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.

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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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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Now with more Buckeye flavor!

THE GAME EVERYONE SOMEONE? IS TALKING ABOUT

So Much for the Repeat
Ohio State 81, Ole Miss 69
UMass 78, Florida 66

We can’t even pretend to be excited about the NIT. Such excitement, however, is what we are paid to do (and by “paid”, we mean “spared from Orson’s mighty whip”), so some quick takeaway thoughts from the games:

1) No rematch between OSU and Florida - which as we covered last week, would have mattered just as much as Roy Williams playing Kansas again, since approximately the same number of players were around for each of the previous rounds of those battles.

2) We really respect the fans that turn out of the NIT games, making the trip to MSG for the finals. While we were at Georgetown, the Hoyas were stuck in NIT purgatory for a few years - and we’ll be damned if we didn’t tune those teams out as soon as Selection Sunday came and passed. We’re impressed by the fans whose loyalty extends beyond disappointment and follows their team straight into the mouth of oblivion.

3) Hahahahaha - SEC iz Da suckz!! (Really? No. But it’s fun to say, no?)

4) For reasons we cannot begin to explain, we think UMass will beat tOSU tomorrow night.

AND NOW, ONTO MORE FUN TOPICS

Not So Much with the Pillaging, Fellas …

What happens in Mexico apparently must stay in Mexico, until diplomats intervene or charges are cleared. Two Portland State players were hauled into a Mexican jail after one beat the snot out of a fellow American tourist while the other fled the scene. We enjoy this - two American college students are involved in battery against a fellow American college student, but because they do it at a Mexican resort, they will get to be a punchline for years months some indeterminate time.

Just to confirm, young high school recruits when you sign on to play with a team, do not attempt to emulate their mascot. Fellow PSU players now stand on notice that raping and pillaging are strongly discouraged. Centenary players … well, same rule, but don’t feel like you have to tuck the shirts in.

Hardy har har, funny men
The boys at PTI decided to open yesterday’s show with a patently obvious April Fool’s prank. The joke wasn’t terribly funny - sure, tug at our heartstrings - but we appreciated the effort all the same for the unintentional comedy. (Don’t sue, Simmons!)

Further, it confirmed out belief that you could come up with a topic off the top of your head, hand it to Tony and Mike, and the exact same debate would occur regardless: Factual description, Wilbon defends “his boys”, Tony sounds old, Wilbon makes half-informed point that sounds fully-informed because he’s Mike Wilbon, Tony makes crass remark and/or does penguin dance. Why, yes, as a matter of fact, we aren’t sure why we watch this everyday still either!

Carousel - a term tossed around to describe movement in the coaching labor market, but why? Upon further review, it’s oddly accurate - constantly in motion until some pimpled, power hungry AD teenager throws off the gears, needlessly detailed, exciting to kids and their parents while alternatively boring and creepy to everyone else. Properly cited, we’ll pick up the nomme d’art and talk about the school’s who lack the courtesy to save their coaching news for next week when we have nothing else to write about.

After bolting Iowa for the calmer … plateaus? … of New Mexico, Steve Alford was rewarded Monday with a three-year extension with the Lobos, putting him under contract through 2016. All of this for one season of work that got the Lobos to 24-9 and a first round loss in the NIT. When notified of the extension, Charlie Weis nodded his head with approval. Combined with Herb Sendek’s desert revival at Arizona State after leaving the boobirds in Raleigh, one has to think there is something to the whole “life is easier in the Southwest” theory, even amongst the coaching ranks. Outlook: Sunny, even with those killer cacti.

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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.

There was not a single thing to dislike about this game. A nip and tuck first half that featured slick play and hard defense. The underdog pulling away while the favorites watched in horror and protested in waste. A mid-major star who is about one win away from crossing from underhyped to overhyped. And the full result - Davidson 73, Wisconsin 56, and the little #10 seed that could is one win away from wiping George Mason off the maps.

On the flip side, Wisconsin … and Big Ten basketball by extension (given Michigan State’s paltry performance) … got knocked on its ass, and we couldn’t be happier. Wisc plays a style of basketball that would better be described as “football”, since they rely almost entirely on post play, penetration, and beating the ever loving bejesus out of each and every opponent. Elbows, butt rams, subtle shoves, blatent shoves - this is Big Ten basketball, and it’s thoroughly unfun to watch. Unfortunately, it has also been successful in tournaments past - in fact, Davidson’s win was the final blow struck to our brackets, since we had Wisconsin in the Final Four. We’ll gladly forfeit our measly entry fee to see a fun team like Davidson advance instead.

We know that three other games happened tonight - all were, for the most part, boring blowouts and unworthy to report. (Stanford tried to keep it close with UT, but apparently, putting together a program with 1/6 the money of Texas means you get the Lopez twins, but no discernable offense.) So we head to bed tonight with visions of another double digit seed making the dance … and, since they are playing a Bill Self coached team, you have to like their chances, right?

What? All the good names that sound like “blog” have been taken already.

Some people are saying O.J. Mayo plans on declaring for the NBA draft. We disagree. We think he plans on eating a delicious BLT, washing it down with a frosty cold glass of juice, then showing up at the Clippers shoot-around this afternoon. We’re dead serious. We have no beef with Mayo, and in fact think he may be onto something with his “Fuck it, if it’s all about image anyway, I’m gonna control mine instead of letting the NCAA do it for me” attitude. And we think he’s smooth enough that he might just convince a catatonic Mike Dunleavy that he’s already on the team. (HT: Bryan)

Bruins Nation gets its mancrush on. We enjoy the way Kevin Love plays, but … honestly, this post made us feel a little awkward. That said, Love is like the anti-Hansbrough in the Machiavellian world of big men - while Pyscho T leads his charges with the ever-present threat of cannibalism, Kevin Love effectively walks the streets of the people handing out coinage, candy, and offensive rebounds.

Whelliston provides the stats on the money differences between the Sweet 16 teams this year. Most of the information isn’t terribly surprising or newsworthy, unless you are the type who is still surprised to learn that the Wisconsin athletic department budget could fund the entire SoCon. The one that shocked us, though - Texas spends over six times as much on its college basketball program as Stanford does.

Orange and Blue Hue states the obvious, but with some barebone facts - more people watch the first weekend when there are more upsets. We’re curious what the effect for the second weekend is - our hunch is that fans return to normal and want chalk, but we could be wrong.

Finally, gotta give Gate 21 some credit for putting lipstick on the pig today after their Vols got depantsed by Louisville. We’re not sure whether we are jealous of their good attitude, or scornful of their low expectations. We’re leaning towards the latter, if only because last weekend’s losses still hurt.

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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Sure, it’s not quite the same as the first weekend. But the 2nd weekend of the tournament is where even more drama happens, in many respects - can Davidson actually pull a Mason? Which #1 seed will bite the dust in a most unsavory fashion? And when will it get warm enough for girls to wear skirts and flipflops? (Not that we’re watching, honey.) For these reasons and more, we humbly log in to our MMOD account and bring you our live thoughts as the games progress.

7:10: Let’s get this started. The first pair of games: (7) West Virginia vs. (3) Xavier in the West, and (1) UNC vs. (4) Washington St. in the East. The West game tips off now, with the East game starting in about 20 minutes.

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So, we get back in the saddle for real tonight by doing what we wanted to do all last weekend - liveblogging the games. We’ll be posing all night, and hope you’ll join us. In the meantime, we’re enjoying Bobby Knight’s Pepto-tastic v-neck on, of all things, Baseball Tonight. Dear tWWL: corporate synergy is annoying, but nonsensical corporate synergy is amusing. Keep it coming.

Anyway - for your amusement, belittlement, scorn, and gambling, we present our just-as-informed-as-yours-but-we’ll-call-them-expert-because-we’re-writing-this-damn-post predictions for tonight’s games:

It’s just a little hobby, we’ve only dabbled … but Aunt Lou says hello.

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Hooray mediocre post-season play!

THE GAME EVERYONE NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Same Bad Time, Same Bad Channel
Ohio State 74, Dayton 63 (West)

We have to admit - Ohio basketball fans, we’re impressed. According to reports, Value City Arena in Columbus (and, really, is there any better city to host Value City Arena than Columbus?) was filled to capacity last night. Pretty damn good for a surprisingly good NIT Quarterfinal matchup between two schools from Central Ohio.

But that last sentence holds the key to the NIT - we’re pretty sure that we’re the only person we know who watched a nanosecond of this game. (And, in the interest of full disclosure, we have family in Central Ohio.) In the interest of saving on team travel costs and generating ticket interest, the lower tier post-season tournaments have no choice but to encourage regional matchups (though this one, of course, wasn’t planned.) But regional matchups have regional appeal, and regional appeal means no big advertising dollars, so it should surprise no one that the NIT had to be taken over by the NCAA to remain financially stable.

Meanwhile, a fun storyline that has been picked up already - with tOSU and Florida on opposite sides of the NIT Final Four (with tOSU playing Ole Miss - thanks for beating VPI, Rebs - and UF playing UMass), we could be treated to a rematch of last year’s championship game. I’ll be just like last year! Noah! Oden! Horford! Conley! Brewer! It’s the NCAA championship game on CBS The Deuce!

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We would say we’re sorry, but …

THE GAME EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Please make the room stop spinning
#2 Duke 71, #15 Belmont 70 (West)

[clears throat] Excuse us for just a moment. [walks into hallway, curses, destroys furniture, punches wall, kicks dog, returns] OK, much better.

Now, imagine what that would have been like had Duke lost. We didn’t see the game (poorly timed obligations this week have me working very, very late each night away from a computer), and that’s probably for the best. By all regards, Duke didn’t play poorly - just at a pedestrian pace. Meanwhile, Belmont played like a team that wasn’t afraid of Duke (and needn’t be, because it’s a game after all) and knew it needed to play the game of its life (and went out and did just that). A small part of us is disappointed the Bruins didn’t pull of the upset. A very small part.

Post-game, the MSM seemed to trip over themselves in a race to decide who could write the most poignant “But what does this MEAN for Duke???” piece. Ugh. These are the times when it is useful that these folks are paid to write articles that create emotional reactions (and thus forwards and page views), not necessarily articles that make a lick of damn sense. So, to them I say - Belmont played a great game, Duke played a ‘meh’ game, Duke barely won. This happens to some team in the tournament every g*ddamn year. Don’t oversell it just because it’s Duke.

TWO OTHER STORYLINES JUST FOR KICKS

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To help us prepare for the upcoming tournament weekend, we’re borrowing a tradition from the mothership. Here are our buys and sells for each of the regions for this weekend’s games.

EAST REGION

Buys

Butler - We were at work on Sunday night, so when we let out a Sheila Broflovski-esque “What what what???” when we saw the Bulldogs as a #7 seed, it scared a good number of people. Then we reviewed their schedule, and we understood why - their most impressive non-conference road win is a tossup between Virginia Tech and Southern Illinois. Toss that in with the fact that they are playing another talent mid-major (South Alabama) in essentially a road game (Birmingham), and this should be a loser. But the Bulldogs have one thing that you can’t buy in the tournament, and that’s defense. They held opponents under 60 points in more than half their games this year, and nine times under 50 points. Also, their three losses are by a total of twelve points. The old adage in betting is “don’t fall for the low hanging fruit”, and I think that taking South Alabama (or, for that matter, the unfortunately-placed #2 seed Tennessee) is a little too good to be true; RPI and schedule be damned, Butler isn’t a #7 seed. Bulldogs in my Sweet 16.

Sells

Wazzu - We aren’t in the business of muckraking around here … oh, wait, that’s EXACTLY what we’re in the business of. (Sorry.) Tony Bennett is either the next coming of John Wooden, or he found a killer outline for “Beating NCAA Recruiting Rules 101″, because we have no explanation for how he’s winning in Pullman. Regardless, his team seemed to lose steam as the year went on. Yes, all of their losses were in the Pac-10 - and yes, early in the year, they beat a couple of tournament teams soundly. But we’ve watched these guys, and they seem to be held together with duct tape and shoe polish. Enter Winthrop, a regular tournament participant with a win last year under their belts. We smell an upset.

SOUTH REGION

Buys

Pittsburgh - We’re already on the record as fearing Pitt, but let’s run through the numbers - undefeated until Christmas, including a win over Duke at MSG (known in Devil circles as “Cameron North”). Ravaged by injuries, they finished the regular season 11-9 with both tough losses (by 18 at Marquette) and plucky wins (by 9 over Georgetown). For the most part, they are healthy and playing together again … and showed off by winning the Big East. All this plus a favorable bracket has us thinking they will face Memphis next week. We can’t tell, however, whether we should be nervous or worried that we agree with Bob Knight about Pitt.

Sells

Miami (FL) - ACC bias w000000t! Um … yeah, about that … Miami, we’d like to congratulate you on your invitation to the tournament. Would you have made it, with the exact same squad, if you were in Conference USA instead of the ACC? Not a chance in the world. So enjoy the spotlight and the check, and kindly let St. Mary’s face off against Texas.

MIDWEST REGION

Buys

Clemson - OK, so maybe there is some ACC bias going on here. But as we wrote yesterday, Clemson has a quality squad that has both won and lost very close and tough games against superior competition this year, and has generally owned lesser competition minus a few hiccups. The first round shouldn’t pose much problem for them, but we also think they match up well against Vandy in the second round. As we’ve said before - someone must stop the monster that is Shan Foster, and if it’s not Clemson, don’t think for a second that it will be Kansas.

Sells

USC - We want to believe in Tim Floyd’s squad. (We’re really not sure why - in football season, we hate the sons of Troy with a white-hot heat and wish plagues upon Los Angeles and all of Pete Carroll’s beautiful angels.) We do. We’ve come around on O.J. Mayo and think he might actually be aight. But this team is streaky like taco night boxers, and they are playing against the best player in the country. Even with K-State’s pupu platter on the floor beside Beasley, we like the Wildcats.

WEST REGION

Buys

Duke - You know why? Because we said so. Risky bet? More than you might think - especially if West Virginia, another lanky, defense-oriented, long-shooting team gets to face them on Saturday. But dammit, we’re fans, and we’re gonna pimp our team this weekend because, barring UCLA getting lost on their way to the team buses, we’re pretty sure we won’t be able to do it next weekend.

Sells

Purdue - This was a tough pick for us, because we pretty much see chalk in this region. But of all the “high” seeds, Purdue looks to us to be the most vulnerable. No consistent scoring option, no impressive true road wins out of the Big Ten, and their opponent is an emotionally charged Baylor team. Sure, Baylor has a “just happy to be here” feel to them. But we’re on record as thinking that both of these conferences stink, so we’re going to hope that karma sides with the Bears.