iggymcfly

Don't need this guy at all, but don't feel like looking through the #6 starters right now: Jon Rauch, RP, Washington Nationals

When did being cheered by 50% of the markets become the litmus test for a babyface? Faces are supposed to be cheered everywhere, especially the top face of a company. When you're put against nothing but heels, booked as favorably as possible, partnered with faces to try to make you popular, and you're still booed by 30% of the fans, maybe you're not that popular. The only people that are still cheering him are those that go straight across mark lines, and as such, they'd be perfectly happy to boo Cena if he was booked as a heel and cheer for HBK instead. Also, there's more reasons than just Cena being better as a heel that there needs to be a turn. Both title matches at Wrestlemania are booked as face vs. face. Why do you think that is? It's because the top four draws in the company are all faces right now. There are no credible main event heels on any of the three shows. Edge has been jobbed out repeatedly to the point that he can't even be taken seriously as a main event threat any more and Orton's close in his footsteps. Umaga's got a joke gimmick straight out of the 70s and as such can never be a WWE-champion quality heel either. Raw needs a major turn. Finally, beyond that, Cena's just boring as a face. You can only run the superman champion gimmick so long and Cena's run it into the ground. He needs to do something different with his character. He's already overcome the odds against the whole roster to the point that no one on the roster outside of one face who's been kept away from him is even a viable threat any more. I watched Raw on at least a semi-regular basis for nine years and I quit last fall because Cena dominating the show was becoming so boring. Since it became obvious that Edge was never going to get the title back from Cena, I've watched maybe 1.5 hours of Raw total and I can't be the only one. Cena's driving the intelligent fans away from the product and turning Raw into a Saturday morning cartoon for small children. I'm going to watch Mania basically with the hope that Cena either turns or loses the title, but if he doesn't do one or the other, I can tell you that I won't be back watching Raw in the near future.

All right, I hardly ever watch wrestling any more, but I've caught snippets of Raw the last couple weeks, and there's a pretty good chance I'll end up watching Wrestlemania. Anyway, here's what I think will end up happening: Undercard: Oops, don't care. There's not one person I'd enjoy see winning the MITB match and the Trump/Vince thing is just stupid. I suppose the Benoit match will be decent, but w/e. Batista vs. Undertaker: From my limited viewing, it seems obvious that Batista is done and they need to go in a new direction. I say Undertaker hits the tombstone and Batista kicks out, and then when Batista goes for the Batista bomb later, Undertaker grabs the triangle choke and holds on, eventually forcing Batista to tap. Needs to be a clean finish to contrast with the real main event of the night. Cena vs. HBK: OK, there absolutely has to be a heel turn here, for the feud to continue, because Raw no longer has any real believable main event heels, and because both wrestlers would be freshened up by a heel turn. I'm pretty sure that the superkick on Raw last week was just to throw people off the scent. HBK will do his best to play heel throughout the match until Cena finally goes for the F-U. After multiple pin/submission attempts where HBK kicks out/gets a foot on the ropes/refuses to tap/gets to the ropes, Cena finally flips out and attacks the referee/gets a weapon to beat HBK with to legitimize the turn. HBK gamely fights off the attack for a while and takes a hell of a bloody beating, but eventually multiple chain/chairshots prevail and Cena gets the pin to retain his title, now as a full-fledged heel going into Backlash.

Wow, really surprised it was that low. To be honest, I only watched the second half of the game and during the second half, they were drilling a ton of contested threes despite Ohio State playing good defense throughout. If they were laying bricks all through the first half though, then maybe the OSU detractors have more of a point.

I'm going to skip the popular opinion here of just taking whatever poppy band's been getting the most radio play this month and say Disturbed. Not only do they scream every one of their songs in the same annoying fashion and have these childishly simple guitar riffs that they repeat over and over, but every song sounds exactly the same. Seriously, put any two Disturbed songs together from any album they ever put out, and they will be 95% the same. Trying to listen to a whole album of that (which I've unfortunately had to do a few times) is pure torture.

Not really. That's the feeling I've gotten watching just about every team but OSU in the tournament this year. The Xavier game was the best played game of the tournament thus far, Xavier had an absolutely ridiculous shooting day, played their best game of the tournamnet, and OSU still managed to step up their game one notch higher and get the win. Ohio State made very play they could be expected to at the end of the game and then a couple more (like that ridiculous pick-pocket after the inbounds pass. Contrast that to the two UCLA games I watched (vs. Indiana and vs. Pitt). Terrible basketball. It wasn't just an "ugly style", it wasn't just good defense, it was terrible basketball. In the Pitt game, I'd watch one player get an open 15-footer miss it, then no one would box out, it would go right to another offensive player who would have an open 5-footer, miss that and then the ball would go the other way. The Indiana game, the Hoosiers shot 17/52 from the field and 10/21 from the free-throw line, had 13 points at the half and still only lost by 5. Either UCLA was playing some great free-throw defense or that was just a terrible game. As far as teams only getting one close game, there's not a team that can say that in the Final Four. Georgetown only got by Vanderbilt (who should have been about an 11 seed) after making a terrible ugly bank shot with 2 seconds left that was widely considered a travel. UCLA beat Indiana by 6 in the worst 2nd round game ever played and followed it up with a single-digit victory in the worst 3rd round game ever played vs. Pitt. Florida hasn't won a game by double digits since they played Jackson State in the opener and would probably be eliminated without 15 BS foul calls going against Oregon. Basically, it seems to me like Ohio State faced a couple hot-shooting teams that were playing well and then played even better whereas the other 3 schools just put up some crappy performances against mediocre teams and got lucky enough to get away with it.

Yeah, not the best season finale. I didn't like them just glossing over Actium, and being like "by the way, Anthony lost". Also, Vorenus's death seemed gratuitous. With Cleopatra and Antony already killing themselves, it was like "better kill everybody off, it's the season finale". They should have had another couple episodes in Egypt with Vorenus and Antony in Egypt, established the Antony/Cleopatra thing better and established how Vorenus was missing his children. Then, when they did the reunion, they should have made it mean more. Have a frank conversation between Vorenus and Vorena the elder where he tells her how he never actually killed her mother and how he went looking for the children almost immediately and killed 20 men, but was told that they'd been killed and thrown in the river. Maybe throw some emotional vulnerability in, telling his children that they're "all he has left" and give them reason to forgive him. Have signs that he's a beaten down, tired old man (it has been 20 years since the start of the series) without just having him quickly stabbed in a meaningless fight with Roman guards.

All this, "OSU played close games so they were lucky to make the Final Four" is BS. They were unlucky in that they faced two teams that matched up perfectly with them (Xavier and Tennessee were both pure perimeter teams which is about the only offense that can score consistently with Oden in the middle. They were unlucky that both of those teams played amazing and shot the lights out against them. They advanced because they're probably the best team in the country right now. If you want lucky, how about UCLA going up against historically bad shooting performances from both Pitt and Indiana. And don't give me the "it's their defense" crap. I watched large portions of both games and Pitt especially missed a ton of wide open looks, many of them from inside 10 feet. How about the Bruins getting virtual home games in the regional semis and regional finals despite only being a #2 seed. My pick before the tourney was OSU over Florida and I'm sticking with that, although if anything's wrong, it's probably the actual championship game. Florida's going to definitely have some home advantage in Atlanta and they actually matchup pretty well with the Buckeyes as they have perimeter scorers in Green and Humphrey, but still have the size inside to neutralize Oden on the other end of the floor. I just can't stand the idea of ugly-ass Noah leading the Gators to the first back-to-back NCAA titles in 16 years.

Really fun to see Georgetown come back there. They were getting completely jobbed by the refs for the first 35 minutes or so until the refs apparently just gave up and said "well fuck it, if UNC's not going to make a shot, I guess they'll just lose then." Especially satisfying to watch the big guys just destroy the Tar Heels in the OT. Also, amazingly, my bracket's actually looking pretty decent now after getting massacred early. I'm not going to win any pools, but I'll have a respectable finish with 3 Final Four teams and keep my Yahoo ranking in good shape. Oh, and 22-13 on sports bets is pretty nice too.

Forget 6 hours, it's been 24 already. I think we have to skip Cena's Writer and just let the draft proceed. He can always pick from whoever's left when he get back. MJ Styles, is that cool?

I agree that getting open for shots is a huge skill on its own and that hardly anyone in the league could just "decide" to take 37 shots and still get a lot of good looks and score 60. However, I really think Dirk could if he tried. He's very unselfish and puts a lot of effort into getting his teammates going, but he's capable of getting a good look pretty much any time he wants to. That little step-fake 18 footer is pretty much undefendable and he's added pretty good driving ability to his repertoire too.

And with the first pick of the 18th round, I'll take Nick Punto, Utility middle infielder, Minnesota

With the final pick of the 17th round, the Cranky Old Men select: Aaron Heilman, RP New York Mets Put waaaay too much thought into this pick this week. Finally decided on Heilman after he had a good spring outing the other day.

Kobe's sick. It's kind of amazing that he's got that whole other gear when he really wants to take over the offense. I still think Dirk's the MVP this year when you add in rebounding and getting teammates involved, but as a pure scorer, Kobe's easily the best since Jordan in his prime.

She looks perfect for you. Just a little bit on the nerdy side, but still cute and far from a shut-in. Nothing to regret there at all.

Black Lushus is a mediocre poster. Not a bad poster, but no way can he possibly be the best poster on TSM. Czech's at least interesting sometimes. I vote for Czech.

You think there's a woman alive than can resist Jack Bauer?

You didn't happen to watch the first four episodes of the season, did you?

Another really good episode this week. I really liked the parallels between what Pullo did (killing Erene's lover and then marrying her and being happy) to what Gaia did (poisoning Erene and being happy with Pullo). It's like neither one deserved to be happy, so they just got a taste of what they wanted and then got it taken away. Anyway, most of all, I'm sad to see the show end. There are so many really, really well developed characters that each have their own interesting side stories. At the very least, it would have been nice to see a couple more episodes squeezed in, but I guess this is the end of the line. Too bad Antony can't win at Actium.

I know that if I had a medical problem, the first place I'd look for advice is The Chocolate Socket. Don't see how that could possibly go wrong.

Agreed. I was going on competitiveness in my list; not interest value. SIU/Kansas is the one game I really want to see and the Salukis are the only team left that I'm really cheering on. I'd love to see SIU get to the Final Four.

I'd go with: 1. Memphis vs. Texas A&M 2. UCLA vs. Pitt 3. Ohio State vs. Tennessee 4. Kansas vs. Southern Illinois 5. North Carolina vs. USC 6. Oregon vs. UNLV 7. Florida vs. Butler 8. Georgetown vs. Vanderbilt BTW, don't know how I left Vandy off my short list of teams with no shot to win the tournament. They're significantly worse than Butler or UNLV. Just got lucky to get what was IMO quite possibly the best draw in the whole tournament. Oh, and to be honest, I don't think SC can win it all either. I can see them getting lucky and knocking off a Carolina-type team once, but I don't see them beating 3 quality opponents to win a national title.

I searched..KEKO in the draft thread..whoops. I only spelled it right here cause I looked it up when I wanted to make sure thats who I was picking.. In need of an emergency backup plan..I'll go with Danys Baez RP BAL He should be the setup guy, so he should get some holds with the added incentive of being next inline for closer should Ray falter as well as some occasional save opps if Ray gets overworked. Total homer pick though because I have no idea who to pick and dont feel like looking around a 2nd time tonight. I was just joking Marvin. I did the same thing about six hours ago. Funny to see everyone getting all serious about it though.

I didn't say UNLV had no shot to beat Oregon. I said they were unlikely to beat Oregon (which I believe) and that they had no shot to win the tournament. As in, I could see Taylor and Porter getting hot and the Ducks taking down Florida or Ohio State. I can't see anyone doing that for UNLV. Also, UNLV and Oregon may play similar styles, but Oregon just does everything better. They take the "3-point shooting team" thing to the extreme, taking significantly more attempts from long-range than UNLV, and they still make a higher percentage. Both Porter and Taylor are over 40% this year while taking an insane number of attempts while none of UNLV's starters shoot that well from distance. Also, the Ducks have done that while facing elite defenses all season like UCLA and Washington State whereas UNLV has compiled a lot of their stats against the dregs of the Mountain west. I really think UNLV plays like an "Oregon Jr." much like Nevada was a "Memphis Jr." who got beaten solidly by the Tigers today.

Jesus, I can't believe we're in the 17th round and people are still making repicks!