Houston

HOUSTON - The Texans look like the new bullies in the AFC, while the Baltimore Ravens look like a mess without Ray Lewis. Matt Schaub threw two touchdown passes, and Arian Foster ran for two scores as Houston dominated a showdown of the conference's top two teams, routing Baltimore, 43-13, on Sunday. Johnathan Joseph returned an interception 52 yards for a touchdown, and the Texans (6-1) finally beat the Ravens, who'd won all six previous meetings and eliminated them from last year's playoffs.

Bill Fitch, strategist supreme, may have to revise his locker room talks. The Houston Rockets listened to Fitch's pregame instructions last night and fell behind 11-4 in Game 2 of the NBA Championship Series. Behind 60-50 at halftime, they congregated with their coach again. It is not known if Fitch told them to begin the third quarter with two baskets in the first 5:52, but that is what they did. By then Larry Bird and the Celtics were comfortably in the saddle with a 75-57 lead, and it ended 117-95, and the next thing the Rockets heard from Fitch was this: "All right, let's hustle up and get out of here.

HOUSTON - There was no sense in losing sleep Thursday night, Charlie Manuel said, because he could not reasonably expect his Phillies to win all 19 of their remaining games. He arrived Friday to Minute Maid Park with more reasonable expectations. "Maybe we can get 18 wins in," the manager joked. One loss to baseball's worst team bred a desperate team. Jimmy Rollins smashed the fifth pitch of the game into the right-field stands, and the Phillies kept hitting, cruising to a 12-6 win against Houston, exactly the way it should have happened Thursday.

HOUSTON - Former President George H.W. Bush's family sought privacy and provided no new details Thursday about his medical condition, a day after his spokesman said that he's in intensive care after being hospitalized for treatment of a bronchitis-related cough. In the first upbeat statement in days, Bush's longtime Houston chief of staff, Jean Becker, said that the former president is getting excellent medical treatment in Houston and that he would ask that people "put the harps back in the closet.

The Celtics, having lost momentum in the NBA finals, yesterday lost their sense of humor. On Wednesday, after taking a 3-1 lead in this best-of-seven series, the Celtics were loose and joking. The title seemed to be taken for granted. But yesterday, two days after being routed, 111-96, by Houston in Game 5, they were tight-lipped, anxious and edgy. After practice, players dressed quickly and left quietly. Some avoided reporters. There seems to be a feeling that Boston had better take care of business today in Game 6 (Channel 10, 1 p.m.)

HOUSTON - In the fifth inning of Sunday's eventual, deflating defeat in Houston, the Astros chose to walk Chase Utley intentionally and take their chances with Ryan Howard with two on and two outs. It was the second straight time the Astros walked Utley to face Howard. Houston wanted to face Howard, the former National League MVP who had six straight seasons of at least 30 home runs and 100 RBI entering 2012. Howard may have been surprised, but Charlie Manuel was not. "Eh, not really," the Phillies manager said after a 7-6 loss.

HOUSTON - As Charlie Manuel admitted after the first loss of a forgettable extended weekend in Houston, baseball's law of averages meant that reeling off four straight wins at Minute Maid Park would be a tough task. The Phils roared into town having won a season-high seven straight, including back-to-back sweeps of last-place teams. The first loss to the Astros, another last-place team, wasn't altogether surprising; it was almost expected. But losing two of four games at the hands of the worst team in baseball would be considered a defeat.

IT'S A SHAME the Giants' Martellus Bennett doesn't play for the Eagles. He'd come in handy if distraught fans start leaping from the upper deck of the Linc. Don't laugh, Bennett has experience in such matters. The tight end had three catches in a win over the Packers on Sunday. But his biggest grab came after the game when he caught a middle-aged man who had fallen over a railing. Bennett was walking toward the tunnel that leads to the locker room when he made the clutch catch of the fan, who had fallen approximately 15 feet.

  Tyson Chandler scored 16 points, Jeremy Lin had 13, and the New York Knicks rolled to their second straight dominant victory under Mike Woodson, beating the visiting Indiana Pacers 115-100 on Friday night in the opener of a home-and-home series. Two nights after beating Portland by 42 on the day Mike D'Antoni resigned, New York shut down Pacers star Danny Granger, who had angered them by saying Friday and Saturday were two "very winnable games. "   Hornets to stay in Big Easy The Hornets and State of Louisiana announced an agreement in principle that would keep the team, which is currently owned by the league, in the New Orleans Arena through 2024 and pump in about $50 million in improvements.