Assorted Notes from the Sports World

World Curling Championships 2009
Scotland topped Canada in the Gold medal game of the 2009 World Curling Championships. Scotland, led by skipper David Murdoch, got a point in the tenth end to steal the victory, 7-6. Norway defeated Switzerland in the Bronze medal game. Fengchun Wang of China won the Collie Campbell Award as the player who best exhibits ability and sportsmanship.

UEFA Champions League
Quarterfinals:
Chelsea def. Liverpool 7-5 on aggregate: Chelsea shocked Liverpool 3-1 at Anfield (Liverpool) in the first leg. In the second leg at Stamford Bridge (Chelsea), Liverpool came back from a 3-2 deficit in the 80th minute and scored two goals in two minutes to pull within a goal of making it to the semi-finals. However, Frank Lampard scored in the 89th to put it away for Les Blues.

Barcelona def. Bayern Munich 5-1 on aggregate: Barcelona won the first leg 4-0 at Camp Nou (Barcelona) on the heels of two goals from Lionel Messi, effectively ending Bayern's hopes of advancing.

Arsenal def. Villarreal 4-1 on aggregate: The first leg was a 1-1 draw at Villarreal, but Arsenal put it away with a 3-0 win at Emirates to advance to the semifinals.

Manchester United def. FC Porto 3-2 on aggregate: Mariano Gonzalez scored for Porto to force a shocking 2-2 tie at Old Trafford in the first leg. Manchester United was able to squeak by with a 1-0 win at Porto, by virtue of a Christiano Ronaldo goal in the 6th minute.

Semifinal matchups:
Barcelona v. Chelsea, April 28 and May 6
Manchester United v. Arsenal, April 29 and May 5

Olympic Sports
-Deriba Merga of Ethiopia won the men's Boston Marathon after placing fourth in the Beijing Olympics. Merga had a time of 2:08:42, finishing almost a full minute ahead of Daniel Rono of Kenya and Ryan Hall of the United States.

-Salina Kosgei of Kenya won the women's Boston Marathon in the closest women's finish ever, edging out Dire Tune of Ethiopia by less than a stride, in a time of 2:32:16. American Kara Goucher had led late in the race and finished just nine seconds back of the two. The Dual third-place finish for the Americans was the best since 1985.

-Two British cricket teams set the record for field event played at the highest altitude. The Twenty20 match was played at the foot of Mount Everest at Gorakshep, 16,940 feet above sea level. Team Hillary defeated Team Tenzing in the match, and the teams were named for Sir Edmund Hillary and his guide Tenzing Norgay, who were the first to conquer Everest in 1953.

-Marleen Veldhuis of the Netherlands broke the women's 50-meter freestyle and 50-meter butterfly world records. She broke Australian Libby Trickett's freestyle record by one-hundredth of a second, cutting it to 23.96 seconds. The Butterfly was formerly held by Swede Therese Alshammar, and the record is now 25.33 seconds from 25.46 seconds.

-International Olympic Committee chairwoman Nawal el Moutawakel was "most impressed" by Tokyo's bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. The committee has already visited Chicago and still needs to visit Rio de Janeiro and Madrid, and will make their final vote on October 2 of this year.

2009 ACC/Big Ten Challenge Matchups
Penn State at Virginia
Maryland at Indiana
Michigan State at North Carolina
Northwestern at North Carolina State
Virginia Tech at Iowa
Wake Forest at Purdue
Boston College at Michigan
Duke at Wisconsin
Florida State at Ohio State
Illinois at Clemson
Minnesota at Miami

Interesting Baseball Fact of the Day: The record for most consecutive seasons leading the league in strikeouts is held by Walter Johnson, who did it for 8 straight seasons from 1912 to 1919. In that span Johnson was 215-113 with a 1.59 ERA and 0.94 WHIP. He had 1699 K, good for an average of 212.4 per season and 5.6 K/9.O