More Ruminations It finally happened.
That Atlanta Hawks made it to the NBA Eastern Conference Final. In one of the most exciting six game series in NBA history Atlanta earned a spot in the conference final to face Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Hawks had to wait a few extra moments to celebrate their victory as officials went to the replay monitor to determine that Washington Wizard Paul Pierce’s apparent game-tying three pointer was actually after the buzzer. Atlanta players and fans held their breaths until the official word that the game and series were over.
Now, they face the Cavaliers. Very few of the sports talking heads are giving Atlanta any chance at all of winning this series. Not so fast my friends, if nothing else these Hawks have proven themselves to be extremely resilient. I expect the Hawks to rotate players defending Lebron James. Lebron is due to lose a conference final and Atlanta is way overdue to win one. I’m looking forward to this series and I’m picking the Hawks in seven games.
So, former Notre Dame quarterback Everett Golson has chosen Florida State to play his final season of college football. He was going to announce Tuesday and then changed his mind and said he was going to visit more schools and then changed his mind yet again the same day and decided to announce he was going to FSU after all. Yep, that’s the kind of decisiveness you are looking for in a quarterback. I’ll go ahead and make the bold prediction now. If, and that’s a big if, Golson is the starting quarterback for FSU when they play Florida at the end of the season, the Gators will intercept him three times. Remember, you heard it here first.
The NCAA Softball Tournament moves into the Super Regional round this weekend. Eight schools will host eight other schools in best 2 out of 3 formats with eight teams advancing to the Women’s College World Series. Eight of the sixteen teams still alive are from the Southeastern Conference. Yes, you read that right, half of the teams in Super Regional are SEC teams. The rest of the country makes up the other half. Can you say dominance? And the SEC is a relative newcomer to the sport. Yawn, what sport should we take over next? I guess the SEC could get into ice hockey and really chafe everyone’s buttocks.
Florida will host Kentucky in Gainesville for an All-SEC Super Regional. The Gators swept Kentucky three games in Gainesville in the regular season but all of the games were competitive. Top seed Florida did not surrender a single run in the Regional. I like the Gators’ chance of advancing to the World Series but anything can happen in a three game series.
Georgia went into Sunday needing to defeat Western Kentucky twice in order to advance and did exactly that in impressive fashion. The Bulldogs whipped up on Hilltoppers 12-3 and then 17-0. Now UGA travels to Ann Arbor to take on a Michigan team that romped through their regional.
I predict four SEC teams in the Women’s College World Series with it being most likely Florida, LSU, Tennessee and Alabama. It would not be horribly surprising to see as many as five SEC teams in Oklahoma City.
