66 days ’til Opening Day

There’s 66 days left until that best day of the year, MLB Opening Day. 66 is also the number of games Billy Wagner pitched in 2007. As usual, I chose a completely useless stat. But it leads me to a different point.

Usually, when a discussion over the best closers in the league comes up, two names are always discussed: Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman, usually in that order. But Wagner has been pretty good too. He’s been a closer for 11 seasons, and only once had an ERA of 3.00 or above. He has a career WHIP of 1.02 and has 1,014 career strikeouts in only 771 innings. That’s pretty good.

A big win for UCLA

There were plenty of reasons UCLA basketball could’ve lost last night at Oregon. Luc Richard Mbah a Moute and Lorenzo Mata were out with injuries. James Keefe fouled out and Alfred Aboya missed a lot of the game because he had four fouls. The Bruins were playing at one of the toughest arenas in the Pac-10 and against a team that was highly-ranked earlier this season.

But UCLA won anyway, 80-75. Kevin Love dominated with one of his best performances as a Bruin, if not his best, scoring 26 points and 18 rebounds. Darren Collison had one of his best games offensively and defensively, scoring 22 points. It was a great team effort overall.

Don’t just take my word for it, here’s what the Bruin blogosphere had to say: