Monday, June 07, 2010

Oh So Close for Baseball

It was a heartbreaker for the Dartmouth baseball team yesterday as it took a 3-2 lead into the top of the eighth inning against Texas A&M only to see the Aggies deny the Big Green a second NCAA Regional victory by taking a 4-3 come-from-behind verdict. The Miami Herald has a story and the official Dartmouth press release can be found here. Postgame quotes are available here.

If you watched the Big Green's three games on ESPNU you know that it would be hard to buy the kind of positive publicity the Dartmouth baseball program received. Granted, the audience probably wasn't very large, but you can bet there were high school baseball players thinking Ivy League who were tuned in, and the announcers could not have been any more complimentary of the Dartmouth program and coach Bob Whalen.
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Dartmouth's run in the USA 7's Rugby Collegiate Championship came to an end with a 17-7 loss to San Diego State yesterday. Kudos to NBC for giving an exciting version of the game coverage, but it is beyond astonishing that finding the results via the tournament's official website is all but impossible. In case you are wondering, San Diego State fell to eventual champion Utah in the semifinals, 17-10. Utah upset Cal in sudden death overtime to win the championship, 31-26.
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Today's trivia: Dartmouth football's all-time record against Patriot League schools is 55-63-5, a .467 mark.
  • Bucknell 4-1
  • Colgate 5-18-1
  • Fordham 4-1
  • Georgetown 0-1
  • Holy Cross 34-35-4
  • Lafayette 6-2
  • Lehigh 2-5
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I didn't see the whole Celtics-Lakers game last night but what I did see confirmed something I've been thinking for a while. The NBA game has gotten so fast and the players have become so good at acting that the officials have an almost impossible job getting offensive foul calls correct. It would be one thing if incorrect foul calls simply meant a point or two for one team or the other. But a bad call or two can send a key player to the bench and dramatically alter the game. It's maddening.
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That Certain Hanover High Senior got the call this weekend making official her invitation to play in New Hampshire's Granite State softball game for the top seniors in the state. The guess here is that she'll be the only catcher on the field one week from Thursday who is training to run Division I cross country next fall ;-)

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