Memphis Tigers defeat UCLA Bruins 78-63. Memphis was too much for UCLA. While the Bruins kept it manageable for most of the game, the Tigers turned up the gear in the final five minutes to send the Bruins home. Darren Collison scored only two points before fouling out in the second half, and the Bruins couldn't get the ball to Kevin Love. Memphis will face Kansas Monday night in the championship game. San Diego......

So the guys are in Vero Beach now, and now my sphincter pulsates in anticipation for March 31: Opening Day at Dodger Stadium. This spring training should prove very interesting despite Jeff Kent opening his yap. Here are some story lines to follow: Tommy Lasorda will manage eight exhibition games. While Joe Torre takes a split squad to Beijing to play the San Diego Padres on March 14 and 15, Lasorda will have the remaining......

"Ducttape Superhero" by The Eye of Brad via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr With exactly one year to go until a new president is inaugurated (and one more year of Jon Stewart's hilarious Bush headlines), the field of Republican hopefuls just got smaller. After poor showings in, well, every primary, caucus and poll, San Diego Congressman Duncan Hunter is ditching the presidential race. No word on what he will do now, but......

Don't know what to get for the gun toting rifleman who has everything? In San Francisco, turning that rifle in to authorities will net you a cool $100 gift card. Eh, you say? OK, how about $200 for AK-47s? I wonder how that conversation might go at home: Honey, where is my gun? Oh, I turned it in sweety, for $100 worth of movie rentals. You did what? Guns don't kill people, gift cards......

An incredible game took place in Los Angeles last night, and it had nothing to do with the Staples Center, USC, or Kobe Bryant. In fact, the two teams facing off had nothing to do with LA or even the United States, really. The Coliseum played host to the national soccer teams of bordering nations Mexico and Guatemala, and true to past instances when Central American squads play in the States, heads rolled in......

Your resident gay-bashing gay sports blogger here amped up for the start of the baseball postseason! And seeing how the regular season ended Monday night in the fabulous game that sent the Padres packing, this should be an exciting postseason. What makes this year’s action exciting is only one of the eight teams were in last year’s playoffs: the New York Yankees. This year there is a team that has only been to the......

The San Diego Padres and the Colorado Rockies each played 162 games and needed one more game to decide who would clinch the wild card. And both teams played like they wanted to win it. I decided early on that I would cheer for the Rockies. I mean since the Dodgers decided to tank in the last two weeks of the season and give the Rockies seven of their 13 wins, the Rockies better......

After I declared the Dodger season over last week, they go and make me look like a complete asshole by winning the next four games in convincing fashion. But thanks to the Giants, I didn’t look like a complete asshole. As the Dodgers won game after game, the Giants tanked game after game against the wild card leading Padres. With each win instead of inching closer to the postseason, they were merely jogging on......

Photo by Jory'z Shotz via Flickr. Ex-Padre David Wells sent his ex-teammates on a loooooooong trip home to San Diego last night. Just when you thought the season was over, the Dodgers win two-in-a-row against the insanely awesome Padres. It was Maddux vs Wells (old vs old?). Wells allowed only 4 hits, Maddux allowed 11 including 2 from Wells himself (his first multi-hit game ever). Dodgers win 6-3. Saito made his impressive 38th save......

Angels 18, Orioles 6 - Anaheim and Baltimore have combined for a whopping 39 runs in the past two game. The Halos had 18 last night, thanks to 13 walks and 3 errors given to them by the Orioles. Baltimore was so bad on defense that their offense hammered Kelvim Escobar for 6 earned runs in 5.1 innings and he still got the W. Vladimir Guerrero went yard, as did Brandon Wood -- for the......

This has been a shitty night. I watched the first couple of innings of the Padres-Dodgers game to watch newly acquired hack Esteban Loaiza completely stink it up. He game up four earned runs in those two innings and couldn’t find the strike zone for the life of him. I then went to play some tennis with my new tennis partner. I couldn’t serve for the life of me, and my normally strong forehand......

With both college football and the NFL going ahead full steam, it’s been hard to really pay attention to the goings-on of the Dodgers. And there is a good reason for that. The Dodgers just plain stunk it up at Telecom-of-the-Moment Park against the Giants. Each game featured a Dodger pitcher giving up crucial runs late in the game. Jonathan Broxton gave up home runs in Friday’s and Sunday’s games, and David Wells managed......

Guess who popped up with the Padres Tuesday? If you guessed Brett Tomko you would be right. Talk about tit for tat, the Padres acquired Tomko when he cleared waivers after being released by the Dodgers. If you remember, the Dodgers did the same when the bowling ball that is David Wells was released by the Padres. Collective dumpster diving much? Tomko, who had gotten the most boos at Dodger Stadium second to Barry......

Is it too little, too late for the Dodgers? I hope not. With four weeks to go, the Dodgers now trail by four games in the NL West after their 11-3 victory over the Cubs. This is not the same Cubs team the Dodgers faced at home in May. Then the Cubs were a bad team that couldn’t hold a lead for the life of them. It took manager Lou Piniella’s ejection and consequent......

It's a national holiday, so we got this one posted a little late. For those of you wondering why we're not inundating you with USC coverage, that's because I'm posting All Things Trojan over at latimes.com. If you'd like to help us do some Trojan coverage here, drop me a line at adam@laist.com. Also, "LAst Night's Action" is only posting about three times a week but will return to a regular M-F schedule starting September......

The Dodgers squandered a good chance to gain some ground in the division and wild card races last night in a 6-4 loss against the Padres. Here the Dodgers faced starting pitcher Jack Cassell making his first major league start, and they did nothing to make him work in the first several innings. The first batter to get a three-ball count was Russell Martin in the fourth when he hit an RBI single that......

The Dodgers have a certain way of making me look like a complete asshole. Just when I proclaim that it would take a miracle for the Dodgers to make the postseason, the offense explodes as if some saintly being was guiding them in the outfield. You know, they should make a movie about that. Against the Phillies on Wednesday the Dodgers scored 15 runs in an obvious show of laziness since a horrible Texas......

Someone at work came up to me the other day sounding very optimistic about the Dodgers. “They’ve been winning games again,” he said. “They have a chance to get to the playoffs.” I really don’t like being the party pooper, but sometimes a situation dictates it. “Look,” I replied, “How many teams are in front of them in the wild card?” “Well there are the Padres, Phillies and Braves.” “And don’t forget about the......

David Wells, the overweight, hard drinking, everyman pitcher from Torrance (who has journeyed around the big leagues from Toronto to New York, and now, to San Diego) has always been a big fan of Babe Ruth. So it's no surprise to learn that Wells had purchased a baseball for $7,000 with the Bambino's signature on it. But who would have thought that the big lug would have the smarts to get Hank Aaron to......

We hate him just like you do, but Barry Bonds just tied Hank Aaron's career home run record of 755. Bonds went opposite field off a hanging curve from San Diego Padres pitcher Clay Hensley. The game in currently still on at blogtime, which is 9:10pm. If you have cable or satellite and can get ESPN2, the game is tied, 2-2 in the 6th down there at Petco Park. Bonds is still in the......

That was just plain pathetic. Here you have a bad Giant’s team with aging position players and suspect pitching. The Dodgers could only manage one run off of five hits while giving up three runs off of 10 hits and an error in Tuesday night’s loss. The sad thing is nothing the Dodgers have been doing since the Mets series at home would indicate they would muster any sort of production anywhere. They lost......

Chad Billingsley was just what the doctor ordered for the Dodgers Monday night. With the Dodgers bullpen so exhausted they’ve started using Prozac as a reliever, the Dodgers needed Bills to go deep in the game against the Houston Astros. In his last three starts he had not gone longer than six innings with 90 pitches. In fact his last game he went five innings on 113 pitches. So the fact he pitched a......

Monday night came news that Nomar Garciapopup would be the third baseman in the near future. Who knew the near future meant Tuesday? Nomar felt he was ready for third base duties and in he went, however that wasn’t the end of it. Grady Little also moved Nomar from third in the hitting lineup to sixth. And just what did Nomar do? With Russell Martin on second and Luis Gonzalez on first with two......

A Word or 54 (or so): I know that there are some folks who are happy to be getting a few new episodes of the doomed Studio 60 - enjoy it while you can. Funny how there is no cohesive letter-writing campaign to save that one, at least not a campaign that is getting any press. Tonight - Thursday - June 7th, 2007 Dodgers @ Padres (KCAL, 7:00 p.m.) Pirate Master (CBS, 8:00 p.m.)......

Ducks 6, Senators 2 - Hell didn't freeze over, but Orange County did. Anaheim pounded Ottawa to win the NHL Finals 4-1 and bring the Stanley Cup to California for the first time. There's plenty being said about this on LAist, so keep reading! Twins 8, Angels 5 - One cold-weather team blew into Anaheim and came out on top. Of course, this game wasn't nearly as significant. Errors created a major subplot, with Minnesota......

If you were just flipping through the channels and said to yourself, “Self, I would really like to see a low-scoring pitcher’s duel,” then you would have really enjoyed Tuesday’s Dodgers game against the Padres. Unfortunately, Dem Bums lost to the Pads 1-0 thanks to a hit batter, stolen base and a single in the bottom of the eighth. In what a pretty unremarkable game, two notable things happened. Notable thing, the first: My......

A Word or 77 (or so): ABC has a lineup of new episodes and shows tonight - bucking the other networks, with the exception of Fox and the CW, who were always trend-buckers [hey, I said "buckers" ok, you dirty-minded individuals]. You might have also seen on the AP that the kids are trying to keep Jericho on the air - if CBS doesn't want to run it, they should sell it. I always......

A Word or 26: Welcome to the land of reruns and late night TV. Someone give me a heads up on other stuff on basic cable that's perhaps worth watching. Tonight - Tuesday - June 5th, 2007 Dodgers @ Padres (PRIME, 7:00 p.m.) Twins @ Angels (Fox Sports, 7:00 p.m.) On the Lot (Fox, 8:00 p.m.) The first 5 finalists present their films. The Sea Wolf (TCM, 8:30 p.m.) Edward G. Robinson stars in......

If the Dodgers win and no one sees it, does that count as a victory? By George it does! The Dodgers are now 20-14 with a two game lead over the Padres and D-Backs, but they are doing it in an ugly fashion. The stat that jumps out at me is before Wednesday’s game the Dodgers were 2 for 35 when the bases are loaded. Even worse is they are 0 for 19 when......

Being a natural born cynic, this is hard to say and even harder to do. But the Dodgers did played a 5 hour long game on Sunday and pulled off a win over the Padres, so I will try to hide my disappointment about getting killed 9 to 1 on Monday night by the Diamondbacks, who are now up on the Dodgers by half a game.......