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Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Tech-Dogs rivalry lacking in baseball
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Georgia played Georgia Tech on Wednesday, and neither side trotted out its No. 1 pitcher, or even its No. 2. That’s the way college baseball works. Or, more precisely, doesn’t work. What sort of sport renders the year’s first installment of Clean Old-Fashioned Hate only the fourth-biggest game either team will play this week?
Both Tech and Georgia regard conference games, which are reserved for weekends, as the ones that matter most. Of Wednesday’s matchup, Tech coach Danny Hall said: “We feel we need to win the game.” (His team did.) But the feeling wasn’t so strong that he deployed David Duncan, his best pitcher. Duncan, see, is a weekend guy.
Hall again: “The emphasis for us is on postseason play, and we feel winning conference games is the way to get there … It pains Georgia Tech alums to hear me say that, but that’s just the way it is.”
Imagine the outcry from Tech fans if Chan Gailey chose to start Taylor Bennett instead of Reggie Ball in Athens last November. (Wait a second. Bad example. Try again.) Imagine the protests from Georgia fans if Mark Richt, looking ahead to a bowl game, had held out Matthew Stafford against Tech.
Said David Perno, Georgia’s baseball coach: “The difference is that we play 56 games a year, as opposed to 11 or 12.”
There’s never an uproar about the way Tech-Georgia baseball is conducted because (a.) not nearly as many people care, and (b.) those who do see the merit in the respective coaches’ conventional wisdom. That said, maybe more people would care about Tech-Georgia baseball if the logistics were different.
As it is, the old enemies will meet twice more — once at Turner Field next Tuesday and again in Athens on May 9. Spreading things out dilutes the effect — Russ Chandler Stadium, which seats 4,157, wasn’t filled Wednesday — and renders what should be a spirited rivalry almost an afterthought. Mightn’t it be more interesting if the two faced off over the course of a weekend, when the best pitchers would presumably be available? Sure. Now to the bigger issue: Is such a series logistically feasible?
Alas, maybe not.
Dan Radakovich, Tech’s athletics director, wrote in an e-mail: “A weekend series would be difficult, and I think the same issue confronts other ACC/SEC rivals. To play a three-game set on a weekend would need to be done in early March.”
Said Hall: “I wouldn’t be opposed to it, but we’d have to do it in February.”
Perno: “If you do it earlier, basketball’s still going and the weather’s 50-50.”
Not so long ago, Tech and Georgia would play a pair of two-game series — sometimes in midweek, other times on the weekend. Then Turner Field became available, and the schools scaled back. Radakovich again: “Certainly [a weekend series] would impact the Turner Field game, which is a great thing for both schools.”
Clemson and South Carolina, it should be noted, played a two-game series — one at each place — the first weekend in March. They met again Wednesday in Columbia and will play next week in Clemson. Then again, they don’t have the Turner Field component to consider.
A suggestion: Let Georgia and Tech do something similar — play home-and-home on a weekend in late Februrary or early March, weather and basketball notwithstanding. As Perno conceded, “That way you could see us use all the best arms.” That’s in contrast to Wednesday night’s doings, which saw the Jackets pull Ryan Turner after two scoreless innings so as to save his strength for a scheduled Sunday start against N.C. State.
Play the weekend series early, and then come back with a third game at Turner Field in late April. That would satisfy all the venue requirements, and it might lend an edge to a rivalry that has, to be brutally honest, gone soft.
Permalink | Comments (33) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Defects exposed in quick retreat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
New York — Imagine finally having enough money to buy a used car, and then halfway down the driveway the transmission falls out. So much for the trip to the beach. Or the market.
So much for redefining your existence.
The Thrashers made the playoffs. Five minutes later, they are out of the playoffs. Cue it, Groucho: Hello, I must be going.
The division title this season — unexpected. But this — even more so.
And, no, this should not be a time to celebrate the steps forward. The 43 wins, the playoff berth, the Southeast Division title — all worthy precedent-setting moments. But you lose four straight games to a team that you beat three out of four times during the season — where’s the room for celebration?
“It feels really empty,” Ilya Kovalchuk said.
It should. You can debate the bad goal in Game 1 and the bad bounce in Game 2 that immediately dropped the Thrashers into an 0-2 hole. But four straight losses don’t happen by accident. Four straight losses mean that as far as you have come, you have farther to go than you could have imagined.
After the final game, several Thrashers owners and executives walked around the locker room. Atlanta Spirit president and CEO Bernie Mullin shook Bobby Holik’s hand and said, “You’re division champions.”
Holik forced a smile. “It’s a start,” he said. But he shook his head as he walked away. The man is used to more. He played on two Stanley Cup teams in New Jersey.
Division championships — they don’t even get you down the driveway.
“Personally, I don’t think we were even close to being competitive in the playoffs,” he said. “There’s a long, long way to go here. I don’t think there should be any sense of accomplishment whatsoever.
“It’s not like we need any more parts. We didn’t have what it takes. We have what it takes physically, but that’s a very small part of hockey.”
Bang on the cranium. They made too many mistakes.
Bang on the chest. They started slowly in Game 1 at home and tanked it in Game 3.
The stars underachieved. The starting goalie struggled.
“I want a Stanley Cup — and now we’re done,” said Keith Tkachuk, who cost the Thrashers three draft picks in trade and almost certainly won’t be back. “Obviously I’ll always cherish playing with a great bunch of guys. But we felt really good about our chances to win a Stanley Cup, and we got beat by a better team.”
They made the playoffs. They hit the lottery. And they won — a scratch-off ticket, which lost. They won four of their last five games of the regular season to clinch the division. Then they flopped.
Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Didn’t they do this all season?
“We would lose five, win five, lose five, win five,” Greg de Vries said. “Now we lose four.”
Until Wednesday, they never had a lead in any game in the series. They led twice in this game, 1-0 and 2-1. So much for small victories. Two minutes into the third, Matt Cullen rifled a shot over Johan Hedberg and under the crossbar. Fans screamed goal. But it wasn’t until after a subsequent review that the Rangers were awarded the goal (the puck clearly dropping down over the goal line before bouncing out).
The Thrashers lost one game on a 60-foot dump-in off the glass. You expect them to win a review?
Criticism will follow. It should. General manager Don Waddell shouldn’t be hammered for making the pre-deadline deals for Tkachuk and Alexei Zhitnik because that got the team to the playoffs. But there are holes all over the place, particularly at center and on defense. The Rangers exposed just how slow this team is.
Coach Bob Hartley will be criticized and should. The Rangers’ Tom Renney was a step ahead the entire series. But those calling for Hartley’s firing are short-sighted. He got the team to the playoffs, and his record has improved every season. He’ll get a new contract.
Hartley understands why there is heat, and he’s not running from it.
“We all come in the league with a big target on our back,” he said earlier Wednesday. “I guess that’s the ransom for the glory.”
Glory is still being held hostage.
Permalink | Comments (74) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Hawks should pursue Jerry West
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
This is a no-brainer, even for Hawks officials, who collectively have moved through life as The (witless) Scarecrow.
Get Jerry West.
I mean, whenever greatness is available, you just get it.
West is available, and he is greatness. Such high praise continues for the former Hall of Fame player and accomplished executive despite his frustrating five-year run with the Memphis Grizzlies as director of basketball operations. This season, they had the NBA’s worst record, and they also are in the process of being sold.
Not a good situation when you’re greatness, and you’re 69 years old. As a result, West is retiring this summer, but he said he is open to becoming a consultant somewhere.
Why not Atlanta, especially since he should be here anyway?
Remember? After West built the Los Angeles Lakers into its mini dynasty with Shaq and Kobe, Hawks officials had a chance to hire West as general manager before the Grizzlies came calling on him.
Instead, Hawks officials became The Scarecrow again. Now they can correct their previous gaffe involving West without even clicking their heels.
All they have to do is pick up the phone and call the guy.
Permalink | Comments (48) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Terence Moore
Doesn’t matter who’s in Thrashers’ goal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
New York — If nothing else, this should about do it for intrigue about who starts in goal for the Thrashers. Because, like, does it matter?
Kari Lehtonen wasn’t very good Tuesday night. But at least this time, he blended into the scenery with his teammates. They looked slow. They looked disorganized. They looked panicked. They looked like 1999.
They gave up a goal 32 seconds into the game. They gave up two goals to a kid (Ryan Callahan) whose resume is only 14 NHL games long. They gave up a goal when their defenseman (Shane Hnidy) apparently couldn’t stand the sight of his goalie (Lehtonen) actually making a save, so he kicked it in.
New York 7, Atlanta 0.
Until Tuesday, the Thrashers had managed to hold the Rangers without a touchdown.
“We got outplayed and we got embarrassed,” Marian Hossa said. “There’s nothing else to say.”
They aren’t merely knocking on the door of an early exit. They are threatening to erase the memory of any forward steps they took this season and implode any goodwill they built along the way.
Before the playoffs started, we wondered if these Thrashers were good enough to go deep. Now we wonder how they got here. For the first time, they didn’t look like a playoff team. They looked like a team wishing this series was only a best-of-five, because that would mean they wouldn’t have to play again tonight.
They weren’t just bad. At 3-0, they were just bad. They fell apart and then they pulled apart. The night before, they all sat at the same dinner table at a Manhattan steak house. But in Game 3, they looked at each other like strangers, when they looked at each other at all.
“This isn’t about special teams or breakdowns or whatever,” Bobby Holik said. “We played against that team pretty evenly for a couple of games.”
“Eight minutes into the game, we’re down 3-0,” he continued. (It was 12 minutes, actually. But he was on a roll.)
“At that time, the team should come together. That happened at times during the season. But it’s magnified now because it’s in the playoffs. It’s a concern. We addressed it briefly [in a post-game meeting]. But now is not the time for analysis. Right now it’s one game too early.”
He meant loss. Freudian slip.
The Thrashers are down 3-0 in their first playoff series. They have yet to hold a lead. We’re not sure about their dignity.
We can only imagine how their coach is taking this. Bob Hartley saw the Rangers’ Michael Nylander get behind his defense, take a pass from Jaromir Jagr and beat Lehtonen on the game’s first shot 32 seconds after the opening faceoff.
“The entire bench froze,” he said.
Down one goal and the entire bench froze?
What does that say about a team’s character?
They lost another game and, for the second straight game, they lost their composure. They took 18 penalties, including five 10-minute misconducts.
Ilya Kovalchuk had a roughing, a fighting, a misconduct — and one shot.
Hossa had a boarding, a roughing and once again no points. He came into this series as one of the league’s premier players. For two games, he was invisible. But he has transitioned to numskull. He was pushed off the puck. He was lazy defensively (he was on the ice for the first three Rangers goals). He was dumb (the boarding was five seconds into a power play).
Hartley on the mess: “We didn’t want to take a check. We didn’t want to do the little things. The game was lost.”
Hartley brought the Thrashers to the playoffs. The team did not immediately announce a huge contract extension. Suddenly, after a performance like this, you have to wonder about his job security.
You have to wonder about Kovalchuk, who had shown signs of maturity during the season but now is merely coming undone. You have to wonder about Lehtonen, who has allowed 11 goals in two playoff games. You certainly have to wonder about Hossa. Wasn’t Marcel supposed to be the lesser Hossa?
We thought the goalie was ready. We thought a lot of things about this team. We never thought they would go back in time.
Permalink | Comments (74) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
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