Orange You Glad You Stayed Up?

Tweet The Space Station was locked and loaded last night for the big UConn-Syracuse game. Little did we know that the Space Kid and I were destined for a six OT thriller in the Garden. I know this isn't horse racing related, but it's one of my three passions (the Orangemen, the Bills and racing) and it was center stage last night. My three passions have had quite the week, with the TO signing last weekend (screw the Onion - hat tip to Colin's Ghost), the Cuse staying alive in the Big East (can they do it again with G-Mac in the house?) and a huge Derby prep weekend lined up. They say things happen in threes (let's count Fort Erie's good news as the third?). For the record, I do not have triskaidekaphobia, and last night's victory actually occurred today (1:30am or so), so begat any of you Mountaineer fans who may be throwing some voodoo my way! Things are actually setting up nicely with West Virginia knocking off Pitt, but the team (who went only 7 deep through 5 overtimes) will be exhausted and the minutes may start taking its toll. Now, mind you, I grew up in Central New York and attended the triple OT Big East finale in 1981 as a pimply-faced teenager, where Leo Rautins (Andy's father) tipped in the winner with 0:03 on the clock at the Dome. My whole family still resides there and are all season ticket-holding crazies and my father still makes the annual trek to Manhattan to enjoy the tournament (with occassional detours to AC, of course). Anyways, I'm a tad sleep deprived this morning and giddy over the big win. Two more to go. Another 9 o'clocker tonight.

I was all set to blog on the Derby preps last night, but the game just overthrew that notion. I did sneak a peak at the four main prep BRIS PP's (after negotiating through the trainer sites at the TBA homepage - bottom right hand corner). It is a huge weekend for the EquiSpace R2R stable with four horses live (Old Fashioned, Patena, Pioneerof the Nile and Friesen Fire) for me. I think the most intriguing races are the Louisiana Derby and the Tampa Bay Derby. I'm thinking Old Fashioned and PoTN will run off with their respective races, but the other two look much more interesting from a betting perspective. Three horses that have my attention in the La Derby are Patena, Papa Clem and Terrain (who emerges after a disappointing fifth in the Delta Jackpot). Raf Bejarano selected Papa Clem over New Bay (picks up Talamo) who will be running at his home track in the San Felipe for Richard Mandella and owner B. Wayne Hughes, always a telling angle. Late Saturday afternoon will be a fun time this weekend. More on the TB Derby tomorrow.

The second Derby futures pool is open until Sunday night, on that note I'm disappointed Big Drama is off the trail, I hope to see him down the line at the Spa this summer. Speaking of the Derby, it looks like they will be adding another race to both the Oaks and Derby cards, which makes for a rather long day. It's nice that the Oaks has partnered with the Cure, a rather positive development and positive news for our sport and a great cause.

I didn't get to watch the allowance race at Oaklawn yesterday afternoon featuring last year's 3yo Eclipse champion Proud Spell (see firewall post), but was obtain updates through my fellow twitterers while watching the Live Odds at the DRF. Whenever a big favorite is running (especially after a layoff like Proud Spell) I look for the negative show pool, which occurred as she took $118K of the $127K show pool. Hoping maybe she'd run out of the money I sprinkled a few bucks on the second through fourth choices, only to break even. Will keep trying, Old Fashioned will probably attract the bridgejumpers again this weekend, but not sure he will fall off the board in this one.

Make sure you pick up your race cards for this weekends preps at DRF, using the special TBA code (found in the middle of the homepage - see Formulator ad above the 3yo filly division standings) where you can grab 10 cards for the low, low, low (dare I say rollback?) price of $10. I'll be trying Formulator this weekend for the first time and am looking forward to it.