Sunday, June 10, 2012

The Sports Corner

As the self-appointed sports writer for the blog, it's time to catch you up on the latest happenings in the Wild World of Sports (the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat).



All scores and standings are as of 6/10/2012.

Hockey 

The Stanley Cup is upon us.  Those living in Los Angeles have been surprised at the run their Kings are making and are just one win away from the Cup.  They held a 3-0 lead over the New Jersey Devils, but New Jersey has made a comeback and the series is currently at 3-2 with Game 6 being in Los Angeles on Monday night.

Soccer

As previously pointed out in an earlier post, the European Championships are here.  We are partway through the first games in the group stage.  The major upset so far was Denmark's 1-0 victory over the Netherlands.  Spain and Italy also fought to a tie.  For non-Europe teams, the US beat Antigua & Barbuda in World Cup Qualifying 3-1 and Canada defeated Cuba 1-0.  The US travels to Guatemala on Tuesday while Canada hosts Honduras in Toronto.  On the domestic side, the team at the top of the table in Major League Soccer is none other than my beloved Real Salt Lake; games are currently on hold due to national team games.

Basketball

The NBA Finals are upon us.  The two teams involved are the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder (formerly the Seattle Supersonics).  A lot of talk has been about LeBron James, who has taken some flak from fans because of his decision to leave Cleveland and join a couple of other superstars in Miami and try to win a title.  He has played extremely well in the last round and now hopes to win the title against Kevin Durrant.  Game 1 is on Tuesday.

Boxing

Last night (6/9/12) Manny Pacquiao, widely regarded as one of the best pound-per-pound fighters in the world, lost a split decision (2 judges said he lost, the third said he won) to Timothy Bradley.  This decision has been widely criticized as being unfair; most people who watched the fight and scored it at home had Pacquiao winning comfortably.  The stats on total punches landed and thrown also would suggest a comfortable win for Pac-Man (Pacquiao's nickname) but the most important statistic, the judges scorecards, said otherwise.

That's it for this sporting moment.  Please let me know if you think your sport isn't being covered enough and I will consider it (though calls for me to cover cricket and billiards will most likely go unanswered).

1 comment:

Coleen said...

The flight I was on last night to LA erupted into cheers when it was announced the Kings were the new Stanley Cup winners. Does that mean LA is now a hockey town?