By Paul Casey Gotham
It is that time again. Let’s hear from you, readers. We had another week of stellar performances. Pick the ONE (1), UNE, UNO from April 18-24th that stands out to you, and tell us a story.
Zach Randolph gets my POTW.
Randolph registered three double-doubles for the week as the Memphis Grizzlies eliminated a number-one seed and took a 1-0 lead in their second-round playoff series.
Randolph’s 31 point-11 rebound performance on Friday night led Memphis to first playoff series win in the organization’s history. The Grizzlies eliminated the San Antonio Spurs, 99-91.
The power forward was 12-22 from the field in the win at San Antonio.
Randolph ended the week scoring 34 points and grabbing 10 boards as the Griz took game one of their second-round matchup with Oklahoma City, 114-101.
Randolph shot 37-68 from the floor while corralling 41 rebounds in four games.
Who gets your POTW?
I’m going with the Tampa Bay Lightning, who have now won 5 consecutive NHL playoff games (4 last week). The Lightning were down in their series to the Penguins 3-1 and came storming back to win Game 7 and the series on Apr 27, and now they’ve gone on to take a 2-0 series lead vs the #1 seed Washington Capitals, including an OT win yesterday. Great goaltending by Dwayne Roloson with a .951 save % over the streak has spurred Tampa.
Bill … looks right now like your instincts were quite good on Tampa Bay. Kudos! 😉
So this doesn’t get lost in the shuffle … special mention should go to Notre Dame’s student athletes for again getting it done quite well in the classroom. This just in:
https://www.und.com/genrel/042911aaa.html
Kudos to all the fine schools who are on the various Top 10 lists. This is the side of COLLEGE sports that should get more attention.
Actually me predicting something correctly should merit a POTW, or at least a helmet sticker. But I’ll be humble about it, since my fifteen minutes is almost up.
Wally – great call on the Graduation Success Rates. In a perfect world those numbers would directly correlate to the numbers achieved on the athletic field.
Bill – spin a tune for us brother. You have had as many hours of fame as I have had minutes. 🙂
That may be true Casey, but as my memory starts going, you’re catching up and about to pass me.
Casey … to a large extent, ND is enjoying quite a bit of national success on the various fields of play. I hope and think football is now on the right path when it comes to on the field performance … they certainly seem to be off the field. But when you look at all the other sports for both genders (soccer, basketball, hockey, lacrosse, softball, fencing, etc), ND has been very highly ranked and won or contended for a good handful of national titles over the past decade. All student athletes are included in those numbers, so the university and athletic dept are doing an EXCELLENT job in the general realm of “intercollegiate athletics”.
But maybe it suggests ND football ought to schedule more games with Rice, Duke, Wake Forest, and Northwestern … so we can play against teams who face similar high demands in the classroom. jk 😉