TOWSON, Maryland Tuesday, February 24, 2020 - Let me get a few things out of the way. The best sports news of the past weekend was Burnley's 3-0 take down of Bournemouth. The match was on the losing side's pitch and, to be candid, Burnley's goal was never seriously threatened. The Claret, by the end of the weekend's play, was tied with Arsenal with 37 points, good for ninth place in the 20-team Premier League.
Burnley has now won four of its last five matches, a far cry from the woeful way Burnley started the campaign.
In Baseball, Maryland improved to 5-1 by taking two of three from Rhode Island over the past weekend. The very idea that the two teams played all three games outdoors in February with no postponements or delays should give anyone an idea of how the weather in these parts has changed. The Terps won, 9-3 on Friday and 3-0 on Sunday, but lost, 11-8, on Saturday afternoon.
Maryland was due to take on George Mason in College Park Tuesday afternoon, but the game, if not already called, almost certainly will be because of the steady all-day rain.
Maryland's basketball team fell a tad after losing to Ohio State on Sunday. They are now 8th in the AP and 9th in the coach's poll. The bloody. polls have gotten to be so ridiculous in their bias towards the big conferences. Michigan State is not very good this year, yet they are ranked 24th with a miserable 18-9 record. Teams like Northern Iowa (23-5), Stephen F. Austin (24-3), East Tennessee State (25-4) and St. Mary's (23-6) aren't ranked, even though many of the latter teams always seem to knock off some so-called big names in the NCAA tournament.
Some of the lads who vote in the poll can't let their college years go. They vote for teams that were good in past years, but not this year, while ignoring the St. Mary's of the world, who always win big games, always play fearlessly against big teams, and always get screwed by the people who pick the tournament teams and vote in the polls.
The depressing lot who pick the tournament teams will ignore St. Mary's but take eight or nine teams from the Big Ten or Southeastern Conference, even though most of those teams won't survive the first weekend.
Does a team that finishes sixth or below in their conference really deserve a tournament berth that they will not take advantage of at the expense of a second place team that has been winning at a breathtaking pace only to lose a conference tournament game that might keep them out of the NCAA for no good reason.
But Tom Izzo is such a good coach. Does keeping one of his worst teams in the past decade out of the NCAA take away from his legacy? It does not. But keeping kids who have achieved at a championship rate out of the NCAA so Izzo's legacy can be salved is obscene.
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