If you appreciate the status quo in sports, this is the time for you to focus entirely on Scottie Scheffler’s preparation for the U.S. Open.
Because a whole lot else is haywire.
No Lakers (OK, no surprise, but …). No Celtics. No Warriors. No Mavs or Nuggets. Middle America has dominated the NBA playoffs and left the major market teams looking at next year’s rosters.
Who had Indiana vs. Oklahoma City playing in the Finals when the season began? Even when the playoffs got started? But they are clearly the cream of the crop, even if the network executives don’t like the potential for a disconnect in the TV ratings race.
Who could imagine the WNBA without Caitlin Clark? We’re having to endure it while she’s off for a couple weeks with an injury. Amazing it’s taken this long with the beating she gets as defenses, helpless otherwise, try to rough her up to knock her out of her groove.
The NCAA baseball regionals usually are as chalky as any postseason college tournament gets. Maybe a couple regional hosts, the top 16 teams, fail to hold serve. But over the weekend, down went Nos. 1 (Vandy) AND 2 (Texas), and four more of what the selection committee deemed to be the teams most deserving of homefield advantage.
It wasn’t just the selection people; poll voters and analysts didn’t kick much dust when the 16 regional sites were set, and they generally reflected the collection of Top 25 polls that exist in college baseball. When LSU and Arkansas collided about a month ago, it was obviously a showdown of two top teams – but the Razorbacks were No. 1 in one poll and 7-8 in others.
Both are still alive. Dave Van Horn’s Hogs are now the top remaining seed left. LSU (barely) recovered from its worst postseason loss ever, to a fearless Little Rock team guided by classy former Northwestern pitching coach Chris Curry.
Once again this season Tiger fans are questioning their pitching depth (thought to be the team’s chief asset), their hitting (up and down all year) and head coach Jay Johnson (because why not? What’s he done lately?) Some of these people had long ago also speculated the game had passed Skip Bertman by – in February of the 2000 season, when his LSU team won the College World Series again.
Up in OKC, the magic carpet ride by the NBA’s Thunder eases the agony of the first Women’s College World Series in five years that will not be won by the home team, the Oklahoma Sooners. Who stopped the champs? The best paid team in the sport, the NIL queens from Texas Tech led by their million-dollar pitcher, former Stanford ace NiJaree Canady.
People in Lafayette were bummed when last year’s Ragin’ Cajuns coach, Gerry Glasco, headed to the west Texas plains and left the land of etouffee and Mardi Gras. They were ticked when many of his best players followed. But when a Texas Tech billionaire’s open vault produced Canady’s mill-NIL deal it became apparent that the ladies in Lubbock were more like Wall Street commodities, and now the program is two wins from a WCWS crown.
That money pit won’t dry up. And Canady is a sophomore in a sport with no professional future unless the latest start-up league actually makes it, unlike a few predecessors.
That brings us to a championship team with no NIL, the local heroes, the LSUS Pilots. They had the vision of winning the NAIA World Series since arriving on campus last August. But the idea of going undefeated? Nah, never happens, and I mean, never.
Just did. If you had on your list of 2025 predictions that coach Brad Neffendorf would share a podium with President Trump, email me. I want to give you some money to buy my lottery tickets.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com