Good morning!
Not many of the 4,587 fans inside the Mullins Center on Tuesday noticed the ceremonial puck drop before UMass beat Yale, 5-2. UMass President Marty Meehan, Speaker of the House Robert DeLeo and Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy waved as they left the ice.
Meehan took over the entire university system after he lifted UMass-Lowell off its heels, but DeLeo needed a GPS and Subbaswamy used a campus map to find the rink.
Pardon me for not waving back at them. The program’s success was long overdue, and AD Ryan Bamford was wise to look west and not east to find the right coach.
It’s taken just two-and-a-half seasons for Greg Carvel to assemble a team that’s 14-2, ranked No. 2 in the country and unbeaten in Hockey East (7-0-0).
“Humble and hungry, hockey guy through and through,” said Canton (N.Y.) native Dave Lapointe, who grew up watching Carvel play and coach at St. Lawrence. “I watched him as a leader when he was captain in the early ‘90s. His mother was my fourth grade teacher. Great lady and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
The Minutemen will resume conference play on Jan. 4 against UMass Lowell (4-4-1 in Hockey East). Other home games of note are Northeastern (6-1-1) on Jan. 18, Boston University (5-5-2) on Feb. 8 and Boston College (6-1-2) on Feb. 15.
On the postgame show with Donnie Moorhouse, Carvel said he talked to the players before they left for semester break, “I told my guys how extremely grateful I am. They trip over themselves to do the right thing.”
One of the more entertaining moments in the game was when Yale coach Keith Allain barked at referee Anthony DaPuzzo. Bulldogs defenseman Charlie Curti had hauled down Jake Gaudet on the backcheck, and DaPuzzo’s arm went up near the Bulldogs’ bench.
“Are you f****** kidding me!” bellowed Allain, his voice booming across the ice and up into the last row of seats. Allain’s Bulldogs won the 2013 NCAA title and three straight Ivy League titles. They’d won six straight games and were ranked No. 18, yet his junior and senior-laden team was being outhit and outscored by the youthful Minutemen.
“We can play speed, we can play physical, we can play defensive,” said Carvel. “We don’t go into games hoping and guessing, we go into games knowing.”
Greenfield’s Justin “Juice” Moore was laid to rest Tuesday, five months shy of his 89th birthday. His friend Fran Lemay remembered playing semipro football with Moore, Bob Sanderson and Nook Burniske for the Greenfield Lions. “After it disbanded in 1955, Juice and I played for the Holyoke Knights. We practiced Tuesdays and Thursdays and games were on Sundays. We got $10 a game for the Lions Club and Holyoke offered us $25. That sounded good, except we didn’t get paid half the time.”
Anyone who’s ever wagered on an NFL game knows it’s $11 to win $10. It’s called the vig, short for vigorish, and it’s how the house makes its money. One guy has one team, the other guy has the other, and the house rakes 10 percent from the winner.
According to Jimmy Boyd of boydsbets.com, a bettor must have a .524 winning percentage to break even. “It can change quite drastically if your standard juice is higher or lower than 10 percent,” added Boyd. “Just a few cents off standard juice can make a world of difference.”
I have a friend who bets $20 each week that he can pick more winners against the spread than Secret Squirrel, Cigar Sunday, Mama Duck and the rest of the crew. He’s yet to collect, and it chafes him to think that the winning record one week was 10-2.
Regardless of that, the season standings reveal that bookies don’t need a vig, at least not with this group. Of its 812 players, only 17-percent (135) were winning at a break-even clip.
What’s worse, the collective winning percentage was .485.
All of which means not much. Anyway, I’ve got the Patriots to cover the 2½.
In the 1980s Gary Sanderson and I did a sports talk show called the Sunday Sportspage on WPOE 1520 AM (now WIZZ). One of the regulars was a grizzle-voiced Tigers fan named Bill Burnham, whose grandson Jay is the radio voice of the UMass basketball team. Young Burnham has shown the inflection, the cool and the temperament to deliver solid play-by-play. His Tigers-loving granddad would be proud.
EARLY CONTENDER: “Keep an eye on Aiken-trained Maximus Mischief, could be a Derby entry,” emailed Bill Gutfarb, Eaglebrook Class of ’67 and part owner of the Mosaic Racing Stable in Aiken, S.C. He charts the barn’s latest talent, and his wife Wendy trains the retired thoroughbreds to be fox hunters.
“Our two up-and-comers are a 2-year-old gelding Appointment and 3-year-old filly Joule. Appointment (sired by Freud) got a race in at Belmont on Thanksgiving Day and we were happy with his dead heat fifth of 11 runners. If all is well, you’ll see him at Belmont in the spring. Joule plans to be entered on 12/20 at Aqueduct for her first race.”
SQUIBBERS: UMass has gone from “All other teams” to 10/1 in the Vegas sportsbooks to win the NCAA hockey title. Tickets to the championship game in Buffalo are selling for $125-$340 on StubHub. … The day after Quinnipiac knocked UMass out of the top spot, Brock Hines was surprised to discover what happened the first time the Bobcats ever reached No. 1. “It was Feb.11, 2013, and guess who their first game was against? Greg Carvel’s St. Lawrence Saints. And guess who won? Funny how things work.” … According to College Hockey News figures, UMass leads all other New England colleges, averaging over 5,015 a game. Ten teams are ahead of UMass — none from the eastern conferences — and UMass could finish in the Top 5. …. Former UMass hoopster Tyrn Flowers followed Derek Kellogg to LIU-Brooklyn, where he’s the second leading scorer (12.6 ppg) for the 5-5 Blackbirds. … Nice to see some hoops fans at Tuesday’s game, notably Greenfield’s Forbes Byron and Pete Ruggeri, who were following Greenfield rinkrats Mike and Larry Petrin. … John Blair stopped Wednesday at Ocean State Job Lot in Westerly, RI. “I came across “Red Sox 2018 World Champions” t-shirts for $9.99. The same exact t-shirts I did not buy for $35 at the Fenway Park Pro Shop during the World Series parade. A whole rack of them, all sizes.” … Deerfield’s Ron Puchalski and former UMass coach Jim Reid will be kindred spirits rooting for Maine today at Eastern Washington in today’s FCS semifinals (ESPN2; 2 p.m.). Both played for coach Walter Abbott from 1970-73. The Black Bears (11-3) will be a decided underdog against the 11-2 Eagles, who lost to No. 13 Washington State in September but have won six straight games. … The Yankees and Red Sox are vying for free agent middle reliever Adam Ottavino, who was raised in Brooklyn and pitched at Northeastern. Ottavino made 75 appearances and struck out 112 batters in 77.2 innings for the Rockies this season. Sirius-XM’s CJ Nitkowski thinks his NYC roots give the Yanks the inside track. … Tickets for the AHL All Star game at the MassMutual Center on Jan. 28 are priced from $39 to $99 (“on the glass.”) … Last week’s Army-Navy game lasted longer than the Siege of Vicksburg — 15 minutes for a fourth quarter replay? Sheesh. … Nick Saban to the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore: “We do everything we can to prepare players for wet weather. We have wet ball practice at least once a week, the ball’s wet the whole practice, and players have to learn how to catch it, handle it, throw it, carry it.” … The Sporting News reports that 20 FBS head coaches have either been fired or resigned this season. … Sirius-XM’s Bruce Gradkowski asked the Globe’s Ben Volin to describe his first reaction to seeing the Dolphins’ last-second touchdown: “It was, oh shoot I have to change my story real quick.” … Happy 51st birthday, Mo Vaughn.