BALTIMORE, Maryland February 10, 2014 - The last time Derby County defeated the Queens Park Rangers, George H. W. Bush (the father) was President of the United States and outer space research - and the results gained from it - was about to explode with the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope. The year was 1990. Last night, John Eustace scored in the 20th minute and Derby County made it stand up for a 1-0 victory over Queen's Park before over 23,000 fans at iPro Stadium.
The win allowed the Rams to further tighten the Championship Division Race. This morning, Leicester holds firmly to the top spot with 67 points, while Burnley has 56 points for a leading share of second place. Queens Park also has 56 points. Derby is now breathing down the neck of the Rangers and the Claret. The win last evening leaves them with 55 points. In fifth place is Nottingham Forest with 51 points. In sixth is Reading, with 47 points. For review purposes, recall that the first and second place teams are automatically promoted to the Premier League at the end of the season in May. A third team will be promoted at the completion of a single elimination tournament involving the third, fourth, fifth and sixth place finishers. Burnley is said to be in second place right now, even though both they and Queens Park have 56 points, because the Claret have the better goal differential number (21-15). It is interesting to note that Nottingham Forest, in fifth place, has the second fewest number of losses in the entire league: four. Only Burnley has fewer losses: three. And, there is this: six teams have lost two or fewer games at home. Three of these teams have exactly two losses: Wigan Athletic, in 11th place with 40 points; Middlesbrough, in 12th place, with 39 points, and Nottingham Forest, in fifth place, with 51 points. Two teams have one home loss: league-leading Leicester City, with 67 points and third-place Queens Park with 56 points. The only team that is undefeated at home on this tenth day of February is Burnley, in second place and also with 56 points.
In a game Maryland's Basketball team desperately needed to win, they lost last night at Virginia, 61-53. Maryland held a one-point lead at halftime, but lost Jake Layman to an eye injury. Virginia, winners of eight straight games, had three players in double figures led by Joe Harris with 19. Maryland was led by Seth Allen with 15 points and Dez Wells with 12. Nick Faust had nine points, but seven of them were crammed into the final minutes as the Terps rallied from a 52-41 deficit with just under five minutes left to pull within 54-50 with 2:11 to play. The final basket in the surge was a Faust jam. The Terps continued to claw back after the Faust dunk. Charles Mitchell grabbed a defensive rebound with 1:34 to go, and the Terps worked the ball to Evan Smotrycz, who launched a three-point shot with 1:19 to go, a shot that, if good, would've cut the homestanding Cavalier lead to one point. One fan said he had never seen a shot go that far down inside the basket without going all of the way in, but, in fact, the shot did not go in altogether and Virginia held on to win.
Here in Maryland, we are preparing for another large winter storm, coming, as it does, in the middle of another prolonged period of arctic cold that has left temperatures far below normal and well below freezing. And yet, opening night for the Terrapin Baseball team is Friday at the University of Florida. The Gators are ranked 20th in the preseason poll. The Terps are expected to start California native Jake Stinnet a 6' 4", 202-pound senior. While losing number one starter Jake Reed, a sixth-round draft pick of the St. Louis Cardinals, they return the hurlers who covered about 90% of last year's innings. If you're thinking that it's a good thing they're playing down south, you're right, but they are there only briefly. The Terps play three in Gainesville before returning to College Park to open their home season Tuesday against Rider. That is Tuesday, February 18, 2014. This writer lives about 40 miles north of Maryland's campus. It is maybe two or three degrees cooler here, than at College Park. We haven't been far above freezing for weeks - save for maybe a day or two - and my yard is covered, mostly, in snow. I went to a doubleheader last season on March 1 and what I chiefly recall is that it was bloody cold and that it snowed, off and on, throughout the games. The Terps were playing Princeton, and the handful of Tiger fans at the game were all covered in blankets. This is Terrapin Coach John Szefc's second season and he seems to have a team capable of bettering last year's 30-25 record. The big "if" of course is the pitching. The Terps had 11 ACC wins last season, the most since they won the conference title in 1971. That is 42 years ago if you forgot your calculator or can't find it on your computer or other device. And Maryland was so close to being so much better. A case in point was the first ACC series of the year at Virginia, the same Virginia that is ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the two major polls this season. Maryland won one of three in that series but were so close to winning on opening night that it made your head swim. All season long they had chances to bust through and win an ACC series. The won at least one game in every series except the one at North Carolina. And yet the only series they won was the last one at home against Boston College.
There is profound parity in college baseball, as evidenced by last season's NCAA tournament. Towson University - which won its biggest battle when it fought off a misguided effort to cut the program before the season - made it into the tournament and promptly beat powerful North Carolina. Valparaiso eliminated Florida. And in a nationally televised game, Columbia, which had never won an NCAA tournament game (despite having former players of the caliber of Lou Gehrig), eliminated powerful New Mexico. Maryland will be in its last season in the ACC. They will be trying, first, to qualify for the ACC tournament. Only the top eight teams in the standings do so. Last year, they ended the season at No. 29 in the RPI but didn't get in their own conference tournament. Almost every ACC team that qualified for the conference tournament also were named to NCAA tournament.
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