Pitchin' with Pritch: Clemson claims the championship

The first month in 2019 has already been filled with some pretty decent sports events.  National Championship in college football, professional football playoffs are started, and all kinds, at all levels of basketball.

For starters, how many of you picked Clemson to win the National Championship? 

I have to be honest and say that I really did think....the game would be close but Alabama would win! 

I thought the game might be close and the Vegas people, depending when you looked, said they would give you 6.5 points if you took Clemson. 

They don’t make very many miscues but they certainly didn’t have it figured correctly on this one. 

Now the over/under was 59.5 points and the combine score 44-16 was 60. They were close there and I would imagine most people thought it would be an “over” game but the way it ended up being was way different than I thought it would be.

I thought the combined score might hit a 100 the way it started and I never thought Clemson could shut out the Alabama offense for an entire half but they did as the Tide couldn’t roll across the goal line in the third or fourth quarter.

Clemson had the best quarterback on the field that day in true freshman Trevor Lawrence and he threw for 347 yards and three touchdowns.  

He had the best receivers that day and Justin Ross had six catches for 153 yards and a touchdown. 

The Clemson defense was the best and started the scoring with A.J Terrell getting a 44-yard pick six. If you didn’t like Alabama, this was a great game. It was a great game!

Basketball

There were also some pretty good basketball games this past week or so. Creighton lost a couple and their game against Marquette was unbelievable. First of all, the Blue Jays had a 13-point lead at one time in the game. Usually they win when that happens. 

They had a 5-point lead with about 30 seconds left. They had 3-point lead with .8 of a second left and they had the ball under their opponent’s goal. All they had to do was get the ball in and hold on to it and the game was theirs. 

They chose to throw the ball deep and it went over the head of all the players and the Creighton player who was suppose to get the ball chose to screen the man guarding him just for a split second but then could not run the ball down and it went out of bounds, untouched by either team at the other end of the court. 

So now Marquette gets the ball under their goal and throws it to about mid-court and a Marquette player catches and gets the shot off and hits it for three and the game is now into overtime. 

Of course then the Jays get beat and it was something like 111-108. 

Then Coach McDermott had to face a press conference after that. I didn’t see it but he is a friend and I know it must have been very difficult to explain what went on at the end of regulation.

 Then there was Nebraska against Penn State. Both teams needed a Big 10 win and the good thing is that Nebraska got the win by six points 70-64. In my opinion it was an ugly game. 

James Palmer, who is the leading scorer, really struggled, but Isaiah Roby maybe played his best overall game of his career and carried the Huskers to a very big win. 

Roby had a career high in points with 22 and picked off 11 rebounds and had several blocked shots in the contest.  

The Huskers, however, could not rebound very well and Penn State out-rebounded them 46-32 and 21 of the rebounds were offensive rebounds.  

Another strange thing in the game was that none of the Huskers bench players saw any action in the second half.  

Things are going to have to pick up a bunch this week as the Huskers travel to Indiana on Monday and play Michigan State on Thursday at PBA.

 I hope to be in section 122, row 24 and seat 7 or 8 for that one.