Category: External Sports (Page 198 of 821)

Report: Bowers “really struggled” at Pro Day

April 1, 2011 / Anthony Stalter

We knew that Da’Quan Bowers’ Pro Day on Friday was important after several reports have come out this month indicating that teams are worried about his knee. Unfortunately for Bowers, it doesn’t appear as though he put those concerns to rest.

According to Pro Football Weekly, Bowers “really struggled” at his workout on Friday.

He clearly looked fatigued, and left evaluators strongly questioning whether he will be ready in his first season. One evaluator in attendance estimated that Bowers’ knee appeared to be 70 percent healthy, at best.
“If he falls to us, we would have to discuss it,” said one evaluator, whose team holds a pick in the back half of the first round, “and I’m not sure we would pull the trigger. We’ll listen to our doctors. He had a real difficult time bending. I question whether he will be ready.”
Another evaluator added: “He’s not ready. He was hobbling around out there. The shuttles were bad. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. He cost himself millions of dollars.”

Ouch. Once regarded as a top-5 pick, it appears as though he’ll fall considerably at the end of the month. There’s always a chance that teams are sending out negative vibes about him in hopes that he’ll fall, but there hasn’t been one positive report about his knee since he had it scoped following the 2010 season.

Making matters worse for Bowers is that this year’s defensive end class is deep. North Carolina’s Robert Quinn, Missouri’s Aldon Smith, Cal’s Cameron Jordan, Iowa’s Adrian Clayborn, Ohio State’s Cameron Heyward, Wisconsin’s J.J. Watt, Georgia’s Justin Houston (considered to be a “tweener”) and Purdue’s Ryan Kerrigan are all regarded as first round picks. It would be easy for a defensive end-needy team to simply move Bowers down and one of those prospects up, causing Bowers to fall. Of course, depending on how far he drops, he could also be considered a major bargain. (Assuming his knee does eventually heal, of course.)

We’ll see. There’s still a month before the draft and that means a month of recovery more of recovery for Bowers. This news is certainly disappointing but who knows what teams are thinking at this point? His draft fate will be decided soon enough.

External Sports, NFL, NFL Draft

2011 NFL Draft da'quan bowers da'quan bowers knee da'quan bowers pro day NFL Draft NFL Draft rumors

Who is the best three-point shooter in the NBA?

April 1, 2011 / John Paulsen

As the season winds down, I try to answer questions like these. Here’s my criteria:

1. The player has to shoot at least 38% from long range.
2. He must make at least 1.0 three-pointer per game played.
3. He has played in at least 50 games.

Here’s the alphabetical list of players that qualify: Arron Afflalo, Ray Allen, Ryan Anderson, Marco Belinelli, Mike Bibby, Chauncey Billups, Matt Bonner, Stephen Curry, Jared Dudley, Mike Dunleavy, Landry Fields, Channing Frye, Rudy Gay, Daniel Gibson, Ben Gordon, Kirk Hinrich, Eddie House, Richard Jefferson, James Jones, Kyle Korver, Kevin Love, Kyle Lowry, Kevin Martin, Wes Mathews, Jodie Meeks, Anthony Morrow, Steve Nash, Gary Neal, Jameer Nelson, Anthony Parker, J.J. Redick, Jason Richardson, Luke Ridnour, Brandon Rush, J.R. Smith, Deshawn Stevenson, Marcus Thornton, Hedo Turkoglu, Charlie Villanueva, Reggie Williams, Shawne Williams, Dorell Right and Nick Young.

Three-point accuracy is important, but so are makes. To me, it’s more impressive when a guy is hitting 2.0 threes per game at 39% than if he’s hitting 1.2 per game at a 41% clip. The more makes, the more the defense is keying on stopping that player from getting open looks, so that makes the makes (yep, makes the makes) that much more impressive.

Here’s a look at the chart. As always, click it to see a bigger version.

A few takeaways:

— What a year Ray Allen (45.2%, 2.2) is having. Not only did he break the three-point record, but he’s having his best year accuracy-wise if his career, all at the age of 35 years. As a Bucks fan, I was sad to see the team trade him away for Gary Payton, but I understood the reasoning behind it. They had the younger Michael Redd waiting in the wings. Now look at the two of them.

— Stephen Curry is proving that last year’s accuracy was no fluke. Whenever Ray Allen decides to retire, Curry is the odds on favorite to take the mantle of the best three-point shooter in the league.

— Best big man shooter? I guess we’d have to go with Matt Bonner, who is listed at 6’10” and is hitting 47.5% of his threes. Kevin Love, Channing Frye and Ryan Anderson are also impressive.

— Thirty-two of the 43 players are black. Eight are white Americans. Three are foreign-born (Turkoglu, Belinelli and Nash). I’m surprised there aren’t more foreign-born players on the list, though a few (Carlos Delfino, Omri Casspi, Sasha Vujacic) just missed the list.

— Of the 43 players, there are five power forwards, nine small forwards, 12 point guards and 17 shooting guards. Best shooter by position…PG: Curry, SG: Allen, SF: Jefferson and PF: Bonner. There are two Spurs on that list.

Like this post? Here are more statistical studies.

External Sports, NBA

2010-11 NBA season statistical studies

Matt Holliday out indefinitely following appendectomy surgery

April 1, 2011 / Anthony Stalter

This was the title I used exactly one month ago after St. Louis starter Chris Carpenter suffered a minor injury during an exhibition game:

“The St. Louis Cardinals, your cursed team for 2011”

If this last month and a half has been an indication of how the rest of the year will play out for the Cards, it looks like I can save that title and reuse it throughout the season.

Thirty-seven days after it was discovered that starter Adam Wainwright would be out for the entire season following Tommy John surgery, and 30 days after Carpenter suffered his scare, St. Louis has learned that outfielder Matt Holliday will be out indefinitely following an appendectomy.

This news comes a day after Holliday went 3-for-4 with a homer and a walk in the Cardinals’ loss to the Padres in their home opener. He could miss anywhere from 1-6 weeks after undergoing the surgery, which means Albert Pujols won’t have his main protection in the lineup for maybe a month or more.

That said, the Cardinals believe that since the doctors “got it early,” it’s possible that Holliday may only miss “six or seven days.” And seeing as how Giants’ outfielder Andres Torres returned from his appendectomy last year in just 12 days, maybe St. Louis has reason for optimism regarding Holliday.

Of course, Torres also admitted that he probably came back too soon and hit just .250 over the last eight games following his surgery. The bottom line for Holliday and the Cardinals is that this is yet another setback in what already is turning out to be a long year in St. Louis.

External Sports, MLB

Albert Pujols Matt Holliday matt holliday appendectomy matt holliday return matt holliday surgery St. Louis Cardinals

Moon on perceived racial bias towards Newton: “Unless u have been black, u have no idea!”

April 1, 2011 / Anthony Stalter

Warren Moon spoke out this week about what he perceives as a racial bias against Auburn quarterback Cam Newton.

From CBSSports.com:

“A lot of the criticism he’s receiving is unfortunate and racially based,” Moon said. “I thought we were all past this. I don’t see other quarterbacks in the draft being criticized by the media or fans about their smile or called a phony. He’s being held to different standards from white quarterbacks. I thought we were past all this stuff about African-American quarterbacks, but I guess we’re not.
“Of course there is racism in every walk of society. We’ve made a lot of progress in this country. But racism is still there. I just thought in the sports arena we were beyond it. I think the way Cam is being treated shows we’re not.”
Moon added: “The thing that makes me laugh is the question of can he [Newton] come out of the spread offense? Can he run a pro offense? Colt McCoy came out of the spread offense and very few people raised that issue about him. So did Sam Bradford. Same thing. Very few questions asking if Bradford could run a pro offense. Some of these questions about Cam are more about his intellect. It’s blatant racism, some of it.

Is Moon serious about McCoy and Bradford? Whether or not they could run a pro-style offense was the biggest question surrounding both quarterbacks last year. And it’s always going to be a question when a QB prospect ran the spread in college, so Moon has no basis for saying “very few people raised” concerns about McCoy and Bradford running the spread.

Moon has received plenty of backlash from his comments, but didn’t back down via Twitter on Friday morning:

College Football, External Sports, NFL, NFL Draft

2011 NFL Draft Cam Newton cam newton racism warren moon cam newton warren moon racism comments

Don’t forget about Brad Stevens and Butler

April 1, 2011 / John Paulsen

This moment of madness brought to you by Muscle Milk®. It’s powerful protein. Drink. Evolve™

Much of the attention this week has been devoted to Shaka Smart and Virginia Commonwealth, and deservedly so. But let’s take a moment to appreciate what Brad Stevens and the Butler Bulldogs have done over the last two seasons.

Last year, when Butler (a #5-seed) knocked off Syracuse and Kansas State to make the Final Four, there was a lot of Cinderella talk. But since #11-seed VCU made it to Houston this year, people are sleeping on the #8-seeded Bulldogs. They lost their best player (Gordon Hayward) and two other rotation players (Willie Veasley and Avery Jukes), replacing them with Andrew Smith, Khyle Marshall and Chase Stigall, none of whom average more than 24 minutes per game or 8.8 points per game. So this is essentially the same team as last year’s minus an NBA player (Hayward) who is getting healthy minutes off the Utah Jazz bench. And they still made the Final Four, upending three of the top four seeds in their region along the way.

Much of the credit goes to Stevens, who in early February wrangled a 14-9 team that was in a tailspin coming off three straight losses to UW-Milwaukee, Valparaiso and Youngstown State. At that point, the Bulldogs’ tourney hopes were on life support, and they needed to string some wins together to even have a shot to make the postseason. Over the next month, they rattled off nine-straight victories, including wins over Cleveland St. and UW-Milwaukee in the Horizon League Championship to earn a berth in the NCAA Tournament.

To fill the scoring void left by Hayward, Matt Howard stepped up his average from 11.6 to 16.7, while also bringing rebounding (7.7 per game), three point shooting (42.6%), along with unequaled grit and hustle. Howard is the team’s heart, but when they need a shot, they turn to Shelvin Mack, the team’s best offensive player. This kid has hit some huge shots over the last two seasons.

But the real reason that the Bulldogs have made a repeat appearance in the Final Four is that they’re back to playing championship caliber defense, which is something that they struggled with for most of the season. In four tournament games, they’re holding opponents to a stingy 41% shooting from the field, and just 30% from the three-point line. They’ll have to defend the three well if they hope to beat the Rams, who are hitting 44% from distance in the tourney.

Given their matchup with an #11-seed, the Bulldogs are in the unusual position of being the favorite. If Saturday’s game comes down to the final few possessions, one has to believe that Stevens and the Bulldogs have the necessary experience and moxie to pull out a win. A team’s personality generally reflects its coach, and Stevens is the model of poise on the sideline. His teams never seem to get rattled.

Two consecutive Final Four appearances by a mid-major program? That’s one heck of an accomplishment.

So let’s take a moment to appreciate Brad Stevens and the Bulldogs.

College Basketball, External Sports, March Madness

2010-11 college basketball 2010-11 college basketball season 2011 NCAA Tournament Brad Stevens Butler Bulldogs Matt Howard Shelvin Mack

Category: External Sports (Page 198 of 821)

Report: Bowers “really struggled” at Pro Day

Who is the best three-point shooter in the NBA?

Matt Holliday out indefinitely following appendectomy surgery

Moon on perceived racial bias towards Newton: “Unless u have been black, u have no idea!”

Don’t forget about Brad Stevens and Butler

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