Larry Sanders is averaging 3.4 points and 3.1 rebounds per game this season.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Larry Sanders looks like hell.
Not normally, of course. It’s just that tonight he’s fighting the flu, and currently, the flu is winning.
“Are you going to throw up?” I say sarcastically, as the lanky, amply tattooed Milwaukee Bucks center rises from his locker stool and aims to summon a Willis Reed-esque performance for our interview.
“I don’t know, maybe,” Sanders replies. He’s absolutely not kidding.
Later, the box score would show Sanders as a “DNP-Coaches Decision”, but the only decision Bucks’ Coach Scott Skiles needed to make was whether or not he wanted his center bolting from the court mid-play to track down the nearest trash can. It was an easy call, I imagine.
But even Sanders’ balky stomach couldn’t dampen his outlook on this night. A former star for the VCU men’s basketball team from 2007-09, Sanders is in his second season with Milwaukee, which entered Wednesday’s contest with the Washington Wizards trailing the Philadelphia 76ers by a game and a half for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
After six seasons with the Chicago Cubs, former VCU pitcher Sean Marshall was traded to the Cincinnati Reds this winter.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – It’s been a couple years since I had a chance to check in with former VCU pitcher Sean Marshall, currently a member of the Cincinnati Reds. He’s always gracious and much has changed since the last time we last spoke, in August of 2010.
The biggest difference in Marshall since our last meeting wasn’t his uniform, even though he spent his first six Major League seasons as a member of the Chicago Cubs. It wasn’t his new role as Reds’ closer, although that’s sure to cast a new light on the career of one of baseball’s best relievers.
The biggest change in the 29-year-old Marshall is much more subtle. You might not even catch it. When discussing his career, Marshall says “we” and “us” now, much more than he does “I” or “me”. It’s not that he was selfish before – anything but, in fact. But he’s speaking for Team Marshall now, as opposed to just for himself for even for his new club, the Reds.
Marshall and his wife Sarah were married in December of 2010 – by Mr. Cub Ernie Banks, by the way – and the couple welcomed their first child, a son named Brody, last June. Those kinds of changes are much more dramatic than switching the color of your stirrups.
Nicklas Lidstrom led the Detroit Red Wings to a 21st consecutive playoff appearance this season.
By Andrew Dykstra
It is that rough time of year for watching sports… for me anyway. I’m not an NBA fan and have never been a baseball fan, and that is all that dominates ESPN these days. ESPN is what is on constantly in the D.C. United locker room. Fortunately, there are a few things that will have my attention and keep me occupied till next football season:
1. The NHL playoffs. The regular season can be tough to watch at times. My team is the Detroit Red Wings. Unless they are playing Chicago, St Louis, Vancouver or maybe a big-time eastern division team, the games can be uninteresting at times. They play so many games during the year, that you can’t expect every game to be live or die. But now we are in the playoffs and I’m thankful. I’m watching the Red Wings series with the Nashville Predators right now.
2. Like the World Cup, during the summer, every four years, the Euro Cup is played between the top European national teams. This year, I believe it will be on ESPN. It’s being played in Poland, unless I’m mistaken. Holland and Germany are my teams to watch. Both are talented teams, with the Germans being one of the best tournament teams in the history of soccer. It’s always interesting to see what England does and Spain is only two years off their World Cup championship.
This is where my attention will be from now through the summer. Then, we can finally return to football. Word is Michigan football opens with Alabama… big test, can’t wait.
Let’s Go Wings!
Andrew Dykstra plays for D.C. United of Major League Soccer. He was a four-year starter in goal for the VCU Men’s Soccer Team from 2005-08 and spent two seasons with the Chicago Fire of the MLS before playing the 2011 season with the Charleston Battery of the USL. For Dykstra’s other blog posts, check here.
We’re channeling our inner Charlie Sheen (circa 2011) and talking more about winning. Over on the mothership site (VCUathletics.com), we posted a bunch of facts & figures from the 2011-12 season. If you missed it, here ya go.
Since people like to crunch numbers and let’s be honest, there’s a lot of stat geeks out there. I figured you all might be interested in checking out the wins chart we have here in our office. Below is the breakdown for the top-50 in total wins over the past three, five and 10 seasons. Like we all know, Ram Nation is right up there with some of the best programs in the country.
RICHMOND, Va. – You’d think by the title of this blog post, we’re talking about Tim Tebow. Well you’re wrong, in fact the only reason I mention Tebow is to drive all the people to this blog that have google alerts on him. ESPN may actually do a feature on this blog just because we mentioned him.
Back to the task at hand. All week we’ve heard the mainstream media debate about John Calipari and the “one-and-done”. He’s been lauded because of his ability to turnover his roster and still be one of the best programs in the country. That same statement holds true for the longest-tenured coach at VCU, Paul Kostin, who has been running the tennis programs for 22 years. (Interesting note: Shaka Smart was 12 when Coach Kostin took over)
Kostin has been losing First Team All-CAA players for years now and yet he ALWAYS has the Rams in the mix for not only a CAA Championship, but NCAA Tournament bids and most of the years in the mix for top-25 rankings. This year is no different with the men’s squad sitting at 17-4 (winners of five straight) and the women’s squad sitting at 13-4 (winners of four straight).
The men’s squad has had the CAA Player of the Year in three of the past six seasons and each time VCU has had to replace them during the following season, each time the Rams advanced to the NCAA Tournament (which they’ve done 15 of the past 16 years).
In 21-plus seasons with Ram Nation, Kostin has compiled 945 wins. Think about that, 9-4-5. The amazing part may be the fact that there are only 304 loses on the other side of that, a winning percentage of over. 760. That goes along with a million NCAA Tournament appearances as well as being the only VCU program to play for a national championship when the men’s squad played in the 2000 NCAA Finals.
Tebow can have his time in the NY Spotlight, Kostin will just be sitting at Thalhimer Tennis Center on Cary Street racking up more and more wins and more NCAA Tournament appearances.
The old saying in baseball is “Hitting is Contagious.” At least that’s was one of the excuses my dad tried to tell to make me feel better after I gave up six runs in an inning.
That theory as certainly true for the VCU Baseball team this past week who went 4-0 last week and have now won five of six entering a five-game homestand with Liberty, George Mason and VMI coming to the Diamond.
VCU pounded out 37 hits this past weekend up at Northeastern. The Huskies are usually pitching dominant and entered the three-game set against the Rams with a 4.28 team ERA, which ranked fourth in the conference at the time. That’s when the Rams arrived in Beantown and seemingly everyone on the bus got a hit in the three-game set. Even Andrew Phillips, the internet voice of the Black & Gold, may have gotten a hit and you’re talking about a guy who had two hits total in his 13 years of little league baseball. Just don’t ask Phillips to catch a pop-up, that leads to disaster. We actually found highlights of Phillips’ little league career in the video below, he’s at the :05 and :30 mark.
Back to the Diamond Rams, who are led by the sophomore tandem of Joey Cujas and Bill Cullen. After hitting .588 last week, Cujas has pushed his yearly total to .455, which will be close to the top-10 nationally when the NCAA stats report comes out today. Cullen is at .363, while leading the country in triples (7) and ranking in the top-three nationally in doubles (14). This past week, redshirt juniors Taylor Buran and Brent Mikionis got hot and at the perfect time for VCU with the duo combining for 13 hits in 28 at-bats with three longballs and six RBIs.
However, this is what usually happens in baseball, the team has an offensive explosion, but nobody really notices dominant pitching and that’s exactly what the Rams had this past week with a team ERA this past week of just 1.95 to go along with 30 strikeouts and just nine walks. On the year, VCU has 206 strikeouts and just 75 walks (2.75 strikeout-to-walk ratio). Freshman Heath Dwyer has been a huge lift for the Black & Gold with a 3-1 record and 2.86 ERA in 28.1 innings of work.
I believe coming into this year that the Rams had a real shot in a wide-open CAA race and this is the team that I thought could win the thing. It takes time to get in the rhythm, Buran and Mikionis are prime examples of that. They both battled injuries last year and had a tough start to this spring, but turned it on last week and if they stay at that level, VCU will be tough to beat and yet again will be battling for a CAA Championship and another trip to the NCAA Tournament.
