Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Wednesday Night Beer: Skippy's Upset of Texas Likely Means No Gameday in Lincoln

An unintended casualty of UCLA's blowout of Texas in Austin last weekend is almost assuredly the chance of ESPN's College Gameday returning to Lincoln. ESPN is probably going to be choosing between Madison (Ohio State at Wisconsin) or Lincoln (Texas at Nebraska), and after last weekend, Madison has to be the favorite.  Both the Buckeyes and Badgers are undefeated, and there is a chance that Texas could be bringing a two game losing streak to Lincoln if they can't find a way to defeat Oklahoma this weekend.

What does last week mean for a gametime for the Texas/Nebraska game? Well, an 11 am kickoff is likely out of the running now.  Maybe an evening kickoff on ESPN, but that 2:30 kickoff on ABC is looking better than I thought it would.

I missed the start of last Saturday's Central Florida at Kansas State game, as I had a lawn full of grass that desperately needed mowing.  So when I finally sat down to have lunch and watch some football, I found out I had only missed the first few minutes of the game, thanks to a storm that rolled through. Schools are a little more sensitive to lightning than they used to be, so delays happen from time to time.  I really didn't think much about it until I saw this AP picture of the storm, provided to us by Bring On The Cats.  If I didn't know better, I'd swear that was a Photoshop of a screen image from the movie Independence Day.

The Nighthawks will now have a two-game sellout streak, as this Saturday's game against Sacramento is now sold out. It'll be interesting if they can carry this sellout streak further, as the next two games will be tougher.  A Thursday night game against Las Vegas on October 28th will be the tough one, and the season finale on Friday, November 19 won't be much easier due to the weather.  Even so, two sellouts is impressive.

I won't be at the Nighthawks game on Saturday night; instead, I hope to check out year two of Dean Blais' UNO Mavericks hockey squad.  11 freshmen on the roster means there are lots of new names and faces to look at.  One player that I'm simply curious about is 6'8" defenseman Andrej Sustr; 6'8" sounds like a basketball player, not a hockey player.  (He's 10" taller than four of his teammates!)  The Omaha World-Herald's Chad Purcell says he "skates very well for a big guy."

The Mavs are picked to finish eighth or ninth in the twelve team WCHA this season. I think that's purely a crap shoot prediction on most people's part; most of the coaches and reporters aren't terribly familiar with UNO.  We know that UNO won't be favored to win the whole thing or finish last, so somewhere in the middle makes sense.  A little low, perhaps...but I wouldn't expect anybody associated with the WCHA to put UNO that high on that list to start the season.

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