Starting (Divisible by) Five
1. 55: That is the number of minutes No. 2 Notre Dame senior Skylar Diggins played last night in the Fighting Irish’s 96-87 triple-overtime victory against No. 3 UConn. In other words, all of them. Diggins finished with a game-high 29 points and a team-high 11 rebounds in her final home game in South Bend as the Irish (29-1, 16-0) capped their first undefeated season in Big East play. And yes, it was reminiscent of the men’s five-OT win versus No. 11 Louisville last month.
The Irish have now taken six of seven from UConn, but another encounter in Hartford looms next week.
2. 50: That’s the number of points Baylor’s Brittney Griner scored, a career-best, in the Lady Bears’ 90-68 defeat of Kansas State. The six-foot-eight leviathan was 21 of 28 from the field (including her first dunk at home since freshman year) and eight of 10 from the free throw line as top-ranked Baylor (29-1, 18-0) extended its home winning streak to 55 games, which is also a multiple of five.
Griner: The Lew Alcindor of women’s college hoops
3. 20: That’s the number of years that have passed since Quentin Tarantino’s classic, Pulp Fiction, was released. Kudos to Vanity Fair for turning over the rock and revealing how the movie got made, how the stars were cast (Matt Dillon: You blew it!), where the name Honey Bunny originated, and why Ving Rhames’ Marcellus had that Band-Aid on the back of his skull (we would have liked, though, to have seen a photo of the actor who played The Gimp). You cannot have everything, alas. Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead.
Stay cool, Ringo.
4. 15: That’s the consecutive number of games the Miami Heat have won after last night’s disposal of the Timberwolves in Minneapolis. A thought occurred to me: What if LeBron, just to punk us all, had said, “Milwaukee” instead of “Miami.” If he had said, “I want to play for the Bucks, not the bucks.” (and, yes, we know he could have made more $$$ going somewhere other than Miami). Anyway, it was just a thought. Milwaukee’s actually a really nice city…in the summertime. While the Heat are in the midst of their franchise’s longest win streak, this season’s longest win streak still belongs to the Los Angeles Clippers, who won 17 straight back in December.
5. 5: The letters in the first name of Regis Philbin, who is the first name talent to be associated with the new sports channel, Fox Sports 1, that today Newscorp will announce that it is rolling out in August. Hey, I love Reege, but he turns 82 in late August. A few suggestions for my (one of) my former employer(s): Get Keith Olbermann and make him your flagship anchor (love him or hate him, people will watch him). Bring in my old friend Paula Faris, who is being criminally underutilized at ABC. Behind the scenes, bring in the wizard of producers, Michael Weisman. Make a big push into soccer, and not MLS, but EPL and other Euro soccer. Fox already has soccer and this is a boomtown sport whose demographics include both recent immigrants and dissident white males who are a little fed up with overproduced, over-officiated (Did we really need to stop the game to see if his foot was on the line for that three-pointer…again?) American sports.
Faris: Smart and savvy.
There’s a window here for Fox. You’re not going to beat ESPN…not any time soon, anyway. But with patience and straight sports coverage (i.e., avoid all “First Takery”) you can build a formidable competitor.
Reserves
Six Catholic schools in the AP Top 25 this week, headlined by top-ranked Gonzaga, a Jesuit school. What say you, Seths Davis and Greenberg, Andy Katz and Doug Gottlieb?
So, Tom Petty is playing five dates at a venue that is literally five blocks from my apartment this spring? Well, I’m there.
LATE-BREAKING: Former N.C. State head football coach Tom O’Brien is now an assistant coach at Viriginia. And he had to move some of his belongings from Raleigh, N.C., to Charlottesville, Va. This is how O’Brien told his former employers that they could kiss his ACC.
Remote Patrol
Los Angeles Lakers at Oklahoma City Thunder
TNT, 9:30 p.m.
Kobe is back, but are the Lakers? The Mamba is averaging a shade under 35 points per game in his last five games, four of them wins, as LA returned to .500 for the first time in 30 games or, literally, half a season (they are 30-30). OKC, however, has won 18 straight at home versus Western Conference teams and five in a row at Chesapeake Energy Arena versus the Lakers.
Kobe is averaging his age (34) of late.
(Honestly, this game has more star power but we may be more intrigued by watching Ryan Kelly play his final home game at Duke at 7 p.m. on ESPNU)