For the first time in Coach Pete Carroll's nine years on the job, his University of Southern California football team has lost a game played in November, with yesterday's 55-21 shellacking by Stanford. As noted in the linked L.A. Times article, "The November win streak, which reached 28-0 with last week's victory at Arizona State, began in 2001, when the Trojans finished fast and wound up in the Las Vegas Bowl."

November is arguably the toughest month for a team, as it plays some of its biggest traditional rivals with placement in as good a bowl game as possible often at stake. USC's 28 consecutive November victories are shown in the following list, by opponent (@ = road game). Indeed, one sees games against cross-town rival UCLA (although the Bruin-Trojan battle was later moved to early December) and national rival Notre Dame (only in the even-numbered years, as the teams play in South Bend, Indiana, in the middle of October in odd-numbered years, supposedly because USC does not want to play in the cold of November).

2001 Oregon State, @California, UCLA
2002 @Stanford, Arizona St., @UCLA, Notre Dame
2003 Washington St., @Arizona, UCLA
2004 @Oregon St., Arizona, Notre Dame
2005 Stanford, @California, Fresno St.
2006 @Stanford, Oregon, California, Notre Dame
2007 Oregon St., @California, @Arizona State
2008 Washington, California, @Stanford, Notre Dame
2009 @Arizona State

In one sense, the 28-game win streak survived on a bit of a technicality; in 2006, USC lost to UCLA, but game was played on December 2. USC's game-by-game logs from 2002-2009 can be found here, whereas the 2001 log can be found here.

The Indianapolis Colts survived a scare today from Houston, to lift their record to 8-0 this season. As noted in this ESPN.com article, the Colts have now won 17 straight NFL regular-season games, which ties for the third-longest such streak in league history. A year ago, the Colts won their final nine regular-season games, before making a quick exit from the playoffs at the hands of San Diego.

The NFL also has one other 8-0 team, the New Orleans Saints, who beat Carolina today.

For all of Alex Rodriguez's hitting slumps during previous years' MLB playoffs, the Yankee slugger really turned things around this year in helping his team to the World Series title. In this year's 15 Yankee postseason games, ARod hit 5 doubles and 6 homers, batted .365, sported a .500 on-base percentage, and slugged at a clip of .808. The latter statistic means that he nearly averaged a full base on all of his official at-bats (Rodriguez stat page on ESPN.com).

A Los Angeles Times tribute to former UCLA men's basketball coach John Wooden on his 99th birthday contains the following item (apparently in reference to his time playing semi-professional basketball in Indiana):

During one 46-game stretch, he made 134 consecutive free throws.

The Minnesota Twins, sporting a record of 70-72 with 20 games to play, finished the regular season playing .800 ball (16-4) to tie the Detroit Tigers atop the American League Central Division and force a one-game playoff on Tuesday for the division title (Twins game-by-game log).

Florida Marlins' pitcher Ricky Nolasco recorded nine straight strikeouts against the Atlanta Braves tonight, in a 5-4 Florida win. According to the linked game article:

Nolasco's nine consecutive strikeouts in one game were one short of the big league record set by Hall of Famer Tom Seaver for the New York Mets on April 22, 1970, against San Diego.

The Minnesota Twins' recent hot play has gotten them back into contention for the American League Central Division title. In a crucial double-header today against the first-place Detroit Tigers, Minnesota got within one game of first by taking the opener, but then fell in the nightcap to restore the Tigers' two-game lead.

Floundering with a 70-72 record after a September 12 loss to Oakland, Minnesota put together a stretch of winning 11 out of 12 games (Twins game-by-game log). Detroit also helped make the race competitive by losing 9 of 12 in mid-September (Tigers' log).