In the movie Grease there’s a scene where John Travolta says to the T-Bird friends of his “OK boys, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em”. For some reason I equate this to Joe Mazzulla telling his Celtics players to shoot three pointers like they are worth twelve points, you know, especially when you have a twenty-point lead! The moronic third quarter that we witnessed the other day made me sick to my stomach. As a longtime coach there are several strategies teams can use to reach their desired result. One wonders though after you are zero for infinity if you should keep with the mentality to ‘shoot ‘em if you got ‘em’! How about driving to the basket and getting fouled – get to the free throw line. Jeez. They start game two in about an hour from this writing so we’ll see if there’s been a philosophical change in the offensive approach.

All of the home teams lost the first game on their home floor in the second round. Vegas must have needed another building or two to erect! Think about it, they had to have made a billion dollars on just the first games played.

The NCAA transfer portal is killing any real chances of high school players, on the men’s side at least, of making a D1 roster. It’s also going to kill small division one programs. UVM’s run of success may be over, though I hope not. Simply put, college basketball is now a professional sport where athletes are paid millions of dollars. UVM doesn’t have millions of dollars to put towards their men’s basketball, or women’s basketball roster for that matter. Already at a disadvantage, it will only separate the bigger programs from the smaller ones. It makes me sick.

The talk of our area around golf is about the decline of our local golf course – The St. Johnsbury Country Club. Members have flocked to Orleans for the past few years. I hope they can turn it around. I’d love to see them get it back to where it was. Seeing the once pristine course under Todd Rainville’s and then Ryan McCaffrey’s guidance current status makes me sick.

I don’t know what it is about the Red Sox but they’ve turned me into a ‘fair weather’ fan. I have never been a ‘fair weather’ fan and consider myself quite knowledgeable on the history of all things Boston Red Sox. When Mookie left and Xander no longer occupied shortstop I was sort of gutted. Sickening.

Anytime the Dallas Cowboys make a trade I chuckle and envision someone, um Jerry Jones, playing darts with a blindfold. Kind of like Dak throwing a bomb.

It’s well documented that I am a die hard Minnesota Vikings fan. Early prediction for next year. If JJ McCarthy is healthy for the entirety of the season he will throw for over 4,000 yards. Kevin O’Connell is just too good of a coach for JJ not to do so if he stays on the field. TJ Hockenson said recently JJ Mac has the arm strength of Matthew Stafford. Sick.

There are seven, count ‘em, seven, undefeated baseball teams in Vermont. That either means those that are undefeated are really really good(which they may be) or the competition isn’t great across the board. I’m leaning toward the latter unfortunately.

There are also seven, yup count ‘em, seven undefeated girls softball teams. BFA-St. Albans under Bert Berthiaume seems to be in the same dominant form we have seen from his clubs over the last four decades! One of the best programs EVER in Vermont softball history. Oxbow is rolling in division three once again. I don’t see anyone beating them. The other divisions are up for grabs with anyone in the top three having a chance in division two. Division four will be Proctor and West Rutland with a possible Blue Mountain title run!

We need to find a lacrosse expert to give you the update on that sport as I have zero clue – although there are those that would argue I don’t have a clue anyway. Haha. I do know this, my cousin was a division one All-American at North Carolina in the 80’s when they were dominant! In the 80’s we used to say ‘that’s sick’ when describing something we liked. So, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em this week’ and buy something sick!

Happy Mother’s Day to the moms out there!

The opinions expressed by EB are solely his and are not a reflection of those of NSN. If you’d like to reach out to EB please contact him at eberry@nsnsports.net