The Streak (2/9) and the end of another streak

To anyone who knows how to pick soccer games, I'm jealous of you. Every day, ESPN has a couple to choose from and for people like me, it's simply a guess. This morning, I guessed wrong, giving myself an L3 streak, but I'm looking to turn it around tonight.

Unfortunately, the games on the board are gross. Points between Florida A&M and Norfolk State? Three pointers between Mississippi Valley State and Alabama State? Duke @ UNC in, uh, women's basketball? Points between two players in two different games? I'm staring L4 in the face, unless I win a coin flip, because I have no idea on any of them.

I'm taking DeMarre Carroll to outscore Sherron Collins when Missouri hosts Kansas. No insight. No reasoning. Let's move on.

I visited North Dakota from Wednesday to Sunday, seeing family and whatnot and was isolated from the sports world for the most part, though I was able to get to a couple high school basketball games on Saturday. (You know you're in North Dakota when the cafeteria is serving Knephla soup at basketball games.)

However, I did see Gonzaga get trounced once and escape an upset once, which was nice... I guess. I did miss Friday's much-anticipated matchup between the Spokane Chiefs and the class of the WHL, the Vancouver Giants. The Chiefs went in having won 11 in a row, Dustin Tokarski hadn't lost since November and even though the Giants were 44-4-3 and Spokane lost their top defenseman in Jared Cowen, I thought the Chiefs were playing great hockey and were the better team.

I was wrong.

I didn't see the game, but heard about it. Vancouver won 4-0, but it wasn't that close. Apparently, everybody was off their game except one or two guys. I didn't see the game on Friday, so I couldn't verify it. But I saw Sunday's game.

The Chiefs welcomed in the Kelowna Rockets last night for a contest between the third and fourth ranked teams in the Western Conference. Watching the game, it was clear the Chiefs had lost whatever momentum they gained while winning 11 straight. The Rockets netted a shorthanded goal in the first (when Kelowna's Colin Long broke in on Tokarski, I said "I've got Long." That's just how it's going right now...).

Spokane was able to tie it up in the second, but were still being outplayed by the visitors and when Long scored again on the power play in the third to make it 2-1 with about 12 minutes left, I hoped the boys would start skating harder and look like they wanted it, but nope.

With Tokarski pulled late, they had a couple chances, but after failing on those, the Chiefs spent the last 30 seconds trying to get the puck into the offensive zone, but to no avail. The 2-1 loss wasn't an indication of how poorly they played, but two home losses in a row is. Now, Spokane is clinging to the third seed and find themselves in a tailspin. They have one month to figure it out, but if they don't, not only might the Chiefs not see May, but possibly April as well.