The Pressbox

It wasn’t easy, but the Detroit Pistons survived a tough battle with Orlando last night and now holds a 2-0 series lead.

The Magic put up a good fight, but the Pistons were simply more poised down the stretch. Their many years of playoff experience paid off.

The win puts the Pistons in great position. All they need to do is win one of the next two games in Orlando and they will have a stranglehold on the series. But let’s hope no one tells them that. The Pistons seem to get themselves in trouble when they think things are going well.

Hey all you wrestling fans:

I just wanted to let you know I’ll be posting results from the Individual State finals at the Palace of Auburn Hills. There are eight wrestlers from the Monroe County Region in state championship matches - Dundee’s Chris Rau (103), Chris Eggert (160) and Jimmy Rowe, Monroe’s Zac Stevens (125), Bedford’s Alex Ortman (160), Airport’s Deven Brown (145), Ida’s Nick Smith (119) and Erie Mason’s Jordan Dusseau (145).

Starting weight for the semifinals is 285 pounds.

Bedford sends out Mason Cole against Tyler Benson of Lake Orion.

I really enjoyed watching the Detroit Shock’s game against Phoenix Tuesday night.

Bill Laimbeer has his team playing some pretty good basketball. Detroit showed amazing poise, hitting clutch shot after clutch shot every time Phoenix got close.

Phoenix runs one of the ugliest offenses you are ever going to see. It seems like the plan is to fire up the ball as soon as they touch it on the offensive end. But it was working Tuesday night. The Mercury hit some unbelievable shots.

Detroit can wrap up the WNBA title Thursday night. Watch a little bit of the game if you get a chance. You might be surprised at how well these women play.

Can the first game of an NFL season be a must-win situation?

Probably not, but the rules are sometimes different for the Detroit Lions.

Confident voices have been emerged from the Lion locker room during the preseason. Jon Kitna boldly predicted 10 wins or more. Many of the players supported their quarterback.

But that kind of talk quickly flies out the window if the Lions can’t open today with a win over the only team in the NFL that was worse than them last season.

What a blow it would be to the Lions if Josh McCown, who was traded to Oakland after not being able to beat out Kitna for the Detroit’s starting quarterback job last year, leads the Raiders to victory.

So, for the Lions, maybe Game 1 is must-win.

I was at Monroe High’s football game last night.
That was a good assignment for a couple of reasons.
First, it was one of the few games in the county that wasn’t delayed by weather and, secondly, the Trojans put on a great show.
Monroe completely dominated a team that came in at 2-0.
Ben Notario had as good a first quarter as you’ll ever see: three touchdowns, hard-running inside, a bone-jarring tackle that forced a fumble and a great one-handed catch.

The Trojan defense was very active, especially the linebackers, and quarterback Willie Jones threw the ball effectively.

There were a couple of silly penalties that frustrated the coaching staff, but all-in-all, it was a terrific way to bounce back from last week’s frustrating loss.

What a miserable weekend it was for sports fans in southeast Michigan.

Two frustrating Detroit Tiger losses were combined with a humiliating loss for the University of Michigan football team.

It might have signalled the end of championship hopes for both.

Michigan still has a lot of season to play, but teams that lose to Appalachian State don’t generally win national championships.

As for the Tigers, the weekend summed up how frustrating the season has become.

They made a nice comeback to tie Oakland in the ninth inning Friday night, only to lose in the 10th.

Then on Sunday, they built a 7-0 lead only to let it slip away in a 10-inning loss. It was a golden opportunity to gain ground on the rest of the teams in the playoff hunt with the Yankees, Indians and Mariners all losing.

The Tigers finished a six-game road trip to Kansas City and Oakland - two teams out of contention - with a 2-4 record. That’s not how you launch a playoff run.

I guess we’re just lucky the Detroit Lions didn’t play Sunday to add to the misery.

The Tigers have slipped four and a half games behind Cleveland in the AL Central.

Are they finished? I am not quite ready to give up on them, but it doesn’t look good. That’s a big margin to make up in a little over a month and, worse than that, they show no signs of being capable of going on the kind of a streak that would make it possible.

What an amazing turn of events for a team that was being called the best in baseball at the All-Star break.

I remember writing a column last year that said “magical” was the right word to describe the Tiger season. Everything they did turned to gold. Jim Leyland made all the right moves, players came through with clutch hits at just the right time and the opponents made mistakes that helped the Tigers.

None of that has happened this year. Other than the walkoff home run by Carlos Guillen against the Yankees last week, when was the last time you remember a Tiger coming up with a clutch, game-winning hit in the late innings? It seemed like there was at least one a week last year.

The magic seems to have disappeared.

Jim Leyland has made a lot of great moves since becoming manager of the Detroit Tigers, but his decision to bat Timo Perez in the No. 3 spot Tuesday night against Kansas City baffled me.

I know he has been scrambling since Gary Sheffield went out with an injury, but this hunch did not work. Perez came up in several key spots in the early innings and failed to deliver. He did have a double in the ninth inning, but the Tigers were down by four runs at that time.

I know Leyland doesn’t want to mess with the Magglio Ordonez-Carlos Guillen combination in the No. 4 and 5 spots, but Sean Casey would have been a better choice at No. 3, or he could have moved Placido Polanco to third and let Perez hit second.

When asked about his choice of Perez in the No. 3 hole refused to give his reasons. All he would say was he did it because that’s where he wanted to hit him.

Leyland is a great manager, but he occasionally let’s his stubborness get in the way.

I got an unexpected Saturday night off yesterday.

Because of a power outage at The Evening News printing plant on Huber Drive, we had to get Sunday’s paper done by 3:30 p.m. so that it could be shipped to Adrian for printing.

That meant I got out of work early, but I didn’t have power at my house, either. That didn’t leave many options for the evening.

After taking the family out to dinner, going on a walk and playing Lego with my daughter, I pulled out a battery radio and prepared to enjoy the Tiger game.

There wasn’t much to enjoy.

The game was tight for the first few innings, then Jeremy Bonderman blew up with a four-run sixth inning allowing the Yankees to build a 7-2 lead.

I wrote an item in this blog a few days ago about how Justin Verlander wasn’t acting much like an ace. The same is true of Bonderman. Both of them have been mediocre or worse since the All-Star break.

The Tigers can’t make the playoffs with their two big guns pitching that way.