ANAHEIM — Well, you’d have to say that was a fairly encouraging night for the Angels.
In his first appearance in eight months, Bartolo Colon gave up just one run in seven innings and was the winning pitcher as the Angels defeated Seattle 7-6. It was Colon’s first win since he beat, yes, the Mariners last June.
“It was a different feeling, and I ask God that I don’t have to go through that again,� Colon, who had been sidelined by a torn rotator cuff as well as a pulled muscle in his right side, said through interpreter Jose Mota. “Because it was kind of scary at one point. But I feel pretty strong. … It’s a different feeling not to have to hold back on (the) fastball.�
Colon had a couple of misadventures, but they weren’t really about his pitching. He “tweaked� an ankle while covering first on a Jose Guillen grounder in the second inning — and was hit in, um, the posterior by a Jose Lopez drive in the fifth. (Quite a few good one-liners in the press box after that one, about getting hit in a well-padded area, the trainer not really offering to treat the problem, etc.)
“We were a little concern when he tweaked his ankle,� said manager Mike Scioscia. “As he stayed in and pitched, it loosed back up. … He pitched a terrific game, showed all the same things he showed in his last three rehab starts — combined very good velocity with command and movement.�
Of course, it was also encouraging because the Angels have now scored 15 runs in two games, after scoring a total of 14 in the previous nine games. (Not surprisingly, they were 1-8 in that span.)
“Some guys, we’ve talked about needing to work counts better,� Scioscia said, “and some guys are the guys that, when they get the pitch to hit, they have to square it up. We’re getting a much better blend — eight walks tonight, and with runners in scoring position, tonight it was 5 for 13, last night it was 5 for 9.
“The situational hitting is coming in, we’re running well and doing some of the things this lineup needs to do.�

ANAHEIM — No doubt about it: It’s tough being a young pitcher for the Angels.
In a scenario reminiscent of last year, when Jered Weaver was sent down to Salt Lake City after a 4-0 start to his big-league career, the Angels on Saturday optioned Joe Saunders to their triple-A team to make room for Bartolo Colon’s return from the disabled list.
All Saunders has done to date is go 2-0 with a 1.96 ERA, including six shutout innings against Seattle on Friday.
“I was hoping they’d give me a chance in the bullpen,� said Saunders. “But they don’t see me in the bullpen. Neither do I, really.�
Saunders said he’d try to take a lesson from Weaver’s experience a year ago, when he continued to pitch well in the minors and quickly returned for good.
Manager Mike Scioscia said the decision was a difficult one.
“There are some things in our rotation we need to see,� he said, “and right now, it wouldn’t be good for him or our organization to have him in the bullpen. He needs to keep pitching, he needs to be stretched out and ready to go, and we’ll see where this leads. …
“It’s never easy to send anybody out, but it’s really tough when here’s a guy we know is ready for the challenge in the big leagues, and our organization depth right now happens to be very strong in that position.�

They’re back: The flip side of the Saunders decision is that it puts the Angels a step closer to having their expected starting rotation of Colon — who started Saturday — Weaver, John Lackey, Ervin Santana and Kelvim Escobar. That group will be complete as of Tuesday, when Escobar is slated to return.
“We’re excited to see that rotation get where we anticipated it,� Scioscia said. “… With Bart coming back and hopefully getting into the form he has, and we’ve already seen Jered throw well, that’s a big part of what our team needs.
“And we need it to really settle into place. The earlier you can start it, the earlier you can see it settle. I think by all estimates, for us to have the five guys in the rotation this early was very optimistic, and we’re seeing it come to fruition.�
Weaver missed the first two weeks with biceps tendonitis, Colon had been sidelined by a strained muscle on his right side, and Escobar has been on the DL with shoulder irritation.

Clinical activity: Scioscia held his third annual youth baseball clinic Saturday in Thousand Oaks, and was all smiles about the experience, which included a huge crowd — “We’re talking about 1,500 kids,� he said — to learn from the manager and Angels players Erick Aybar, Howie Kendrick and Reggie Willits.
“It was beautiful,� Scioscia said. “It was really fun, a great day, a fun day. … We had kids from Simi, Oxnard, Oak Park, T.O. There were even two teams from Anaheim that drove up.�

ANAHEIM — When it seemed a “Slapshot� sequel might break out, the Ducks and Wild staged something else instead: a hockey game.
You can probably thank Chris Pronger for that.
Pronger’s goal just 62 seconds after the opening faceoff vaulted the Ducks into a 1-0 lead, and Anaheim went on to beat Minnesota 4-1, closing out the first-round Stanley Cup playoff series in five games.
If not for the quick goal, it might have been a much different, much uglier kind of game.
Minnesota came into Thursday’s game still incensed about a punch by Anaheim’s Brad May late in Tuesday’s Game 4 that knocked out Wild defenseman Kim Johnsson, earning May a three-game suspension and removing Johnsson from the lineup. (He was hospitalized overnight for a head injury and was released Wednesday, but did not travel to Anaheim.)
As a result, there was such a scent of retribution in the air that one Minnesota paper devoted a story to the prospect of a fight between Wild tough guy Derek Boogaard (all 6-foot-7, 250 pounds of him) and his Anaheim counterpart, George Parros (6-5, 232). It also dutifully cranked out a feature based on interviews with Steve Carlson and Dave Hanson, who played two of the three brawling Hanson brothers in, yes, the movie “Slapshot.�
Add a pregame fracas in which both teams came together at center ice — Boogaard and Parros were the featured dancers, although no punches were thrown — and it was clear the stage had been set for old-time hockey.
“I was glad we didn’t start fighting,� said Teemu Selanne, “because we didn’t want to lose anybody.�
Least of all Selanne, though there was a moment when that seemed like a possibility. Shortly after the skirmish, Selanne was hit by an errant puck shot by a and required “six or seven� stitches, according to Ducks communication director Alex Gilchrist. The doctor, he said, lost count.
“That was nothing,� said Selanne of the wound above his right eye, and you can believe it: He lost several teeth to a puck in the mouth during the Torino Olympics, and kept playing then. He has no idea who was responsible. “I think somebody turned his head away and said, ‘It wasn’t me,’ � he joked.
Eventful as the warmup was, it certainly had the Ducks ready to play.
“I think that was a good wakeup call,� Selanne said, referring to the brouhaha, not his encounter with the puck. “I saw these guys when they came back (in the dressing room) and I saw their eyes. Everybody was ready. It was like a war, like, ‘Guys, the war is on.’ �
But any chance of prolonged hand-to-hand combat was almost certainly shelved by Pronger’s goal, for which the league should be eternally grateful. With Minnesota trailing faster than you can say “10-point must system,� the Wild could hardly risk initiating anything that might have unnecessarily resulted in an Anaheim power play and a possibility of a two-goal deficit. And so the ugly underlying undercurrent was never unleashed.
With the stakes so high, there was simply no room for frontier justice.
Considering how necessarily some people claim fighting is as a party of hockey, it’s amazing how completely it vanishes when there’s no room for such nonsense.
So they just played hockey, and intense, dramatic hockey it was, given the stakes. The Ducks killed off a four-minute power play in the second period, including two minutes of 5-on-3, with the game still at 1-0. Not long after that, Anaheim had its own four-minute power play — and gave up a shorthanded goal to Marian Gaborik, only to respond in less than a minute with a goal by Ryan Getzlaf.
The Ducks led the rest of the way, adding a third-period goal by Corey Perry and an empty-netter by Travis Moen, but a close game to the finish was another bit of good fortune. Had the Ducks pulled away, the Wild might have freed Boogaard to pummel someone as he saw fit, and with their playoffs slipping away, he probably would have had plenty of teammates willing to vent their own frustrations.
Instead, everyone stuck to hockey.
Beforehand, when the teams were milling around in a scrum during the warmup, that seemed like the most unlikely outcome of all.

ANAHEIM — NHL spinmeister — er, commissioner — Gary Bettman visited the Ducks-Wild game as part of his traditional tour of the playoff series, and as is often the case, the league’s cable TV package with Versus was part of the discussion, given that the network remains obscure and the ratings remain tiny.
Bettman, of course, had the usual all-is-well take on things, bridling at a description of Versus availability as “spotty,� and continuing to defend Versus because it gives the network what he called “wall-to-wall� coverage, with pre- and post-game shows.
“We knew in the short term, we would sacrifice some distribution for better treatment,� he said.
Of course, you can argue that better treatment means very little if no one can see it, or that if Versus was really interested in good treatment, it would actually be covering games itself, rather than picking up local feeds or the Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts from the CBC. (Hockey Night in Canada has, without question, the best hockey coverage, but it means Versus is carrying the Vancouver-Dallas series instead of games with two U.S. teams. Like, say, the Ducks and Wild.)
No one asked Bettman about hockey violence — at least not while I was at his session. I was a little late getting there because I was watching warm-ups, when the Wild and Ducks gathered for a brief, wholly unsupervised group shoving match — followed by a warmup accident in which Teemu Selanne was felled when apparently hit by a shot. With stitches visible, he was on the ice in the starting lineup.
The warmup, in other words, was a whole lot more eventful than the Bettman session.
But then, that would have been true even if nothing happened.

LOS ANGELES — As the saying goes, reality bites. So the Clippers are trying to bend it to their own purposes.
Facing an extremely unlikely parlay to reach the playoffs — they have to beat New Orleans (doable) while Golden State loses to Portland (unlikely) — someone in management has made the decision to keep the Golden State game off the out of town scoreboards. You can track every other NBA, NHL and baseball game, but not the one most people in the stands are looking for. (The in-arena wi-fi also happens to be down, eliminating another way of checking scores, but that might just be coincidence.)
Anyway, at halftime here, whether anyone knows it or not, the reality is that the Clippers are just about dead. Golden State lead 64-46 at halftime, so the Clippers’ 44-42 lead at the half doesn’t mean much.
There’s also a little bending of reality going on in the Clippers’ reaction to the way Dallas took a dive last night against Golden State, holding just about everything but Mark Cuban’s ego out of action in a 111-82 loss.
The Clippers’ spin, as represented by Mike Dunleavy before the game, is that this represented Dallas’ preference for playing the Warriors instead of the Clippers.
“I mean, they clearly had a choice, and they made it,� Dunleavy said. “They made it in a big way. There was no doubt in anybody’s mind when they came out and the guys who were sitting on the sidelines dressed with suits, when you looked at them.� (Dirk Nowitzki, Jerry Stackhouse and Josh Howard sat out; starters Jason Terry and Devin Harris came off the bench.)
“Yesterday,� Dunleavy continued, “I heard from someone close to the (Dallas) organization, saying, ‘They don’t want to play you guys.’ �
A more likely scenario, though, is that they really felt the choice was between the Warriors and Lakers, and were doing everything they could to lift Golden State into the seventh spot and a matchup with Phoenix. (That could happen if the Lakers lose at Sacramento tonight.)
It’s probably understandable the Clippers didn’t want to look at the Dallas decision and see that they were considered irrelevant by the Mavericks.
The reality, though, is that they’re about to become irrelevant by anyone’s standards.

LOS ANGELES — Since the Clippers have left the door open, the Lakers are going to do everything they can to go through.
Unexpectedly given a chance to clinch a playoff berth tonight, thanks to the Clippers’ afternoon pratfall — “We anticipated they would win the game this afternoon,� Phil Jackson said — the Lakers will go at Seattle with a full roster, or something close to it, as Kwame Brown will not only return, but start.
“This is the first time in I don’t know how long I have 14 players to choose from before the ballgame,� Jackson said.
Brown’s return is a bit of a surprise, given his recent stated reluctance to play. Jackson claims it has nothing to do with pressure he’s applied through his comments or such gestures as pulling out a white handkerchief prior to Thursday’s game with the Clippers, the implication being that Brown should cry into it about his concerns.
“I’ve tried a lot of little things, but none of them seemed to click,� he said. “I think he needed confirmation that he’s going to be fine. I think the pictures we had taken, the diagnostic stuff was good for him. It was confirmation he’s going to be OK.�
Brown seems a bit less certain about that than his coach.
“I haven’t done anything,� he said, asked how the ankle felt.� It feels OK from being in the walking boot, but it’s not in the boot any more. I’m just going to go out here and see what I can do. I should be OK.�
It’s not something he’d be trying if the Lakers weren’t struggling so badly to clinch a playoff berth.
“Got no choice,� he said. “Unless we want to go home. Don’t want to go home.�
Based on their afternoon performance, the Clippers don’t share that same conviction. In giving up 60 first-half points, falling behind by 23 and eventually losing 105-100 to a nothing-to-play-for, regulars-on-the-bench Sacramento team, the Clippers looked like a team more than happy to think about being someplace else. And that’s not just my view.
“Some guys made effort, some didn’t,� said Elton Brand. “Some guys want to go fishing and do other things, I guess.�
Brand was not one of those guys. He made 9 of 14 shots and finished with 29 points, 14 rebounds, seven assists and three blocked shots.
Still, since so many other guys were no-shows at the start of the game, Brand probably will be doing other things after Wednesday.

ANAHEIM — I’d be more apologetic about not having written for a few days if I thought anybody noticed; based on the (lack of) response I’ve been getting, I’m about to look into trademarking the phrase “America’s Least-Read Blog.�
Be that as it may, between the bug I picked up in Atlanta and a lot of scrambling between various events, there hasn’t been a lot of time to attend to this. But since I have a few quiet moments here before the Ducks-Wild game, I wanted to follow up briefly on last night’s Lakers-Clippers game, which I couldn't do from home last night because I had no electricity as a result of Thursday's wind storm.
Thanks to the ridiculously late 10:30 finish — a function mostly of TNT’s late start and endless commercial interruptions, but not helped by the 89 free throws — I didn’t have time to deal with the Laker players’ reaction to blowing a 10-point fourth-quarter lead and losing 118-110. (The combination of the late finish and stunning fourth-quarter turnaround made this game a writer’s nightmare. I know, I know, not your problem.) But here are a couple of things they said after blowing a 10-point fourth-quarter lead and losing 118-110, and not surprisingly, they weren’t particularly upbeat:

Lamar Odom:
“We can’t make 3s. We can’t keep a lead. There’s not a team we can’t lose to right now. We’re not tight enough as a group. … No lead is big enough … Every time we get a big lead, we get a little lazy, stop doing the small things that it takes to win basketball games.�

Kobe Bryant:
“We didn’t make good decisions defensively. We have to keep guys off the free-throw lline. It was the second game where we allowed guys to get into the paint and draw a foul. (Corey) Maggette shot 24 free throws. (He made 17 as part of a 39-point night.) We have to do a better job of staying in front of people and keeping them out of the paint.�

The Lakers are in Phoenix tonight. You can’t really like their chances the way things are going.

ANAHEIM — Had a brief conversation today with Jered Weaver in the Angels’ clubhouse, the day before his first rehab start out in Rancho Cucamonga. The Simi Valley High graduate has opened the season on the disabled list with right biceps tendonitis, but says he’s now feeling very good and is anxious to get started.
Assuming the rehab start goes well, he’ll make one more at a place to be determined, then join the Angels in Boston during their first road trip. Tentatively, he’s slated to start April 16 in Boston, which would put his second start in the final game of a three-game home series with Seattle — and older brother Jeff.
Jered said he’d tried to project the two starting rotations out, and as of now, he’d miss starting against Jeff by a day. One weather cancellation could change that, though, and with Seattle going into Cleveland and Boston, that is certainly possible. (The forecast for the next four days in Cleveland is for temperatures in the mid- to low-30s with snow showers, including a 60-percent chance of precipitation on Saturday. In Boston, rain chances are 30 and 40 percent for the final two games.)

There are a lot of people with greater insight than me to comment on the passing of former Grambling coach Eddie Robinson, but I didn’t want to let it pass without recalling my one encounter with him, and how much I was impressed by him.
I went digging around at home to see if I still had a clipping from the story, but couldn’t find it, so I have no idea about the year. All I know is that it was when the Cowboys were still training in Thousand Oaks, because that’s how it came about. The NFL used to have program (maybe it still does) in which it brought coaching staffs from the predominantly black colleges to an NFL training camp, and in this particularly year, Grambling came for a week of Cowboys camp. Imagine Tom Landry and Eddie Robinson talking football. Just imagine them talking, period. It would be like having part of a coaching Mount Rushmore come to life.
Anyway, I approached Mr. Robinson at a practice and asked if we could talk, and he could not have been a nicer, classier individual. We had our conversation strolling around the Cal Lutheran campus, and I just remember how he exuded a leadership quality. Without knowing a single thing about his coaching from a technical standpoint, I fully understood why he was so successful.
A day or so later, I called someone from the NCAA to get some statistical information — this was either just before or just after Robinson set the record for career victories — and the person at the other end of the phone had a perfect Eddie Robinson story. As I recall it, the man from the NCAA had done quite a bit of work researching the coach’s career record and had gotten to know the coach a bit, and some time later had to go into the hospital for some sort of ailment. One of the first people to call and see how he was doing was, that’s right, Eddie Robinson. He was just that kind of man. I’d still rate it as one of my favorite interviews of all time.
There are only a handful of people I’ve interviewed that I really wish I had a picture with. Tom Landry is on that list. Eddie Robinson is right near the top.

ATLANTA — Since the good folks at CBS and their subsidiary, the NCAA, have chosen to play a championship game that starts at 9:22 p.m. local time, I have just gotten back to the hotel from the Georgia Dome at 2:08 a.m. So I’ll keep this brief.
The good thing about Florida’s victory in the NCAA championship game is how it reinforces the value of staying in school and experience and all the things that have mostly been lost in major-college basketball.
The bad thing is that it was a very predictable ending to a very predictable tournament.
After 64 games, the No. 1 overall seed won, beating another No. 1 seed in a Final Four that also included two No. 2s. As I’ve written before, Cinderella took this March off.
That doesn’t mean there wasn’t some compelling basketball. There was, particularly in the rounds of 16 and eight. The Final Four, not so much, unless you’re from Florida.
Oh, well, so it goes. You take the good with the bad. And there’s no doubt Florida is really, really good. A lot of pundits figure to use a lot of words trying to tell us just how good, deciding if this team is the equal of the Duke team that was the last to win back-to-back titles or any other standout group in recent college history.
Sorry, I’m not playing that particular game. For one thing, I don’t feel qualified to do it; I’m not enough of a college hoops junkie. For another, it’s just such a pointless exercise. It’s so difficult to compare across eras and generations in any sport, and it’s probably even more difficult in college sports, where teams are together so briefly.
Those details won’t stop a lot of people, of course, and more power to them. But all that really matters is that in two straight NCAA tournaments, the Gators were better than everyone else. That’s enough to earn them a place in history; why bother with ranking where exactly that place falls?

ATLANTA — College basketball season may be ending, but overlap season is in full swing.
I knew this, of course — the two days before coming to Atlanta included applying for my Ducks credential for the Stanley Cup playoffs and picking up my Dodgers credential — but it’s driven home all the more after spending a big chunk of the day watching Major League Baseball openers. Given that the NCAA title game starts at the ridiculous local time of 9:21 p.m., and that the whole of downtown Atlanta was jammed with people walking around in Florida shirts saying, “I need tickets� (except for the scalpers walking around asking “who needs tickets?�), there was certainly plenty of time to sit in the hotel room and watch some baseball.
(Based on those crowded streets, for a few hours tonight, the Georgia Dome may qualify as one of the largest cities in Florida.)
Overlap is nothing new, of course, since so many seasons drag on so long; we’re still more than two months from the end of the NHL and NBA seasons. But this week I’ll probably be covering baseball, basketball and hockey; if I was willing to watch the alleged sport of Arena Football, I could probably hit for the cycle.

ATLANTA — Greg Oden and Mike Conley Jr. have been teammates for a long time. Longer, probably, than anyone else at the Final Four.
They met in the sixth grade, played at the same Indianapolis high school, and are both freshman starters for Ohio State.
Oden is the more famous of the two, the one who has to deal with the constant questions about turning pro after this season.
Conley, at least in this NCAA tournament, has been the better player.
With Oden regularly hampered by foul trouble — he’s averaging 25 minutes per game — Conley has played a huge role as a freshman point guard, averaging 15.2 points and 4.6 assists per game. As a result, he’s finally emerging from the long shadow cast by the 7-foot Oden.
“I do feel like I’m kind of leaving his shadow a little bit,� Conley said. “I’ve had a lot of opportunities this year that I finally decided to take advantage of. When he goes out of the game, that’s a great time to try to prove yourself that you can play without him.�
Conley has no qualms about admitting it was difficult being overshadowed in high school.
“It is frustrating, knowing that every time you go out, people aren’t looking at you,� he said. “They’re looking at Greg, you know. And it hurt a lot. I felt I should have got some credit for some wins and things like that, in certain games in high school. And after that, I just tried to just block it all out and play my game. … Only people on my teams knew how good I was, really. People on the outside didn’t really know.�
This was enough of a concern to Oden that at one point, he suggested they shouldn’t go to the same college.
“I thought maybe he did want the attention to go somewhere by himself and make a big name for himself,� Oden said. “But he’s stepped up, and what he’s doing, he’s just showing people with his game, what he can do no matter if I’m here or not.
“He said, forget you, I’m going to step up and I’m going to win these games, and I’m going to play hard and be the best player I can be, and people are going to notice me no matter what. And that just shows what kind of person he is, that he’s determined to be a great player.�
Certainly, Oden does everything he can to give Conley credit.

“To be able to play with him all these years, it’s an honor,� Oden said. “He just steps up in big games, and he’s somebody you want to have on your team, especially in the national championship game. …
“I mean, he’s a big part of my game, just because of the things he does and how he draws my defender and gives me open layups and open dunks. I try and develop my game, but still it counts that he’s a great player, and he helps me out so much with his ability to shoot and drive.�
Few people have had the opportunity to watch Oden develop the way Conley has. When they first met, Oden “wasn’t very good,� he says now.
“He was just a tall, goofy looking guy with goggles on. He wore Rec Specs, I think, in games. It was funny, almost hysterical to watch him play sometimes.
“He let a lot of that get to him. He wanted to get better, because of a lot of the things people were saying about him, just being tall and not being able to do a lot of the things that people thought he should be able to do. He grew a couple inches in high school, and he grew as a person. He got that determination to want to get better. He was in at 5 o’clock every morning before school, and that’s the kind of work ethic you’ve got to have to get better.�

Adding to Oden: My Monday column from the Final Four is about the contrasting messages Florida and Ohio State would send to college basketball with victories, mostly because of what Oden represents in the new landscape created by the NBA’s age rule.
This should not, I’d like to elaborate here, be taken as a criticism of Oden as a player or especially as a person. Watching him deal with the media Sunday, I was impressed how grounded he seems. He goes out of his way to credit Conley’s role in his success, and generally says the right things — and more importantly, seems to mean them.
Even members of the opposition have noticed.
“He’s somebody that I really admire when it comes to all of the expectations, and all of the things he’s had to deal with all year,� said Florida’s Joakim Noah earlier in the weekend. “Right now, he’s the enemy. … So I’m not going to say too much, but I admire what he’s gone through this year. I don’t really know him personally, but he looks like a humble guy. … It’s probably worse for him than it is for me, and I can only imagine what he’s going through.�
Oden seems pretty likeable, especially with the occasional flashes of humor he displayed Sunday.
Given that he looks much older than his 19 years — like, say, about 15 years old — someone asked him if he thought he’d be carded if he went into a bar.
“I’m pretty sure I would,� he said, and then gave it some further thought.
“Well, not really, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t let me in, because somebody would probably say ‘That’s Greg Oden.’ �
That drew a laugh, but nothing like the one he received in talking about teammate and backup center Matt Terwilliger.
“He’s really strong,� Oden said. In practice, all he does is foul me. That’s how I get used to it. I literally go up to rebound the ball, and he just sits there and grabs me. And I look at the coaches like, is that not a foul?�
The reporter also asked — and this wasn’t one of the great moments in our profession — why Terwilliger was nicknamed Twig.
“His last name is Terwilliger,� Oden pointed out, with an inflection that made it clear how obvious that should be — and that also drew a huge laugh.
Maybe you had to be there, but his delivery was perfect.