It feels like I’ve started these Friday columns the same way for the past few weeks but I’m gonna go to the well again.

Ladies and gentlemen, we made it to football.

The holiday weekend brings us two Saturday games, three Sunday matchups, and one final Monday Night Football matchup featuring Section 400 contributor Matt’s Eagles.

Until then, we have to talk about a semi-crazy Thursday night in sports.

Let’s get right into it.

Santa Clar(it)a Diet

Santa Clara had looked more like zombies than Broncos over the past 13 seasons against Gonzaga. Despite talented teams and a veteran head coach in Herb Sendek, the perennial middle-of-the-pack WCC team had lost 26 straight games against the mighty Gonzaga Bulldogs heading into Thursday night.

The Broncos now have a one-game win streak.

In what is looking like a down season for Mark Few’s Zags and the West Coast Conference in general, Santa Clara has stepped up and now sits atop the standings in the WCC.

Not only that, but this squad has a legitimate chance to win the conference at the end of the season.

The Broncos already have key non-conference wins over Oregon and Stanford and have the chance to pick up another major conference win against St. Mary’s later this week.

With a star backcourt of Adama Bal and Carlos Marshall Jr. the Broncos have the talent, and the wearthithal, to make a run at a regular season conference championship. That could be enough to get this team into the dance.

Deadz

The Los Angeles Lakers are officially in trouble.

Lebron James, Anthony Davis, and the band of the mediocre role players making up the Lakers roster is simply getting outplayed night-in and night-out in every game following their In-Season Tournament Championship.

I won’t go as far as to say the Lakers aren’t going to make the playoffs, although Jack and Matt are said they are leaning that way in our podcast today, but I will say Los Angeles is in deeper doo-doo than their star when he’s asked to sum-up a book he’s been carrying with him for months.

The Lakers should make the postseason, or at least the play-in, but can we really expect a middle-aged Lebron James to carry another mediocre team to the Finals.

Let me remind you the last time Lebron made a Finals after a normal postseason (no Bubble), Bronny James was in elementary school.

Back in the New York Groove.

The New York Yankees finally made another move after their blockbuster trade for Juan Soto last month, signing veteran pitcher Marcus Stroman to a 2-year contract.

Stroman should slot in nicely for the Yankees as a middle of the rotation arm behind Gerrit Cole and Nestor Cortes.

The native New Yorker returns to the city after a somewhat tumultuous stint with the New York Mets from 2019-2021.

At the risk of Stroman somehow seeing this and blocking me on Twitter, I’ll refrain from saying anything else.

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