I did a lot of work around the house the past two days, so I was able to keep my eye close on the sports world (well, at least, the NFL, tennis and college basketball.) It was a great weekend in my opinion.

NFL

The Super Bowl is now set.

A year after Peyton reached his first Super Bowl, his oft-maligned younger brother will make his first appearance there. A great finish in the NFC championship as the Giants, once again, won on the road (their 10th straight road win) to upset the Packers. I love Favre and would like to have seen him with another shot, but I also felt pretty good about Eli making it as well. I hope that, win or lose, he has a great game. I also had to feel good for the Giants’ kicker after missing two field goals late in that game.

Oh yeah, and the Patriots won again.

Australian Open

Some great tennis this weekend in Melbourne, although I didn’t see much of it. There were some great 5-set matches on Saturday. With ever-underachieving Andy Roddick packing his bags earlier in the week, James Blake came through for the American men on Saturday. Blake was down two sets to Sebastian Grosjean before pulling out the win 6-2 in the fifth. I love Blake and would really like to see him win a major, but the deck certainly seems stacked against him considering the top three players in the world right now. Hopefully, he’ll eventually get his shot.

One of my other favorite players is Marcos Baghdatis, who took a two set to one lead on Australia’s Lleyton Hewitt, before eventually falling 6-3 in the final set. Baghdatis is always a lot of fun to watch, and I’d like to have seen this match in full, and certainly would like to have seen him win.

Finally - the one match I did get to watch most of - was the Roger Federer/Janko Tipseravic match. This was also a five-setter that saw Federer on the brink of losing. Federer rarely is challenged in the third round, so this was certainly news. Even more so, considering it went five sets. And it’s almost incomprehensible that he would be taken to 10-8 in the fifth. Tipseravic was playing outstanding and went up two sets to one before Federer finally did what he always does - win. I admit I’m growing tired of Federer and would love to have seen him drop this one. I’m looking forward to seeing how he finishes out in Sydney. Can he do it again?

I’m hoping one of the other two top seeds - Raphael Nadal or Novak Djokovic - is the one that takes him out. If they all keep winning, Federer would have to go through Blake, Djokovic and then Nadal to win. I don’t think he’ll have much trouble with Blake, but facing Djokovic and Nadal on successive days would be quite a challenge. But, as I said, they all have to keep winning. If they do, I think Federer will not get #13 just yet.

College basketball

This was a weekend of upsets with two of the top four going down Saturday - both at home. Maryland went into Chapel Hill and knocked off #1 UNC, which was just astonishing. I didn’t see that coming at all. And, I literally didn’t see it, because, while it was on ABC, it wasn’t shown here because of the contract our local ABC station has to show SEC games instead. So, we were treated to Alabama vs Mississippi State instead. Great. (That comes in real handy during football season, but really sucks during basketball season.)

Then, USC went to #4 UCLA and came out with their own upset. Oh, and while not an upset by any stretch of the imagination, Kentucky lost again. I thought I would enjoy mentioning that. I was right.

My fear was that a another top ten team was going to go down when Clemson came to Cameron Indoor later that night. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, but Clemson’s size proved to be difficult for Duke to handle, which wasn’t exactly a surprise considering the dearth of post players for the Blue Devils at this point. Clemson killed Duke on the boards, but fortunately Duke was able to force 20+ turnovers (and score nearly 40 points off turnovers) to counter the Tigers rebound dominance. I’m not sure how many second-chance points they had, but it was far too many. Duke needs to figure out a way to solve their lack of inside game before they have to face a team with size that won’t turn it over with the regularity that Clemson did Saturday night.

Still, Duke won, UNC lost, God is good.