Saturday, August 31, 2013

Quickie Pre-Kickoff Sports Chowdah Update- Dempster Returns in Time For Some Sox on Sox Action; Tough Sledding for UConn As They Drop Home Opener to FCS Towson

AP Photo/Elise Amendola
RED SOX- After a California road trip, the Red Sox returned home to Fenway and managed to take two out of three from Baltimore to host the Chicago White Sox. Friday night's game featured Ryan Dempster's first start since intentionally hitting Alex Rodriguez on August 18th's nationally televised game on ESPN.

The Red Sox got out to the early lead thanks to Mike Napoli drawing a bases-loaded walk in the bottom of the 3rd. Boston then added to their 1-0 lead in the bottom of the 4th with a Shane Victorino RBI single and Big Papi's 2 RBI single to right center field on a 3-2 count and with 2 away to make it 4-0 Boston. This would be pivotal, since the White Sox would start to rally in the top of the 5th before Avisail Garcia homered and Alejandro De Aza belted and RBI triple to cut the Red Sox lead to 4-3. Once again, Koji Uehara was called up to make a 4 out save and did so for his 15th save of the season. Boston goes on to win by the 4-3 final and Dempster gets his first win since July 27th against Baltimore.

Saturday's game will have Jake Peavy getting the start against his former team. So far this season, Peavy has a 10-5 record with a 3.99 ERA- his record with Boston is 2-1 with a 3.31 ERA, including last week's complete game against the Dodgers. Peavy will be going up against former teammate John Danks [4-10; 4.15 ERA]. First pitch is scheduled for 7:10 ET and the game will be televised on both NESN and Chicago superstation WGN.

NCAA FOOTBALL- The UConn Huskies put themselves in an early hole on their Thursday night home opener. Most likely playing with a chip on the shoulder after being left out of last year's FCS playoffs, the Towson Tigers stunned the Huskies by going on to win 33-18 before a crowd of 30,689 at East Hartford.

As most of the NCAA kicks off this weekend, the Huskies will have an additional week to lick their wounds before another home game, this time against the Maryland Terrapins on September 14th.

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