Summer Olympics 2012: Day 4 Update

Another solid day for the USA yesterday, as Mike recaps nicely below:

Day 4 Update:

Well we lost a medal in equestrian that we were projected to win.  We lost another boxer.  Some mixed results in Tennis again with Roddic going down to Djokovic which was expected.  Disappointing that we almost stole a medal in Judo again, but came in 4th.  China picked one up in Judo and Fencing.

Great win for the women’s gymnastics team bring home the gold and knocking China to 4th place.  We also won a gold in Men’s Skeet shooting so there is no question which county has the best Skeet shooters. 

Team sports did well.  Women’s Soccer and Men’s Volleyball got nice wins as did Men’s Basketball.  Water Polo and Field Hockey also won.

In Swimming there were 4 events, and we were predicted to get 4 medals and that’s what we got.  In the 200 Free Schmidt dominated and go the gold.  Missy Franklin ALMOST stole a medal finishing 4th by 100th of a second…  So close!  Impressive race for her.

Phelps got caught and beat in the 200m Butterfly(his best stroke)  Not a good sign but still a silver.  The good news is in that race China was predicted to medal and didn’t.  We dominated the relay but China got the bronze picking up an unexpected medal.

Finally in Beach volleyball an intense matchup with the top USA pair of Dalhausser and Rodgers against a Spanish team.  The Spaniards won the first set and got real upset at some calls in the 3rd and final set.  In fact they even received a yellow card(WTF? They give them out in other sports than soccer?)  One Note I am sending this out before the final beach volleyball match that will start around 11:30 PM local time in London.  I have tickets for the Giants –vs- Mets tonight and have to get some beers in me first.

So we end the day tied with China again, and this time China picking up an extra medal vs what was projected.  Right now we trail by a deficit of 4.  It would be nice to close that down to 0 prior to the Track and Field events this weekend, and then leave it up to our Track and Field team to dominate.  One thing is clear, it’s a two country race!

Day 5 Schedule:

Another Synchronized diving event where both the USA and China are favored to win medals.  In Fencing we are actually projected to pick up a medal in Women’s Saber.  Men’s All-around Gymnastics’ is an opportunity for us to pick up a medal.  3 rowing finals are tomorrow and we are favored in the Women’s pair.  But we have a boat in all 3 races.  Fun to watch so keep your eye on rowing tomorrow.  Also there are some Cycling events in which we are projected to get medals, but we have multiple competitors in the top 10.

Of the 4 swimming events tomorrow, we are only supposed to pick up 2 medals, but we have people going in every event.  Contrast that with China which is projected to pick up 3 medals tomorrow.  If we can hold our own tomorrow in the pool it will go a long way to being top of the medal chart come Thursday.

Bad news is some Table Tennis medals will be awarded tomorrow and China dominates.  The Gold Medal match is 2 Chinese players against each other. China is also favored in 2 weightlifting events.

2012 Olympics US Snapshot Day 4
Country	Overall	Gold	Silver	Bronze	+/-	Prediction
China	23	13	6	4	+3	94
USA	23	9	8	6	+5	88
Team Sports	W	L	T	Standings	Place to make it to Medal Round
M-Basketball	2	0		T1	Top 4
W-Basketball	2	0		T1	Top 4
M-Volleyball	2	0		T1	Top 4
W-Volleyball	2	0		T1	Top 4
M-Water Polo	1	0		T1	Top 4
W-Water Polo	2	0		T1	Qualified
W-Soccer	2	0		1	Qualified
W-Field Hockey	1	1		4	Top 2
Beach Volleyball	W	L	T	Standings	Place to make it to Medal Round
M- Dalhausser/Rodgers	2	0		T1	Top 2/3*
M-Gibbs-Rosenthal	1	1		T4	Top 2/3*
W-Trenor/Walsh	2	0		T1	Qualified
W-Kessy/Ross	1	0		T1	Top 2/3*
Tennis	Round
M- Isner	3rd
W-Vwilliams	3rd
W-Swilliams	3rd
M2-Bryan	3rd
W2-Huber/Raymond	3rd
W2-Williams	2nd
Mix- ???
Boxing
M-Fly Warren	R16	3-Aug
M-Bat Diaz	R16	1-Aug
M-Heavy Hunter	R16	1-Aug
M-Middle Gausha	R16	2-Aug
M-Light Ramirez	R16	2-Aug
M-Welter Spence	R16	3-Aug
M-SuperHeavy Breazeale	R16	1-Aug
W-Fly Esparaza	R8	6-Aug
W-Light Underwood	R16	5-Aug
W Middle Sheilds	R8	5-Aug

My Two Cents:

Well, our big guns continue to choke in the swimming events, as Phelps let a SOUTH AFRICAN beat him to the wall for gold in the 200M Butterfly.  I guess we made up for it in the 4x200M Freestyle relay, but winning by 3 seconds or .03 seconds still only gets you 1 gold medal. 

Men's basketball looked a little sluggish in the first half, only outscoring Tunisia by 13 before blowing them out in the second half to win by 47.  For those of you who took Tunisia -55, congrats on your win.  And just to follow up on my 2012 vs. 1992 comments, I think Tunisia would have beat pretty much every team the Dream Team played in 1992.  That's how bad the international competition was back then.  Still, 1992 > 2012, but not because they beat everyone by 50+. 

Women's gymnastics....ah, forget it.  They won gold.  That's all that matters.  And frankly, the faster gymnastics are over the better.  Such a snoozer. 

According to Mike, not much on tap today as far as high profile events go.  Some swimming events that we should medal in, as well as a few others.  For a full slate of events check out Wednesday's Olympic Guide. 

USA USA USA!!!

Summer Olympics 2012: Days 1-3

What better sporting event to get my lazy a$$ back into blogging than the Summer Olympics?!?  And, just to make sure I'm still being sufficiently lazy, I'm going to do daily/weekly blog posts about the Olympics based on my cousin Mike's legendary Olympic emails. 

For those that don't know, my cousin Mike LOVES the Olympics (both Summer and Winter).  He generates daily/weekly emails that summarize how the US of A did each day in each event and compares how the USA did against what was projected for the USA.  So, for example, Ryan Lochte choked yesterday in the 200M freestyle and did not medal.  He was favored to win gold.  Therefore, Ryan Lochte cost the USA a medal.  Now we know who to blame if we end up losing by 1 medal to China. 

I will copy and paste Mike's emails into my daily/weekly blog posts (and I will make sure not to correct any spelling mistakes.  Mike's Olympic emails are legendary not just for their content, but for the awful spelling as well. Though I think he re-reads and spell-checks these emails more than usual).  I will also add my two cents at the end.  And I will recommend some Summer Olympics content on the Internet that I suggest all of you read if you like to follow along with how the USA is doing.

Without further ado, we pick up with Mike's Day 3 recap.  And for those who have not been following along, the Olympics officially started on Saturday.  So Day 3 was Monday, 7/30/12:

Day 3 Update:

The day started up good with the USA picking up a medal in Diving and Judo.  We also had a near miss in Judo.  Don’t sleep on the USA Judo team, they might make some noise.  In addition China lost a shooting medal, they won gold but were predicted to win 2 medals and finished 4^th.

Unfortunately  we got dominated by China and lost out on a medal in Men’s Gymnastics.  The first USA goat of the Summer Olympics is Orozco who completely blew the USA chances. 

More good news in Fencing as we didn’t win any but China was project to win 2 medals in the Women Epee but only got one.  They also lost a medal in Weightlifting. 

In team sports we did good as usual with Women’s Volleyball and Basketball winning.  In beach volleyball the secondary men’s team suffered a tough loss to Poland. The Trenor/Walsh team won(actually they are up 1-0 but I’m going to make an assumption), qualifying them for the medal round.

In Tennis we still have quite a few alive, but we did lose a boxing match. 

Another epic collapse by Lochte.  Not only did he fail to medal in an event that he was favored in but he let a Chinese swimmer beat him giving them a medal that wasn’t expected.  Missy Franklin lived up to the hype and we went Gold Silver in the Backstroke in Men’s as well. 

Let’s face it today was a day that if Lochte or the men’s gymnastics team does better, we could have been atop of the medal standings by ourselves. 

Day 4 what to look for:

USA men’s basketball is playing late (5:15 PM EST) so that should be fun to watch for about 10 minutes.  No American’s qualified for the final in the Diving event or the Kayak event for Tuesday.  We finally have some Equestrian medals to give out to those fine athletes/horses and the USA might end up with 1 or 2.  We have the Women’s Team Gymnastics’ and hopefully the women can do better than the men.  Some Judo and Fencing in which the USA could sneak a medal or two. 

We have the #4 ranked Male Skeet shooter in the world, and we already picked up the gold in women’s skeet shooting(not sure if you saw the women skeet champ, but she is all athlete) so maybe a good chance to medal there. 

For Swimming we have 4 events.  All 4 events we are predicted to get a medal in so it should be another good day in the pool 

Snapshot:

Below is  the Day 3 snapshot.  I got rid of all other countries since this is now a 2 country race!  Right now we would lose to China 93 to 96. 

2012 Olympics US Snapshot Day 3
Country	Overall	Gold	Silver	Bronze	+/-	Prediction
China	17	9	5	3	+2	94
USA	17	5	7	5	+5	88
Team Sports	W	L	T	Standings	Place to make it to Medal Round
M-Basketball	1	0		T1	Top 4
W-Basketball	2	0		T1	Top 4
M-Volleyball	1	0		T1	Top 4
W-Volleyball	2	0		T1	Top 4
M-Water Polo	1	0		T1	Top 4
W-Water Polo	1	0		T1	Qualified
W-Soccer	1	0		1	Top 2/3*
W-Field Hockey	0	1		T4	Top 2
Beach Volleyball	W	L	T	Standings	Place to make it to Medal Round
M- Dalhausser/Rodgers	1	0		T1	Top 2/3*
M-Gibbs-Rosenthal	1	1		T4	Top 2/3*
W-Trenor/Walsh	2	0		T1	Qualified
W-Kessy/Ross	1	0		T1	Top 2/3*
Tennis	Round
M- Isner	3rd
M-Roddick	2nd
W-Vwilliams	2nd
W-Swilliams	3rd
W-Lepchenko	2nd
M2-Bryan	2nd
W2-Huber/Raymond	2nd
W2-Williams	2nd
Mix- ???
Boxing
M-Fly Warren	R16	3-Aug
M-Bat Diaz	R16	1-Aug
M-Heavy Hunter	R16	1-Aug
M-Middle Gausha	R16	2-Aug
M-Light Ramirez	R16	2-Aug
M-Welter Spence	R16	3-Aug
M-Light-Welter Herring	R32	31-Jul
M-SuperHeavy Breazeale	R16	1-Aug
W-Fly Esparaza	R8	6-Aug
W-Light Underwood	R16	5-Aug
W Middle Sheilds	R8	5-Aug

So as you can see, Mike is fairly thorough in his analysis.  Like he said, the Summer Olympics is a two horse race between China and the USA.  Yesterday was a bad day for the USA against China, as China gained a medal thanks to Lochte's choke, and also smoked us in the men's team gymnastics.

For a great rundown on what events are on display today, and where you can watch them live, check out www.grantland.com - a columnist named Shane Ryan writes a daily "Olympics Viewing Guide" that explains what events are on tap and where exactly you can watch live.  Here is the link to his Tuesday Guide. 

My two cents:

A big day today for Michael Phelps.  At 2:48pm EST Phelps will compete in the 200M Butterfly finals where he will try to tie the all-time Olympic record for most medals at 18.  Then, about an hour later, Phelps will team up with Lochte and two other Americans for the 4x200M Freestyle relay finals.  Assuming Phelps medals in the 200M fly, he will have a chance to break the all-time medal record in this relay.  You know, assuming Lochte doesn't choke again.  If you want to watch these events live, all you need is a cable subscription (Fios, DirecTV, Comcast, etc.) and follow this link.

Also, Team USA Basketball plays Tunisia at 5:15pm EST today.  Let me just put this on record:  the 2012 Team USA basketball team would not stand a chance against the 1992 Dream Team.  No chance.  HOWEVER, if the 2012 team had a healthy Dwight Howard, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade and Derrick Rose instead of Anthony Davis, Kevin Love, James Harden and Russel Westbrook, I think it would be MUCH, MUCH closer. 

Enjoy the games.  USA USA USA!!!

Shots of Jame-O: Mixed Bag

American Idol - Final Four:

Last night Skylar Laine was voted off American Idol for being a spaz, and so Idol is down to the final four contestants of season 11.  Those four are Joshua Ledet, Phillip Phillips, Jessica Sanchez and Hollie Cavanaugh.  I told you guys back when the top 24 were chosen that I was an avid Idol watcher and was pretty good at picking which contestants had a chance to win or make it this far.  Well, to save you the trouble of scrolling down and checking my picks, let me just say this - when I previewed the top 12 guys, I gave one guy a ceiling of "Top 3" and one guy a ceiling of "Winner."  The Top 3 guy - Joshua Ledet.  The Winner - Phillip Phillips.  When I previewed the top 12 girls, I gave one girl a ceiling of "Top 5" and two girls a ceiling of "Winner."  The Top 5 girl - Hollie Cavanaugh.  The Winner - Jessica Sanchez (let's just pretend that I didn't also give a "Winner" ceiling to Jennifer Hirsch).  So, of the 5 contestants that I rated the highest, 4 of them make up the final four.  Very profitable skill I have...

To be honest, I'm shocked that Hollie is still around.  I thought Colton Dixon, Elise Testone and Skylar Laine were all better singers/performers.  Apparently there are a lot of voters out there who like mediocre singers with weird British/Irish accents. 

As for who my pick is to win...I'm not going to change my predictions now.  I said Phillip Phillips and Jessica Sanchez had "Winner" ceilings, and so I'll stick with them in the finals.  However, I really hope it's Joshua Ledet because he's by far the best singer left in the competition.

Sports Injuries:

It has been a BRUTAL week for injuries in sports.  First, Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls tears his ACL last weekend, effectively ending any chance the Bulls had of winning the NBA Championship this year.  Then Major League Baseball players started dropping like flies throughout the week - mostly guys on my fantasy teams - including last night's bizarre Mariano Rivera injury.  Rivera tore his ACL last night while shagging fly balls during batting practice for the Yankees.  Apparently this is something he's always done throughout his almost 20-year career as the best relief pitcher/closer in MLB history.  Tough loss.  And in the NFL, Baltimore Ravens OLB Terrell Suggs tore his Achilles tendon playing basketball...or was it doing conditioning drills?  Either way, that is an injury that will likely cause him to miss the 2012 NFL season.  Side note:  Suggs must be a real pansy if a torn Achilles will keep him out for the upcoming season.  I tore my Achilles playing rec league basketball this winter and was back playing 3-4 weeks later (ok, so maybe I just tweaked my Achilles and cried about it like it was torn).  And then to top that, even though it isn't technically a sports injury, former San Diego Chargers future Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau commits suicide.  All I can say is WOW. 

NBA Playoffs:

A quick (and late) preview of the NBA playoffs.  Sure, it's easy to make predictions now that most first-round series are 2-3 games in, but better late than never, right?  Right?  Does anyone care about NBA basketball?  Well, I do....

Eastern Conference, Round 1:  Bulls over Sixers in 7, Heat over Knicks in 4, Pacers over Magic in 5, Celtics over Hawks in 6.

Western Conference, Round 1:  Spurs over Jazz in 4, Thunder over Mavs in 5, Lakers over Nuggets in 5, Grizzlies over Clippers in 7.

EC, Round 2:  Celtics over Bulls in 6, Heat over Pacers in 5

WC, Round 2:  Spurs over Grizzlies in 6, Thunder over Lakers in 7

Eastern Conference Finals:  Heat over Celtics in 5

Western Conference Finals:  Spurs over Thunder in 6

NBA Finals:  Heat over Spurs in 6.  Now or never for Lebron, Wade and the Bostrich. 

NHL Playoffs:

I was yelled at last night for never discussing hockey on my blog.  First off, I do follow hockey regularly and love watching the NHL playoffs.  Already, midway through Round 2, the NHL playoffs have been UNREAL.  Tons of overtime games, tons of high scoring battles and one of the best first round series ever that only went 6 games - Flyers-Pens.  That said, the reason I am not writing about the playoffs is because I'm a Red Wings fan and they were eliminated from the playoffs by Nashville in about 4 minutes.  I will say that I'm happy the Pens are out and that I think the Rangers will win the Stanley Cup.  Barry Melrose I am not.

What I'm Watching:

Ok, I stole this heading from my favorite TV blog - "What's Alan Watching" on www.hitfix.com.  Just a quick rundown of what shows I'm watching right now. 

Mondays:  I actually can't think of any shows I watch that air on Mondays.  I usually use Mondays to catch up on Sunday night TV. 

Tuesdays:  New Girl on FOX has been really funny the past few weeks.  Hmm, that might be it for Tuesdays actually. 

Wednesdays:  American Idol on FOX, obviously.  Modern Family on ABC.  And I am still DVRing (and slowly catching up on) Suburgatory on ABC. 

Thursdays:  Community, The Office and Parks and Recreation on NBC.  Even with this awful season of The Office, this is still the best comedy block out there.  I forgot to set up a DVR series recording for 30 Rock, but I do love that show and plan to catch up On Demand at some point.  Touch on FOX is solid, though I think I'm only watching because I feel I owe it to Jack Bauer Kiefer Sutherland.  Awake on NBC is great, maybe my favorite new show this year.  However, rumor has it the ratings are SUPER low and that it'll probably get cancelled.  Go figure.  And then Person of Interest on CBS is also one of my favorite new shows.  Full slate on Thursday nights, along with the American Idol results show on FOX. 

Fridays:  I drink alcohol and watch sports.

Saturdays:  I drink alcohol, watch sports and play golf.

Sundays:  Probably the two best shows on TV right now are both on Sunday nights - Mad Men on AMC and Game of Thrones on HBO.  Just flat out AWESOME shows.  If you are not watching them, I highly recommend you go back and catch up from the beginning on both.  I think this is season 5 of Mad Men (so you have some catching up to do), but only season 2 of Game of Thrones.  Also, I must be a glutton for punishment because I am still watching The Killing on AMC.  Not a very good show.  Also, I started watching VEEP on HBO.  Pretty funny - and if you are a fan of Seinfeld, it's worth a watch for Julia Louis-Dreyfus.  It also stars the girl from My Girl, who is all grown up and dropping F-bombs, as well as Tony Hale, who played Buster on Arrested Development.  Good stuff.

That's that.  Have a great weekend.  Only 5.5 hours till I can drink alcohol and watch sports....