>> Wins on Friday against the free falling Cleveland Cavaliers and on Sunday against the Charlotte Bobcats coupled with an Indiana Pacers loss at Miami have moved the Wizards into 5th place in the Eastern Conference playoff race with just two games to go. The Wizards overall record now stands at 45-35 and the team has won four in a row since their five game losing streak.
With the Pacers two games back with only two to play, it looks like the Wizards will face the Chicago Bulls in the first round of the playoffs. However, which team will have home court advantage is still to be determined. Washington’s remaining games are at New Jersey (who needs a win to qualify for the playoffs) and New York while the Bulls host the Knicks and play at Indiana. Washington is currently one game behind the Bulls in the standings but own the tie breaker should the teams finish with identical records due to their 2-1 season series advantage over the Bulls. As they say in the Bloggerverse…Developing!
>> Not to be outdone, your Washington Nationals swept the weekend series with the Arizona Diamondbacks and sit atop the NL East by virtue of their five game winning streak. The Nats are unbeaten at RFK Stadium so far this year and have had 116,002 fans make their way through the turnstiles, good enough for 38,667 per game. That’s roughly 30,000 fans per game more than the team used to draw in Montreal. As Thomas Boswell points out today in the Post, The “Ex-Expos” have gone from “life support to fan support”. Suddenly Manager Frank Robinson’s prediction that the team would win more than 83 games doesn’t sound so crazy.
>> While they were allowing the Nationals to make a guest appearance in their house, the DC United were finishing off a grueling fortnight of matches both within and outside the MLS with a tightly contested Friday night loss to the Columbus Crew. Edson Buddle of Columbus scored the game’s only goal in the 26th minute of play in a game in which Columbus mounted relentless pressure to capitalize on a United team freshly back from Mexico City. Fatigue, coupled with the fact that playing soccer in Mexico City is like sucking carbon monoxide directly from the exhaust pipe of a Renault Fuego, forced coach Peter Nowak to make major adjustments to his starting alignment. As a result, Jaime Moreno, Christian Gomez, and Alecko Eskandarian didn’t enter the game until late in the second half—though when they did, the run of play underwent a complete turnabout. Fantastic saves by Crew goalkeeper Jon Busch demonstrated he was prepared for the late game pressure, which is more than we can say for Nowak, who was tossed in the 85th minute for harassing the referee.
The United will get plenty of rest between now and April 23, when they will face the New England Revolution at RFK.
(DC United round up from Jason Linkins)
