Pro Bowl: The New England Patriots will be represented by two players at the NFL Pro Bowl this year as Wes Welker and Stephen Gostowski were named to the AFC Team. [Reiss’s Pieces]
UConn’s Donald Brown Named 2nd Team AP All-American
Donald Brown, a 2nd Team AP All-American from UConn.
The accolades continue to pour in for UConn Huskies running back Donald Brown as he was named to the AP All-America 2nd team.
He is the first member of the Huskies to be named an AP All-American since their move to the FBS. Brown was recently named to the Walter Camp Foundation All-America 2nd Team as well as Big East Offensive MVP and All-Big East First Team. He also took home team MVP and offensive MVP at UConn’s awards dinner last night.
Brown announced yesterday that he plans to return for his senior season at UConn. He led the nation in rushing with 1,822 yards while adding 17 touchdowns as well.
Next up for Brown and the Huskies is a date with the Buffalo Bulls on January 3, 2009 in the International Bowl in Toronto at Rogers Centre.
A full look at the AP All-American Teams after the jump.
Teixeira Anticipates $22-28 Million A Year
Mark Teixeira: According to Karl Ravech of ESPN, Mark Teixeira is anticipating a contract that will pay him anywhere from $22-28 million a year.
Karl Ravech of ESPN reported that he had checked in with someone close to the Teixeira negotiations. According to Ravech’s source, the first baseman, who is the prize of the free-agent market, is in negotiations with five teams: the Angels, Nationals, Orioles, Red Sox and Yankees. Using the standards set by Torii Hunter’s five-year, $90 million deal and Alex Rodriguez’ 10-year, $275 million deal–both of which were signed last offseason–Ravech reported that Teixeira is in line for an eight-year deal of $22 million to $28 million per season.
[WEEI.com]
Paw Prints – The Daily Roundup – 12/16
As we heard yesterday, Donald Brown will be returning to the UConn Huskies for his senior season.
After a 5-0 start, mistakes killed the UConn Huskies football team.
If you missed the awards handed out at the UConn football banquet last night, don’t forget to check them out.
Randy Edsall and Tyler Lorenzen aren’t concerned about the critics surrounding them.
Brian Bennett of ESPN.com has his season review of the UConn football team.
Rob Lunn has an early look at the Buffalo Bulls over at Thoughts From a Fat White Guy.
Neill Ostrout of the Connecticut Post, David Borges of the New Haven Register, Matt Stout of the Norwich Bulletin and Gavin Keefe of the New London Day, Mike Anthony of the Hartford Courant have some postgame notes from the UConn men’s win over Stony Brook.
Stanley Robinson made a solid return to the Huskies last night.
Jim Calhoun was not happy after the Huskies 34-point win last night.
Jeff Jacobs of the Hartford Courant says there no guaranteed happy ending for the UConn men.
Mike Anthony of the Hartford Courant has some extras from last night’s win over Stony Brook.
David Gillett has his take on the UConn men’s game last night.
There will be 28 NBA scouts in attendance when UConn opens up Big East play against Georgetown later this month.
Here’s a nice feature on Stanley Robinson from Dana O’Neil of ESPN.com.
Fran Fraschilla of ESPN.com takes a look back at UConn and Gonzaga.
Former Husky Nate Miles had his court case continued once again.
Jim Calhoun and his staff will do a little recruiting while they are out in Seattle.
The UConn women may be No. 1 but you can never count out the Lady Vols.
A win is a win for the UConn women no matter how they get them.
Rich Elliot of the Connecticut Post says Renee Montgomery learned a valuable lesson after Sunday’s game.
UConn women’s hockey player Dominique Thibeault was named the TPS Hockey East Player of the Week.
Red Sox Make Offer To Mark Teixeira
Mark Teixeira: According to Michael Silverman, the Boston Red Sox have made an 8 year offer to Mark Teixeira.
The Sox have made an offer, the biggest and longest yet for this current ownership group. The offer is believed to be for at least eight years, with ownership and baseball operations cognizant that Teixeira, 29, represents the safest bet they can make for at least this year and next to shore up the heart of an aging lineup.
In The Red Zone – 12/16
Good win for the New England Patriots on Sunday afternoon as they kept their playoff hopes alive with the win. They are still tied for first in the AFC East with the Miami Dolphins and New York Favres Jets but the Jets hold the tiebreaker for the division. The AFC East teams are tied for the two wild card spots with the Baltimore Ravens although the Patriots are on the outside looking in due to having the worst record in the conference.
It’s quite conceivable that the Patriots could win their final two games and not make the playoffs with an 11-5 record. Art Martone of the Providence Journal breaks down the playoff scenarios for the Patriots.
The Patriots got an amazing effort from their QB1 Matt Cassel, who was able to put aside his grief for an afternoon and throw 4 touchdown passes, including two to former Raider Randy Moss. They also had 277 yards rushing. Just total domination by the offensive line.
Jerod Mayo should be a lock for NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year.
Matt Light injured his shoulder in the game on Sunday and according to John Tomase, he has a mild shoulder separation.
The sagging Arizona Cardinals come to town on Sunday having already clinched a playoff spot.
With just 4 accepted penalties, the Patriots are still on pace to break the NFL record for least accepted penalties in a season.
Brandon Meriweather has not missed a snap since Rodney Harrison’s injury.
Wes Welker joined an elite Patriots club with his second straight 100 catch season.
Matt Cassel’s numbers through his first 14 games compare favorably to Tom Brady’s through his first 14.
Ron Borges has his report card for Sunday’s game.
Bill Belichick was very critical of his own performance in Sunday’s win over the Raiders.
Gary Marby of WEEI.com has some postgame Patriots nuggets.
Some Site News
As some of you may or may not know, Steve has decided to take some personal time away from the blog. I’m not sure when he’ll be back or if he’ll be back at all. During that time, I’ve taken over the Patriots and Celtics coverage here and will continue to do my best at keeping you up-to-date. If anyone is interested in helping out with the blog, especially the Pats and Celtics (the C’s especially if you have Comcast SportsNet NE), send me an email through the contact page.
You may have noticed a few changes here as well. I’d been wanting to do this for about 6 months now or so but a while back I had looked at plugin called asides. The plugin is used for short blurbs or blog posts. I tested it out today a few times so if you’re scrolling down the site and see something like this:
15 Straight Wins: Rajon Rondo had a career-high 25 points to lead the Boston Celtics to an 100-91 win over the Utah Jazz at the TD BankNorth Garden. Kevin Garnett added a double-double with 19 points and 10 rebounds. [ESPN.com]
or
Red Sox: The Boston Red Sox would like to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season. [RedSox.com]
They will be located between the blog posts and can also be found in the recent posts section on the right sidebar. Because of the plugin, I increased the number of posts on the front page to 20, it had been at 15. So far I haven’t noticed a difference in load times but if I do, I’ll decrease it back to 15.
For those who want to look back at what’s been written in the past, you can use the calendar for the archives of a particular day. Just click on the day and it will bring you to the day’s blog posts. Same thing goes in the archives as well. The archives are done by month for the current year. For example, if you clicked on the July archive page and wanted to see what was written on July 14th, you can then click on the 14th on the calendar and it will give you all of the days posts.
I don’t have a category drop-down menu anymore because honestly it would take a long time to scroll through the 365 categories I have. But if you’re interested in seeing what else has been written about a particular category listed on a post, just click on it and it will give you all the posts. To test it out, you could click on the General tag at the bottom of this post and it will bring you to all of the general posts since the site’s inception in November 2005.
I know that some people come to the site for just the UConn news or the Patriots or the Red Sox news. I’ve always had the separate category feeds for each of them but had just made a casual mention of them in a blog post. So if you subscribe to the site through a feed reader and are interested in just one of those feeds instead of everything from the site, I’ve taken the liberty of adding each those three feeds to the meta section as well.
And of course, if you want to email the post you are reading or post it on one of the social network sites, you can use the share this button.
Lastly, I am awaiting the upgrade release of the Cutline Split Theme to take advantage of the new WordPress 2.7 commenting features. Once it’s released, I’ll make the necessary tweaks to the style sheet so it’ll look like nothing has changed visibly.
Thank you for making SOX & Dawgs a part of your day.
PS – Don’t forget to enter the 3rd annual SOX & Dawgs College Football Pick’em Contest.
Rondo’s Career-High Leads Celtics To 15th Straight Win
15 Straight Wins: Rajon Rondo had a career-high 25 points to lead the Boston Celtics to an 100-91 win over the Utah Jazz at the TD BankNorth Garden. Kevin Garnett added a double-double with 19 points and 10 rebounds. [ESPN.com]
UConn Men Return With 91-57 Spanking Of Stony Brook
It didn’t take long for the No. 2 UConn Huskies to draw the ire of head coach Jim Calhoun tonight. Just 2:10 into the game, he tied an NCAA record with 5 substitutions to send a message to his starting five.
Well, the starting five responded as they all scored in double figures in the Huskies 91-57 win over the Stony Brook Seawolves in front of 12,721 at the XL Center in Hartford, CT.
Jeff Adrien led the Huskies (9-0) with his 36th career double-double. He finished with 18 points and 10 rebounds. Hasheem Thabeet narrowly missed a double-double as he had 18 points and 9 rebounds while Jerome Dyson had 16 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists. Both A.J. Price and Craig Austrie added 13 points with Price having 5 assists and Austrie had 7 assists.
After taking the first semester off for personal reasons, Stanley Robinson returned to the court and had 7 points in 16 minutes of action.
The Seawolves, coached by former UConn player and assistant coach Steve Pikiell, led all scorers in the game with 20 points. He also pulled down a team-high 6 rebounds. Bryan Dougher added 10 points while Jonathan Moore chipped in with 8 points.
The 11-day layoff seemed to affect the Huskies early on as Calhoun made wholesale changes using 11 players in the first 3 minutes of the game. A Kemba Walker alley-oop pass to Robinson seemed to ignite the Huskies as they went on a 19-2 run to break the game open. With the Huskies up 20 in the last minute of the first half, Carter made 2 three-pointers to cut the lead to 44-30 at the half.
Dougher hit two 3’s for the Seawolves to cut the UConn lead to 12 at 53-41 but a 20-2 run by the Huskies pushed the lead to 30 at 73-43. With the layoff, Calhoun left his starters in a little longer than normal in the second half as they worked on some offensive sets and their defense.
UConn was clearly the superior team tonight as they used their height to their advantage as they dominated the glass 47-24.
They will need more of that as they will be tested with they head across country to take on Gonzaga Saturday afternoon at 4 PM in Seattle. The game will be broadcast nationally on CBS.
Red Sox Wish You Happy Holidays
Red Sox: The Boston Red Sox would like to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season. [RedSox.com]