Jeter and Fantasyland

Today's post is about Derek Jeter and the book Fantasyland.

First my thoughts on Derek Jeter. Today I was reading an article on baseball prospectus about Jeter. It was about whether or not the Yankees should resign him after his contract ends in 3 years. The article came to a conclusion which I completely agree with, which was that they should not resign him. Derek Jeter has been in decline for a couple of years. His defense as he has gotten older has gotten progressively worse and is now below average for a shortstop. Was Derek Jeter a great shortstop at one point, yes, but that point has been gone for a while. The Yankees need to realize when his contract expires that they should not resign him. While many people don't know whether the Yankees will be able to get rid of Jeter I think that they will. My reason for this is because of what happened with Bernie Williams. Williams wanted to come back to play for another season with the Yankees but they knew that he was too old to be a productive player anymore so they let him go. Williams was like Jeter, was a beloved Yankee and a winner but that was outweighed by his age and declining skills. The same goes for Jeter. He has always been a beloved Yankee and a winner (4 world series rings) however his skills are now in decline and in three years he will no longer be a productive starting shortstop anymore.

The second part of my blog is about Fantasyland. Fantasyland is a book by Sam Walker about a season of fantasy baseball. He has refused to play fantasy baseball for years but is now ready to try to take on the best in the world. He joins a league called Tout Wars which is the all-star league of fantasy baseball players. This league includes players such as Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus, and Jason Grey of Rotoworld. It's the story of Walker's journey to become a fantasy superstar and the events and stories that came out of his crazy fantasy season. So far I have read the first 99 pages and can't stop reading. I'll update this when I finish the book but so far it's a must read for anyone who claims to be a baseball fan.

I wrote my second article for RootZoo. It's about Stephen Strasburg the #1 baseball draft prospect in the country. He is a RHP for San Diego State and has an outstanding slider and a 94-98 mph fastball that can touch triple digits.

Here's a link to my article.
Stephen Strasburg Article

Here's a quick recap of this week's important sporting events.

NCAA Tournament

• North Carolina looked really good by dismantling Gonzaga and then beating Oklahoma. Oklahoma's downfall was their terrible 3 point shooting.
• The Villanova - Pitt ending was awesome. Villanova threw the ball away, Levance Fields hit both free throws to tie the game and then Scotty Reynolds drove the length of the court and hit a layup with .05 seconds, which won the game.
  
• Michigan State pulled the upset over Louisville. Michigan State played the best defensive game they had played in a long time and maybe the best defensive game of the tournament.
  
• UConn played a solid game holding off a dangerous Missouri team that wouldn't go away.

NHL

• NY Rangers have lost 3 of their last 4 dropping to 7th in the east after losing a huge game to Pittsburgh on Saturday. Sidney Crosby scored the game winning goal for the Penguins to beat the Rangers 3-4.
  

NASCAR

• Jeff Gordon has look really impressive this season. In his last 5 races he has finished 2nd - twice, in the top 5 - 4 times and in the top 10 - 5 times.
  
• Jimmie Johnson won this week after finishing 3rd last week. After struggling in the first few races of the season he is starting to look like the 3-time defending champion.
  

Soccer

• United States vs. El Salvador. The United States simply did not come to play for the first 70 minutes of the game. El Salvador went all-out from the beginning of the game and got out to a 2-0 lead. At about the 70th minute the US decided that they were going to try. For the rest of the game the US dominated and scored 2 goals (Altidore and Hejduk) to end the game in a 2-2 tie. This was an OK result considering Onyweu and Tim Howard were both not in the starting lineup.
  

NCAA Tourney 3/26

This is going to be a quick post because I didn't get a chance to watch very much of today's action. Let me start out by talking about Pittsburgh. I have been reading articles about how Pitt has looked sluggish and very nonimpressive so far this tournament. All I have to say to that is they are in the elite 8. Yes they haven't played all that well and East Tennessee State, Oklahoma State, and Xavier aren't the 3 hardest matchups in the world; but they still got the job done and did what they had to do to win. Uconn despite all the off the court distractions played well and handled Purdue pretty easily showing that they are still definitely one of the favorites to win the tournament.

Onto the second set of games. Villanova looked really good and made Duke look ordinary and beatable. Villanova after struggling early in their first game against American has looked like a definite title contender and is playing better than any other team in the tournament right now. They have made their last two wins look easy. Now let's look at the Missouri-Memphis game. Memphis has been struggling this entire tournament; however, they have been able to overcome it because of their atheletic ability. In this game though, Memphis was outplayed again by Missouri. This time however, Memphis was not the more athletic team in this game and Missouri was able to control the game and dominate the second half.

There will be more in depth analysis tomorrow because I will be able to watch all the games.

St. Mary's - San Diego State

This blog post is about the St. Mary's - San Diego St. game in the NIT Tournament. Sadly I will only be blogging about the second half because I did not get a chance to watch the first half (I was doing a cost-accounting project). Fun fact, Marshall Faulk was at the game (how awesome is that). Now on to the game.
Patty Mills really struggled in this game. He couldn't get off very many quality shots and was completely unable to get an easy buckets. Once again Patty decided to be a hero and took way too many 3 pointers. Diamon Simpson played a descent game but really only rebounded well. He was overmatched inside by San Diego State's big men and was really a nonfactor in the game. Omar Samhan played very tentatively. Normally he plays confidently and aggressively but for some reason in the game today he was scared to take on defenders and take his jump shot (which he can make). Carlin Hughes played one of his better games but like the rest of the Gaels did not have his normal 3 point shot working today.
For San Diego State the story of the game for them offensively was their big men. They outplayed Simpson and Samhan and clearly dominated the low post. The unsung hero of this game was Richie Williams. Richie Williams had the daunting task of guarding Patty Mills. Just like in the last meeting Williams came out the victor. Patty Mills shot a terrible 7-24 mainly because of William's outstanding defense.
It was a tough way for the Gaels to end the season but at least it was an exciting finish and a nice farewell tour for the one and only Patty Mills.

Stephen Curry vs. Patty Mills

Last Tuesday night Patty Mills carried the Gaels to a victory over Wash. State and set up a matchup between two of the best guards in the country. Patty Mills vs. Davidson's Stephen Curry. For a mid-major game this was a matchup of the century. Patty Mills the Australian Sensation, who has taken over the St. Mary's basketball program and turned it into a national force to be reckoned with, vs. Stephen Curry who is the nations leading scorer and last year led Davidson into the sweet 16 of the NCAA tourney. The best part of this game was that St. Mary's and Davidson are basically the same team. St. Mary's was going to make the tournament easily until Patty Mills went down with an injury and Davidson was going to make the tournament pretty easily until Stephen Curry went down with an injury. Those two injuries caused both teams to end up here in Moraga, California playing in the NIT, not for a NCAA championship but rather for mid-major pride.
For the most part the game itself was not a letdown. Stephen Curry was slowed down by great defense played by Wayne Hunter and Patty Mills but still managed to score 26 points. Patty Mills went 1 for 10 from 3-point range but scored 23 point and added 10 assists to only 1 turnover. The game was very close until the middle of the second half when St. Mary's slowly started to pull away. The Gaels played a very good game throughout and made Davidson beat them with players other than Patty Mills. Andrew Lovedale, Davidson's best big man played a lousy game. He was dominated by Omar Samhan on the offensive end. Defensively Diamon Simpson played well scoring 12 points while adding 15 rebounds. Overall in this game, Davidson was outmatched by St. Mary's and St. Mary's clearly was the better team.

Side Note: At the end of the game Patty Mills wanted everyone to storm the court because of our victory. This could prove to be symbolic because that gesture quite possibly means that this was Patty's last home game as a Gael. Although it will be sad for St. Mary's when Patty leaves this is probably the best year for him to go to the NBA. The draft is not very deep and right now Patty is playing extremely well. Besides his shooting there is nothing that Patty really has to learn and his shooting can be worked on at the next level. So for these reasons I think Patty is going to go to the NBA draft. (Hopefully he gets drafted by the Knicks so I can watch him play next year, that would be awesome).

First Blog Post

Hello everyone and welcome to my first post as a blogger. I have a couple reasons for starting this blog. This is because I am a huge St. Mary's College basketball fan and am a student there, although this is really fun none of my friends will listen to me talk about the mistakes that the team we are playing is making and the ways they could improve so that they would play better against us. Also, they hate when I talk about our star players and I try to point out their faults. For example our power forward Diamon Simpson tries to dunk most of the time when he is around the basket and usually misses, this is crucial because if instead of trying to dunk he just shot layups he would average at least 6 more points a game.

Now let's talk about the St Mary's - Washington State first round game of the NIT. First let me say that St. Mary's completely outplayed Wash. State and Patty Mills and Diamon Simpson both had great games. With that said, Washington State's head coach in my opinion coached a lousy game. First, #11 Aron Baynes, Wash. State's best player and inside presence should have gotten at least 1 touch on the ball every time down the court. Within 10 feet of the hoop he was outplaying Omar Samhan and could score and get to the line at will. Second, Wash State's point guard Taylor Rochestie played a really good game but was overmatched by Patty Mills. Wash State's coach should have run the offense so that Rochestie would not have had to try to score 1 on 1 against Mills which he had to very often. Yes Rochestie should have figured out how to get open but Wash State should have run plays to get Rochestie free so that he would be able to get open shots. These are the two criticisms I have of Wash State's coach. As a coach it is your responsibility to figure out why your team is struggling and can't properly run it's offense and as the coach he should have realized how to fix these two important problems with their offense. If he had given Baynes the ball more and run Rochestie off screens Washington State would have made this game a lot more competitive than it was.

Also, today I wrote my first article for RootZoo. RootZoo is a sports talk site where users post articles and talk about all different sports. Below is the link to my article about The NCAA tournament selection process.

Here's the link