Sports Thread For 3/9/10: Arsenal Light Up Porto, Robben Steals It For Bayern

Samir Nasri's terrific individual effort help sends Arsenal flying into the quarterfinals

It always is an exciting night in Champions League 2nd leg knockout stages encounters. But with a total of 9 goals on this night, it was even more so than usual.

Unfortunately for Porto, they didn't contribute to those tallies, as Arsenal thrash them 5-0 on the night to win comfortably on aggregate 6-2.

Nicholas Bendtner overcame his disastrous five misses on Saturday against Burnley with his first ever hat trick, while Samir Nasri brilliant effort and Emmanuel Eboue's finish round up a great day for Arsene Wenger's side and a forgettable night for the Portuguese giants.

Meanwhile, Arjen Robben's terrific left strike three minutes after precocious Stevan Jovetic' second goal has led to Bayern Munich advancing on always goals against Fiorentina. The 3-2 win for the Italian club was certainly muted, as the only competition where they have performed well this season has now ended.

In other sports news
Allen Iverson responded on Twitter last night in the midst of the Stephen A. Smith piece indicating that gambling or drinking problems could totally ruin his life. It is a sad case.

The Jets organization has the upmost confidence in Shonn Greene to just let Thomas Jones go to the Chiefs . But it is even more interesting that Jones went to Kansas City, knowing that JaMaal Charles is the #1 back there in most people's minds after a great finish to the season last year.

With the way the UCONN men played today, they don't even deserve to play in the NIT. Hell, their friends on the women's team could beat them right now.

And I didn't get a chance to talk about it much here until now, but it was certainly an enthralling opening week of Davis Cup tennis competition:

While Novak Djokovic led Serbia pass the US on home soil and David Nalbandian's return was the difference in them beating Sweden in Stockholm, the tie performance of the weekend obviously goes to the entire nation of Chile.

Fernando Gonzalez takes credit for the leading role by scoring the clinching victory over Dudi Sela, but all members of that team are worthy of the praise for even playing the tie in the aftermath of that earthquake.

Chile's Davis Cup team, led by stalwarts Fernando Gonzales and Nicholas Massu, give their country something to cheer for in a time or mourning (Photo from AP's Max Montecinos)