Weekend winners
Brianna Stewart. The UConn star was picked as the first unanimous AP player of the year in 21 years. She is the first three-time winner and she is a day away from winning her fourth consecutive national title. Yeah, that's winning the weekend. She's a win away from securing her legacy as the most accomplished college basketball player of all-time.
Jim Herman. The journeyman golfer - ranked 191st in the world - held off Henrik Stenson and Dustin Johnson for his first PGA win Sunday. He was unflappable down the stretch and earned his first trip to Augusta with the win. Since turning pro in 2000, Herman had made $3.48 million; he made $1.22 million Sunday.
Lydia Ko. Yes, the headlines of women's golf are not exactly trumpeted from the front page, but Ko is on an amazing run. She has won the last two majors of the season and has finished first or second in nine of her last 14 starts worldwide. Oh, did we mention that she's all of 18-years-old, and has to be in the discussion as the greatest teenager in professional sports.
Blue. This will be the 12th time in 15 years the NCAA men's basketball champ will have blue as its main color. The outliers are Syracuse (2003), Louisville (2013), and Maryland in (2002).
Steve Kerr. Yes, the Warriors lost Friday night, ending their run of home wins at 54 consecutive games. But they are still on pace to set the win record with five games left. Still, Kerr's answer to the 1995-96 Bulls vs. these Warriors was slap perfect. Remembering that Kerr played for those Bulls and coaches these Warriors, here's his response:
"It's a really hard question to answer, not just because you're comparing eras, but literally it's tough for me to answer it grammatically," Kerr told reporters. "Because I don't know who 'we' is and who 'they' are. I'll just say if the two teams played each other, there's no question we could be us and they could beat them."
North Carolina head coach Roy Williams gestures as he talks during a news conference for the NCAA Final Four tournament college basketball championship game Sunday, April 3, 2016, in Houston. North Carolina will play Villanova in the championship game on Monday. (AP Photo/Tim Donnelly) Weekend losers
The Final Four. The games were unwatchable, and reports from fans - including Mike & Mike host Mike Greenberg - make it sound like the views from the monstrous Reliant Stadium in Houston that unless you were in the fold-out chairs you wouldn't have been able to see the action anyway. (And speaking from Dome basketball experience - watched the Dream Team in 1996 at the Georgia Dome in the upper deck - it makes sense.)
Jacobia Grimes is a repeat offender and he faces 20-plus years in prison for stealing $31 in candy bars from the Dollar General.
James Kiki. He's the guy leading the Yahoo NCAA bracket pool, and he has a Nova-UNC final. That's the good news. The bad news is he is assured of not winning because he forgot to pick a winner of Monday night's title game. The winner gets $50,000. Side note: James claimed he was planning on picking Villanova over UNC, so there's that.
Donald Trump. Yes, when The Donald has to make the rounds on Sunday morning TV with apologies, well, then you know it was a really rotten week.
Masters contest
OK, this may be the best week of the year.
Baseball opening day, and that's a good thing unless you are a Braves' fan and until the calendar says 2018, all game days are tied in their quality. The Final Four and the title game, and here's hoping tonight's title game is way better than the semifinals. And of course, there's the Masters.
Ah, the Masters. A tradition unlike any other. An event - and place - so special, there's not much else like it in all of sports.
Think of it this way: How many other venues truly outshine the great stars of the sport the venue hosts? Yes, there are some other golf courses in the discussion - St. Andrews comes to mind - but they only occasionally host major championships.
The only two that come to mind are Churchill Downs and the Indianapolis Motorspeedway, which in our view finishes a distant third in this discussion. (If you are thinking Daytona, well, we thought that too, but that's a regional iconic venue; Indy is a global one.)
Augusta National is so perfect and poignant and passion-filled, it's like an old friend.We know the stories. We recall the shots. We remember Mize's chip on 11 in '87, and of course the magical back nine of Jack the previous spring. We remember Tiger's heroics and Phil from the pinestraw and Bubba's impossibly hooking wedge from jail in a playoff.
We remember the collapses and the charges. We know the holes like we've played the course a hundred times, because in a lot of ways we have. We know there's no running and no cell phones. We know the "patrons" are treated like royalty whether they are actually royalty or some guy named Roy. We know the GReen Jacket - everyone knows the Green Jacket - and we're all pretty sure we'd wear it every day if we had one. And we know there's going to be a Masterfully Mastering the Masters Challenge here at the 5-at-10.
Here's the rules: Pick five golfers, best four finishers count. Where each golfer finishes is your score. (So if you have the winner that's 1 point; if you have someone tied for seventh, that's 7 points, etc.) Add the score together and lowest score wins some Masters swag and some food gift cards. Deal? Deal.
Who's with me?
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr smiles during a news conference before an NBA basketball game against the Indiana Pacers, Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. Kerr is returning to the Warriors' bench on Friday after a leave of absence dating to the first week of training camp in October as he recovered from complications following two back surgeries. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) This and that
- The above quote from Steve Kerr was in response to Scottie Pippen saying the Bulls' record-setting team would sweep the Warriors and that he would guard Steph Curry and hold him under 20. Well, here's our view: If they played with the more physical rules of the mid-1990s, the Bulls would clearly roll and Pippen's physical defense would hold Curry under his 30-point average. If they played under the current rules that do not allow hand checking, the Warriors would roll, Curry would get 40-plus and Pippen would be in more foul trouble than the chickens at Pilgram Pride on plucking day.
- Here's an interesting story making the claim we discussed last week that Geno Auriemma is easily the best women's basketball coach, and stretching that greatest arc to all of sports.
- Tiger Woods' agent says the 14-time major champ will return to the sports "sometime in 2016."
- Thon Maker may be the kid that really helps the college basketball scene by skipping the college basketball scene. In this story Maker, who is 19 and reportedly graduated high school last May, is applying for the NBA draft. He is a skinny, 7-footer with perimeter skills, but is amazingly raw. If Maker gets in the draft, this kind of prospect - very high ceiling, and very limited film against high-level competition (thus making a very real bust possibility) - could push the owners and the NBA office to seriously aim for a two-and-done adjustment to the NBA draft rule. Better times.
Today's question
Lots of potential in here. Greatest teenage professional athletes of all time? These Warriors vs. mid-1990s Bulls, who you got? Who won the weekend and who lost it?
If you need a Rushmore, well, Robert Downey Jr. turns 51 today. Who is on the Rushmore of Hollywood comeback stories, because Downey - a rising star in the 80s who was in prison and an addict before becoming one of the biggest stars of the 2000s - certainly makes a case for a spot.