Random thoughts are bouncing out, just like my predicted NCAA winners
It’s a random thoughts week as the sports world transitions from winter to spring.
_ March Madness isn’t all about basketball. Was able to watch most of the NCAA Division I women’s hockey national championship game Saturday. Congratulations to the Wisconsin Badgers for winning yet another title –– the program’s sixth –– in dramatic fashion.
In a defensive game with Northeastern that went into overtime tied at 1-1, you kinda felt like something quirky or unusual was going to have to happen for a team to break through. The gamewinning goal wasn’t totally unusual. Actually it can be a pretty successful tactic in the right moments and this was one of them. Badger standout forward Daryl Watts took advantage of being behind Northeastern goalie Aerin Frankel and the eagerness of Husky Megan Carter. Watts bounced the puck off Carter as she skated into the crease area and it ricocheted past Frankel. Just like that, game over.
There’s nothing more dramatic in sports than overtime championship hockey.
Wisconsin’s men enter their NCAA tournament play as a threat as well, holding the fourth overall seed in the 16team tournament and face Bemidji State
Matt’s
Bleacher Shots
at noon Friday in Bridgeport, Conn. The Badgers are 20-9-1, won the Big Ten regular- season title this winter and reached the championship game of the Big Ten tournament, where they lost to rival Minnesota.
It’s good to see Wisconsin back near the top of the college hockey world. The Badgers will be even more interesting to follow in the future when Sawyer Scholl, a former Medford skater is expected to join their ranks in the fall of 2022. Scholl, who finished his high school career by playing for Green Bay Notre Dame, was a first-team all-state forward as a senior last year and is currently playing for the Green Bay Gamblers, who play in the Eastern Conference of Tier 1 US Junior Hockey. He has two goals and seven assists in 33 games. The team is 24-13 with an overtime loss and two shootout losses.
_ Yeah, that was fun watching my chances of a perfect NCAA basketball bracket ending in the first game and the chances of winning anything ending in the first day. It’s always fun to try. There are three number-one seeds still playing so a lot of people’s Final Four predictions could still come true.
Going into it, I thought there’d be fewer upsets because underdogs wouldn’t have those capacity crowds supplying extra momentum. I thought there’d be a lot of close games but the favorites would pull most of them out. Wrong!
_ Been catching a few minutes of Milwaukee Bucks basketball here and there and it’s starting to look like things are coming together after all of their offseason roster changes and a rocky start. The Bucks put 140 points on Indiana Monday and two-time league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo didn’t even play. They’ve won nine of their last 10 and, after Monday’s win put them at 28-14, the Bucks sat just 1.5 games behind Philadelphia for the top seed in the Eastern Conference and had the fifth-best overall record in the league. Antetokounmpo, statistically, might be even better this year than his last two MVP seasons.
It’s still going to come down to defense and shooting in the playoffs, two areas the Bucks have failed the past two years after going in as the number-one overall seed. Man, has the NBA changed. It’s all about shooting and spacing now. The physical play I remember from the 1990s is non-existent. Not sure that was the best brand of basketball either, but I do like seeing teams actually have to earn their points on occasion and possessions mattering, which is why I prefer a good college or high school game.
_ I’ve only got one more week to make a Brewers’ prediction for the season. I can already say I’m more optimistic than I was earlier this month.
_ As I write this on Tuesday, news has broken that cornerback Kevin King is returning to the Green Bay Packers on a one-year, $6 million deal.
The first pick of the second round in the 2017 draft, King is a solid NFL cornerback. You can do a lot worse. He’ll never live down the fact that then-general manager Ted Thompson traded down and passed on Wisconsin’s TJ Watt before selecting King. Watt is in Pittsburgh and one is of the NFL’s best defensive players. And, King had a rough outing, to put it mildly, in the NFC Championship game against Tampa Bay in January. With King’s rookie contract expiring, it just felt like a good time to end that relationship, especially with the Packers struggling to stay under the salary cap.
Like every year, there is griping about the Packers not making splashes in free agency this off-season. But their salary
