Thank God It's Monday! 1-12

If you would have told me that North Carolina would start its ACC action 0-2, I would have happily made your bed and fluffed your pillow in the loony bin. But I guess I should be fluffing my own pillow after Wake pulled the upset 92-89 win over UNC Sunday. Credit Jeff Teague for putting up a career-high 34 and credit Wake’s D for smothering UNC’s Tyler Hansbrough. Hansbrough scored 17 points on 3 for 12 shooting, missing the five shots he threw up in the second half. With this rough start to conference play, you have to wonder if Tyler is reconsidering his choice not to jump to the NBA after last season.

 

Nope, this isn’t going to be another paragraph devoted to LeBron James but a shout-out to the new number one in college basketball, the Pittsburgh Panthers. The Panthers, in their first defense of their number one ranking, crushed St. John 90-67. The win improved the Panthers to 15-0, 3-0 in the Big East.

 

What’s an Extra Second, Nothing Big?

That’s something you don’t want to be asking Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher after he saw his number one seed team fall to sixth-seeded Baltimore Ravens 13-10 Saturday. The win for the Ravens was helped by an obvious delay of game non-call that allowed Baltimore to drive within field goal range for the game winner. The blame for this loss can’t be placed solely on one call, though, as the Titans floundered opportunity after opportunity to score with costly turnovers and mental errors.

 

Yes, you will be reading this right; The Arizona Cardinals are in the NFC Championship game. How did they get there? By dominating the Carolina Panthers 33-13 in Carolina in such a complete fashion that it had you doing a double take to make sure these were the Cardinals and not the midseason Patriots of a year ago. They beat the Panthers with offense; WR Larry Fitzgerald had 166 yards and a TD. They beat them with defense, forcing Jake Delhomme into 6 turnovers. They flat-out just beat them. And now they are one win away from a trip to Tampa. Who’d have thunk it?

If the trend of this playoff continues as it is, teams will be playing for the 5^th and 6^th seeds next season and not the top spots because it’s been a curse to host games this week. The Philadelphia Eagles made the road teams 3-3 this week with a 23-11 win over the top-seeded New York Giants. The Giants, without a receiving threat to take away pressure from the running game and QB Eli Manning, floundered on offense and never seemed to get going. Meanwhile, the Eagles capitalized on costly Giants mistakes and the steady play of QB Donovan McNabb to make it to their 4^th NFC Championship in 8 years.

 

Normalcy was returned to this seasons playoffs as the Pittsburgh Steelers overpowered the San Diego Chargers 35-24 to punch their ticket to the next round. A tight first half game was blown open in the third quarter in which the Steelers held the ball all but .17 seconds, scoring 7 and extending their lead to 11. And yes, that wasn’t a typo, the Steelers only allowed the Chargers one play in the third quarter, which was an interception. Pittsburgh was led by a resurgent Willie Parker who rushed for 146 yards and 2 scores and a vintage Big Ben, who made crucial third down passes and didn’t turn the ball over.

 

The Boston Celtics can finally stop withdrawing from that hypothetical bank Doc Rivers keeps talking about, at least for one game, as they ended a four-game slide by beating the Toronto Raptors 94-88 Sunday. The day belonged to Boston’s Ray Allen, who put up a season high 36 points in the victory, including eight three-pointers. Boston has a chance to put together its first back to back wins since the 19-game win streak if it can head to Toronto and beat the Raptors again on Monday.