Today in Sports – New England Patriots become 1st team in NFL history to finish regular season 16-0
Dec. 29
1926 — Merlyn Phillips of the Montreal Maroons scores five seconds into the game at Chicago for an NHL record for the fastest goal from the start of a game. The Black Hawks win the game in overtime, 5-4. It would be matched three times.
1934 — The first college basketball doubleheader is played at New York’s Madison Square Garden. NYU beats Notre Dame 25-18 and Westminster defeats St. John’s 37-33.
1957 — Tobin Rote passes for four touchdowns and scores another to give the Detroit Lions a 59-14 victory over the Cleveland Browns in the NFL championship game.
1961 — Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia Warriors scores 60 points against the Los Angeles Lakers at Hershey, Pa., the future site of his 100-point game.
1963 — Chuck McKinley and Dennis Ralston give the United States a 3-2 victory over Australia for the Davis Cup title.
1968 — The Baltimore Colts shut out the Browns 34-0 to win the NFL championship at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.
1968 — The New York Jets beat the Oakland Raiders 27-23 in the AFL championship game.
1979 — Safety Vernon Perry sets an NFL playoff record with four interceptions to lead the Houston Oilers to a 17-14 victory over the San Diego Chargers.
1982 — Alabama’s Jeremiah Castille intercepts three passes to help beat Illinois 21-15 in the Liberty Bowl and send coach Paul “Bear” Bryant out as a winner. Bryant finishes his coaching career with 323-85-17 record.
1984 — Wayne Gretzky of the Edmonton Oilers scores his 100th point in the 35th game of the season, a 6-3 victory over the Detroit Red Wings.
2006 — Texas Tech spots Minnesota a 31-point, third-quarter lead, then rallies for a stunning 44-41 overtime victory in the Insight Bowl, the largest comeback in Division I-A bowl history. The previous record for a bowl comeback was 30 points, set by Marshall against East Carolina in the 2001 GMAC Bowl.
2007 — The New England Patriots complete a perfect regular season, finishing with a remarkable 16-0 record following a thrilling 38-35 comeback victory over the New York Giants. New England is the first NFL team since the 1972 Dolphins to win every game on the schedule, and that one was only 14-0.
2011 — Baylor pulls out an incredible Alamo Bowl victory in the highest-scoring regulation bowl game in history, beating Washington 67-56 in the wildest shootout of this bowl season. Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III isn’t dazzling, but Terrance Ganaway rushes for 200 yards and five touchdowns. The previous bowl record for a regulation game was 102 total points set in the 2001 GMAC Bowl between Marshall and East Carolina. That game went to double overtime and ended with a combined 125 points — which still stands as the overall bowl record.
2012 — Second-ranked Connecticut plays spoiler and streak-buster this time, snapping No. 1 Stanford’s nation-leading 82-game home unbeaten run with a surprisingly easy 61-35 rout. It’s the Huskies who saw the end of their NCAA record 90-game winning streak at Maples Pavilion with a 71-59 loss two years ago, almost to the day on Dec. 30. Stanford loses at Maples Pavilion for the first time since March 2007.
2013 — Peyton Manning is 25 for 28 for 266 yards and four touchdowns before sitting out the second half of Denver’s 34-14 win over Oakland. He finishes the season with NFL records of 5,477 yards and 55 touchdown passes.
2014 — Teenager Mikaela Shiffrin becomes the most successful U.S. skier in the slalom at Kuehtai, Austria. The 19-year-old racks up her 10th career slalom win, beating the records set in the 1980s by Tamara McKinney and on the men’s side by Phil Mahre, who both had nine wins in ski racing’s most technically demanding event.
2016 — Olympic slalom champion Mikaela Shiffrin uses a spectacular final run to win a night race for her third World Cup triumph in three days. Shiffrin is 0.33 seconds off the lead at the final split time before accelerating to win the race by 0.64 ahead of Veronika Velez Zuzulova of Slovakia. After winning two giant slaloms the previous days, Shiffrin continues her dominance in slalom by landing her 23th career win in the discipline.
2020 – Milwaukee Bucks break NBA record for most 3-pointers made by a team in a single game with 29 in a dominant 144-97 victory over the Heat in Miami.
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