Bostonist was rooting for a rain out Friday night. Have you ever seen a team more in need of an extra day away from baseball than your 2011 Red Sox? Seriously. We said on Friday we expected - hoped, really - Boston to be ready to take on New York for one last time this season especially because they're 6-0 in the Bronx this season. A two-day break before fighting to preserve a playoff spot should be a good thing.That's what we think, anyway.
Results tagged “thegame”
There's always points to analyze in any game. Like these. Both the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts know everything about each other. One question remains unanswered: Which Pats team will take the field? The team that lost to the moral equivalent of your little brother - Cleveland? Or, the team that dominated another alleged contender in Pittsburgh? We'll know when we see it.
Today is the day. Harvard and Yale stage the 127th edition of The Game at Harvard Stadium at noon. Yale (7-2) leads the series 65-53-8. Harvard (6-3) won 14-10 in 2009.
Movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn once famously said of preachy movies, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union.". Well, Western Union is now out of the telegram business, so the Celtics had to send a message to Detroit some other way, playing stifling defense, fundamental offense, and grinding out a win that - well, that sends the message - that they just might actually be the best team in the East.
It felt great for a second or two, flipping the pages of the local dailies to check in with the Bruins. Win, win, shootout win, come from behind win, win...and then that Monday night game against the Capitals happened. The Bruins came back home to Boston last night a little humbled, but we'd hoped that they were ready to kick it up a notch and not make absolute fools of themselves again deliver a quality game against Florida.
The tag line for Chuck E. Cheese is "Where a kid can be a kid." It should be amended to say, "Where a kid can be a kid, and where an adult can be an asshole."
It was about a week ago when we noted that the Bruins were in 6th place in the Prince of Wales Eastern Conference, which was a decent place to be, thus drawing the winner of the weak-sister Southeast Division. In that week, the B's have solidified the 6th spot, but are now officially in spittin' distance of bigger and better things. They've won blowouts this week, they've won shootouts, they've won at home, they've won on the road. They've done everything but beat Montreal. Now we see 6th place as little more than a nice springboard.
Harvard Coop, 3rd floor
It seems that the Bruins' approach to the NHL trade deadline - to hold steady and remain as is - might just pay off. On Tuesday night, against an Ottawa Senators team that the Globe kindly referred to as "thoroughly disinterested" (read: someone's will to play didn't arrive at the TDBN Garden with the rest of the Senators' gear), the Bruins cruised along to a 4-0 win, extending the winning ways that began out on the road. We're liking these results - and we're also digging Coach Claude Julien's decision to start the game with the bash brothers line (Jeremy Reich, Vladimir Sobotka, and Shawn Thornton).
Let's take a trip out to Phoenix, shall we? The Celtics for once found themselves n the other side of the equation, as the team trying to cool an ongoing Suns hot streak. Turns out that the Celts don't well handle such a situation, losing 85-77 to Shaq and his crew. The quick breakdown of dubious distinctions from the game? Lowest Boston total of the season, first third-straight loss of the season, really lousy ball play from the Boston green.
We don't like to think back to the final moments of Super Bowl XLII. If we could, we'd erase the name Plaxico Burress from our memory, and we'd focus on the good times we've had with Ellis Hobbs.
He was the last man added to the Eastern All-Star team. When KG scratched, he waited for the call, only to find it went to Rasheed Wallace. When Washington's Caron Butler went down, the call finally came. He had to cancel the fishing trip and make plans to go to New Orleans.
Is it just us, or does it seem like whenever the Bruins have the spotlight to themselves, they lose? When they play the same night as the Celtics, or Patriots, they're fine, but give everyone else the night off, and it feels like we always have to lead with a Bruins loss. Maybe it's just us. But they deserve better.
The good news for the Celtics is that the Timberwolf portion of their schedule is in the history books. After surviving a 1-point game against Minnesota at home a couple of weeks ago, the C's went to the Twin Cities and pulled out a 2-point win.
Last night was one of the strangest games we've seen in a while at the TDBG. With the unremarkable Clippers in town, the second quarter had a playoff-like intensity to it, with technicals, an ejection, and some really scrappy play. The fourth quarter showed a surprising lineup, as Doc left the second unit (House, Powe, Davis, Posey, Tony Allen) in for almost the entire time. Most surprising of all - the bench played some fantastic defense and better-than-expected offense to close the Clips out.
Tuesday was supposed to be a glorious day. A crowd was to stand in the rain, braving the elements to cheer for the football heroes ambling down roads lined in blue and red. And after the last bits of confetti were cleaned up, the celebratory mass of people would tune in to cheer for their basketball team's winning ways.
It seems for some reason, Tom Brady and Randy Moss don't want to take a 6,000 mile flight this week and be reminded of Sunday's crushing disappointment. Brady's ankle issues are well-documented, of course, but Randy is feeling sympathy pain and is skipping the trip to Hawaii as well. So the Pro Bowl will have to go on without them. Tissues all around.
All the Bostonists got together and thought of how to deal what is admittedly a rough day.
After he got hammered in the 1996 election, Bob Dole told everyone who would sit still and listen that he didn't take things as hard as he'd feared. "I slept like a baby...woke up crying every two hours," he'd say.
After one of the most painful, stunning, heart-breaking upsets in sports history, local football fans were left to pick their jaws up off the floor. Right up to the end, it seemed like the Patriots would win. In post-game interviews, coach Bill Belichick looked shell-shocked than usual. A few local newscasters wore expressions suggesting that close relatives had died. It was an ugly mood.
--Cambridge was the scene of a violent attack on a homeless man. Early on January 29, the man was walking with his girlfriend in Central Square on Norfolk when three men attacked him, and one of them stabbed him in the back. [Cambridge Chronicle]
With a couple of days before the Super Bowl, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell found himself discussing a topic that even he's got to be sick of by now. Wouldn't he rather pour over the details of the commemorative coin toss coin? Or the commercial he's really looking forward to seeing? On how many times fans at the game in Glendale will have to hold up colored cards to become part of the action of the halftime show?
Today, we're not going to talk about YouKnowWhat XLII. Because there's nothing to talk about. Today, we're going to celebrate two big wins from our two local winter teams. (We will remind you, however, that we'll be live-blogging YouKnowWhat XLII starting 7:30ish on Sunday. Get your commentin' fingers in shape.)
Super Bowl Media Day is the professional football equivalent of the annual family reunion. A bunch of people get together, often traveling long distances, for the purpose of catching up. There's little that they have in common, but since they sort of fall under the same name, everyone has to make nice. The hijinks on display makes for a hilarious time for those not directly involved. People make nice and dumb down the stories of what they do and who they are in order to appease the extended family, and the whole thing would be much more enjoyable for all involved if alcohol was part of the equation. Someone (or, rather, many someones) wind up doing something dumb that seemed like a really good idea at the time, but is really foolish in retrospect.
Bostonist hearts the Herald's habit of mashing up anything sports-related with other subjects, such as online romance. Today, as the Super Bowl approaches, Joe Dwinnell contacted a shrink to help fans find meaning in Bill Belichick's hoodie and cope with various neuroses. The good doctor warns that fans might want draw clear mental boundaries between themselves and the Patriots coach:
In a sense, it's comforting. The Celtics went to battle against one of the other good Eastern teams without Kevin Garnett, and almost beat 'em. On the day of the C's' long-awaited return to national afternoon TV, the script ran eerily similar to the first game in Orlando; the Magic jumped out to a big lead, the Celtics clawed their way back, but ran out of gas at the end. Orlando's the only team to get a 14-point lead on the Green all year, and they've done it twice.
As Boston and New York brace for another symbolic sports showdown in the form of the Super Bowl, New York media outlets are busy painting Tom Brady as a "girlie man."
We guess we have to face the facts that the Steamroller Pats of this past autumn were the aberration, not the norm. The M.O. for the first three championship teams was: keep it close, make the big plays and make the other guy NOT make them, then walk out with a win, and make sure the other guy walks out shaking his head and wondering if one or two plays would have made the difference.
In a way, it doesn't feel right; the Colts should perhaps be in town today. They are(were) the defending champs, after all. They gave the Patriots the first in a long stretch of runs for their money that the Pats survived. The Dungy-Belichick and Manning-Brady rivalries are about the biggest stories in sports in this young century.
After Randy Moss vigorously defended himself after a woman in Florida served him with a temporary restraining order, the woman's lawyer, David McGill, provided a different story.



