This weekend will be another weekend full of sports action. Besides the regular NHL, NLL and NBA schedules, the NCAA Men’s Division 1 basketball tournament begins today along with the CIS Men’s Hockey Championship, the quest for the cup, ah, that is the Memorial Cup, began yesterday and two curling events begin Saturday: the Canadian Seniors Curling Championships and the Ford World Women’s Curling Championship. If we’re lucky we may even see some spring training baseball.
The road to the final four is perhaps the most anticipated and, next to the FIFA World Cup, the most watched sporting event of the year. Action begins today when Georgia takes on Xavier at 12:20 Eastern time followed by Portland State at Kansas at 12:25 and Temple at Michigan State at 12:30. Games will be played well into the night as the last game of the day between Mississippi Valley State and UCLA tips off at 9:55 PM Eastern. When everything is said and done, twelve games will have been played and six spots in the second round on Saturday or Sunday will be claimed.
In Canadian Interuniversity Sport, the men’s hockey championship will be decided this weekend with six teams in the hunt. The top seed University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds, winners of the AUS, are heavily favoured to win the national title and open the tournament this afternoon at 2:00 PM against the Brock Badgers (OUA finalists). At 7:00 PM tonight, the host Universite de Moncton Aigles Bleus take on the Canada West Champion University of Alberta Golden Bears while the CW finalist Saskatchewan Huskies and the OUA Champion McGill University Redmen begin play tomorrow against the losing teams of today’s games. The teams are split into two pools and the winner of each pool faces of Sunday evening for the championship.
The road to the Memorial Cup also begins this weekend with four Ontario Hockey League games tonight. The OHL playoffs even started last night with the Belleville Bulls taking the first game from the Peterborough Petes by a 4-1 score. All playoff teams in both the Western Hockey League and the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League will start their playoff run tomorrow night. In each league, sixteen teams made the playoffs while two from the QMJHL, four from the OHL and six from the WHL are watching from the sidelines. The winners of each league, along with the host Kitchener Rangers, will be heading to Kitchener in May to play for the Memorial Cup in what is the best Canadian tournament.
If basketball and hockey is not your sport, maybe you’d enjoy a little curling. The Ford World Women’s Curling Championship begins Saturday afternoon from Vernon, BC. TSN will be broadcasting the round robin games, at least Canada’s round robin games, and CBC will likely be showing the semis and final game next weekend. I’m sure anyone who is interested will figure out the broadcasting schedule in their area. For fans in the Prince Albert area, they can check out the Canadian Seniors Championships starting Saturday at the Prince Albert Golf & Curling Club. There will be four draw times with six sheets seeing action every day from Sunday to Thursday with three draw times Saturday and next Friday. The semis and the finals will be played next weekend.
This weekend will be a great time to sit at home and keep the batteries charged in your remotes as there are tons of sports to check out. For me, I will take a break from watching sports Saturday as I make the two hour drive to Buffalo to check out the Bandits vs Rock game. With the Leafs in Buffalo Friday night, this weekend has been touted the ultimate sports weekend by the Buffalo sports community. At least the Sabres organization that put together a great sports package with tickets to both events and a night at a hotel is touting this the ultimate sports weekend. I honestly cannot agree more with this statement. Go Bandits!
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