95 South will be calling pretty soon, but here are a few final observations from the weekend in College Park and Philadelphia:

Connecticut should be booking its flight to Indianapolis, because it's almost impossible to imagine losing to Washington, George Mason or Wichita State. Of course, Illinois, North Carolina and Tennessee probably couldn't imagine it either, but Connecticut simply should not lose to any of the teams coming to D.C. Then again, as I wrote for tomorrow, Connecticut shouldn't have had to sweat out Albany and a Kentucky team that didn't exactly bring back memories of the Goose Givens days, or even Jeff Shephard. I'm pretty sure the guys who played for the Kentucky team depicted in "Glory Road'' could handle their counterparts today, in their 60s. But UConn needed a huge finish by Marcus Williams, an insane three straight offensive rebounds of missed free throws by Hilton Armstrong, and one very questionable out-of-bounds call down the stretch to hold onto what was a 13-point second-half lead.

Patrick Sparks went crazy for Kentucky: 28 points, 19 in the second half. Of course, someone in the post-game press conference prefaced a question about him by saying, "He's not the most athletic player out there ...'' Three guesses what color Sparks is. Please don't get me started. Jim Calhoun eventually pointed out to the questioner, he's probably more athletic than you.

Villlanova-Boston College and Gonzaga-UCLA (in that order) are far and away the most appealing matchups in the next round, although it would make a lot of people happy if Duke-LSU was at least close.

Bonus for the growing legion of disgruntled Terp fans: Shane Clark, 17 minutes, two points, four fouls. Not a big impact as far as I could tell, but I can't say I watched every minute of that game.

So, you ask, how's the bracket? Eight of the final 16, that's how. I wrapped yellow police tape around the D.C. side of it. I had Alabama-Birmingham, Illinois, North Carolina and Seton Hall. Three of four are alive in Minneapolis, three in Atlanta, two in Oakland. Half of my Final Four is DOA (North Carolina and Kansas, leaving Texas and BC).

Conference call: Big East 4, Missouri Valley 2, ACC 2, Pac 10 2, SEC 2, then Conference USA, Big 12, West Coast and the mighty, mighty Colonial. G'night, thanks for coming, stay sober: the Big Ten, six and out.

One final thought swirling around the UConn locker room yesterday: after all the effort all season to get the top seed in the region they wanted, they might end up playing for the Final Four against George Mason in front of their home crowd.