owl Page 241 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

DeMarcus Cousins Chases Errant Shot, Runs Face-First Into Basket
The irony is that Cousins really does everything he ought to be doing here. John Salmons pretty much tosses a jumpshot into the stands, and Cousins gets after it to try to maintain possession for the Kings. It's the basket stanchion that's recklessly sitting there. But that's good hustle....

Twitter's Favorite Anonymous Sportswriter Has Some Thoughts On Bobby Knight's Latest Embarrassing Debacle
Angry former basketball coach Bobby Knight, now an ESPN color analyst, will not speak the name of those loathsome Kentucky Wildcats on air. Most everyone knows this by now, but no one has been able to get Knight on the record regarding his bratty behavior. So when The Big Lead's Jason McIntrye procu...

Dirk Nowitzki High-Fived Roddy Beaubois So Hard He Nearly Knocked His Head Off
Dirk was a little fired up after his running hook shot drew a foul and put the Mavs up 16 during the fourth quarter of last night's win in Denver. His enthusiasm was a bit more than teammate Roddy Beaubois was ready to handle....

Miguel Cabrera Bleeds All Over The Infield After Taking Grounder To The Face
Cabrera, by necessity the Tigers' new third baseman, got a rude welcome to the hot corner in today's spring training game in Clearwater. A Hunter Pence grounder took a bad hop and caught Cabrera directly in the sunglasses, which cut open his cheek and ruined a perfectly good uniform with human blo...

Here Are Some Angry Letters People Sent To The FCC After M.I.A. Flipped Off The Super Bowl
Maybe this doesn't need to be said, but normal people don't complain to the FCC. It's not that they don't get offended: it's just that it takes a hell of a lot more to offend them than the sort of thing that actually makes it on television. Like M.I.A. slipping a middle finger past NBC censors. Not ...

Pau Gasol Sings The Fray Classic "How To Save A Life"
Video of Paul Gasol doing some karaoke has been going around for a few days, but this snippet here is a better quality, and really all you need to see/hear. Scroll ahead to the :54 mark if you don't want to hear Pau talk about his love for both singing and UNICEF. The event, in support of UNICEF's...

Watch Creighton's Grant Gibbs Inbound The Ball Off An Alabama Guy's Back And Score
These are always great. Grant Gibbs goes off Nick Jacobs's lumbar for the easy layup, giving us the rare and wonderful highlight/lowlight combo. (Creighton won the game by a point.) Clark Kellogg calls it a "smart schoolyard play," which raises the question: What kind of schoolyard game features i...

UConn's Season Encapsulated: Jeremy Lamb Blows A Dunk At The Buzzer With The Huskies Down 13
UConn operated with a certain air of jack-assery this season, and there's really no better example than how that season ended, as UConn stole the ball from Iowa State (which was just running out the clock in the accepted manner of sportsmanship) and Jeremy Lamb botched a windmill dunk. Your reigni...

Here's Blake Griffin Airballing Consecutive Free Throws
Blake Griffin is good at many things, like dunking and shilling inexpensive Korean automobiles. He is also not very good at some things, and one of them is shooting free throws. Don't expect much reaction from the Clippers broadcast team, though—they're too busy debating the merits of Tracy McGra...

JaVale McGee Did Another JaVale McGee Thing Last Night
We already showed you JaVale McGee's, um, pass to Jason Kidd from last night. And we still think what happened Monday, when he cherry-picked after trying to catch a pass with his face before giving up, is without equal in McGee's ceaseless catalogue of hilarity, a virtuoso blend of the sort of low...

JaVale McGee Gave Jason Kidd The Easiest Steal Of His Career Tonight
The stat tracking software used by the NBA has standard stock phrases for events in the game. Here's how the official description of this reads in the play-by-play:...

Northwestern's Attempted Halftime Buzzer-Beater Didn't Go In The Basket, But It Did Hit Somebody In The Head
Northwestern's consolation for missing out on the NCAA Tournament was hosting one of tonight's opening NIT games against Akron. While they missed this attempt to score before the halftime buzzer, I'm pretty sure knocking the ESPN camera assistant's hat off is worth a couple hundred tickets at a N...

JaVale McGee Does Goofy Thing, Lazy Thing, Awesome Thing All In One Sequence
I mean, this is the definitively JaVale McGee video, isn't it? The good, the bad and the ugly, all in the span of about ten seconds. JaVale gets hit in the face with the ball on the fast break, turning it over. Then he neglects to get back on defense. But wait! The Wizards get the steal and airmai...

Philadelphia Goalkeeper Zac McMath's MLS Season Did Not Get Off To The Best Start
Major League Soccer kicked off this weekend, and with MLS Commissioner Don Garber in attendance, the Portland Timbers were eager to put on their best show in the home opener against Philadelphia Union last night. After falling behind 1-0, the Timbers' Andrew Jean-Baptiste knocked this goal past U...

Mitt Romney Explains Super Bowl 46 In The Stiffest Way Imaginable
Mitt appeared on our friend Paul Finebaum's show today and talked football like an average American! To wit: "This last Super Bowl was a hard one to take. A catch in the final moments, which was a spectacular catch, dashed our hopes once again." See, definitely not a robot! [NYT]...

The Oregon 5A Girls' High School Championship Ended With A 16-7 Final Score
Despite featuring the nation's top junior basketball recruit Mercedes Russell, Oregon's 5A state championship game ended up being the lowest-scoring in history: a 16-7 snoozefest won by Russell's Springfield squad over Willamette....

Last Night's Arena Football Season-Opener Was A Farce
Arena Football's 25th season kicked off last night, but it would be a stretch to call what was played in Orlando "football." A players' strike hours before kickoff meant both teams mostly used replacement players selected in a draft before the game, leaving NFL Network announcers without rosters a...

Homecoming Queen By Default: Temple Returns To The Big East
Unlike a colleague, I did not go to Harvard. I went to and loved Temple University, which at its heart was a commuter school with an ugly campus surrounded on all sides by North Philadelphia wasteland, a place where basketball was king, but a king in memory, and football only a rumor....

The U.S. Women's Open Of Bowling Will Be Held Outdoors, In The Least Magical Place On Earth
What you're looking at is an artist's conception of the U.S. Women's Open, which will follow in the footsteps of the NHL's Winter Classic and the NCAA's aircraft carrier game by being held outside, under the desert sun, in downtown Reno, Nevada. I can't think of a better gift for your worst enemy....

Here's How Oakland Squandered A Late 11-Point Lead And Was Upset By Southern Utah
"The Badlands Conference" is my favorite nickname for the Summit League, and it's an apt name given the conference tournament takes place in South Dakota, home to Badlands National Park. Last night's Summit quarterfinal between sixth-seed Southern Utah and third-seeded Oakland left the Golden Gri...