The Five Choke Special

After UVA baseball collapsed in the super regional last night, the spring of disappointment is now complete. That’s five #1 ranked teams, zero titles.

As noted in an earlier post, the Caps had their best regular season in team history, but bowed out in the first round. The Cleveland Cavaliers won 60 games again, but were upset by the Celtics in 6 games in the second round, and might have a bigger loss if Lebron leaves.

Meanwhile, UVA’s spring sports joined the choking list. The men’s tennis team continued their trend of going nearly perfect all year only to lose in the NCAA semi-finals, taking their three year record to 102-4 with no titles. A week later, the lacrosse team lost to eventual champ Duke in the final seconds, ended a season where the only losses all year were to the Blue Devils. To end the heartbreak spring playoff runs, UVA baseball hosted their first ever super-regional and were one win away from returning to the College World Series, only to lose back to back games for the first time all year, ending their season and this torturous spring playoff season with a 11-0 embarrassing beatdown.

Well, now its time to turn to the fall. Oh, great.

World Cup Fever

Usually the fanfare of the World Cup is met with yawns here in the US, but after our strong showing in the Confederation’s Cup last year and our matchup in the first game, there is more attention this time around.

On Saturday the United States takes on England in one of the most anticipated games in the history of American Soccer. The Three Lions are the heavy favorites, but we’ve heard that one before, see: 1776. ESPN has been rolling out the commercials for a while, and even the two ambassadors have been eloquently talking trash to each other. Luckily the other two teams in the group are not as tough (Algeria and Slovenia), so we should advance to the knockout round, unlike last time.

This is also the first time I’ve been in an office pool for the World Cup so I have even more invested in it. After a little research, I noticed some interesting trends. Only twice has a team defended their title, and that was almost 50 years ago, so Italy’s out. No Confederations Cup winner has won the World Cup the following year, so Brazil is out, except that they have won every other WC since ’94, which is an easy trend. Only one time in 12 has the Euro winner gone on to win the World Cup two years later, so Spain is out, despite more than half my pool picking them. Only Brazil in ’94 won as the top ranked FIFA team, which is more of a reactionary ranking to the winner’s of the WC, so more reason to doubt the Green and Yellow this year. This hilarious post helps relate American sports teams to the World Cup teams, which helped me pick some of the smaller teams.

Can you name all the teams in this year’s Cup in 5 min? (Only missed 3). How about all the winners? (Was kind of easy since there aren’t many options). And finally all the host countries? (Missed two).

If USA doesn’t pull off the huge upset and wins the whole thing, then hopefully Spain does because I will be here and watching this from a balcony during the final. Viva la Furia Roja!

Hopeful Days for the Nationals

June 7th and 8th are going to be two key dates for the future of the Washington Nationals franchise. Not only is Stephen Strasburg making his major league debut on Tuesday, but the Nats have the first pick in the draft on Monday.

This time a year ago, Strasburg was drafted first overall and eventually signed at the deadline to the highest rookie contract ever. After going 6-2, with 1.30 ERA in his 11 starts in the minors, “Baseball Jesus” is making his long awaited debut on Tuesday, or Strasmas. Once his starting date was announced last week the game was sold out before it had a chance to go on sale. Cities are even trying to change their names to him, and his last minor league start was nationally televised on Versus. With the Nats only a couple games under .500, only 6 games out of first, and have decent run support this year, Strasburg’s 100 mph arm will be needed on a possible wild card push this season.

Meanwhile on Monday, Washington will be making another #1 overall pick, due to back to back 100 loss seasons. The runaway favorite choice for the Nationals is 17 year old power slugging catcher Bryce Harper, who took the GED early in order to play sooner. He has been highly touted since SI dubbed him the Lebron of baseball last year, but comes with some baggage of being an immature teenager. DC already has the polite face of the franchise and a silent hurler, so a cocky slugger might be needed.

Hopefully Harper will be catching the first pitch from Strasburg in a World Series in a couple seasons.