia Bulldogs and SEC man and don't spend a lot of time thinking about Monarchs and Blue Hens, or 'Cocks and Trojans. Give me some Power 5 and ranked teams and I'll know what I'm talking about, not these coin-toss decisions between schools I haven't watched since the last bowl season. 

I'll be back, you see? Down but not out. Someday, we'll look back at these times and laugh.