Super Bowl XLIV, the Blues, and the Bubble

Technology has forever changed the way we follow sports. We can now watch games in HD, check scores on our phones, and even follow our favorite athletes on Twitter. Sports video games graphics improve each year, looking more and more realistic, and now even the results are becoming very realistic. For the sixth time in seven years, a simulation on EA Sports' Madden accurately predicted the winner of the Super Bowl. This year, it even got the MVP right by selecting Drew Brees. The game was more lopsided than the 35-31 score it projected, but that's still scary good. Betters will probably pay more attention when the Madden simulation is published next year, as it broke a streak of projecting favorites to win and it's choice still held up.

The game itself was still very entertaining, as the Saints did have to rally from a 10-0 deficit and they didn't put the game away until Tracy Porter's pick-6 put the Saints up by 14 and left the Colts just 3:12 to try and score twice. I was thinking that the Saints had left Peyton Manning too much time and that they might have to go to overtime, but Manning's throw, or moreover, Reggie Wayne's weak attempt to catch it or at least break up the play, cost the Colts the game.

Also doing some winning as of late, have been my St. Louis Blues. They flat out railed a weak Toronto Maple Leafs team on Friday night. They outplayed Toronto the vast majority of the night and getting a pair of shorthanded goals in under five minutes during the second period pretty much put the game away. A shortie, as Blues color man Darren Pang termed it, is a back-breaking goal. Giving up two within two power plays has to completely demoralize a team. It's something I rarely do on the PS2, so to actually have it happen is pretty much inexcusable. Toronto isn't even going to benefit from their low finish as they dealt away their first-rounder for Phil Kessel. Their GM Brian Burke has a plan, but we'll have to wait and see how that one turns out. Trading away Alex Steen and leaving T.J. Oshie off of the U.S.A Olympic roster didn't pan out too well for him, as those were the scorers of the shorties. Not a bad way to stick it to him a bit, huh?

The Blues still have quite a bit of work to do. They have the Washington Capitals coming in tomorrow night, fresh off a two-game losing streak to follow up a 14-game winning streak, which was the third longest in NHL history.  So to put it lightly, the Caps are almost due after dropping two in a row. This could be a great test for the Blues. Even if they get a lead, the thing they haven't been doing is closing out games. They have now blown third period leads nine times. And unlike in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, those nine blown leads won't disappear of the computer screen like Ferris' nine absences. The Blues managed to salvage their game against Detroit on Tuesday, but they still let the Wings get away with a point, which can't happen against a team that you're directly competing with for one of the last playoff spots. Washington will keep coming the entire game, so the Blues can't afford to be complacent for a minute. They were down 5-2 to Montreal on Wednesday night to begin the third period and came back to tie it and force overtime before succumbing to the Habs in overtime. The Blues have to close out games if they expect to close in on a playoff spot. They sit just four points back of the eighth spot right now and it would sure be nice to go into the Olympic break within two.

Another team that's had trouble closing this season is the St. Louis University Billikens. They've squandered a couple large leads on the road and with those wins, they'd be a top-100 RPI team. At this point, they're looking at a very small shot at getting an at-large bid into the NCAA tourney, but if they can run the table or even go 6-1 over their last seven, it would certainly have to be noticed by the committee. In their last seven games, they have five left at home and two on the road. One of the road games is at UMass and is very winnable. The other is at Dayton, which would not be a bad loss by any means. They currently rank seventh in the Atlantic-10 which is projected by ESPN's Bracketology to get six teams into the dance at this point, which is even more impressive when you see that the Big East is also projected to get six. So the Bills certainly are in a league that is getting respect this year. That being said, their 6-3 record has mainly been built against the weaklings of the conference with the lone exception being a home win over Richmond (Which won't look quite as good since SLU got pummeled at Richmond). They have the meat of the league coming in with home games against Dayton, Rhode Island, Xavier, Temple, in addition to one of the aforementioned patsies in Duquesne who the Bills beat in OT on the road. SLU is 12-1 at home this year, so if they can keep up their home-court advantage, they could be in good shape heading into the conference tournament. Let's just hope that like the Blues, they can start to close games out.