Pretty much everybody I know can't wait for this Final Four, in a different way than when they couldn't wait for last year's Final Four, because George Mason was such a complete unknown and you could expect anything to happen. There's really a different buzz when all four teams in are the absolute cream of the crop, and proved it in getting here. After all, check the two No. 2 seeds, Georgetown and UCLA - can you ask them to have beaten two better teams from two more storied programs (North Carolina, Kansas) more convincingly? The one everyone's drooling over is Georgetown-Ohio State, the first game, but it seems sacrilegious to shortchange the nightcap, Florida-UCLA, even though we've seen Florida already and we don't really want to see UCLA and the way they play.

Anyway ...

* Prediction: sticking to the last vestiges of respectability in my bracket. Georgetown over Ohio State, 77-71, and Florida over UCLA, 60-55.

* Speaking of the joy of just being here, of the type George Mason reveled in (hard to forget Lamar Butler asking if he could keep the nametag off the interview table), this year's award goes to the Hoyas, who really seem to be enjoying this more than the others. At least collectively. Individuals at UCLA and Ohio State look like they're having fun - Mike Conley, for instance, spent a half-hour answering the same four or five questions over and over and never even rolled an eye. With Georgetown, JTIII took another step away from the image his father created by actually cracking wise at the podium: he was informed that there was time for two more questions, and the next one was about whether his team was worried about playing in a dome since the last time it did, at Syracuse at the end of the season, it lost. JTIII's answer: "No. (pause) We can add another question, since that answer was so short.'' At the other end of it, Greg Oden answered the same handful of questions a million times and hung in there pretty well, but he looked and sounded as if he's answered the same questions a million times.

* As for Florida, they pounded the "everybody hates us'' theme to within an inch of its life. Joakim Noah, naturally, threw his personality into it - at one point he talked about last year's team being hungry, and this year's team being hungry but seeing "filet mignon and salami and all your favorite foods being thrown around everywhere.'' Seriously, what can beat filet mignon and salami? In fact, it's what Atlanta's known for. Oddly, Noah might be the only reason everyone isn't actually hating this team by Monday night.

* It's a big sporting event in a warm-weather southern city, so of course it was cold and rainy when the plane landed.

* Try this out in your city: how many places are named after people who are still alive? Between the airport and downtown, you can find three here: Turner Field, Andrew Young International Blvd. and the Carter Center.

* Biggest media crowds around players: Oden, Noah and Roy Hibbert. You know, that's three big men at one Final Four. That's kind of like a theme. I hope nobody else noticed before we write about it.

* Honest and true, up close Oden does look his age - because everybody knew a guy who looked grown way before everybody else, deep voice, facial hair, the whole thing. He just looks like a 19 year old who's looked 19 since he was about 12.

* Of all the sons of famous fathers - alert! tomorrow's column! - no one looks more like the old man than Patrick Ewing Jr. He also inherited the verbal tics, in this case the phrase "most definitely.'' By the way, it was one more step toward the bran flakes for me when it sunk in that I covered Ewing and Doc Rivers and remember when Patrick and Jeremiah were kids. Not to mention vividly recalling Tito Horford in the Capital Classic, kicking Danny Ferry's All-American behind up and down the court. Ferry is now the G.M. in Cleveland and has been very accessible and quotable over the years, and he probably didn't need to be reminded of that.

* Very brief airport and hotel sightings: Calvin Hill, TNT's Craig Sager, Bill Raftery, who was in ... amantoman!

* Did I say it was cold and rainy outside? To paraphrase Dr. Evil, it's frickin' freezing inside the Dome, as it is inside most domes. Time to head back to the (hopefully) warmer hotel and get ready to freeze again tomorrow.

Posted by David Steele at 6:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Been busy today, getting ready for a weekend of covering, writing and blogging about the Final Four this weekend in Atlanta. So I just came across this a few minutes ago about a human leg washing up on a beach owned by James Dolan, chairman of Madison Square Garden and its properties, including the New York Knicks.

Now, we know Isiah Thomas got a contract extension to continue as coach, something Dolan happily signed off on. But the Knicks do play at home tonight against Cleveland. Better make sure everybody shows up, including those of whom the Knicks haven't been happy lately. For example, ex-Terp Steve Francis.

Which is a gruesome way to get into the topic: what happened to Stevie Franchise? Am I crazy or did he used to really be able to play, and was he not always considered neither a cancer, a pariah, a quitter or a stiff? Didn't Maryland people used to be slightly proud of him and what he did in his one year there, even though he was clearly using College Park as a springboard to the NBA?

Well, those days clearly are over, and he has a contract everybody hates, probably even the guy who gave it to him (Isiah himself). So if Stevie doesn't show up for the game tonight, we might have to call the New York CSI guys for an update.

Posted by David Steele at 7:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

This week's podcast featured a spirited discussion of the NBA's age-limit rule, why we believe it's terrible and unjust (which was expanded on in my Monday Sun column), and why college ball benefits from it so much. The boost it provided for college basketball and this year's tournament are obvious, and one of the places that breaks it down so well is on ESPN.com's basketball blog by Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy (who is a must-read for me, because now I routinely either passionately agree with or violently disagree with everything he writes). Here, he's clearly a fan, because he's back to being a fan of college basketball because of the talents of Greg Oden and Kevin Durant. Decide for yourself how important that is compared to stifling a player's wants or needs to go pro. But if you care far more about college ball than the NBA (and the players in it), how can you not love it?

Simmons today is also an essential read because, at the very bottom, he runs an email from a North Carolina student who knew the Ram mascot, Jason Ray, who died yesterday from injuries suffered when he was hit by an SUV in New Jersey while the Heels were at the East regional.

More on one-and-done: here's the now-infamous New York Times story from last week about O.J. Mayo and his "recruitment'' by Southern California - in which one of Mayo's people called coach Tim Floyd, told him Mayo wanted to come there sight-unseen, and that the coach couldn't have his number but that Mayo would call him. Which Mayo did, then promising him he'd also recruit teammates for him and yet still refusing to give the coach his number. The upshot is that Mayo simply wanted a place to polish his profile for a year until he went pro. Understandably and not unfairly, Mayo is receiving most of the condemnation for this, as any spoiled, entitled high-school kid should. But for agreeing to all of this, USC should abolish its athletic department and reassign Floyd, the AD and the school president to custodial positions. Oden and Durant aside, it's hard to see how this can be seen as beneficial to college basketball, especially the "college'' part.

Posted by David Steele at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

It didn't really dawn on me until the final seconds of regulation at the Meadowlands. Twenty-five years ago, in my dorm at Calvert Hall (pre-renovation) at University of Maryland, as a freshman, by myself, watching the '82 national championship game, tense, screaming, cursing, trying to will Georgetown past North Carolina. Not even sitting down, just pacing around the single. Now, here I am, in my bedroom (the nearest TV to the computer), by myself, tense, pacing around the room, not even sitting down.

Great game. But a completely different outcome. I can remember almost everything from that '82 game, from the sight of John Thompson, Carroll High grad, first black coach in a championship game, on the bench opposite Dean Smith of all people, Patrick Ewing getting called for goaltend after goaltend and nobody caring because it was such an awesome display, James Worthy not caring because he was going to keep going in there and shooting anyway, the game coming down to the final seconds, Michael Jordan - the third-best player on the Tar Heels, behind Worthy and Sam Perkins - hitting that jumper, Georgetown rushing back down, plenty of time, Freddie Brown picking up his dribble, pausing, looking right, throwing to ABSOLUTELY NOBODY except James Worthy, Billy Packer yelling, "He threw it to the wrong guy!'', the free throws, Thompson hugging Freddie Brown on the sideline, Sleepy Floyd trying to heave up a final shot, North Carolina celebrating, me running into the dorm hallway cursing up a storm, hearing other cursing up and down the hall. A big chunk of it was about rooting on Georgetown, another big chunk of it rooting against North Carolina, hoping Dean and the program would keep shriveling up in big games. Hard to believe it used to be like that.

Now, today, here's Georgetown sucking all the drama out of the overtime, but dropping jaws by coming back the way they did. This is a team with John Thompson III's stamp on it - crisp, efficient, effective offense - but the defense won it, just like his father's old teams did. This was like the '84 Final Four game, against Kentucky, when Georgetown held the Wildcats to something like two baskets in the second half - nine percent sticks in my mind for some reason, meaning they shot in the neighborhood of 2 for 22 - and drove them crazy because every possession became completely futile and baskets were going to come only if Kentucky got really lucky. That was how North Carolina had to feel. They were rolling throughout the first half, getting the pace way beyond what Georgetown should've been comfortable with, and just as suddenly, from the last seven minutes of regulation until the end of overtime, the mere thought of getting a good shot, much less a basket, becoming a cruel joke.

So a lot of old Georgetown faithful who still hurt from 1982 felt some vindication, even though there was a championship to savor in 1984. And face it, it's downright freaky that Thompson's son coached them there and Ewing's son, who could barely get off the bench at Indiana and was nothing more than a famous name in high school, played a major role in it.

It's really freaky that the original game was 25 years ago, and that I can remember it that clearly, and that I re-enacted the feelings and actions so unconsciously today.

One added benefit: against all possible odds because of my lifetime-worst bracket performance, my championship-game pairing remains intact, Florida-Georgetown. I don't think I deserve to be that lucky. I mean, I had Albany in the Sweet 16. Meanwhile, there has to have been a previous Final Four in which all the teams had won national championships, but none come immediately to mind. I just rattled them off back to '99, and none back through there.

Posted by David Steele at 7:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Josh McRoberts is leaving Duke after two seasons to enter the NBA - not to test the waters, but to dive right in.

Wow. Where to begin?

* The consensus seems to be that he should have gone out after last year, that he probably hurt his stock by staying in and, in a sense, getting exposed, in terms of his game, and if some of the reports out of Durham in the final weeks before Duke was eliminated in the NCAAs, his attitude.

* Having said that, does Duke dip even further next season? Or do they actually benefit from this as promising newcomers enter to replace him?

* Our Paul McMullen pointed out earlier this week, even before this announcement, that Mike Krzyzewski has let his focus slip because he's doing too much and, thus, should step away from Duke for a year. With his best experienced inside player bailing early, Paul's observation makes even more sense.

* You might have noticed that Duke players, with the most notable exception of Grant Hill (and even he has been absolutely cursed with injuries), haven't done much in the NBA lately. Check J.J. Redick's rookie numbers, for example, and (archived) see what he thinks about this, from the New York Times two weekends ago.

* I wonder if there will be as much angst about McRoberts passing up his last two years at an esteemed academic institution as Duke in pursuit of the filthy lucre of the NBA, as there seems to be about Kevin Durant possibly leaving Texas, even when Durant is much more of a sure thing and McRoberts a real risk.

Posted by David Steele at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

It's a little easier writing this now than if I had written it Monday morning, when I was convinced I was the only person in America who guessed horribly wrong on the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. I'm finding out now that it was an epidemic. That's the new mission of this posting: to find out how many others were infected and how badly - and, yes, if anyone was as badly infected as me.

But first, I feel compelled to address an important development from last night.

TWENTY-NINE TURNOVERS?!?!?!?

Don't misunderstand this next observation, and please, I'm trying not to be condescending here. The Maryland women winning the national championship last year was a significant moment, and if there was a way to link to my column last April proclaiming so without you having to pay to read it, you'd see the proof. That team really seemed like the next evolution of the sport. The roster is deeper than I've ever seen a women's team, they're all multiskilled, they play together, they play smart, the athleticism has taken a quantum leap over the years, they're all likable, Brenda Frese has been a brilliant coach, they're all very accessible, everything you could want and root for. That being said, I think I did permanent damage to my vision watching that game last night, and it's going to be hard to watch a women's game again for a long time.

That was inexcusable. You can't, under any circumstances, explain away 29 turnovers by a defending national champ in a tournament game, with the possible exception that Kristi Toliver pulled a Gilbert Arenas/Kobe Bryant and said, "OK, you're gonna bench me? We'll just see how much you guys can get along without me.'' She was my favorite player on that team even before she shot the Terps into overtime with that three-pointer in the final last year, and last night, in the first half, she played as if she had a cast on both hands. Talk about contagious - the entire team couldn't even get the ball past midcourt most of the time, much less get off a shot, and spent three-quarters of the game backpedaling trying to stop Mississippi from sprinting to another layup or wide-open three. And, c'mon, Mississippi? OK, got that all out of my system.

One more thing: I'd like to personally apologize for defending the call against D.J. Strawberry at the end of the Butler game Saturday. I watched it a couple of hundred times over the weekend, after having written that it wasn't that bad a call - and it was that bad a call after all. At the time I saw it, directly in front of me across from the Maryland bench, it looked like a bang-bang play that could be interpreted the way the official did, and I wrote it that way. Of course, I'm not charged with getting it right the way the ref is, and he did, in fact, interpret it the wrong way, and in fact doesn't even appear to have been looking at the play when Strawberry caught the ball and landed. I said as much on my podcast with Terps radio color man Chris Knoche, and I'm saying it here, too.

Back to the original point.

My NCAA tournament picks stunk. I have only seven of my Sweet 16 left, and I'm still spraying air freshener around the nine teams I got wrong. It turns out there have been several public confessions of bad picks this week. Tony Kornheiser has said, on Pardon the Interruption and on his washingtonpost.com video spots, that he has only eight of his teams left. Gregg Doyel of cbssportsline.com admits to having picked Georgia Tech to reach the final 8, and Davidson and Stanford to reach the Sweet 16. Even Sports Illustrated's four-page spread of a bracket got four wrong, three going down in the first round.

And we all messed up for the same reason: George Mason. Everyone was trying to pick this year's Mason, and picking multiple random double-digit underdogs to make big runs to duplicate Mason's run. We all bought the mid-major, little-school-that-could, Cinderella hype, and it blew up in our faces this year when the results ran abnormally to form. In the process, everybody brushed off the chances of three high seeds that got overlooked all season: USC, UNLV and Butler. All seemed ripe to get bounced by someone seemingly better.

Still, no one set himself or herself up for more humiliation than me. My nine misses on the Sweet 16: Maryland, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Virginia Commonwealth, Indiana, Texas, George Washington, Albany.

I'm taking the Fifth on this from now on. Or as Dave Chappelle would say, Fif.

So who did as bad, or worse? Either in quantity of quality of whiffs on the Sweet 16? And who has the courage to admit it in public here? Be honest. Don't just make up stuff to make some kind of point. Don't say, for instance, "I had Belmont and Jackson State playing in the championship game, because I'm a moron like you.'' If you've been ashamed for three days of the well-informed, well-thought-out predictions you made that went frighteningly off-track (imagine the feeling I had as I watched the Vanderbilt-GW score pile up), feel free to admit it here. You'll face no ridicule here.

We're all friends here in the garden of misery that will only be relieved by getting our pool money back for finishing last.

And by the fact that at least your team didn't commit 29 turnovers.

Posted by David Steele at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
                    

Say what you will about the weather and accommodations here, but Buffalo got to host two great games today - one decided by three points on the last possession, the other in overtime after the eventual winner blew a 19-point lead and was forced into overtime. There weren't all that many empty seats after all; the crowd was announced as well over 18,000 for each game. They got their money's worth.

You can't ask for much more than Butler 62, Maryland 59, especially when so much rode on every rebound (like all the ones Maryland missed at the end), shot (like the ones Butler kept missing but still rebounding and turning into something meaningful) and whistle (like the one Terp fans are getting bent out of shape over, the offensive foul on D.J. Strawberry, which wasn't an egregiously bad call - not wrong at all, in fact. Sorry, Brandon Crone was there when Strawberry got there and turned to the baseline. It would be hard - not impossible, but hard - not to make that call.

Butler's a great story, and that's what the tournament is all about. VCU is a good story, too, but it ended a little while ago, with Pitt winning in overtime. Pitt made enough of its free throws in overtime to hold on, although not the one in regulation that would have averted overtime. The CAA might really have to be considered a major conference now, and so might the Horizon (Butler's league). In fact, dispensing with the term "mid-major,'' period, is overdue. It's obsolete. And it doesn't make a lot of sense, anyway.

Add the two games in Buffalo today to the two overtime games elsewhere earlier - Ohio State sidestepping an upset and Vanderbilt outlasting Washington State - and Texas A&M's escape against Louisville, and you've had a great day, and the night games are only just starting.

I should say it's a great day if I'm not looking at my bracket. I picked all the wrong double-digit-seeded upsets. Albany. George Washington. Georgia Tech. Holy Cross. Should've picked Winthrop instead. Four of my Sweet 16 were done in the first round. I have no credibility; in fact, you're doing me a big favor by even still reading this blog with predictions like that.

Posted by David Steele at 8:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
                    

Correction: there is at least one Duke fan in the building. He was on an elevator at halftime, wearing a Duke cap. He was asked (by fellow fans who clearly had enjoyed some adult beverages in the first half, including one with green hair, presumably for St. Patrick's Day) if he was a Duke fan ("Hell, yeah,'' he said) and then asked who he would root for in the late game between VCU and Pittsburgh. He paused, and said, "Not the guys we played the other night.'' Then he rambled for a couple of sentences, in which he included the term "street thugs like before.'' Honestly, it wasn't clear what context he meant that in. I'd rather not speculate. Then everybody got off.

At 16:39 of the second half, it's Butler, 34-33.

Posted by David Steele at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

The TV timeout at 7:59 of the first half has Maryland up 17-15, no surprise once you realize that Butler has rarely shot with more than five seconds left on the shot clock, and that they haven't really gotten a fastbreak opportunity. The Terp fans got an unexpected treat (although not welcome by school officials, you figure), though - the Butler pep band played the Rock and Roll Pt. II song banned at Comcast - because of the students' home-made lyrics. Naturally, with the Butler cheerleaders on the floor, the Maryland fans took the opportunity to chant "Hey, you (stink)!'' at the appropriate times. Naturally, the non-Maryland media looked around, wondering what the hell that was about. Once again, I'm so proud to  be an alumnus.

More sights that aren't a surprise: a less-than-full house, although not by much. Definitely not the atmosphere for Duke-Virginia Commonwealth in the first round, and now the Duke crowd is gone.

During the previous timeout, the P.A. announcer gave the final from the South region thriller that, unfortunately, most of the fans here couldn't see and which overlapped the start of this one. Ohio State avoids the upset by Xavier, 78-71 in overtime. How much of a pair does Ron Lewis have, with that three that sent it to OT? Ohio State looked dead. Greg Oden had stunk up the court all day, and they still pull it out. You know Thad Matta's life had to have flashed before his eyes when that three went up.

We've got another timeout here - called by Maryland, just after A.J. Graves' three from in front of Gary Williams. Butler, 21-19 with 5:46 left in the half. The Butler contingent is getting louder.

Posted by David Steele at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

As thrilled as so many people were to see Duke lose last night, the city of Buffalo and CBS can't be too happy. The elimination by Virginia Commonwealth probably cost both entities some money. It wasn't an accident that the Duke game was on in prime time Thursday, and you can assume that schedules would have been juggled to get them on prime time tomorrow, too. Specifically because all of America either loves or hates Duke, the longer they're in the tournament, the higher you figure the ratings will be. Now, this bracket has to sell Maryland-Butler or, even tougher, VCU-Pittsburgh. Not that neither will be entertaining games - they should both be top-notch - but name brands sell.

Meanwhile, the exodus this morning was substantial. There were a lot of empty seats for the early session yesterday, but not a one for the Duke-VCU game, and it was, of course, because of Duke. Now all those fans, who also swarmed all over downtown and packed the hotels and restaurants, have bailed. Someone has to scoop up the tickets, but even in balmy, spring-like conditions, it's not a given that fans from the remaining schools, even Maryland, can make up the difference on short notice.

And it ain't balmy and spring-like here. It's been snowing for about an hour and a half now, there's about three inches on the ground now, and the snow advisory is on for the rest of the weekend. It's going to stick, too, because it's been in the 20s all day today. Getting into town might not be a big problem since Buffalo is used to snow, but the snow in other cities will shake up plans.

Posted by David Steele at 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Wireless connections in this arena, as provided by the NCAA, really stink. So you would have seen a lengthy posting here about the greatness of Stephen Curry and the 30 points he scored against Maryland earlier today (according to the official NCAA tournament record book the third-highest total ever for a first-round game, at least in the era of the 64-team field), but you're not, because I was knocked off line as I was posting it. If you watched the game, you know. He's the real thing. More of the real thing than the wireless service here. Please, don't thank me, thank them.

Posted by David Steele at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Your intrepid correspondents are inside HSBC Arena in overcast, construction-riddled Buffalo, where the weather isn’t dissimilar to what it is back home – unseasonably warm. Davidson is practicing now, with Maryland due to hit the floor in a couple of hours, following the players and coaches’ media availability. That gives us time to discuss a critical topic as the start of the tournament nears: bracket etiquette.

At BWI last night, two guys in suits talked about their brackets in the waiting area throughout the time before boarding. They talked about them getting on the plane, they talked about them as we prepared for takeoff, they talked about them in the first 20 minutes or so after takeoff, they took a break for much of the rest of the one-hour flight, and started again during approach into Buffalo, after landing and after they got off the plane.

They didn’t just talk about them. They talked really loudly about them. They waved their arms. They waved their brackets. They argued details. They cut each other off. They expounded on seeding history, three-point percentages, strength of schedules, conference rankings, coaches, senior classes … everything and everything. Nobody near them in the boarding area could miss them, and practically nobody on the plane could, either. Several passengers turned and stared, or glared, or twisted away to try to tune them out. The bracketologists didn’t notice.

For all I know, they might have been NCAA officials. Or CBS guys. They were dressed like businessmen, but you can’t judge anything based on that (they could have been mobsters, I suppose; hey, NBA players aren’t the only ones assumed to be something because of the clothes they wear). All that was for sure was that they, and their deepest feelings about their brackets, could not be ignored by anyone remotely within earshot.

So: breach of bracket etiquette? Are there unwritten, or even written, codes of conduct about how to act at this time of year, especially in public, around strangers or even your friends? That seems like an obvious one – assuming that not everybody wants to hear about your picks. Maybe there are certain places where you have to keep that sort of thing in check, and others where you can rant and rave at any volume.

Help me out. What are the rules? Send them along, and the best (or most worthy of debate) will be posted later.

Posted by David Steele at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                    

Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim just completed his 1,000th broadcast interview since the NCAA field was unveiled, on ESPN's Cold Pizza. Two thoughts emerged from it: 1) No one will ever call Cold Pizza the sports version of 60 Minutes. The network has done an amazing job of providing Boeheim a shoulder to cry on the last 16 hours or so, and this interview was probably the worst example. I walked away when the host tried to tie who was on the selection committee from the ACC, and not on from the Big East, with Virginia getting a high seed and the 'Cuse getting left out. Hey, if you're going to openly question a college athletic administrator's integrity, do it to him and not to the whining coach who just lost some recruiting leverage. This all happened, of course, after Boeheim campaigned for an expanded field, the last refuge of the tournament reject. A suggestion: beat Drexel in your own Dome next time and you won't have to worry about it. You know, win your way in.

Speaking of which, Drexel coach Bruiser Flint apparently isn't in the broadcast fraternity of coaches, because he hasn't gotten any airtime that I've seen, and assuredly less than Boeheim has. And, you know, a far stronger case can be made for Florida State and Clemson, but apparently those coaches (Leonard Hamilton, Oliver Purnell) aren't on anyone's speed-dial either. Or maybe they're all taking it like men. One of those two reasons, I'm sure.

Oh, yeah. 2) Syracuse's high-volume griping about a snub that wasn't all that egregious makes them the team Most Likely To Pull a Maryland in the NIT. Boeheim is flipping out over being left out even more than Gary Williams did last year. Remember how "prepared'' the Terps were for the NIT opener? Bad early sign: the Orange play Wednesday against South Alabama (at home, where else) and Boeheim referred to them, on the air, as "South Florida.''

Of course, that's what I get for watching Cold Pizza.

Posted by David Steele at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
                    

Early thoughts and observations now that the men's NCAA field of 65 is full:

* Maryland is the fourth seed in the Midwest region - and the best news of the day is that the regions are named after actual regions, not cities anymore - but is everyone absolutely convinced that if the Terps get by Davidson, they'll get past Butler or Old Dominion? if they don't, they'll be hearing about it forever, considering the disdain the ACC holds for mid-majors and the bitterness from last year's picks. Butler is from the Horizon, ODU the Colonial.

* Old Dominion probably was the last at-large to get in, considering it's one of three at-larges with 12 seeds and it ends up in No. 1 overall seed Florida's bracket.

* More proof that it's not Duke's year: with an early-round pod in Winston-Salem, the Blue Devils were sent to Buffalo, as a No. 6 seed in the West. And, you know, they got sent to the WEST.

* Not a bad pod there in Buffalo: besides Maryland's Midwest bracket, there's Duke, Pittsburgh (which can't be as lame as they looked against Georgetown in the Big East final) and Virginia Commonwealth, who pretty much got a guard named Eric Maynor to single-handedly beat George Mason in the Colonial final with a bunch of steals and nine straight points in the final two minutes.

* The ACC got seven teams in, most of any conference, and it's still mad it didn't get eight. It still feels better than it did last year, when it got just four. Looks like this year might be the year big-foot conferences and mid-majors struck the right balance. The mids got a lot of at-larges in that blew their conference tournaments (wasn't Nevada, a 10 seed in the South, once ranked 10th in the country?).

* Gotta admit, for a first-round conference tournament loss to a lower-seeded team when you're on the bubble anyway, that wasn't a bad loss for Georgia Tech against Wake Forest. You wonder if the committee considered exactly what it took for them to lose that game.

* Syracuse and West Virginia being left out doesn't seem that harsh. Drexel being left out does. But nothing's more cruel than Clemson: say what you will about their fade after their 17-0 start, but they got robbed at Duke and robbed at the ACC against Florida State (Al Thornton, getting NBA star calls already), and those two losses knocked them out.

* For all the talk about the drama of the first day, once again there isn't a 16th seed that seems to have the slightest chance to break the drought against a No. 1. But you have two of the uglier high seeds in the nation at No. 2s, Wisconsin and UCLA, and you ought to root for upsets in their openers just for aesthetics' sake.

* Florida A&M pulls off the best finish of all the one-bid tournaments (buzzer-beating tip-in off an inbound with 1.1 seconds left against Delaware State in the MEAC) and its reward is a play-in game.

* GW really ticked somebody off to be seeded 11th in the East, and get sent to Sacramento for a Thursday game. Worst road trip of any school in this field, maybe ever.

* No matter where they're seeded, no matter who they play, no matter what their record is, Notre Dame is a colossal pain to play. Ask Maryland (from early in the year) and Georgetown (their last game).

* Right-off-the-bat prediction, subject to change before gametime of the opener Thursday: Maryland is seeded like a Sweet 16 team, and that's where they'll get.

Posted by David Steele at 7:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
                    

Colleague Rick Maese, on the scene in Tampa, nailed it this morning. This may have the name "ACC Tournament,'' it may look like the ACC tournament, but it can't possibly feel like the ACC tournament. Gary Williams hates hearing that, but it's true.

Rick was where I was two years ago - his first tournament is in Tampa, mine was down the road in D.C. That was very convenient, and of course part of me can't disagree with the idea that the tournament can't live on Tobacco Road and that at least the longtime members ought to have a taste. Especially the ones in major markets, in which you can't find a Piggly Wiggly anywhere in the vicinity.

Yet it really, simply, still didn't feel the same. The ACC tournament belongs in a bustling downtown area just a little more than it does in a place like Tampa. I noticed it, and believe me, the visitors from Nawth Cakalacky noticed it - every morning when I pulled into one of the downtown parking garages and walked to then-MCI Center, I heard hundreds (probably thousands) of longtime ACC tourney-goers bitching up a storm about how they couldn't tailgate, how there weren't any places to eat (that is, eat what they wanted to eat, pulled pork and sweet tea), how it was just too crowded. I never actually heard the word "city-fied,'' but that was the general sentiment. No offense.

They did have a point - it felt like D.C., which is fine, but just not like the ACC tournament. Some feelings you just can't shake. Then, the next year, it was in Greensboro, and it really felt like what I figured it would. The tournament was the be-all and end-all of Carolina life that week. And, of course, Gary Williams spent much of the Wednesday practice cracking up the writers at courtside with a monologue about having to come there all the time, never coming to a real city, and comparing Maryland's metropolitan scope to Greensboro's.

A couple of Maryland alumnus pals were cracking up recently about the eventual prospect of the tournament going to Boston, where it surely will be about as alien as it seems in Tampa. I tossed that at Williams the other day; he said, seriously, "Why not? They're in the conference now, they should host one.'' I'll save those cheap, easy, regionally-stereotypical jokes for another day.

All I know is, it will look like an ACC tournament on TV, which is where I'll be pretty much all day today - and, if I can pull it off, tomorrow.

Posted by David Steele at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

If you happen to run into Carmelo Anthony today and he hands you a cigar, don't be surprised. Of course, the chances of this happening increase with how close you are to Denver today. Nevertheless ...

According to this Rocky Mountain News story about last night's Nuggets-Hornets game, Anthony is due to become a father today. His fiance, TV personality LaLa Vasquez, is scheduled to give birth to their first child. He left the arena after the game and went straight to the hospital and is skipping the team's trip to Golden State for tonight's game. No word so far on whether the blessed event has happened, or of any possible names, or of his/her vertical leap.

Posted by David Steele at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Told you I'd get back to the Gerald "Artest''-Tyler "Rip'' Hansbrough incident. (Artest because what Henderson committed was pretty much the exact foul Artest committed against Ben Wallace to precipitate the Auburn Hills brawl two years ago, and Rip Hansbrough because he'll probably be wearing a facemask for the ACC tournament game Friday.) And thanks to the loyal blog-responder (who often replies under the name Francis Sawyer or Douglas Neidermeyer) who suggested the headline above.

You've surely heard the references to the "Isiah defense'' since the mugging on Sunday afternoon. Here's why. This is what Mike Krzyzewski said after the game: "The game was over before that - I mean the outcome of the game, let's put it that way. That's unfortunate, too, that those people were in the game in that play. Maybe this wouldn't have happened."

And here's what Isiah Thomas said after his Knicks brawled with the Denver Nuggets in New York in December, referring to what he supposedly told Carmelo Anthony in the moments before the fight broke out: ''I just said to him: 'You're up 19 with a minute and a half to go. You and Camby really shouldn't be in the game right now.' We had surrendered. And those guys shouldn't have been in the game at that time. They were sticking it to us pretty good. They were having their way with us pretty good.''

We don't even have to make the argument that Coach K's rationalization was no less heinous than Isiah's, or that it was barely less defensible than what John Chaney did a couple of years ago with a player he sent in to give "hard fouls'' against an opponent.

We can point out that this is all taking place with two programs raised onto a loftier pedestal than most, with two coaches (certainly one) raised onto a loftier pedestal than most, in a sport routinely heaped with praise and accolades for its superiority in every way over the thug-infested, poor-fundamental, morality-deprived, bad-example-for-our-youth NBA.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Posted by David Steele at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
                    

Warning: this blog post is a little longer than usual, for good reason.

If you had to pick a day to have some sort of computer problem, wouldn't the last day you'd pick be the day you were going to blog about an NFL team's cheerleader tryout? With photos?

Welcome to my life. That was me on Saturday morning, when I got the always-welcome invitation to help judge the Ravens cheerleader tryouts at the Downtown Athletic Club, and had the further brilliant idea to take a couple of cellphone-camera shots of the participants and add them to this post.

That was before I realized, later in the day - after I made the painful decision to leave early to cover some game in College Park - that getting in and out of this system was incredibly difficult this day, and the rest of the weekend. And before whatever magic I'd discovered in getting shots of Jack Nicholson's Oscar-night bald head posted last week had disappeared by the time I tried to get the photos up here. I really could have used a techie who worked weekends.

I mean, why blog about a cheerleader tryout if you don't have photos?

You'll have to be satisfied with the pictures accompanying this article on the Ravens website, even though it appears the photo came from last year's tryouts, or at least from some practice at the Castle in Owings Mills. The tryouts Saturday were in one of the rooms that hold the big exercise classes at the DAC. And you'll have to trust me that the overwhelming percentage of women trying out were fine - apparently because you can't just show up off the street thinking you can go dance on an NFL sideline eight or more times every fall; the 200 tryouts were weeded from several hundred more who applied and had to send in, among other things, photos of themselves in bikinis or a sports bra and shorts. Not too much pressure there.

Clearly, many of the judges were not chosen by the same criteria. The judges, by the way, besides me, were plenty of Ravens employees, including some from Ravens TV, plus several radio personalities. We sat at a long table, had grading sheets in front of us, and the tryouts were paraded in front of us in groups of four, onto a floor with tape marks on them to tell them where to stand, run and leap when asked. It looked a lot like a Broadway audition, or the tryouts for "Fame.'' Overseeing the whole thing - the tryouts and the judges - were cheerleading coordinator Tina Galdieri and dance coach Tracy Ricker, at least one of whom should have been holding an enormous cane and pounding it on the floor yelling "FIVE-SIX-SEVEN-EIGHT'' the way Debbie Allen did, but who both were a lot more low-key and less dramatic.

By the way, one of the categories on the grade sheet was "physical appearance,'' to be graded on a scale of 1 to 20. And we were told not to feel bad about giving extra weight to the hot-looking candidates and letting that sway a close decision. Thank God they don't choose columnists that way (see above). Nevertheless, I knew that was going to be a tough call, because when I arrived about a half-hour before the actual tryouts began, I watched all the candidates, spread out across the basketball court, getting a crash course in the mandatory dance move. Then my glasses steamed up, and I went to a back room to join the other judges and suck down a bottle of water.

Give the candidates credit: they were all very professional, and they either were in character the entire time or they are all genuinely nice young women. They had no way to know I was a future judge; I could have been just some buffoon who sneaked down from the gym to the restricted area to gawk, yet they were all very smiley and polite as they walked past me back and forth to wherever they were going. They were also the same way as they waited their turn to be judged; you walk by, nod, say hello, wish them good luck, and they smile back, say thanks, and keep rolling. There could have been mass snubbing of anyone that walked by that couldn't help them get to their eventual goal, but there was none that I noticed.

That, clearly, is a big part of doing this: you have to be "on'' at all times. They do appearances year-round, so they really are much more than just pom-pom wavers on football Sundays.

Now, how they handle the pressure of performing like this is amazing, although anyone involved in the performing arts can understand. They have to look stunning, perform all the feats - many of which are Olympic gymnast-level stunts - really project their personalities and impress the judges in every way possible, in a span of about five minutes.

Sadly, I only got the chance to mercilessly scrutinize every physical and psychological flaw of about 20 women. And four men. They didn't mention that until I got there, and the men went first, even though I only had a limited time to judge before heading to the Maryland-N.C. State game. Gotta admit, though, you're less likely to mock a male cheerleader after you've seen him, close-up, holding a grown-up woman in the air by one foot with one hand for what's only a few seconds, but must feel like an eternity, and then either catch her by the waist on the way down, or her entire body in both arms as she twists out of her midair pose. And they had to do the standing backflips and running forward tumbles the same way the women did. One guy did it while wearing a knee brace. I really didn't find any of them particularly "hot,'' though.

Then came the women (yay!), and some of them were absolutely stunning. And at least two of them looks so fit, without an ounce of extra fat, that they probably could run back kicks for the Ravens if B.J. Sams'   leg doesn't heal fa