Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Spring Cleaning Sports Chowdah- Orange (County) Crushed, Sox Sweep Halos in 4; B's Negotiate Way Past Price in 2OT; C's Send Spike Lee Home Unhappy


MLB: After taking the first two games from the Angels, the Red Sox went for the 4 game sweep in Orange county. Not only did they manage to win the final 2 games of the series against the Angels, they got back-to-back shutouts from what many had considered the weakest part of Boston's 5-man rotation.

On Saturday night, Daisuke Matsuzaka brought down his ERA even further by throwing eight innings of one-hit shutout baseball and got run support from a Kevin Youkilis 2-run homer and RBI's from Varitek, Adrian Gonzalez and even Carl Crawford. After giving up a leadoff single to Erick Aybar in the bottom of the 9th (the Angels 2nd hit of the game), Daniel Bard got the next three batters in order to close out the 5-0 Red Sox win.

On Sunday, John Lackey went up against his former team and allowed 6 hits and a walk scattered throughout 8 innings of work while the Red Sox gave him some run support right out of the gate with RBI hits from Adrian Gonzalez and David Ortiz in the top of the first as well as another run coming in on a fielder's choice off the bat of Mike Cameron to jump out to a 3-0 lead.

The Red Sox would add to that lead on a Pedroia sac-fly, 2-run Carl Crawford homer and Adrian Gonzalez single to make it 7-0, and Dan Wheeler would come out in the bottom of the 9th for a 1-2-3 inning to close out the 7-0 win and sweep the long weekend series in Orange County, winning the final 2 games by a composite score of 12-0.

Boston is 5-1 on the Left Coast jaunt of their road trip and 8-2 in their last 10 games. Their road trip will bring them back a little closer to Boston on Tuesday night when they take on the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards. Clay Buccholz (1-2; 5.31 ERA) is scheduled to get the start against Baltimore's Zach Britton (3-1; 3.16 ERA) with first pitch at 7:05 ET.


NHL: Both Tim Thomas and Carey Price were outstanding in net on for Saturday night's game in the Garden. The Bruins were unable to get anything by Price in the first two periods, but managed to take a 1-0 lead 4 and a half minutes into the 3rd on a Brad Marchand goal. With just under 6 minutes remaining in regulation, Montreal came back and found the back of the net on an even strength Jeff Halpern goal, tying the game and eventually forcing sudden death overtime.

The score would remain knotted at 1-1 through the first overtime, but with just under 11 minutes remaining in the 2nd OT, Nathan Horton would break the deadlock.
Tim Thomas stopped 44 of 45 shots faced in both regulation and OT while Carey Price faced 51 shots on Saturday, turning aside 49 of them.

The Bruins take the series lead for the first time by a margin of 3-2 and have the opportunity to close out the series on Tuesday night in Montreal. Game 6 from the Bell center will be braodcast live on NESN, the NHL Network and CBC with the puck dropping at 7:00 PM ET.


NBA: Despite the first two games not being decided until the final 20 seconds of so of regulation, the Celtics dispatched the Knicks in a particularly brutal and efficient fashion on Easter Sunday.

Even after Spike Lee's apperance in One Day at Fenway, I'm enjoying the schadenfreude. Or perhaps because of it. Either way...
The Celtics pretty handily won Game 4 by a final of 101-89 and swept the series with the Knicks.

Kevin Garnett had 26 points and 10 rebounds while Rajon Rondo had 21 points and 12 assists in Sunday afternoon's romp. Big Baby came off the bench for 14 points while Carmello Anthony led the Knick's scoring with 32 points in the losing effort.

After having taken care of New York so swiftly, the C's will now have to play the waiting game (unless they decide the waiting game sucks and play Hungry Hungry Hippos instead), awaiting the outcome of the Miami Heat/Philadelphia 76ers series to find out who their next opponent will be.

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