NickComan.Com

I got up surprisingly early on Saturday morning after falling asleep in the middle of “I Heart Huckaebees” earlier than expected the night before – so early that I could catch an entire soccer day in England before all of the college hoops games and even a few gold medals.

My fondest pubescent SI Swimsuit Memory... pre-Tsunami

About at noon (I was a little late), I noticed on Cnn.com that there was an 8.8 Earth Quake and that there were worldwide tsunami warnings. I continued with Arsenal-Stoke City and Wildcats-Vols because I figured: if it was a really big disaster, the sports coverage would switch to it or at least mention it. By early afternoon I was getting messages about friends pre-gaming tsunami landfall and seeing joke Facebook posts about the tiny tsunami lanfall in southern California. At this point, unless it’s a disaster that we haven’t already seen a bigger Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich, or real life version of, it’s just normal depressing news… people don’t want to watch normal depressing news.  I’m not sure that’s really a terrible indictment, but it is something that at this point an 8.8 quake falls into that category… (But it wouldn’t if Petra Nemcova had been stuck in a tree fighting for her survival for 48 hours – that was gripping). I guess it has just been a bad run for natural disasters and we’re really used to it. It seems like we are about at the point in the movie where volcanoes erupt in Los Angeles. Luckily, I don’t think the movies are that realistic…

But let’s start with the soccer…

Rooney doesn't really look "like an athlete" does he? (Wife Coleen)

The finals of the “Carling Cup” (The fourth most important trophy for English teams?) took place today with Manchester United taking down Aston Villa 2-1. What is the Carling Cup? It’s the “English League Cup” sponsored by Carling Beer of course… not quite at “Winston Cup” level for mildly unacceptable product sponsoring a major competition… but close. Apparently, the League Cup is different from the “FA Cup” (The 3rd most important trophy for English Teams?) in that in the FA Cup, literally any registered English or Welsh soccer team with a home field can enter, encompassing all 8 “levels” of English soccer, while in the League Cup, only teams from the top 4 Levels (Premier League, Coca Cola Championship, League One, League Two) are eligible. Basically, in the FA Cup, local beer league softball teams get to play against the Yankees. In the League Cup, the strangest thing you could see would be A Ball squads like the Lynchburg Hillcats playing the “Bronx Bombers”… which still would be pretty damn weird. Does English soccer need both of these competitions? Probably not… it seems like the FA Cup is the cooler version and that the Carling Cup is just an excuse for another team to get a trophy with a cool sponsor, but that seems to be the point in English (and European) soccer systems. In America, our sports goal for each year seems to be to definitively determine the best team… to have “a champion”. That’s why College Football pisses everybody off so much. It fails miserably in that capacity. In England, they just say: Let’s have four simultaneous slightly different competitions going on (EPL, European Cups, FA Cup, and Carling) and give every team and their fans a bunch of different situations to be excited about that all hypothetically carry the claim “Best Team in England”. Congrats to the Red Devils… you are the first team to get to make that claim this year… we’ll see who the other three are…

So who is gonna win the EPL:

One of soccer’s best attributes is its ability to be translated to sick Youtube Highlight Videos.

Let’s take current “best player in England” Wayne Rooney’s reel from this year for example:

Note how good Rooney is at making himself accessible to his teammates while making runs toward goal. His ability to finish or put himself in great position with his first touch is exceptional, but so much of his success is simply in putting himself in the right place at the right time…

Who does Rooney think the best player in the world is? Barcelona midfielder Andres Iniesta. If you want to see the Steve Nash of soccer, then check out this guy. His comfort level with the ball at his feet, even when surrounded by defenders, is out of control. Just watch this… The dude just clowns on people one after another…

Iniesta has footskills unlike anybody in the world, but on a team like Barcelona that features Lionel Messi, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and Xavi among others, you almost forget about the guy… You shouldn’t. He isn’t, though, what one would call a “pure scorer” like Rooney or Chelsea striker Didier Drogba. If you could equate Drogba to an American sports figure, he would basically be the entire 07 Memphis basketball team – the announcers had no clue how to describe how “raw”, “athletic”, and “physical” they were… but they didn’t really have to. It went without saying…

Drogba is clearly… uhh… “imposing”. The sad thing is… none of these guys are remotely as good as this tool is when he’s healthy:

So who is actually going to win the EPL? We are about 28 games deep and the relevant standings are such:

The Other 13 Teams Don't Matter

I would say that the race for first breaks about 38% Chance for MUFC, 37% Chance for Chelsea and 25% Chance for Arsenal.

Arsenal has the easiest schedule – only Tottenham on the road and Man City at home, but Arsenal also is 3 points off of the pace and is always the team most likely to lose to lesser competition…

Chelsea is one point clear of MUFC for the lead, but they have a bunch of tricky games left: Villa at home along with Liverpool on the road, MUFC at Old Trafford, and Tottenham at White Hart Lane (again, English Stadiums have great names…). Their form against lesser competition has also been somewhat shaky of late. They aren’t beating every random mediocre team 5-1 like they could. It seems like opponents are able to play up to their level… or vice versa.

MUFC is one point off of Chelsea’s pace and has many tough games left on the schedule, but they nearly all at Old Trafford where the Red Devils have been sick. Chelsea, Tottenham, and Liverpool all travel to Manchester, and the only major road test for United will be at cross town rivals Man City… It seems like the stars are aligning for United to squeak out the title, especially given that they seem to be the team least likely to slip up versus lesser competition.

As for the race for fourth: Villa and Liverpool have the easiest schedules; Tottenham’s is by far the hardest; and Man City really controls its destiny as it plays both Tottenham and Villa. I’d say the most likely result is Man City gets the 4th Champs League Spots… with about a 34% Chance. I’d say Villa and Liverpool are about at 26% and 25% respectively, making Tottenham least likely at about 15%. In April, Spurs get Arsenal, MUFC, and Chelsea back to back to back… that’s rough.

Soccer box scores of note:

Spurs 2 Everton 1 - Important Win for Spurs… Everton’s winter hot streak seems to be over after this and their loss to Sporting Lisbon earlier this week.

Fulham 0 Sunderland 0 – Matchup of 2 of the “less cool” London Clubs… Sunderland, who has been awful of late, actually dominated this game. Fulham was lucky to get a draw.

Liverpool 2 Blackburn Rovers 1 – Torres scores; Gerrard scores; Pepe Reina makes sick saves; It seems like Liverpool may be back… maybe

Man City 4 Chelsea 2 – Dos Red Cards for Chelsea… and the typical “when Craig Bellamy gets involved, the team clicks” game from City. Impressive that Man City beat “The Blues” twice this year.

Arsenal 3 Stoke 1 - The score doesn’t really tell the story here. Stoke came out on fire and dominated the first third of the game. Arsenal tied it. A horrific injury took up the better part of the second half, and then an inadvertent handball was called as a PK in the 90th minute to give Arsenal the win… really not that impressive.

Wanderers 1 Wolves 0 - Beating Wolves is never that impressive, but Bolton’s form has been half decent of late.

Final soccer note: Friend and podcast guest RR has been sending me ridiculous links to Arsenal forward Andrei Arshavin’s website.  The guy does all of these “myspace style” Q/As and quizzes, and it seems like either the dude has some sort of “Russian Napoleon Dynamite” sense of humor… or a lot is lost in translation. Check out this: http://www.arshavin.eu/en/news.php?id=505 and this: http://www.arshavin.eu/en/news.php?id=511

Lets get to basketball now…

The nation’s #1 and #2 lost yesterday, and it didn’t seem remotely surprising at all. We are finally in that part of the season where teams really are desperate for “signature wins”… and if you are on the bubble and playing at home against a highly ranked team, you show up. While Oklahoma State and Tennessee were already likely “in the field of 65″, they were both teams that could have ended up as 11 Seed At Large bids or 4 Seeds if they really won out. They made major moves in those directions with OKST 85 KU 77 and Tenn 74 UK 65.

Who would have thought that New Mexico 83 BYU 81 would be such a big deal? The #12 team in the country (crazy) defeated the #11 team (even crazier) in Provo – a nearly Helms Deep level home court advantage… “The Lobos” are now 6-0 against ranked teams, but that is more of a sad commentary about the Top 25 this year. Their wins include: #25 Cal (joke), #24 Texas Tech (joke), #18 TAMU (impressive-ish), #10/#11 BYU (ehh), and #25 UNLV (pretty much a joke too).  In fact, check out Joe Lunardi’s “Vegetarians” List:

They're fun, but you can't trust mid-majors...

The Biggest Game of the Weekend: Clearly Syracuse 95 Villanova 77, a game that the Wildcats really let go of at the very end of the first half. After leading or being close for much of the first period, Cuse made a late run and got a 10 point halftime lead. From that point on, it was never ever close and bordered on ugly.

The Carrier Dome... Really not "Multipurpose"

Nova was typical Nova: explosive perimeter scorers and slashers without a typical front court. They went into a terrible shooting slump against the 2-3 Zone and that was that. Syracuse really looks like a title threat. 1 Great Coach, 1 Incredible Talent (Wes Johnson), 1 Great Leader (Rautins), Effective Scheme (2-3 Zone), Set Rotation (Always play 7 guys)…  I’d break down the elite landscape like so in terms of “chance to win it all”…

Favorites:

Kansas, Syracuse

Quasi-Favorites:

Kentucky, Duke, Nova

Feasible:

Ohio State, Michigan State

Hypothetically Possible:

KState, WVU, Pitt, Georgetown, Texas

If somebody outside of that list wins it all, I will be shocked…

Other games this weekend: OSU 66 Michigan 55 – With Robbie Hummel out, the Buckeyes have to be the class of the Big 10 now.

Georgia 78 Florida 76 – The mediocrity of Billy Donovan’s program between elite seasons is really amazing. This team is really “on the bubble”.

Baylor 70 Oklahoma 63 – I can’t plug them enough. Baylor is my sleeper…

TAMU 74 Texas 58 – Another “home team with a lot to play for” game. Texas is gonna be out of the top 25 after being #1 less than 2 months ago…

Notre Dame 78 GTown 64 – I don’t trust GTown at all…

You Don't Want to Know Whats up in Looking Glass...

Maryland 104 Va Tech 100 – The Terps… my other sleeper. 40+ for Grieves Vasquez on the road…

In the NBA, you just expect good teams to lose terrible games on a weekly basis, but we really hit a new low with the Celtics losing at home to 6-52 New Jersey. This wasn’t some sort of blown lead or flukey game… Boston was losing after each quarter. Some people like the idea that “on any given day, any team can beat any team”, and of course that needs to be true, but when it happens so frequently and so haphazardly, it becomes a sad commentary about the league.

Elsewhere: Kings 103-Jazz 99 – Utah is a very mediocre road team… The Kings clearly are not missing Kevin Martin that much…

Hornets 11 Magic 93 – 40 Points for David West and Darren Collison playing great basketball, the Hornets barely miss CP3…. right? No, but still…

Bulls 115 Blazers 111 – Chicago suddenly looking like the same dangerous playoff team that it was last year… Psyched for more coach Luke Wilson on the sidelines…

Bucks 94 Heat 71 – More than almost any other team, the Heat just throw up total stinkbombs when they lose. Milwaukee is suddenly sneaky good (for an East team), and John Salmons looks good again. Is this just what Salmons does? Suck and then get traded because he is overpaid, and then be good for the remainder of the season post trade?

Mavs 111 Hawks 103 OT – The Mavs are very clearly the #3 team in the West… and probably one of 3 teams that actually has a shot. Talk of Atlanta going after Big Z and putting Hortford at the 4? Makes sense to me…

Spurs 113 Suns 110 – A game in which both teams played really well and got a lot from their entire squads, but in the end, you can always count on the Spurs defending home court…

Thats a lot more than you can say for the Celtics.

I’ll end it with this “floating hotels” video from friend and podcast guest Phil. How does business travel work in a world where hotels move? Do companies start having giant floating airships that move as necessary? Does the P.O.T.U.S. have a floating White House? Seems like it has more “upside” than Air Force One or even Cold War Doomsday Machine Legend “Looking Glass“… I’m unsure on how technologically feasible all of this is, but world would look very different if it came to be… in a good way. Check this out:

Real,

Nick