Sporting Madness

Well, Barnsley finally met their match. After seeing off both Arsenal and Liverpool, their magical FA Cup run came to an end at the hands of fellow Championship strugglers Cardiff City. A ninth-minute goal from midfielder Joe Ledley, playing for his hometown side, proved to be the difference between the two sides: Cardiff created many more chances, but couldn't tack on an insurance marker. Barnsley had their own chances, though, particularly when Kayode Odejayi broke in alone but could only find the side of the net in what Soccernet described as "quite possibly the worst miss seen at the new Wembley". In the end, Cardiff was deserving of the win and a berth in next month's final against Portsmouth. What's interesting is how Barnsley cranked it up to beat top-flight sides like Arsenal and Liverpool, but couldn't seem to do the same against a club from their own league. Perhaps it's the downside of an upset: all of a sudden, the expectations are weighing on...

The Brock Badgers just knocked off the giant-killing Acadia Axemen to win the CIS national hoops championship. Pretty impressive when a #7 seed who didn't even make the OUA finals can pull off this kind of a win: it really shows the depth of the league. Plenty of people will probably use this win to further the case for expanding the tournament to 16 teams, which as I mentioned yesterday, I'm all in favour of, as long as it is an actual expansion rather than just a renaming of the regional finals. The game itself was a pretty good match: largely defensive overall, but some excellent play from both sides. I was particularly impressed with Owen White (MVP of the championships, who put up 12 points and 9 rebounds) down low and Mike Kemp's shooting from the perimeter (he put up 23 points, grabbed three offensive rebounds, and made six of 13 attempts from deep). White definitely looks a lot like Edgar Davids (Dutch midfielder currently playing for Ajax) with his glasses and drea...

Bigger than the Giants and Patriots. More remarkable than the Edmonton Oilers' Cinderella run to the Stanley Cup Finals. More unprecedented than the seventh-seeded Winnipeg Wesmen knocking off the undefeated McMaster Marauders. Even more unexpected than Barnsley knocking off Liverpool and Manchester United. There's nothing that's happened yet this century that can compare to the Acadia Axemen's improbable, almost unbelievable 82-80 double overtime upset of the Carleton Ravens tonight in the CIS men's basketball championships. They'll go on to face Brock tomorrow in a final no one would have predicted. As Streaming Sports Network Canada's Mark Masters noted on their webcast, "This is a game that will go down in the history books as one of the best all-time games in national history." I'd go even beyond that. Carleton has been one of the most dominant programs in any sport ever, winning the last five national championships, going undefeated in OU...