The Kelly Cup playoffs are coming to the Cow Palace in the San Francisco Bulls’ inaugural season as an ECHL franchise.
The Bulls (24-35-7) clinched a playoff spot on Tuesday when the ninth-place Bakersfield Condors lost to the Las Vegas Wranglers in regulation.
With six games to play, the Bulls are eighth in the Western Conference, nine points behind the seventh-place Utah Grizzlies. If the playoffs started today, the Bulls would face the top-ranked Alaka Aces in the tournament’s opening round.
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BERKELEY — Coach Mike Montgomery anticipates big things for Tyrone Wallace, but he didn’t expect the freshman guard to play such a crucial role this year.
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With every crack of the bat at the World Baseball Classic final on Tuesday, one thought reappeared in my head: I can’t wait for real baseball to start.
I could smell the hot dogs, hear the ball hit the mitt, but if Hanley Ramirez wasn’t at the plate getting showered by a chorus of boos, AT&T Park lacked the tension, the drama, the electricity of Giants baseball.
Of course, this is a completely U.S.-centric view of the WBC. If the goal of the tournament is to expand baseball’s global reach, it was a ringing success this year.
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STANFORD — The road to a sixth straight Final Four begins on the Farm for the Stanford women’s basketball team and it could wind through a familiar foe in Spokane, Wash.
The Cardinal landed a No. 1 seed in the women’s NCAA Tournament on Monday — the 10th time Stanford has done so — and will tip-off play in the Spokane Region against No. 16 Tulsa (17-16) at Maples Pavilion on Sunday. If the Cardinal (31-2) advance through the bracket, they face the prospect of running into cross-bay rival and No. 2 seed Cal in the Elite Eight.
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BERKELEY — An upset loss to Utah cost the Cal men’s basketball team a higher seed in March Madness, but the Bears caught a break by snagging a game in their own backyard.
After back-to-back losses, Cal (20-11) landed a No. 12 seed in the East region of the NCAA Tournament. Despite the setback, the team received the good fortune of playing in front of its home crowd in a rematch against fifth-seeded UNLV (25-9) at HP Pavilion in San Jose on Thursday.
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To the outside world, the goals coach LaNay Larson set for the Academy of Art women’s basketball team would have seemed lofty. But the girls in her locker room never stopped believing, even when the season appeared to be slipping away.
The Urban Knights (23-8) have already achieved two of their coach’s goals by notching their first 20-win season and winning the PacWest Conference tournament title. They’ll reach a third goal in Bellingham, Wash., on Saturday when they step on the court against Western Washington in the first round the NCAA Division II Tournament.
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Billy Beane’s iconoclastic genius was immortalized in the silver-screen rendition of Michael Lewis’ “Moneyball,” but the A’s outdid Hollywood last summer, spinning a tale that wouldn’t have been believable had it been fiction.
Yes, the 2012 A’s are a tough act to follow, but Beane’s subtle string of moves this offseason should allow his team to put together a respectable follow-up performance.
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Las Vegas is the perfect host for this week’s Pac-12 men’s basketball tournament: with a wide-open field, every team is a gamble. Cal appeared to be the favorites eight days ago, having won nine of its last 10 games. But the Bears failed to grab the tournament’s top seed, losing 83-70 to Stanford on their home floor a week ago. Then, Washington State knocked off UCLA and Colorado and Utah beat Oregon.
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With six home games remaining, the San Francisco Bulls’ box office figures are right where president-coach Pat Curcio expected them to be.
The Bulls are averaging 4,226 fans per game in their inaugural season at the Cow Palace, which ranks 15th out of 23 teams in the ECHL. Attendance is less than 500 fans below the league average and Curcio considers it a victory.
“Our goal was to average between 3,000 and 3,500 per game and we’ve exceeded that,” Curcio said.
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The 2014 World Cup is just around the corner and one of the world’s hottest teams is bringing the action to The City.
Bay Area soccer fans will get a chance to see the Mexican national team play its version of the beautiful game when it takes on Peru in a friendly match at Candlestick Park on April 17.
“Playing here in the U.S., it feels like you’re home,” coach Jose Manuel “Chepo” de la Torre said through a translator. “We have a lot of support here in the U.S., we have a lot of people who are from Mexico who live here, obviously. We have to play good football.”
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Late-inning heroics from Adam Jones, Brandon Philips and Steve Cishek saved Team USA and the World Baseball Classic’s hopes of gaining relevance on Sunday.
With a 9-4 win over Canada at Chase Field in Arizona, the Americans advanced to the second round, averting, at least for now, the nightmare scenario of a third straight championship game without the host country.
If the WBC is really going to grab our attention and grow, it needs the drama of a final game between the U.S. and Japan — or the Dominican Republic, or Cuba — at AT&T Park on March 19.
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After opening the season with 30 straight victories, the City College of San Francisco men’s basketball team will face its biggest test when it goes for win No. 31 in the quarterfinals of the state tournament.
If the Rams are going to advance to next weekend’s California Community College Athletic Association Final Four in Sacramento, they’ll need to win their rematch with Santa Rosa — the state’s best shooting team — at home Saturday.
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The Pac-12 Conference women’s basketball season appears to be headed for a photo finish and the winner of the horse race will be in a good position land a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
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Talk to Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau or Dan Boyle and they will tell you that bringing home an Olympic gold medal in hockey is almost on par with winning the Stanley Cup. International competition is even more meaningful in soccer as the world stops spinning for 32 days as 32 nations compete for the sport’s ultimate prize.
But does anyone care that Team USA is taking the field Friday for its first game in the World Baseball Classic, our national pastime’s version of the World Cup?
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BERKELEY — As the final seconds ticked off the clock at Maples Pavilion on Jan. 19, the Cal and Stanford men’s basketball teams appeared to be headed in opposite directions. The Cardinal snagged a crucial win and seemed poised for a turnaround, while the Bears continued to sink, dropping their seventh game in 11 outings.
But Cal’s season took a 180-degree turn soon after the 69-59 loss and when the teams take the floor at Haas Pavilion for tonight’s rematch, the Bears will be playing for a chance to win a Pac-12 Conference title.
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