UCLA ekes out good win at Arizona

It was a close game throughout, but UCLA as usual made some great plays down the stretch to pull out a win over Arizona, 68-66.

Kevin Love had another double-double (24 points, 15 rebounds) and made his free throws, making 10 of 11. Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Darren Collison and Russell Westbrook among others played some great defense. Collison’s 16 points helped too.

And considering the win was at an Arizona team that was hungry for a win for so many reasons (To get off the bubble, Senior Day, losing six in a row, now seven losses in a row to UCLA) makes it much more  significant and special.

UCLA is now 26-3, and with a win over Stanford on Thursday can clinch the Pac-10 title. If the Bruins keep it up, they’ll get the #1 seed in the West for sure.

I know I was a day late with this post, but like I said, I took a rare weekend off from blogging. Make sure to check out Telemachus’ video highlights of the game at the new site where he posts them. 

28 days ’til Opening Day

There are 28 days left until that best day of the year, MLB’s Opening Day. For the first time since January, I took a day off from blogging yesterday. So there was no 29 days left post.

28 is the number of saves the Devil Rays had as a team last season, the lowest total in the league. While saves are generally overrated as a stat, having the lowest total of saves in the majors usually means two things:

1) The team was really bad
2) The team’s bullpen was really bad

In the case of the Devil Rays, it was both. But to try to solve #2 (and #1), Tampa Bay brought in Troy Percival (pictured above) to close this year. Percival, of course, was a long-time closer for the Angels and his career looked over until he re-invented himself with the Cardinals last season. In 40 innings, he had an ERA of 1.80, 36 strikeouts on only 10 walks and a WHIP of 0.85. That’s pretty good.

So Percival will help a bullpen that was awful, and easily Tampa Bay’s weakness last year. Out of all of their relievers who pitched 40 innings or more, Gary Glover had the team’s best ERA at 4.89. Yikes.

If Tampa Bay can get a better bullpen this year, look for them to have the franchise’s best season ever. That’s not saying much though — the Devil Rays have never won more than 70 games in a season.