First Call: Le’Veon Bell visits Pittsburgh, Mike Sullivan on Penguins problems, Barry Bonds is sad
Monday’s “First Call” looks at Mike Sullivan’s characterization of his struggling Penguins. Also, Le’Veon Bell’s return to Pittsburgh, Robert Morris hockey stays alive, and a positive spin for Duquesne hoops.
Aw. And Barry Bonds is sad.
Bad connection?
Uh oh.
The last time we heard about something being “disconnected” in Pittsburgh sports, it was an issue with the “WiFi” between Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown.
Look how that turned out.
On Sunday, Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan repeatedly used the word “disconnected” when describing his struggling hockey team. His players have lost eight of their last 10 games.
I asked Sullivan to define what “disconnect” means to him when describing his club.
“What I‘m referring to is cooperative play,” Sullivan explained. “There has to be five guys working cohesively together in all three zones. Both with the puck and without the puck. And it boils down to details.
“We’ve got to help one another. We’ve got to do a little better job in our collective effort and that’s what I am referring to when I say that we are a little bit disconnected.”
If a “disconnection” in the team’s “collective effort” is a fancy way of saying “everything looks broken right now and your guess for answers is as good as mine,” then I agree with Sullivan.
I’d also suggest just saying that.
Regardless, I get his greater point.
Happy returns
Le’Veon Bell was back in Pittsburgh over the weekend.
So let your mind wander as to why.
One report said he was at “the courthouse” for some reason. And he posted video on his Instagram feed of a trip to Mike and Tony’s Gyros on the Southside.
That’s not quite in the realm of being on the Steelers’ radar. And he is still under contract with the Jets.
But who am I to stop your minds from churning out a little blind speculation? Especially since NFL.com’s Gregg Rosenthal just listed Bell as one of the league’s top potential trade candidates.
And he mentioned the Steelers as a potential destination.
Eh, maybe he is just coming back to Pittsburgh for a little inspiration for his next rap album.
Boo, Barry! And boo-hoo, Barry
Barry Bonds says he feels like “a ghost.”
That’s how the former Pirates MVP describes his current absence from baseball relevance. In the wake of his connection to the BALCO scandal of the early 2000s and his general prickly demeanor, no one seems to want a part of Bonds.
He’s working as a weeklong guest instructor at San Francisco Giants camp. And he’s a “special assistant to the CEO” with the Giants.
But that’s about it. And his chances of getting inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame grow slimmer every year.
He voiced his displeasure to The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly.
“I feel like a ghost,” he said, his eyes locked on some distant point. “A ghost in a big empty house, just rattling around.”
And then: “A death sentence. That’s what they’ve given me.”
A bit later: “My heart, it’s broken. Really broken.”
Color me less than sympathetic, Barry.
Back to their old tricks
The Robert Morris University hockey team is doing what it so often does.
Turn it on for the playoffs. Even if the regular season was lackluster.
And it usually happens against Holy Cross.
The Colonials only finished seventh in Atlantic Hockey this year with a record of 11-12-5 in conference play.
Then they lost Game 1 of their first-round best-of-three playoff series against Holy Cross 2-0 on Friday night.
But the Colonials rebounded with a 2-1 overtime win on Saturday, courtesy of this goal from freshman Santeri Hartikainen.
Then they won 5-1 on Sunday to advance out of the first round of the playoffs.
It was the fourth straight year that RMU has eliminated the Crusaders in the postseason. And now the Colonials look to make Atlantic Hockey’s championship weekend for a seventh straight season.
VICTORY pic.twitter.com/U2u2fvRyL6
— RMU Men’s Hockey (@RMUMHockey) March 9, 2020
They’ll have to upset Sacred Heart in the quarterfinals next weekend to do so. And that will be a tough task. The Pioneers finished second in the conference at 18-8-2. They led the league in goals per game (3.88) and power-play percentage (26%).
The Colonials lost both games in Connecticut when the teams squared off earlier this season by final scores of 6-0 and 4-2.
The first two games of the series will be this Thursday and Friday. If necessary, Game 3 will be Sunday.
Not all bad
The Duquesne men’s basketball team entered the final weekend of regular season play knowing that it could wind up anywhere between third and sixth place in the Atlantic 10 tournament seeding.
Thanks to a loss against Richmond Friday and a series of other outcomes, the Dukes finished sixth.
As a result, Keith Dambrot’s team doesn’t get the double bye most clubs in the A-10 covet. So the Dukes will have to play a second-round game at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. It’ll be against either 11th-seeded George Washington or 14th-seeded Fordham at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday.
Duquesne (21-9, 11-7) won 66-61 on the road at GW (12-19, 6-12), and lost to them 70-67 at PPG Paints Arena. The Dukes defeated the Rams (8-22, 2-16) twice in close games, 58-56 in overtime and 59-54.
Should Dambrot’s players win that game, they’ll face third-seeded Rhode Island in the quarterfinals Friday and most likely second-seeded Richmond again in the semi-finals.
But there is a silver lining for the Dukes. They’ll manage to avoid getting Dayton as an opponent until the conference final. The top-seeded Flyers went 18-0 in conference play and are ranked third in the country.
Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via X. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.