Hello,
Tomorrow night on ESPN, the University of Utah will welcome USC to Salt Lake City. Many Ute fans have been pointing to this game as a chance to get a foot up on USC in the Pac 12 South Division. Of course, that was before the start of the season. And that was before the Utes stumbled to a 2-2 start and the Trojans haven't been very impressive either. Both teams have had over 1.5 weeks off to prepare for this game.
If the question is can the Utes beat USC? The answer is yes. However if the question is will the Utes beat USC, the answer is a resounding no. Of the Utes first four games of the season, they've only looked good in one game. That game was against the clearly overwhelmed Northern Colorado.
Meanwhile USC hasn't looked real great either. USC beat Hawaii 49-10, Hawaii is so bad that a mediocre BYU team destroyed them. Also USC looked very average against Syracuse and beat a not very good Cal team. Also Stanford exposed a lot of weaknesses in USC and gave everyone a game plan to beat the Trojans. Of course a team needs to have the horses to enact that game plan.
I see USC winning this game by 14 to 21 points.
Sadly my Dodgers were eliminated last night in the MLB playoffs. With the Dodgers loss St. Louis qualified for the playoffs. They are the last team to qualify for the playoffs. They'll play the Braves on Friday in a one game Wild Card playoff. I don't know how much I like this extra Wild Card team or the one game Wild Card playoff format. It will be interesting to see how it works. Go Braves!
This should be an intriguing offseason for the Dodgers. They have a good bullpen, but they desperately need to upgrade their starting pitching. Clearly Josh Beckett isn't the answer. It will be interesting to see how much Carl Crawford will be able to play for them next season. With him recovering from Tommy John surgery, will be look like the Crawford of Tampa Bay or the Crawford that played for the Red Sox?
Also even with Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier and Adrian Gonzalez it still feels like the Dodgers offense struggles. The Dodgers were able to make a bit of a run at the end of the season. But by that time it was too little too late. What they needed to do was score a few more runs during the season.
I also hope the Dodgers don't go crazy and get big named players only. That hasn't worked out well for very many teams. In Boston that formula was a disaster. What the Dodgers need is a couple of Kirk Gibson like players, someone that will fire up the rest of the team. They need the kind of player that will unite the team together. I'm not sure who that player would be.
However before we get to the playoffs, there's still some intrigue that needs to be resolved. Will the Billy Beane A's manage to beat the Rangers in their third straight game. With the A's playing so well, chasing down the Rangers from being back 13 games on June 30th, I don't think anyone should doubt them now. If you do so, you will doubt them at your own peril. I would love to see Oakland win again and send the Rangers to the one game AL Wild Card playoff.
Then about 7:00 EST tonight it will be the final regular season games (probably) for the Yankees and Orioles. If Baltimore wins and the Yankees lose then Baltimore will win the AL East. Then the Yankees will be the other team in the AL Wild Card. That way they could battle each other and just like that either the Yankees or Rangers would be out of the playoffs. It's time for some new blood in the playoffs.
themusicaddict
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