Singing the Blues

It was quite a weekend if you were paying attention to games played on Saturday and Sunday. I’m talking about college basketball on Saturday and the Super Bowl on Sunday.

If you’ve paid any attention to the things I’ve talked about over the years you would know that I kind of like rooting for the underdog. About a week ago several of us were talking about college sports. One asked another if they watched any games over the weekend. He also said, “No reason to ask Dale, I know he watched several!”

My answer was simple, “Not only was I watching but in the first 10 seconds I already decided who I wanted to win the game.” He laughed and said he did the same thing.

If you are like me and my coworker you have several teams you would like to see win games and a bunch more that you hope never win another game because it seems like they always have the most talent and are constantly in the victory column.

On Saturday, three of those teams lost to teams that probably had no business knocking them off. I watched parts of one of those games. Oklahoma State traveled to Lawrence, Kansas and Phog Allen Fieldhouse and knocked off the Kansas Jayhawks.

I guess you could say they hung on as the Jayhawks rallied in the second half after being down by double digits in the first half only to lose by five.

The Cowboys did the things that win games. Good defense, rebounding, assists and timely three point field goal shooting.

The Missouri Tigers defeated the Kentucky Wildcats by nine. The significance of this victory is that Missouri had never beaten the Wildcats until Saturday afternoon.

The Tigers held Kentucky to 60 points. The headlines would read that Missouri would win in ugly fashion. Most coaches will tell you that they would rather win ugly than lose pretty.

Also Saturday afternoon, the Duke Blue Devils played a non-conference game against the St. John’s Red Storm. Duke was rated No. 4 in the nation and the Red Storm hadn’t won since five days before Christmas.

In what looks like the biggest upset of the year, St. John’s defeated Duke 81-77.

Saturday night, the Arizona Wildcats visited Seattle to play the UW Huskies. In what was a highly entertaining game that went back and forth late in the second half the Huskies got a three-point field goal off a rejected lay in at the buzzer to knock off UA. The Huskies also defeated Kansas at Phog Allen in two months ago.

It is hard to explain why upsets happen.

Most times you look at the talent on one side of the court and compare it to the other side and you would most likely think that the game would be decided by halftime. But coaches work on a game plan and get underachievers to believe in themselves and to trust the game plan and maybe the team will prevail.

At timeouts the players look up and see they are leading and the longer the game is played the more confidence the players get and they see that the favorites are struggling and starting to lose their confidence.

Sports are interesting and the games can be intriguing. Momentum can spur on the underdog and an adrenaline rush can bring them a winning attitude.

The basket seems large enough to be able to allow a beach ball to fall through while the other team thinks that the basket was the size of those used at a carnival.

But that is the way it goes. All four of those teams that lost on Saturday have blue as one of their primary school colors.

When Duke, Kansas and Kentucky lost the headlines that scrolled across the bottom of the sports channel TV screens said “Blue Bloods” defeated in big upset losses. Yes, those are the “Blue Bloods” of college basketball and their losses were shocking this weekend.

Were those losses as shocking as the Super Bowl on Sunday? It depends on who you ask.

I heard enough of the experts say that New England Patriots QB Tom Brady would find a way to beat the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LII. At 40 years of age you have to admire his competitiveness and his ability to rally his team. And yes he came very close.

Eagles QB Nick Foles resurrected his career after Carson Wentz was lost for the season. Foles did enough and more in each of the playoff games the Eagles won and in the Super Bowl he was up to the challenge and brought Philadelphia their first Super Bowl victory.

Yes, I was actually rooting for the Eagles. I didn’t have any bets on it, I was just cheering for the underdog.

Oh yeah, since one of the colors the Patriots have is blue I guess you can say that another “Blue Blood” was defeated this weekend! Oh well.