WVU Baseball on life support, DeLa Hoya delusional
WVU's baseball team dropped two out of three this weekend to drop to 25-18 overall and 7-13 in the Big East. The losses dropped WVU to 10th in the Big East.
Coach Greg Van Zant estimates his team can still reach eighth place and qualify for the playoffs by winning at least four of their last six remaining games against Connecticut next weekend in Storrs, and at home against Georgetown to end the regular season. Connecticut is presently one spot ahead of West Virginia in ninth place with a 6-12 record while Georgetown is 12th with a 6-15 Big East mark.
The baseball team will need a big final week from Justin Jenkins. Justin is a Dick Howser Award candidate and had a 38 game hitting streak this season that is a school and conference record and 10th longest in NCAA history.
Jenkins has a good shot at breaking all of West Virginia University’s major batting records before season’s end, making him the most prolific hitter in school history. Jenkins already owns the school record for single-season hits (94), total bases (411), career doubles (69), consecutive multi-hit games (8) and hitting streak (38 games).
Speaking of hitting, the DeLa Hoya-Mayweather fight probably didn't have enough for non-boxing fans. After the fight Max Kellerman described the action as beautiful for boxing's biggest fans, but probably boring for a casual fan. Mayweather seemed content to throw 30-45 punches a round while Oscar would throw more but land very little. Despite throwing almost twice as many punches DeLa Hoya landed about a third less. I agreed with Kellerman that Mayweather dominated. I thought Oscar won the 2nd, 4th, and 12th rounds and that was it. Every other round had Mayweather dominating the tempo and landing clean or glancing blows to Oscar's face while Oscar did nothing until he would run at Mayweather and windmill like a 8 year old girl while throwing soft punches that missed by about a foot. The pro-DeLa Hoya crowd would stand and cheer and Mayweather would laugh.
The biggest problem with the fight was the announcers. First Emmanuel Stewart and Larry Merchant spent two rounds arguing over whether or not Oscar would tire. He did, but after I was tired of listening to it. Then all three announcers, including play by play woman-beater Jim Lampley, continually stated that Oscar was blocking punches and landing punches despite the clear visual evidence and compu-box numbers to the contrary. Oscar deflected some punches but still blocked most with his nose or ear and I don't think that counts. After the fight Kellerman blasted the one judge who gave the fight to DeLa Hoya and rightfully so while the others made excuses for the judge. It doesn't matter if you throw a bunch of punches. DeLa Hoya believed he won because he threw more punches, but that is not how boxing is scored. If you land 20% while your opponent lands almost 50% and lands more punches and you start fighting like you trained with Tonya Harding you lose.
6 comments:
Ah, you beat me to the punch... *wince*
I had the fight scored 8-3-1 with I believe the 5th as a tie as neither boxer did anything the entire round.
Speaking of Max Kellerman... he'll probably have a meeting with the brass today who will explain to him there is more to commentating than just analyzing the facts. In his new job, there will also be politics with which to deal. During his post fight analysis, he disagreed with Jim Lampley and stated that there are indeed MMA participants equally as talented in their respective sport as De La Hoya and Mayweather. He may be right. But from HBO's perspective, this simply cannot be said on air. HBO's quasi-competitor, Showtime, carries a MMA series. HBO does not. Therefore, a HBO commentator cannot bolster a competitor's wares. (That's what bloggers are for.) Other than that, we Bastards look forward to Kellerman replacing Ledderman in the analyst chair.
Er, I mean Kellerman is replacing Larry Merchant. Wish I could edit comments.
But he was right to call out Lampley on that stupid comment too. Lampley basically said that the boxing match was light years ahead of anything you would ever see in a MMA fight based upon skill levels shown. He is dead wrong and making comments like that make boxing look bad. Boxing is what it is and so is MMA, but both require insane amounts of skill in order to be good.
While they are different types of fighting and an MMA fighter would probably win most confrontations, boxing has it's own albeit different allure. Two men punching each other in the face non-stop. Boxing needs to stick to building up it's own strengths and not attacking others. Kellerman may have been wrong to promote a competitor on HBO, but Lampley was way off base to begin with. If Lampley heard Kellerman's comments I'm sure some woman caught a beating.
HBO should put Lampley in the ring with Chyna for pay per view. As for Showtime being merely a quasi-competitor, I disagree. Showtime has had quality programming of late with the likes of Huff, Sleeper Cell, Dexter, and Weeds (and Fat actress?? what was that?). Meanwhile HBO is likely airing the last season of all of its best shows (The Wire, Sopranos, and Curb). There's little left after that.
I referred to Showtime as a "quasi-competitor" because the two channels often seem packaged together in program packages offerred by cable providers. This could perhaps mean that the two channels have some form of minor agreement between them. Of course, this is all just mere speculation.
In a new development, apparently the CEO of HBO was rubbing elbows with Jim Lampley at the fight. Some of his techniques with the ladies seem to have rubbed off:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/business/08cnd-hbo.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
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