1-Man’s Opinion on Sports-Tuesday “A Bad Night Here…And There”
-0-“A Bad Night Here & There”
-0-
It was a bad night, in San Diego, and in Indianapolis.
The Padres suffered a traumatic loss at home plate, and on the field against the Giants.
Gonzaga suffered a brutal blowout loss to Baylor in the NCAA tournament game, a stunning one side affair.
-0-
At Petco Park, the air came out of the stadium in the 3rd inning, and maybe for much of the season, when Fernando Tatis went down in the batters box, with a violent swing and miss on a pitch, dislocating his left shoulder.
He collapsed in pain and was down for 2-minutes, then helped the clubhouse.
It is a serious injury, one likely to bring on surgery and an extensive rehab. More alarming is that this is the 3rd incident in 3-weeks with his left shoulder.
He apparently injured the shoulder in spring training with a very hard head-first slide, landing and extending that shoulder.
A week later, he tweaked the left shoulder making a back hand stab at a hard hit ball, coming out of the game with what appeared to be an impingement.
And then last night, the horrors of a violent swing, his left shoulder fully extended with the swing, and to see him collapse on the ground in agony.
The shoulder subluxation is a mini-dislocation but if the shoulder keeps popping out, surgery becomes a necessity to tighten it.
The neon light star of the team, has struggled this spring, hitting (.167) with 5-errors in the first 5-games of the season.
They lost to the lowly Giants on top ot the loss of Tatis.
-0-
In Indianapolis, it was a bad night from start to finish for unbeaten Gonzaga. It happened to Indiana State, the Larry Bird led team, that was unbeaten but got bashed by Michigan State in 1979’s finals..
Last night, the Zags were overwhelmed out of the gate. Outscored (9-0) at the start..trailed (16-4) and then (29-10). They looked fatigued from their Thursday night win over UCLA.
Baylor’s guards buried threes at one end, stole passes and mugged the Bulldog guards at the other end.
Twice Mark Few’s team rallied from huge deficits, and you thought, they are climbing back in it. They whillted the lead to 12-but 2-trips down the floor later, the lead was back to 17. Then in the 2nd half, they cut it to 9-but next thing you knew, it was at 20-points.
Game over, hope for history gone.
They never were able to flip the switch to find their offense, or to short-circuit what Baylor was doing.
In the 86-70 thrashing, that was a season low 70-points, coming from a team that averaged 91 on the year. That was a 23-point deficit late in the second half, the worst hole of the season. They hit only 5-three point baskets, again a season worst effort..
Jalen Suggs had foul trouble early, and big men Drew Timme and Corey Kispert had foul trouble late.
And in between the Bears guards went crazy. The backcourt wound up with 78-points in the game.
Their worst outing came in their last game of the season. As Few said ‘we got busted’….the ‘game went sideways’…’we just were not the same team’.
-0-
And so it ends badly, the team in town-Padres…team out of town-Gonzaga.
The Padres were in first place for all of 3-days. It may be hard to keep up with the Dodgers if there is no Tatis in the lineup.
Gonzaga’s great run now gives way to the next story, how many of these gifted young players can Few convince to return to Spokane.
Monday night mayhem in our sports world.
===========================