Friday, March 20, 2009

World Baseball Classic, March Madness, and the Champions League Quarterfinals

WBC Update

Team USA will be playing Japan in the semifinals of the WBC, pitting my home country against the team that I've been rooting for the entire time. I'll continue rooting for Japan, and continue getting yelled at by Tom for it. For the USA-Japan game, Japan should be able to beat a much-injured USA team fairly easily, given the fact that they've beaten every team not called South Korea so far this year. Presumably, Japan will be starting Daisuke Matsuzaka, who has made the WBC his personal showcase for brilliance, and the US will most likely start Jake Peavy, who has been pretty horrible so far in the WBC. Also, apparently, I heard at some point that the US is playing Adam Dunn at 1st base, although I'm not 100% sure on that. If that's the case, expect Dunn to get exposed for a piss-poor 1st baseman against the smallball, infield single loving Japanese team.
Korea-Venezuela should be a fairly interesting game as well. Korea has thus far vastly exceeded expectations, and Venezuela has seemed to just be able to hang around for long enough to get into the semis, rather than dominate every game like Korea has. I've got to pick Venezuela here, as I'd assume they'll start King Felix, who has looked pretty beastly so far during the tourney, and I'm not sure that Bong Jung-Keun, South Korea's ace so far, will be available on 3 days rest. Either way, expect Venezuela to win this game, and lose to the Kamikazes in the final.

March Madness musings from Day 1

U of I found a way to lose to a team called the hilltoppers. Personally I largely blame Bruce Weber. He was complaining about having to go all the way to Portland, and was complaining about calls an incredible amount throughout the game. He seemed to spend too much time whining and not enough time realizing that his team was down by 10 the whole game. On a related note, in case you haven't seem Obama's bracket, its the least creative thing I've ever seen. He may have had like 2 upsets, and they were like 9 over 8. Pretty bad.

Good win for LSU yesterday, they're well on their way to winning a national title.

Maryland looked pretty impressive in their win over Cal, they may be able to make some noise against an overrated Memphis team that's played Junior College teams for the last 2 months.

Champions League Draw

For the quarterfinals of the Champions league, the draws are as follows

Villareal-Arsenal
You'd have to assume that Arsenal should be able to pull off a relatively easy win here, they're playing pretty well and are better overall in just about every way than Villareal.

Manchester United-FC Porto
Manchester United will win this matchup against a hugely overmatched FC Porto club.

Liverpool-Chelsea
This is probably the most interesting of the 4 matchups, as the teams are relatively equally matched and are both suffering from inner-turmoil. Look for Liverpool to pull it off, as they are generally just unbelievably clutch in the Champions League.

Barcelona-Bayern Munich
Barcelona should be able to beat Bayern, although Bayern has been playing extremely well lately. Look for Barca to win big and home and draw or lose a close one in Munich, winning on aggregate.

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