Rebecca Lobo addresses the graduating class at her alma mater.

Graduating seniors, esteemed faculty, family and friends of the UConn community - I’m so happy to be back with you all here in Storrs today. Even though I last played for Coach Auriemma thirteen years ago, my experiences here at the University of Connecticut continue to be the best of my life. I’ll always be proud of how much I accomplished here, and will be eternally grateful for everything it learned during my college career.

Which is why I’m truly honored to address the graduating class this year. I hope that all of you graduating seniors have made memories here in that you hold just as dear, and that you have dreams just as big for what you will do when you leave here today. But I also hope and pray that someone in this audience will save me from the hell I’ve been living since I left.

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The off-season sometimes provides you with slim pickins - and when that happens, ain’t nothing you can do by ride that bomb all the way to the ground. Plus, real life has made strong demands on us today, so a-blogrollin’ we will go.

Today’s theme music - the exact opposite of how we feel these days as nuptials draw near:

Jarrett Carter may be our new favorite blogger, with two worthy posts at two worthy blogs - first, five reasons to keep the best D1 HBCU conference tournament in the Cackolack. We agree with him on all points, though we are saddened that the ACC Tournament won’t be in Greensboro, its rightful location. Atlanta is for bad traffic, gun crime, Tech fans, and SEC affairs - the ACC has no business dragging itself to such depths.

In worthy post #2, Carter asks if Gary Williams wants out of Maryland. Based on the offseason he’s had, as thoughtfully collected by the boys at DBR, who could blame him for wanting to get out with his reputation intact?

This is a bit old, but so is recruiting obsession - Mike DeCourcy breaks down the five spring signings that actually matter over at the SN. That one of said five impact players signed with Fresno Freakin’ State says all that is necessary about the current importance of the spring signing period.

In further evidence that as statistics increase, the result equals one, Yet Another Basketball Blog attempts to quantify coaching success based on recruiting and tournament play. Coach K underperforms! Tom Izzo does better than expected! Northwestern sucks! Oliver Purnell can’t beat competition with five breathing players! Surprises all around! (We kid. It’s a good piece that gives evidence to the conventional wisdom. But don’t expect a revelation.) (HT: RTC.)

Finally, while totally unrelated to college basketball, we love when two worlds collide - Above the Law, the preeminent blog in legal snark, links to Clay Travis, he of the CBS Spin on Sports column, as he gives law school selection advice. We link to this without comment, other than to say that given that Messr. Travis has abandoned the law to become a full-time sports writer, UVA Law should retroactively grant him admission.

Re-defining “big” in Durham.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Hey, Wojo? Maybe You Should Sit This One Out.

Coach K’s recent recruiting failures with big men - see Patrick Patterson and Greg Monroe - have sparked a chicken-and-egg argument. Are the trees not interested because no Duke big man has succeeded at the next level, from Jay Bilas to Christian Laettner to Sheldon Williams with every Cherokee Parks in between? Or is it because the coaching triumvirate of Dawkins, Collins and Wojociechowski (most recently in charge of post players) had no idea how to coach bigs?

Consider the egg scrambled - in the wake of Dawkins’ departure for Palo Alto, Coach K hired former Blue Devil forward Nate James to fill his spot on the bench. What remains to be seen is if this will have any discernible impact, as James comes in with no coaching experience. In fact, this resume looked better suited for reality television:

After graduating from Duke and playing in the Carolinas Basketball League, James spent parts of five seasons playing in Bosnia, Brazil, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Japan, the Philippines, Poland and Russia.

While some might consider the career a world history tour, James didn’t exactly praise the vagabond experience. Instead, he talked about eating nothing but rice and noodles — with chopsticks only — in Japan for several months; playing in a freezing gym in Bosnia; and having to eat cow tongue in Russia.

So, future Blue Devil recruits, know what Duke can now offer. Even if your playing experience can’t get you in the NBA and your Duke degree can’t get you a job, Coach James can help you parlay your experiences in Durham into a spot on The Amazing Race.

TWO STORIES THAT INTERESTED US FOR NO GOOD REASON
Something is Afoot in the District

Player movements galore in our nation’s capital yesterday, as Karl Hobbs kicked two players off GW’s team. Role players, true, but two players nonetheless from a team that only managed nine wins last season. Which makes one wonder what “certain expectations” they failed to meet to warrant dismissal, since one could argue that Hobbs and all of his charges failed to meet the basic “certain expectation” of finishing higher than next-to-last in the A-10.

Meanwhile, further into the snooty part of the Northwest Quadrant, a second potential starter transfers away from the Hoyas. With the announced transfer of Doc Rivers’ kid, Georgetown will be down to four returning players with any significant playing time. Greg Monroe better be really, really good, or JTIII will need to bust out celebrity dance moves again.

Theme music for this morning’s quick post, as we prepare for another ill-advised road trip:

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
More Schools That Couldn’t Fake Academic Achievement
Buzz around the interwebs continues to center on the APR ratings released yesterday. Rush the Court broke down the numbers in much greater detail than us, with some interesting findings:

1) Davidson had the best overall APR (a perfect 1000) amongst hoops programs, while Carolina had the highest amongst BCS programs. There is a safety school joke in here somewhere, but damned if we can find it.

2) The total list of teams suffering scholarship losses: Kansas State, Purdue, Seton Hall, South Carolina, Tennessee, and New Mexico State take a hit of one scholly apiece, while Southern Cal and UAB will lose two apiece for their historic incompetence.

3) The ACC and the Big East had the highest conference APR averages. If that isn’t evidence of the worthiness of the APR as a measure of academic success, we’re not sure what is. (That, or Big Ten programs are even worse at finding decent educations for their players than we already suspect.)

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QEDMF.

Each time you pay a bill, a little part of you dies. We get it. It happens to us too. Every time we pay a bill, we need a half hour of Rock Band and a pound bag of pretzels to get back to a good spiritual place. (And we’re not even married yet. Should we start the Xanax now?)

So we can forgive John Beilein for making a little bit of stink when he sent the first payment of his $1.5 million contract buyout settlement to WfVU last Thursday:

Beilein wrote that he made the first payment under protest, calling the buyout clause “unenforceable” and “grossly disproportional” to actual damages incurred by the university. …

“I urge the University to stop using the liquidated damages provision in its employment contracts because such provisions are illegal, onerous, and violate public policy,” Beilein wrote.

We applaud John Beilein on his legalese* - somebody paid more attention during their legal writing class than we did. (Attention employer: we kid. You know as well as us that no one pays attention in legal writing.)

Without belaboring the point, his argument holds no water. And since he’s already in Michigan, it’s not like he can secure PR points by bad mouthing WfVU now. But for such strong worded advocacy for a lost cause, we tip our cap towards John Beilein, and award him honorary lawya status for the day.

Give WfVU credit though - no strong worded response, no PR games, no silliness. They took the high ground and simply passed every cent of Beilein’s money on to his more successful replacement, as Huggy Bear signed an eleven-year extension that “guarantees” (promise!) that Huggins will remain at the school for the remainder of his coaching career.

Note to Morgantown Police: y’all know no danger like Huggy Bear with job security. Set your stun guns to “weird”.

No one can accuse him of discrimination.

* - Yes, we know his lawyer wrote it. We hope to write such letters some day for our clients. Trust us when we say they will be twice as wrong on the law and five times as snarky.

Absolute badass.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Excuses, Explanations, and Honest-to-God Reasons

When Tennessee’s Chris Lofton struggled early this season even against cupcake opponents, some wondered what was holding the 2006-2007 SEC Player of the Year back. At the time, UT’s head trainer Chad Newman said, “These people that are questioning Chris are going to feel pretty stupid when they find out what’s wrong with him.”

Yes, yes we do - turns out that Lofton was catching up physically after fighting cancer in the offseason:

“When I first heard that word, ‘cancer,’ I thought I was going to die,” said Lofton, whose cancer was detected through an NCAA-mandated random drug test following the Vols’ 121-86 victory over Long Beach State on March 16, 2007.

The results of the drug test were positive; UT officials were informed that if Lofton wasn’t using drugs, the positive result could be a sign of cancer.

More tests followed, and Lofton underwent surgery on March 28 to have the cancer removed. Four weeks of radiation treatment followed, from late April into May.

We’ll admit that our first reaction was shock at Lofton chose to (and succeeded in) keeping this under wraps the whole season - especially with noted media whore Bruce Pearl as a coach. But apparently, Pearl was the only one, besides trainer Newman, who was in on the secret in Knoxville.

“When people are first diagnosed with cancer, sometimes the first thought is to tell everyone close to you, so you can feel all the support and be surrounded with the love you need to battle cancer,” said Pearl.

“But Chris didn’t want anyone worrying about it or our fans using it as an excuse for him.”

Lofton said he appreciates his school and the media for respecting his privacy.

And we respect you for fighting the good fight, Chris Lofton. Best wishes going forward on staying cancer-free.

We now return to our regularly scheduled dick jokes.

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THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
End of Semester Rules at Chapel Hill

As seen yesterday at Rush the Court with 850 the Buzz, some Carolina basketball players spent the end of the semester blowing off some steam earlier this week with a little roof hopping. Now, it was enough for Ol’ Roy that his presumptive starting point guard for next year, Bobby Fraser, was diving from two stories up when he is supposed to be rehabbing his knee. But we have to imagine that seeing his All-American take the high-gravity dip would send him into a tizzy:

For Tyler’s sake, we hope the pool is filled with Chi Omega girls.

In case yesterday’s conversation with his brother didn’t do it for you, that picture above is all the evidence you need of why Psycho T is staying in college as long as he can. (HT for the photo to the Deadspin commenters, you profane bunch of cellar dwellers.)

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This likely won’t end well.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Campaigning in North Cackolack The Effective Way

The old story in our home state is that if Dean Smith wanted to be Governor, all he’d have to do is run, so rich is his cachet with the Tar Heel faithful, who comprise a bigger potential voting bloc than soccer moms and NASCAR dads put together. (Which is good, since NASCAR dads couldn’t get Richard Petty elected Secretary of State in 1996, nor could the soccer moms prevent Mia Hamm from marrying Nomar Garciaparra. ‘Cause that should have required a vote, right?)

With the North Carolina primary coming up next week, one candidate was smart enough to try to tap into that voter base. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL, in case you’ve been living under a rock) showed up in Chapel Hill early yesterday morning to play pickup with Psycho T and his Funky Bunch while Roy Williams watched from the sidelines. Which kind of makes it a coach-observed scrimmage. Which kind of makes it a NCAA rules viola … oh, bother:

“This was a unique situation and not an NCAA issue,” NCAA media relations director Erik Christianson said in an e-mail message to The News & Observer on Tuesday. “It certainly was a great opportunity for the student-athletes to interact with a presidential candidate.”

Dammit - the one time we WANT the NCAA to be nitpicky, overly-sensitive, by-the-books dweebs, they actually recognize a situation for what it is! But realistically, yeah, it was just a pick up game. We can’t blame Obama for using his notoriety to get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity most would kill for. But it certainly didn’t constitute an endorsement or anything, right?

Williams, who watched the play from a chair on the sideline, called out at one point: “You’ve got the future president of the United States wide open.”

Ahem.

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Smile while you can, Johnny.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
If You Love Something, Set It Free

When word first broke that Johnny Dawkins would be the new head coach at Stanford, we wondered when the weather changed in Durham. Dawkins has long been considered Coack K’s consigliare and logical successor when he retires. Had something changed? Had Chris Collins or Steve Wojchichowski passed him in the eyes of their shared mentor? Was Johnny taking a graceful exit while the gettin’ was good? Not according to Stanford’s AD Bob Bowlsby:

Bowlsby said one of the first people he spoke to about the open job at Stanford was Krzyzewski and that he asked Krzyzewski about both Dawkins, who was Krzyzewski’s right-hand man for 11 seasons, and Duke assistant Steve Wojciechowski.

“At that time, Coach Krzyzewski said that Johnny was a likely successor to him [at Duke],” Bowlsby said. (HT: Fanhouse)

That’s right - the Pac-10, where ACC assistants are sent to gain head coaching experience before they take real jobs back home in the Cackolack!

Some people on the Stanford beat don’t think this is such a great match for either party, and we understand and even second their concerns. (Color us nervous about another Duke assistant flopping as a head coach, especially the presumptive heir to the throne.) But Johnny D is a talented Xs and Os guy who is used to working under academic restrictions, so Stanford could have done a lot worse.

SLIPPING OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
Screw You Guys, I’m Going Home

Homesickness? Frustration with a coach? Inability to find decent eats or trim in the D.C. Metro Area? Whatever the reason, two perplexing transfers over the last week - Vernon Macklin leaving Georgetown, and Shane Walker leaving Maryland. While neither player put up monster stats this past season, both were poised to become major contributors in their respective front courts in 2008-2009 - if they had the stones to deal with a little competition from incoming freshmen. To be fair, though, Walker is British, so we can forgive him for being frustrated and confused by a meritocracy - or, for that matter, for wanting to get the hell out of College Park.

TWIDDLING THUMBS
Because It’s a Long Offseason

Even though the national championship game was only three weeks ago, we already feel the cold, dead hand of summer touching us in all the wrong places. Midnight Madness won’t start for another five months, and until college football kicks off in August, all we have to keep us warm are the NHL and NBA playoffs and, after June, nothing but baseball. (Unlike Orson, we actually enjoy baseball, but in the same way we enjoy hummus - fine as a small bite before a real meal, annoyingly bland as the only offering on the table. Needless to say, we don’t enjoy the summer months.)

We’ll do our best to keep busy around these parts - humor pieces, draft coverage, maybe a little bit of recruiting news if we are feeling particularly evil, and plenty of hate mongering. Got a tip, question, or snide remark? Email us here. (We’ll add a link to the sidebar soon.) Right now, though, we’re preparing for the last set of final exams we’ll hopefully ever take - which, of course, means we’re trying to figure out what to do with all of our newfound free time. Which leads to debates like this:

Take the money and run.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Off on the Road to Rhode Island

After getting turned down by (seemingly) everyone and their brother, including UMass’ Travis Ford and George Mason’s Jim Larranaga, Providence College announced yesterday that they had poached Keno Davis, the 2008 AP Coach of the Year, from Drake.

The legal term for this is “huge f’in save.” We’ve seen a program get an excellent candidate after public swings and misses - see: Alabama (2007) and Michigan (2008) football coaching searches. But that is football, and Bama and UM are Bama and UM, and have the gravitational pull of black holes - even if they miss one star, they are sure to suck in another. This is basketball, where coaches in small conferences have far more opportunities to succeed than their brothers in the fall - and Providence is no guaranteed ticket to fame.

Will the gamble work for PC? Probably not. Davis has only been a head coach for one year, and spent his entire career as a player and assistant in the Midwest, and thus brings no relevant recruiting base to the Friars. In the dog-eat-crap Big East, he’ll be waiting for the scraps of more big programs (and other small programs from the A-10, like URI up the road) than he was in the Valley. Even the best coaches can’t succeed in the Big East without Grade A talent. We wish Davis luck (though not too much - he can finish 2nd to the Hoyas any year he wants), but we aren’t holding our breath.

HYPERBOLE GONE WILD
DBR Defends Krzyzewski, Patriotism, Puppies

The fine folks over at Duke Basketball Report published a retort to a New York Times story regarding Coach K’s statements regarding the US Olympic team’s place in the current political debate regarding Beijing and human rights:

Sometimes, through a performance you show more than by what you say. This is a tremendous opportunity to show camaraderie as teammates, serve as the ultimate example of people working together.

NYT says Coach K is in naive loony land. DBR says he recognizes that the best role the team can serve is as a quiet (hopefully successful) model of what is good, rather than a loud model of what we think is good. DBR is much closer to the ball, we think … but they we have to get off the bus when DBR makes the following analogies:

There are a couple of precedents for this: first of all, Jesse Owens, who just humiliated Adolf Hitler (we originally had Rupp here, which has to be our best typo of the year) when he tried to use the Olympics for his own ends. And secondly, the Czech water polo team, which pretty literally beat the everloving crap out of the Soviet team following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia after the Czechs had the audacity to challenge the power structure the Soviets imposed on Eastern Europe following World War II.

We love the guys at DBR - really, they do a fine job covering the team, players, coaches and alums. But … this is a little much, guys.

DBR: Making Duke fans sound like, well, Duke fans.

THE STORIES NO ONE CARES ABOUT
Players Leave for NBA Who Everyone Knew Would Leave for NBA

Derrick Rose. O.J. Mayo. Michael Beasley. Thanks for your one year stay in college, guys.

We agree with Bobby Knight that these one-hit wonders make an even bigger joke out of the “student” part of “student-athlete”. We wonder how these guys approached spring classes, knowing they wouldn’t return for a second year. Did the professors admit they would mail it in? Did they even bother attending? Or did they go to scout for trim?

A SERIOUS WORD
You Are The Pride of V.P.I.

Our distrust and dislike for all things Hokie is documented and still stands. But we set down the Hatorade for a moment to wish everyone down in Blacksburg a peaceful day.

The theme song for today’s coaching moves - only the finest slice of awful ’70s rock, reintroduced to us through the beauty that is Rock Band.

The big coaching story, of course, is where there was no change at all: Bill Self rebuffed his alma mater to stay at Kansas. We stated our policy on this earlier this week, so we say to Self that he had no wrong choices, and that if his heart told him to stay in Lawrence … well, then he must know something about Lawrence that we don’t. But, you know, championships are the best love like hunger is the best sauce. Rating: Chalky.

The biggest change, however, saw Trent Johnson leave a pretty damn good gig at Stanford to take over at LSU. We assume that Trent saw the Lopez twins head for the NBA, remembered he was at a school famous for its chemists and not its ballers, and took the all-expense paid trip to “Recruit Whomever the Hell You Want”-town. (We also don’t know what this says about the relative strengths of the conferences involved - is he leaving the ultra-competitive Pac-10 for calmer hoops waters, or does he view the SEC as a greater challenge?) Regardless of the reasoning, a strong move by an LSU program that has looked rudderless since making the Final Four in 2006 - kind of like it did for the fifteen years before that, too. Rating: ESS-EEE-SEE! ESS-EEE-SEE! WOOOOO BAYOU BENGALS WOOOOOO!

Because nothing says “opportunity” like “dump your new girlfriend for your ex-wife”, Mike Montgomery denied any interest in the new Stanford opening. Probably not a tough decision, given that Cal had literally just backed the Brinks truck up to his doorstep to sign him as the new coach of the Bears. While we understand angst over Cal’s decision to fire longtime coach Ben Braun, we can’t say we disagree with it. Home of hippies that it may be, Berkeley is the state flagship, and hates to lose ground to its little brother in Los Angeles in any category. You want to win big time ball? You hire big time coach. And Ben Braun seems like a nice guy, but not a big time coach. Rating: Golden.

Apparently learning a lesson from his own playing career, UMass coach Travis Ford turned down the opportunity to become a small fish in the Big East Pond at Providence to stay in Amherst. We know that the Friars were a founding member of the Big East, but the times seem to have passed them by, and we can’t help thinking time has come for relegation. That said … it was a Big East coaching opportunity. Ford reportedly passed up an interview with LSU as well, for a team that made the NIT finals. We’re going to work on the assumption that he knows something that we do not - either that his job is oddly secure at UMass, or he has a better grasp on his own Peter Principle than anyone we’ve studied. Rating: Feisty like an undersized point guard.

Recognizing that our Hoyas are the exception that proves the rule, it is never a good thing when you are having to poach from the Ivy League for your new head coach. It is worse when you are hiring an Ivy League assistant. But when you are the New Jersey Institute of Technology, oh ye of your 0-29 record - well, you take what you can get, even if that means hiring an assistant from Columbia as your new coach. So welcome, John Engles! And, for once we mean this with no risk of jinx - you can’t POSSIBLY have a worse year than the last guy. Rating: There can be only one - and the Highlanders would take even that.

0-29 is the new pink.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - In response to demands from coaches and fans of college basketball, as well as rising rancor from media coverage of the sport, the NCAA promised that it would make changes to the way in which college basketball chooses its national champion starting in 2009.

“We didn’t want to throw away seventy years of tradition on a whim, but tension against the tournament-style format has been building for years,” said NCAA President Myles Brand on Monday morning after a three-hour meeting with university presidents. “Ultimately, we think that it is time that college basketball came into agreement with our other major revenue sport so that the fans can finally be satisfied with end-of-season matchups that are both satisfying and will conclusively determine the best team in the sport.”

The new Poll of Objective and Observable Percentages (POOP) system*, designed by ACC Commissioner and BCS President John Swofford and a team of trained monkeys, is based on the successful Bowl Championship Series used in Division I-A football. Teams will be rated on a weekly basis, starting Jan. 1 of each year / season. The rankings will take into account three factors: the team’s rank in the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), the team’s rank in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Poll, and the team’s average rating across eight computer-based ranking systems. Each of these three sources will be treated equally, and the average of the three values will constitute the team’s straight POOP score.

“Our hope is that by using POOP to determine who plays for the national championship, rather than the current haphazard system of the NCAA tournament, we’ll be able to restore some normalcy to the proceedings,” said Swofford. “I mean, the whole March Madness name is a double-edged sword, ya know?”
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On the heels of our scathing review of the quality of the Indiana program this morning, breaking news this evening out of Bloomington - Indiana has reached an agreement with Marquette’s Tom Crean to become the next head coach of the Hoosiers. (Link goes to Yahoo! Sports, if only because tWWL pulled the same “Well, we actually had it first, but we embargoed it - promise!” crap as always.)

Instant analysis - this is a tremendous hire by Indiana. Crean has earned (and we choose our word carefully there) a rock solid reputation in his nine years in Milwaukee. Reinvigorating a long-dormant basketball school and fan base? Check. Recruiting above his weight class? Check. Nine winning records in nine seasons and a Final Four appearance? Check and check. Survived (and thrived) with a move to a much tougher conference? Check. Perhaps most important of all - a squeaky clean record? Major, major, absolutely necessary check.

Crean brings this reputation to a hurting Bloomington, and the announcement today helps clean up the mess left by both Sampson and his fill-in Dakich. IU now stands a chance of retaining their recruits, and avoiding basketball purgatory for the next two years.

As for Marquette - gentlemen, welcome to the cellar of the Big East. We have a tough time believing that MU will find a coach as good as Crean within their budget - but we suppose they struck gold with a young assistant before, and we have to imagine that will happen again.

We’re not quite ready to talk about the chalk-tastic weekend just yet. We need something to cleanse our palate with something far more soothing - something from a more simple time, a more hopeful time - something from, say, late Friday night:

Memories of Cinderella and jokes of forcible rear entry soothe the pain of chalk. (HT: Kleph.)

That’s more like it.

As you all know, Davidson missed their chance for the game-winning, lead-story-writing, script-already-in-development shot that would have led every tournament broadcast for the next twenty years because Stephan Curry couldn’t get an open look. Some people are crediting Kansas’ defense on the play - and there can be no doubt that in those last sixteen seconds, the Jayhawks clamped down impressively. Though we do not come to kick those that are down, we disagree.The scripted play (with Curry asked to bring the ball up and find his own shot) was macho but immature in design. Curry has thrived when working with teammates on ball screens and motion plays; on the most important play of the season, sending him up the court to go mano-a-cinque-mano with the Jayhawks was insane.

Though we of course mourn the loss of our last upstart in the tournament, we have a tough time feeling too terrible for Davidson. They had a great season by any standard, a phenomenal season by SoCon standards, and [insert clichéd dig at pampered lifestyle of students at a school where they do your laundry for you here].

However, anyone who has ever played on an underdog team that made it farther than it should have - and back when we could be confused with an athlete, we were on such a team - knows that when you do lose, the hurt is much deeper than it would have been earlier. Davidson’s loss mattered more yesterday because, unlike in any of the previous rounds, they actually had something to lose. While the loss eats at them today, the mere fact that a small liberal arts school from the SoCon made it to that level should be lauded and remembered for years to come.

As for the other three games? UCLA, suddenly awakened from its slumber through the first three rounds (and, really, the last three months), remembered that it had the defenders to shut down Xavier’s perimeter game and a big man who could bully them down low. Memphis, playing with a chip on their shoulder the size of … well, Texas … , shut down D.J. Augustin and forced the Longhorns to (unsuccessfully) rely on other scorers. And UNC continued to play the best ball of the tournament, taking the lead over Louisville five minutes into the game then holding it with a vise grip.

And thus, we are “treated” to the first Final Four with all four #1 seeds. We’ll have more thoughts on this later this afternoon.

THE GAME EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Atlantic 10 Claims Victory; Usage of Name “Big East”
Xavier 79, West Virginia 75 (OT)

This was the game of the night, but it wasn’t terribly fun to watch. Each team spent one half on fire at both ends of the court, and each team spent one half flailing about like a two-year-old in the ball room at Chuck E. Cheese. (We like this concept - five enormous gentleman crammed into a clown car-esque space, throwing balls wildly at one another while clumsily shuffling around and giggling in delirium.)

We talked about this more in our liveblog last night, but Xavier was able to win down the stretch entirely thanks to their long-range shooting abilities (11 of 19 overall, 3 of 3 in OT) and in spite of their free throw shooting abilities (12 of 21 overall, 2 of 6 in OT). This isn’t a good recipe for Saturday, when UCLA and their “we’re the best team when we feel like it” squad come to town.

TWO OTHER STORYLINES, JUST FOR KICKS

Even Better Than Free Laundry

So, the administration of Davidson picked up the tab for any student who wanted to travel to Detroit for their game against Wisconsin tonight. And, while we rarely recommend going to Detwaah for any reason, we have spent many nights in Davidson, N.C. Wildcat faithful, we hope all of your asses are on these buses just for the excitement of a venue change. (Seriously, guys, don’t worry - we promise that if you leave a note to UPS on your whiteboard, they’ll leave your latest J.Crew shipment at your door and you can rock your new chinos on Monday.)

Basketball: Now With Risk of Crippling Injury!

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