Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey and Golf Blog

The greatest shot in the history of Kansas basketball can be traced, of all places, to Alaska.

Mario Chalmers used to hide behind the couch until his mother, Almarie, sang the national anthem. Then he’d waddle around the corner and onto the “court” he’d constructed on the living room floor of his family’s Anchorage home.

“Three … two … one,” Almarie would count as four-year-old Mario heaved shot after shot at the miniature Nerf rim. “Three … two … one.”

Chalmers’ father, Ronnie, chuckles as he tells the story.

“He won a lot of national championships in that living room,” Ronnie said.

Perhaps that’s why Chalmers felt so at ease at the Alamodome on Monday. Seventeen years after those impromptu games in his den, Chalmers again found himself with the ball in his hands and the clock winding down. Only this time there were 43,257 fans watching – and the national championship really was on the line.

As rookie Michael McDowell barrel-rolled across Texas Motor Speedway, one thing became clear: NASCAR’s latest safety measures are clearly working.

The soft walls and NASCAR’s new car likely saved McDowell’s life following a horrific accident that caught the attention of an industry desensitized to wrecks.

Not this time, though. Not even close.

Drivers and crews standing on pit road during Friday’s qualifying session seemed frozen in place as they watched McDowell’s car lose control entering the first turn and slam nearly straight-on into the outside wall. The vicious impact sent his car flipping eight times around the track, and the most hardened veterans stood silent as they waited for the Toyota to finally come to a stop.

“That was the hardest hit I’ve ever seen anybody take,” said two-time champion Tony Stewart, who stood silent on pit road, arms folded across his chest as he watched the car tumble. “That was a pretty impressive crash.”

It was a horrific accident and a tremendous hit, so violent that many insiders compared it to the impact that killed Dale Earnhardt in 2001. But this time, the driver hopped quickly out of the car and offered a slight wave to the anxious crowd before he was ushered into the care center for a quick checkup.

Fenerbahce will be hoping to reach their first Champions League semi-final and damage England’s hopes of dominating this season’s competition when they face Chelsea on Tuesday.Fenerbahce start the second leg of their quarter-final 2-1 ahead at Stamford Bridge (1845 GMT) after their unexpected win over the London side in Istanbul last week.

If they should finish the evening still holding the upper hand, they would have pulled off a major shock and prevented what looked likely to be the appearance of three English clubs in the last four.

Chelsea are expected to be one, along with either Liverpool or Arsenal who meet at Anfield, and Manchester United, who have a 2-0 first-leg advantage over AS Roma. Barcelona, 1-0 up against Schalke 04, also look destined for the semis.

Even though they are a goal down, Chelsea start as favourites to advance as they have not lost at home in Europe since Barcelona beat them at the Bridge in February 2006 and they rarely fail to win at home in Europe.

Their last 10 home matches in the competition have produced seven victories and three draws.

Fenerbahce, on the other hand, are poor travellers having lost five and drawn two of their last seven away matches in the competition proper.

The day’s other quarter-final is at Anfield between Liverpool and Arsenal, who meet each other for the third time in a week.

Major League Baseball is finally trying to white out its blackout problem – and the restrictions that prevent so many from watching games on television and over the Internet may be lifted as early as the 2009 season.

At the owners’ meetings in May, all 30 teams are expected to deliver reports outlining the territories in which they currently broadcast games or have concrete plans to in the future, according to an MLB source. Based on the information, MLB will redraw its territorial-rights map – the outdated gerrymandering that causes areas such as Las Vegas and Iowa to be blacked out from 40 percent of games on a full schedule – to better reflect the present broadcast landscape.

The catalyst behind MLB’s sudden action is president Bob DuPuy, who at last year’s meetings took a hard-line stance on the blackouts. Aware of the outrage among baseball fans and torrent of letters pouring into MLB offices over an issue with a fairly painless remedy, DuPuy told the owners they had to stake legitimate claims to their territories or risk losing them.

Some owners, another source said, were concerned about existing TV contracts and potential discord among advertisers who were promised certain territories covered. DuPuy understood the conflict and allowed them one year to work out any issues.

The year is nigh, and though the MLB source said it’s too late to implement the changes this season, MLB will try to do so before 2009, when it launches the Baseball Channel, potentially its biggest money-making venture since MLB.com grew into a $2 billion business. The Baseball Channel will be much like the NFL Network.

The Detroit Red Wings can now concentrate on the Stanley Cup Playoffs.Nicklas Lidstrom scored twice to lift Detroit to a 4-1 win over the Chicago Blackhawks on Sunday, the final day of the regular season.

Detroit won the Presidents’ Trophy, which goes to the team with the NHL’s best record and ensures home ice throughout the playoffs. The Red Wings accumulated 115 points and will face Nashville in the first round.

“It’s helps that the travel isn’t too far. It helps our team not to have those long flights out to the west coast right away,” said Lidstrom. “We’ve seen them a lot.

“We know their tendencies and I think we know what they’re good at, too.”

Last season the Red Wings reached the Western Conference final and played Calgary, San Jose and eventually Stanley Cup-champion Anaheim.

American Cristie Kerr fulfilled a favourable prediction in a Chinese fortune cookie at the Kraft Nabisco Championship on Saturday.Less than 24 hours after dining at a Chinese restaurant, the 30-year-old charged up the third-round leaderboard by firing a six-under-par 66 at a blustery Mission Hills Country Club.

Kerr, who clinched her first major title at last year’s U.S. Women’s Open, defied the testing conditions with seven birdies and a lone bogey to climb into a three-way tie for third place, two strokes off the lead.

“Everything kind of went my way today,” a smiling Kerr told reporters after posting a four-under total of 212.

“I hit 11 fairways, 17 greens and made seven birdies. Of the other birdies that I missed, there were five or six of them that looked like they were in. So it could have been stupid low.”

Kerr said she had a feeling a good round might be looming for her after visiting a Chinese restaurant on Friday.

“I went right for the fortune cookie and it said: ‘A great day ahead’ in capital letters. So go figure. Maybe that’s all it takes,” she added.

Fortune cookies, which usually include a piece of paper with words of vague prophecy, are commonly served as a dessert in Chinese restaurants in the Western hemisphere.

How difficult was it to see how great Davidson’s Stephen Curry played in this year’s NCAA Tournament?

Not that hard, right?

He scored a bunch of points, made a slew of great plays. It was all right there in front of us. Even the novice fan could flip on a Davidson game and immediately pick out the best player on the court.

The same can’t be said of a NASCAR race. Jeff Gordon is great, but other than driving to victory lane, how does the novice fan – or even a diehard fan, for that matter – distinguish what Gordon does from the rest of the field?

To some degree, it’s true that a NASCAR driver is only as good as the car he’s driving. But being inside the car, the driver is not visible, so we have a tough time judging his abilities. So how do you identify the talent of a driver who’s capable of wheeling a decent car – maybe a top-10 – into victory lane?

A simple way to evaluate driver talent is to look at who’s won races on a variety of track types – short tracks, road courses and restrictor-plate tracks. Each is a unique discipline and requires different techniques to win. Gordon and Tony Stewart are two drivers who have mastered all types of tracks.