Posted on February 17, 2025

Weekly Update February 17, 2025

Basketball – NBA: This past week’s games. ASG winner.

Basketball – NCAAM and NCAAW: Big matchups in the SEC including 1v2. #1 UCLA goes down. SC losses at home by double digits.

Golf: Aberg wins 2nd title at Genesis. Niemann wins LIV Adelaide.

Hockey: 4 Nations has brought some great games. USA to the Championship.

Olympic Sports: Skiing Worlds including Shiffrins first miss since 2013. Boe becomes best in Biathlon. Fisher breaks WR again. #1 vs #2 in NCAA Gym.

Basketball-NBA:

This week’s games:
- The Cavs opened up the week with a 16-0 run against the Timberwolves to win by 21. Steph Curry and Damian Lillard both put up 38 points for their teams but the Warriors got the better of the Bucks by 14. The Kings/Mavericks game was back and forth, literally every Q was won by the other team. The game went into OT before the Kings would get the better of the home team. But the biggest headline from Monday was Luka’s Lakers’ debut. They easily beat the Jazz. After 3 Qs, the score was 100 (LeBrons’s number and Luka’s new number). The whole stadium was in 77 jerseys.

- Tuesday only had 4 games in action. The raptors upset the 76ers after Embiid passed up an open 3-pointer and turns the ball over. The Knicks beat the Pacers with KAT putting up 40. The Pistons crushed the Bulls 132-92. The Grizzlies beat the Suns by 7. However Ja Morant gave up the game ball because KD reached 30K points in his career during the game. What nice sportsmanship.

- The Pacers needed OT to beat the Wizards. Not impressive as Washington has only 9 wins on the season. The Knicks/Hawks game was much more fun to watch. The Hawks came back in a big way in the 2H, putting up 41 in the 3Q. But the Knicks would win by 1 in OT. The Heat ended up with only 8 points in the entire 4Q! They would lose to the Thunder. Nuggets Jamal Murray was the highest scorer of the week with 55 points. His team would get the better of the Trail Blazers by 11. Bronny scored a career high 9 points in the Lakers loss to the Jazz.

- The Pelicans got a huge OT upset over the Kings 140-133! Helps when McCollum puts up 43. The Clippers beat the Jazz in OT as well that same day. The Timberwolves got a surprising win over the Thunder to hand them only their 10^th loss of the season. OKC never led in that game.

It was the ASG weekend. Candace Parker, Shaq, Chuck and Kenny all had teams. 2 Semifinals were played with the first team to 40, taking the win. Shaq and Chuck made it to the finals where Shaq would grab the easy win. Shaq’s teams was comprised of All Star vets while Candace’s was all non All-Stars. Chuck was international and Kenny was young stars.

NCAAM:
- No upsets Monday. #1, 2 and 3 won on Tuesday. #3 Florida had to comeback to beat #22 Mississippi St, scoring 14 more points in the 2H to avoid the upset. But then #5 Tennessee got beat in both halves by #15 Kentucky. Another underdog who got the better of their ranked opponent was #20 Michigan over #7 Purdue in a close game. Then we just had some regular good unranked upsets. #11 Michigan St fell to Indiana who beat them in both halves but barely. Indiana has had a tough year so this was a big win for the Hoosiers and a storied MBB program. #13 Arizona came back in the 2H but couldn’t make up for their slower start against K St who has taken down 4 ranked teams in the last 6 games. UConn men is not ranked anymore but the Huskies beat #24 Creighton.
- #9 St. John’s and Villanova both scored 39 in the 2H but the Wildcats edged out Red Storm so they win in a close one. #12 Texas Tech did not get upset but it took 2OT to do it and beat Arizona St. Oklahoma played its 5^th ranked team in a row and lost to #21 Mizzou.

- No upsets Thurs. Fri no ranked teams in action. #1 Auburn beat their in-state rivals #2 Alabama in a huge showdown. Both teams scored 52 in the 2H so it was an offensive game. Auburn beat Bama by 9 in the 1H and never let the Crimson Tide lead. Speaking off offense, #3 Duke put up 106 on Stanford. #6 Houston beat #13 Arizona in a low scoring affair 62-58. #7 Purdue lost their 2^nd game in a week losing to #16 Wisconsin on Sat. The Badgers kept it close in the 1H and then went off in 2H putting up 58 and shooting 70%+. #15 Kentucky had that big win earlier in the week but then was a little hung over and lost to Texas. Utah came in with the big upset beating #17 KU. #22 Mississippi St bounced back nicely to beat #19 Ole Miss by 10 and beat them in both halves. That’s a nice rivalry win.
- Sunday only had 4 games and 2 losses. #9 St. John’s beat their 2^nd ranked team of the week, #24 Creighton. Creighton lost for the 2^nd time in a week. TBD if they will be ranked after this week. #14 Memphis started slowly but came back in the 2H to tie it up with Wichita St. so we went to OT and the Shockers shocked their American top dog. They got the win.

Mikaela Blakes has another game scoring over 50 points. This time it was 55 points which is a SEC single game record, a D1 Freshman record and the first player in a century in the D1 to get 55 points and 5 assists.

#1 UCLA goes down to #6 USC by 10!
#3 Texas beat #8 Kentucky who only managed to score 49. The Longhorns then beat #5 LSU with a killer 2H. #7 UConn destroyed #4 South Carolina by 29 points! That breaks the Gamecocks home win record that dates back to 2020 (71 wins)!

PGA: Ludvig Aberg birdied the final hole to break a tie with Maverick McNealy to win the Genesis Invitational. He started the tournament with a 74 so it looked like he wasn’t going to be in contention. Only 3 golfers were in the 60s for round 1. 2 rounds of 66s would help get Aberg up the leaderboard.

LIV: Jaoquin Niemann took Adelaide with a -7 final round. His teammate Carlos Ortiz took 2^nd. Despite going 1-2, Torque GC did NOT win the team competition. Sergio Garcia’s Fireballs took the win by 7 strokes.

Team USA faced CAN in a semifinal. There were 3 fights in the first 9 seconds. It was a great game to watch esp if you are a Team USA fan. America won 3-1. FIN beat SWE in OT which leaves SWE winless in OT in International play (6 tournaments). The round robin finishes up on Monday. The final will be Thursday (USA vs winner of FIN/CAN today).

SUI women duo went 1-2 in the women’s slalom at Alpine worlds. Mikaela Shiffrin placed 5^th but which means she missed out on a medal at worlds for the first time since 2013. She is currently tied with the most medals from worlds at 15 with GER Chistl Cranz from the 1930s.
NOR Johannes Thingnes Boe is officially the most successful biathlete when he won his 21^st golds in the men’s 10k sprint. And there are more races in the season, which he announced he will be retiring at the end of the season.

USA Grant Fisher broke the 5K WR that was 21 years old and that’s his 2^nd WR broken in a week. So that’s now the 3K and 5K. UGA Jacob Kiplimo broke the half marathon WR by 48 seconds, with a total time of 56min 42 sec. JPN Yamanishi broke the WR in the 20km racewalk from 2015.
LSU’s last home loss was to Oklahoma. These two teams are responsible for 4 of the last 5 nattys.

Fri 2/21
- Softball: 18. Vtech vs 12. Alabama @ 4pm on SEC+
Sat 2/22
- Softball: 5. Texas A&M vs 9. Florida ST @ 2pm on ACC+
- Softball: 1. Texas vs 15. Arizona @ 4pm on ESPN+
Sun 2/23
- Softball: 22. Stanford vs 15. Arizona @ 12:30pm on ESPN+
- Softball: 18. Vtech at 12. Alabama @ 12:30pm on SEC+

Thurs 2/20
- Celtics at 76ers @ 6pm on TNT
- Suns at Spurs @ 8:30pm on TNT
Fri 2/21
- Knicks at Cavaliers @ 6pm on ESPN
- Timberwolves at Rockets @ 8:30pm on ESPN
Sat 2/22
- Lakers at Nuggets @ 7:30pm on ABC
Sun 2/23
- Knicks at Celtics @ 12pm on ABC
- Mavericks at Warriors @ 2:30pm on ABC
- Grizzlies at Cavaliers @ 6pm on ESPN
- Thunder at Timberwolves @ 8:30pm on ESPN