CubColtPacer

It definitely was. Big break for the Pacers on that play.

Oh god. Kill that team with fire. Glad I'm not the only one victimized by those suckers. We should form a support group. CURSE YOU JASON WILLIAMS WHY DID YOU HAVE TO MISS THAT FREE THROW!! That is sort of a blessing for Duke fans considering it could have gone down as one of the worst blown calls in NCAA history if Boozer had made that follow up shot. Duke probably goes on to win the title and that play where nobody touches Williams would have been replayed over and over again as one of the most blatant examples of Duke bias ever known. These two teams tonight have a combined 5 Duke players. That's pretty crazy.

Collison will start, but how long he can go or how effective he will be is still a huge question mark.

When he's promoted to Chicago will he bump Byrd to right or play right? That's a really hard question to answer. It depends on when/why he's promoted and where the Cubs are at that point. Jackson's probably a better defender than Byrd but the Cubs are unlikely to bump Byrd unless the Cubs are out of contention. I think where Jackson plays depends on who gets squeezed out of the 2012 plans first-Colvin or Byrd.

I bet that's only 5/6 total. 38 of 46 total. Yeah, I knew it had to be a lot more than that because the Pacers have been involved in 5 series like that since 1994. The team without homecourt advantage didn't end up winning any of the series. The Pacers did it 3 times in Eastern Conference Finals in the 90's (Knicks, Magic, Bulls). They lost all 3 series in 7 games. The year the Pacers went to the NBA Finals the Knicks did it to them in the Eastern Conference Finals before the Pacers recovered to win in 6. Miami then did it to them in 2003 and the Pacers again recovered to win in 6.

It's probably because for the first time most people are noticing the Pacers are more than just one of the worst playoff teams in NBA history. They also have a lot of young talent (their starting lineup is 28, 25, 24, 23, and 20 years old). The suddenness of that revelation is probably why they're being labeled as upstarts now even if they get swept in this series.

I'm just saying...its the easiest part of the schedule right now. Doesn't mean we're doomed or anything moving forward. If we are mediocre against the bad teams are are playing now, we'll have to play better to make the playoffs. Except the Rockies are one of the best teams in the NL and the Brewers are with us and the Reds at the top of our mediocre division. What does that have to do with playing an easy schedule so far? Yeah we played the Rockies, the Brewers are mediocre and we havent played the Reds. I would agree with you that the Cubs schedule gets a lot tougher on paper but it hasn't been that way so far. The Cubs opponents are 53-53 so far. The NL teams that the Cubs haven't played yet are 80-80. I agree with you that the Cubs will have to play better to make the playoffs. However, I'm not really worried about facing more good teams because the Cubs still rarely play anybody who's supposed to be really good this year.

Coleman would have had to pitch on short rest. The good news is that the Cubs only have to have the #5 spot come up twice more in the next 3+ weeks. Hopefully they'll have one of Wells/Cashner back by around mid-May (probably Wells).

Looks like he didn't pick up the spin there..by the time he realized it wasn't a high fastball like all the others Bell had thrown it was way too late.

Probably a few steps shy of the warning track...looked decent for an instant but wasn't that close.

Good catch by Castro. Garza has figured out how to solve his BABIP problems-if you can't lower your opponent's BABIP just strike more people out! The Padres' BABIP is .500 on the day today but they have no runs thanks to the 8 K's and 0 BB's. The strange thing for Garza is that he has never been a really high strikeout guy. If a move to the NL is helping his strikeout rate that could be a really good sign for him going forward.

None of the popular teams have many Monday night games. That's not the desirable night. I don't know if for away teams the Thanksgiving game counts for the 5 night game maximum. Otherwise it's a little surprising that Green Bay didn't get the maximum number of night games.

Compared to what? How many teams really have what's considered a good bench? Here are the NL playoff teams last year "benches" (I'm including everybody who got over 100 PA who was not listed in the starting lineup on Baseball reference since it's so hard to sort out a bench over the course of a year). The two exceptions was Andres Torres who was not listed in the starting lineup even though he had 570 PA so I substituted him for Shierholtz who only had 252 PA. I also threw out Jerry Hairston since he started so much for the Padres (and he was terrible anyway). Phillies: 363 PA .667 OPS, 197 PA .768 OPS, 176 PA .583 OPS, 147 PA .729 OPS, 138 PA .813 OPS, 136 PA .475 OPS, average age 32.67 Giants: 267 PA .707 OPS, 252 PA .676 OPS, 221 PA .644 OPS, 173 PA .712 OPS, 140 PA .696 OPS, 139 PA .692 OPS, 104 PA .537 OPS, average age 31.28 Reds: 243 PA .834 OPS, 228 PA .723 OPS, 226 PA .763 OPS, 226 PA .757 OPS, 182 PA .805 OPS, average age 29.2 Padres: 317 PA .769 OPS, 307 PA .726 OPS, 241 PA .557 OPS, 239 PA .631 OPS, 148 PA .653 OPS, 147 PA .748 OPS, 120 PA .607 OPS, 111 PA .781 OPS average age 28.75 Just for reference, here are the Cubs of last year: Cubs: 394 PA .816 OPS, 347 PA .660 OPS, 231 PA .552 OPS, 224 PA .739 OPS, 204 PA .689 OPS, 185 PA .734 OPS average age 28.17 So there's really only one good bench out of the 5. I'm not a fan of the Cubs bench from 2003-2006. But the last 5 years the Cubs have had a bench that has ranged from average to great. The standards for benches are much higher in perception than these benches actually are in reality.

Fukudome's wife is having a baby. with a Cincinatti loss and a Chicago win, Cubs can be tied for the Division lead. That would require the Cubs to win back-to-back games, which they haven't done yet this year. They're still at .500, though, which also indicates they haven't lost back-to-back much this year either. The Cubs won the first 2 games against the D'Backs-their only 2 game winning streak of the year (the two against the Brewers are their only 2 game losing streak).

News was supposed to come out sometime today for both of them, but I haven't heard anything yet. As you said, Wells played catch while Casher is just reported to be feeling much better.

That's what Vogel is theorizing in the Indystar article today:

The Pacers bench is so awful. Would any of them even lay claim to the Rasual Butler never play roster spot? The interesting thing is that the Pacers bench was considered the greatest strength of their team. In fact a common theme of the season was that the starters would get down early and the bench would come in and pick them up. But the Pacers big men who were pretty good during the season are getting absolutely destroyed in this series. As for the turnovers, I thought the Pacers were everywhere in the first half stepping in the passing lanes and forcing turnovers. The Bulls started having some worse looking turnovers in the second half.

I would probably say Rick Wilkins. The pickings are definitely slim though. The good news is that drought is pretty close to officially over. They now have 2 position player possible All-Stars, 2 more position player role players/possible starters on the team with 1-3 more close to joining them. That's a pretty solid core starting to develop.

If you count the Ford halfcourt three there were three of them. The two from A.J. Price I almost expected to go in. He thrives on hitting those type of shots. Too bad he can't make enough of the open ones.

Nobody got hurt, so no. tsk tsk, no regard for your opponent's health Is Collison seriously hurt? They let TJ Ford on the floor which has to say something. I think Collison will come back but I can't imagine he'll be at the same effectiveness level.

Yeah, the rebounding is the difference in this series. In the season series the Bulls out rebounded the Pacers by 7 3 different times and the Pacers out rebounded the Bulls by 1 in the other game. Looking at the season statistics, a 5-10 rebound advantage by the Bulls should be expected. Instead it's been advantages of 15 and 24 which is just killer. I don't think this says much about the Bulls going forward though. Lots of 1-8 matchups end up with close games. The Pacers have done it to 1 seeds 3 times in 10 years now. Both of the previous teams escaped the Pacers and went on to reach the NBA Finals. Getting the wins without having too deep in the series and moving on is what counts.

I'm not a fan of Indiana calling a timeout there. It probably won't end up mattering though.

This is where Indiana really struggles. I'd be surprised if they can really take this down to the last 30 seconds-minute.

Hans was out for about 3 minutes of game time after that, at the same time that they were playing backups at most other positions and it's halftime in game 2. (yes, I know you're trolling) About 7-8 minutes of game time actually (he was hurt in the 3rd quarter and didn't return until about 5 and a half minutes left) but most of that time was going to be played by the bench anyway. I doubt it ended up making a big impact on the result of that game.

If Collison is hurt for long we might see TJ Ford who has gone from starter to not playing at all back to starter more times in his Pacers career than anybody I've ever seen. He was the 4th string point guard and basically told to go home because he wasn't going to play the rest of the season after failing to be traded and then not accepting a buyout. But then Lance Stephenson got demoted for breaking a team rule which brought Ford up to 3rd point guard. His presence in this series would be incredibly random.