Wir suchen Dich! » have a spot in the Derby gate if

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Kemy Osse scored a career-high 16 points, Marcus Johnson Jr. added 13 and seven rebounds, and Little Rock got 44 points from its bench on Saturday en route to a 97-65 season-opening win over Central Baptist College.Jalen Jacksons 3-pointer with 6:19 left in the first half gave Little Rock a 43-18 lead. The Mustangs never got within 20 points the rest of the way in Wes Flanigans first game as head coach after serving as associate head coach on last years team that went 30-5.Andre Jones led Little Rocks bench with 12 points on 4-of-5 shooting from the field and 4-of-4 from the free-throw line.The Trojans shot 56 percent from the field (33 of 59) compared with 33 percent for Central Baptist.Nick Jones hit four 3s and went 9 of 12 from the line for 21 points for the Mustangs. Jordan Ford made three 3s and totaled 13 points. Vans Old Skool Outlet .S. Open champion Justin Rose birdied the first hole with a blind shot he hit to a foot of the pin, and he stayed in front Tuesday until he completed a 4-under 67 for a two-shot lead over Jason Dufner in PGA Grand Slam of Golf. Basket Air Max 97 Pas Cher . -- Brandon Jennings made the most of his first game with the Detroit Pistons on Sunday night. http://www.pascherbasketnike.fr/france-jordan-1-solde.html . LOUIS -- Lance Lynn was one of the more enthusiastic participants as the St. Basket Yeezy 350 V2 . After slipping from the summit during the week, the Gunners overcame struggling Crystal Palace 2-0 on Sunday thanks to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlains second-half brace. Air Max 95 Pas Cher Chine . Lack made 20 saves for his third shutout of the season as the Canucks blanked the St. Louis Blues 1-0 in the first post-Olympic game for both teams night. Earlier this week, Churchill Downs announced two tweaks in its Road to the Kentucky Derby. Thats the series of prep races offering a graduated scale of points to the first four finishers, points that will determine which horses start in the Kentucky Derby should the first leg of the Triple Crown attract more entrants than its 20-starter limit.One of these changes is perfectly sensible, if somewhat innocuous. The other, in the opinion of this corner, is not.The alteration I think almost all of us will agree with and quickly forget about is Churchills replacing the Grey Stakes with the Sam F. Davis Stakes.The Davis is run at Tampa Bay Downs in mid-February at 11/?? miles on dirt. Even though the Davis was won this year by Destin, who later missed by a nose in the Belmont Stakes, the list of winners of the Davis Stakes does not exactly read like a whos who of Triple Crown lore.However, the Davis is the local springboard to the Tampa Bay Derby, which with time is incrementally becoming a higher-profile Kentucky Derby prep. And the Davis fits the profile of a Road to the Derby race far better than the Grey Stakes. The Grey, run in early October, four months before the Davis and seven months before the Derby, has, as Churchill took the effort to point out in its announcement, attracted fields of just six or fewer in three of its past four runnings.Moreover, unlike the Davis, the Grey is run on Woodbines synthetic main track, which resembles the kind of dirt surface on which the Kentucky Derby is run only in the sense that both are shades of brown.So replacing the Grey with the Davis makes sense because it puts the emphasis on 3-year-old dirt form. But in this case, its a slight emphasis. The Davis is a 17-point prep with 10 points to the winner. For purposes of comparison, the final major Kentucky Derby preps offer 10 times the points.The other, far less agreeable change Churchill made in its Derby prep schedule was the introduction of the Japan Road to the Kentucky Derby. Apparently taken by the ninth-place finish in this years Derby by the Japanese colt Lani, Churchill has designated two 1-mile dirt races at Tokyo Racecourse (yours truly visited that track many moons ago; if you ever get the chance, go!) as Derby points preps.The first of these will be the Cattleya Sho on Nov. 26, and the second will be the Hyacinth Stakes, to be run on an as yet undetermined date early next year. The typical sliding points scale applies to both races, but the Cattleya Sho is worth a total of 68 points with 40 going to the winner, and the Hyacinth is an 85-point race with 50 going to the winner.Churchill has made the Japan road to the Derby different from the traditional road in the sense that only one spot in the gate will be open to a Japanese contestannt, and that would be the one who accumulates the most points over these two designated races.ddddddddddddAmong the issues I have with this concept is, the Cattleya Sho is by far the most valuable 2-year-old race in terms of Derby points this year. It offers twice as many points to the winner as the Breeders Cup Juvenile and four times as many points to the winner as every other 2-year-old race in the schedule, races that include the Champagne, Breeders Futurity, Remsen and Los Alamitos Futurity.The point value of the Cattleya Sho completely contradicts the proper emphasis placed on 3-year-old form in the traditional Derby points preps. It also guarantees that the winner of the Cattleya Sho will have a spot in the Derby gate if his connections want, and if the first two finishers of the Hyacinth decline. Not even the Breeders Cup Juvenile winner will be able to claim that.As for the Hyacinth, sure, its points must be blended with the Cattleya Sho. But while its not as egregious as assigning 170 Derby points to the UAE Derby, which has yet to produce an even marginally competitive Kentucky Derby starter, Churchill still valued the Hyacinth on the same level as the Risen Star, Fountain of Youth, Gotham, Tampa Bay Derby, San Felipe and Rebel. And I find that astonishing.The only reasonable conclusion to reach here is Churchill really, really wants Japanese participation in the Kentucky Derby.What I fear here is the Japan road to the Derby will actually produce a horse game enough to come, which might very well deny a much better horse a spot in the Derby gate. This scenario already existed with the UAE Derby, but it now in