The highlight of the week in sports for April 8-14 comes early, with tonight’s NCAA Final between Michigan and Louisville (9:23 PM ET, CBS). You can read the special preview for that game here, along with thoughts on Saturday’s semifinals. But there’s still a lot more going on in the world of sports. It’s the last full regular season week for the NBA, the NHL is down to three weeks to go and we move into Week 2 for baseball. Here’s the menu for the week in daily sports…
The Atlanta sports market carries a certain reputation—it’s the rep of the big tease. Regardless of the sport—whether we’re talking Braves, Falcons, Hawks, or Georgia Bulldogs, the city of Atlanta seems to always find a way to come up just short. As TheSportsNotebook wraps up its preseason MLB coverage, there’s only one team left to cover and that’s the Braves. We’ll take a look at their chances in the broader context of their home city’s thirst for a championship.
There’s going to be plenty of chances in the next couple days for everyone—TheSportsNotebook included—to make Final Four picks and talk about upset possibilities. But here on Selection Sunday Night, let’s look at the newly unveiled bracket from a different perspective. Let’s break it down by pod—the eight teams assigned to each of the opening weekend venues. Which would be the most fun to go if you had the time and money to just pick a spot and go?
I won’t say that the city of Philadelphia is having the roughest stretch of any American sports city—as long as Cleveland and Kansas City exist, that’s a tough honor to claim. But Philadelphia fans can, at the very least, credibly claim to be the most victimized by high expectations of late. This was a city that was supposed to compete for a World Series and Super Bowl in 2012, and expected to have good teams across the board. Instead, their teams tanked. It’s in that context that TheSportsNotebook is going to start its MLB coverage—we’re going to take a look at the Phillies chances for 2013 in light of what this city’s fans have endured.
If you like college basketball, clear your Saturday schedule, because while there’s interesting games throughout the week, it’s the penultimate Saturday of the regular season that features big battles with possible conference championships at stake. So our walk through the week in TV sports will begin with the end in mind, as we start with all there is to look forward to on Saturday.
*Tip it off at noon EST with three big games. The juiciest is Louisville-Syracuse (CBS) and the ultimate significance does depend on what happens earlier in the week. Both teams are a game back of Georgetown in the Big East standings, but the Hoyas have a tough trip to UConn on Wednesday. A loss there, and Cards-Orange could be for a piece of first place.