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1. Taming The Bulldogs. The Toreros may be the least likely team to make the tournament, until you factor in their coach. The big reason is that few expected them to be able to get past Gonzaga in the conference tournament; the Bulldogs having beaten them 13 times in a row. But San Diego is coached by Bill Grier, in his first year with the Toreros after having spent the previous 16 seasons as an assistant at Gonzaga. The Toreros, a No. 13 seed, will meet No. 4 seed UConn in the West Regional; the first time ever that the schools have played each other. More »
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1. Battle of the Brazos. Texas A&M's rivalry with Baylor is called "The Battle of the Brazos," as the team's campuses sit 90 miles apart, near the Brazos River. The teams have been playing each other since 1914, but no year has been as eventful as this one. The fun started with a five-overtime thriller in College Station, with Baylor emerging with a 116-110 victory. The game wasn't shown on TV, but ESPN Classic later rebroadcast it using footage from A&M's in-arena cameras and More »
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1. I Got A Name. As if it wasn't rare enough to find one young African-American with the name Corey, Coach Wright went out and found two: freshman guards Corey Stokes and Corey Fisher, both McDonald's All-Americans in high school. Each has shown tremendous promise in their limited time on the court (Stokes is an 89percent free-throw shooter, and Fisher is third on the team in points and steals per game). Not since the days of Mssrs. Feldman and Haim has such untapped, dual-Corey-based potential lay waiting to be sprung upon an unsuspecting America. More »
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1. It's the Jags baby... The University of South Alabama will be coming to a television near you this March. I'm guessing most of you are surprised that such a school exists. USA is a small school located in the Mobile area. That's pretty much as far south as you go in Alabama. Last year, they enrolled a little over 14,000 students (undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral), so it is indeed small. USA calls the Sun Belt Conference home, along with other teams like Florida International and Troy. However... this is a team that you shouldn't simply dismiss and it won't be their first time in the Tourney. In 1989, the Jaguars took out Alabama in the first round, and lost to Michigan in the second. Who won the whole shebang in 1989? That's right, Michigan. They also made a first round exit in 1991. The coach and the program have been there before, and they may turn some heads this year. More on that in a bit... More »
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1. Nobody saw this coming. The Hokies came into this season having lost All-ACC guards Zabian Dowdell and Jamon Gordon in addition to their only real capable low post offensive threat, Coleman Collins. Those three were the heart and soul of a Hokies team that went 22-12 overall and 10-6 in the ACC, including a sweep of UNC and a win at Duke. (Ed. Note: And a tourney win over our Illini.) Key returning players from last year were three-point sniper A.D. Vassallo and highlight dunk artist Deron Washington (URL#1). While these two were good in 2007, nobody expected anything from the Hokies this season, especially the ACC media, who pegged them for a respectable tenth place. Instead of settling for the NIT, Seth Greenberg has pulled out a minor miracle and his boys have their dancing shoes ready. More »
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1. It's Pronounced "SHY-er fah-SAY." Photos of it are center (and roommate) Brian Zoubek's desktop background. "Weird," says guard Gerald Henderson. "It's just weird." They're referring, of course, to the infamous (Jon) Scheyer Face, found on the mug of Duke's sixth man. Judging only by his expressions, Scheyer passes a basketball like Al Swearengen passes his kidney stones. Still, at least he always looks like he's trying out there. Scheyerfacing is a fond pastime of opposing ACC fans, largely because PhotoShop doesn't require basic literacy to use. Two of my personal favorites are here. In other news referencing famous pictures of Duke hoopsters, here's your annual Reggie Love update. More »
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1. The Plush Club. The Tigers' late-night exploits at 380 Beale St led Coach John Calipari to institute an 11 p.m. curfew and no-nightclub policy. The first incident at the Plush Club happened in the early morning hours of September 2, 2007, when forward Shawn Taggart and shooting guard Jeff Robinson were charged with disorderly conduct and inciting a riot. The police report suggests that it was actually forward Joey Dorsey who got things going when he climbed up on the bar and "made it rain" (just whose money he was throwing is still undetermined). Dorsey had already left the scene before 20 police cars arrived to disperse the crowd. Charges against Taggart and Robinson were later dismissed. Despite Calipari's no-nightclub policy, Robert Dozier was involved in a second incident at the Plush Club on February 3rd. After an initial confrontation with ex-girlfriend LaParis Woods, Dozier followed her out of the club in his car before both pulled over and continued their argument on a downtown street corner. It was there that Dozier allegedly slapped her twice. Woods, a stripper at The Gold Club in East Memphis, has not filed charges but did take out a restraining order against Dozier. Dozier's current girlfriend, Andrea Brown, followed suit and took out a restraining order of her own against Woods, who allegedly had threatened her at the Plush Club and went to Brown's apartment later that night where she continued her tirade and warned, "I'll be back." Calipari, always the strict disciplinarian, suspended Dozier for one game, not for the alleged assault, but for breaking curfew. One particularly creative fan in Birmingham blacked out her eye for the Tigers' game the following week at UAB and wore a shirt that read "I dated Dozier." This is featured prominently in one of the greatest photos of the college basketball season. Backup forward Pierre Niles' blue-sleeved hand can be seen slapping someone resembling Larry the Cable Guy, though no disciplinary action was taken against Niles following the melee. More »
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1. Fun facts about your Mount St. Mary's University Mountaineers. Mount St. Mary's University was founded in 1808, making it the oldest independent Catholic college in the United States. It's located in Emmitsburg, a tiny mountain town in Central Maryland just south of the Mason-Dixon Line. The Mount (and yes, that's really what they call it) has been co-educational since 1972 and has seen a sharp spike in impure thoughts in the ensuing decades. According to my friend John, a 2002 grad, a popular saying around campus is, "Mount. It's not just a school. It's a verb." Basketball-wise, the most famous alumnus is former Bullets, 76ers, and Bucks guard Fred "Mad Dog" Carter. The Mount (18-14) gained the third tournament berth in school history by winning the Northeast Conference tournament. Strong efforts from the Mountaineer bench powered the team down the stretch, as the reserves notched at least 39 points in each of their last three games. More »
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1. The freight. Here is some basic info you might hear over the next few days. Davidson has the nation's longest winning streak at 22 games. The Wildcats won the Southern Conference for the third year in a row, have won their past 36 conference games and 46 of the past 47. More »
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1. The Baby Boilers Grew Up Before Our Eyes. At the beginning of the season we were positive we were watching an NIT Purdue team .. .or maybe a 12-seed, 19-win Purdue team. As the preconference season began, we looked genius as the Boilers struggled versus the "always tough" Lipscomb. Then the wheels looked like they were coming off as the Baby Boilers lost to Missouri (on the road), Iowa State (neutral site) and finally, Wofford at Mackey Arena. That painful night stuck out for Purdue fans, but also stuck in the minds of voters as the season progressed. This youthful Purdue team lost to Michigan State in East Lansing, but then went on an 11-game tear with two wins over the now Big Ten Champ Wisconsin Badgers, as well as a nationally-televised win over Sparty. The road win v. Wisconsin and home win v. MSU marked the first time Purdue had ever beaten two top-10 teams in a week in the history of the program. This team that at one point was the only in the nation that had four starting freshman grew up quickly. In fact, it could be said that these babies "became men" right before our eyes ... their voices got deeper and fur even began to grow where there was none before .. .nevermind. Point is this group of players, comprised mostly of freshman and sophomores achieved the highest national ranking in the past ten years getting up to 15th. Frosh Robbie Hummel played biggest on the biggest stages as he thrived versus Wisky, MSU & IU. He averaged in the high-teens along with nearly ten rebounds in those contest and he wasn't afraid of taking the important shot. Also, E'Twaun Moore, the jewel of this highly-touted class, came out of his shell at around the midpoint of the Big Ten season; he ended being the leading scorer for the team. Chris Kramer had the unenviable task of guarding Eric Gordon, Drew Neitzel, Jamar Butler and others, but shut down many of these scorers for ten to twenty minutes at a time, fighting knee and wrist injuries all along. Matt Painter showed that he's one of the best coaches in a coaching-rich conference by blending the right line-ups at the right times and game-planning to overcome Purdue's experience discrepancy as the season progressed. So what's the prognosis? Well, this is a darned good Purdue team, much better than we thought they'd be. While statistically they aren't the best-shooting team, they have been extremely smart with the ball and don't turn it over much. And they play hard-nosed, high-energy defense for 40 minutes each game, plus they shoot free throws well. It's said that guard play is important in the NCAA tournament - if this is the case, Purdue could get as deep as the round of eight...but what they have in guards, they simply do not have underneath. Purdue's bigs will struggle against a team with an experienced, skilled PF/C...But this team has the potential to make a lot of noise, if they play the right team. More »
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1. How It Got Here. Founded in 1789 by John Carroll, Georgetown was part of a larger educational effort by the Pope's "Team America" approach to help educate young Catholics in post-Revolutionary War America. Carroll went out to start out other universities, including his namesake in Cleveland, Ohio. The blue and gray clad Hoyas colors were so chosen when the university decided to honor the service of its civil war veterans. Though the school was active in football at the turn of the century (where its motto, "Hoya Saxa!" was coined), the last fifty years the school's sporting prowess has been decidedly basketball related. Ex-NFL commish Paul Tagliabue was a member of the squad in 1962 and former Illinois representative Henry Hyde led the team to the NCAA tournament final in 1943. But those were sporadic successes until the arrival of John Thompson (II) in 1972. The Hoyas made their first tournament under JTII three years later. By 1979, they were tournament regulars. By the mid-80s, the basketball team had most of America fearing for their lives. More »
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1. Record Breaker. New coach John Pelphrey set the record for most wins by a first year head coach at Arkansas with 20 when the Hogs beat Auburn at home to finish the regular season. That isn't a minor feat when you realize two of the best coaches in history coached at Arkansas, Eddie Sutton and Nolan Richardson. They had 17 and 12 wins in their first seasons, respectively. The record was held by Eugene Lambert who led his first team to a 19-7 record during the 1942-43 season. Pelphrey also broke the 100-win barrier with that victory. More »
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1. The Original Bracket Buster. Before there was George Mason, there was Kent State. Back in 2002 the Golden Flashes, behind three stud senior guards (Trevor Huffman, Andrew Mitchell and current FIBA scoring-record holder Demetric Shaw) and current NFL all-pro tight end Antonio Gates (who was an All-American in hoops at Kent and had not played football since high school when he signed with the Chargers), set the standard for Cinderellas when they made it all the way to the Elite Eight before falling to eventual national runner-up Indiana. Kent State took out three nationally ranked foes- Alabama, Oklahoma State and Pitt, not to mention several office pool brackets- on its way to the regional finals and top-12 national ranking. More »
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1. Our Little Baby's All Growns Up! Since the Huskies won their second national championship in 2004, UConn fans haven't had that much to cheer about. In 2004-05, the Huskies couldn't rebound from the loss of Emeka Okafor and Ben Gordon, sleepwalked through the season and got knocked out by NC State in the second round of the NCAAs. In the 2005-06 Elite Eight, despite a rotation featuring five future NBA draft picks, UConn played the role of Michigan to George Mason's Appalachian State. Last season, after a mass exodus to the NBA, UConn was the youngest team in the country (its roster included five sophomores, eight freshmen and zero upperclassmen), and it showed; the team lost 11 out of its last 15 games and didn't even garner an NIT bid despite winning 17 games. Without any significant changes to the roster, fans were not optimistic that this season would be much different, and this skepticism appeared to be justified by several close early-season losses to ranked teams. But following a loss to Providence on January 17, the young Huskies matured overnight, and proceeded to knock off 10 straight opponents, often in dramatic fashion. Interestingly, eight of those wins came after the program suspended guards Jerome Dyson and Doug Wiggins. (Dyson, who led the team in scoring — and apparently was a big fan of Funyuns and the movie Friday — at the time of his suspension, has struggled since returning in late February.) The team has benefited from the major improvement of 6'2" point guard AJ Price, whose career did not begin until last season after being initially delayed by a brain hemorrhage and then a brain fart (he was involved in a laptop theft). Price has raised his game this year, averaging 15 points and six assists per game. Other standouts include 6'6" junior bruiser Jeff Adrien (15 points and nine rebounds per game) and the Tanzanian Devil, 7'3" sophomore center Hasheem Thabeet (10 points, 8 rebounds and 4.5 blocks per game). Price and Adrien were named to the All-Big East First Team and Thabeet was voted the conference's Defensive Player of the Year. More »
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1. A Dingo Ate your Jumper Allowing only 56 points per game (good for third in the nation) in 07-08, this version of the Cougars are one that stifles on the defensive end. And assembling this team of defensive aficionados was an interesting and far flung task for the Coaches Bennett. Not one player who stepped on the court for the Cougs this year resides in the Evergreen State. And only one current Washingtonian is listed on the active roster (freshman Charlie Ernquist). In fact the Cougars recruiting base ranges from Belgrade to Auckland, and everywhere in between. Part of this can be attributed to the basketball globetrotting past of Coach/Female Forbidden Fruit Fantasy, Tony Bennett. Bennett spent three years with the Charlotte Hornets, and then played and coached in New Zealand for the North Harbor Kings until 1998. His international connections have been key in building this team, "The further away we went, the better chance we had of getting someone" Said Bennett. This was basically the tactful way of saying "it's pretty hard to sell the middle of nowhere." More »
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1. Next Year, Buy Us Presents. West Virginia has played 99 illustrious years of basketball, compiling an impressive 61.4 percent winning percentage and a trip to the 1959 NCAA title game. WVU hasn't been as lucky with several opponents, however, owning overall losing records against Steubenville Athletic Club, Smith Skating Rink and the Parkersburg (W.Va.) YMCA. Though, in our defense, both losses to the Parkersburg YMCA came on the road. More »
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1. Ok, so what's the deal with P. State? After 12 years in the NCAA hinterlands, your Portland State Vikings are ready for their national media close-up. Why do I say "your" Portland State Vikings? Because, inevitably in the run up to the school's first-ever NCAA Tournament game next week you will be inundated with stories (and a likely CBS video montage) about the plucky Big Sky champions and by the time you're done hearing about the Vikings pint-sized point guard and the school that couldn't even get respect in its home town you're going to want to drop everything, buy a Jerry Glanville mask and move to Portland. It's the largest public university in Oregon (bigger than Oregon and Oregon State) and is nestled in downtown Portland in the lovely Park Blocks. Pretty much everyone and their mother in Portland has at one time or another taken a class there, but few claim the commuter campus as their school. (We call it PSU, not P-State, Nittany this, Lions!). More »
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1. Stephon Marbury Is Displeased with Your Guru. Larry Brown's first piece of advice to Tom Crean: get three versatile guards to run a team. Dominic James (13.6 ppg, 4.3 assists/game), Jerel McNeal (13.5 ppg, 2.3 steals/game), and Wesley Matthews (11.2 ppg, 4.2 rebounds/game) can lead the team in scoring on a given night. All were four-star recruits in 2005, Crean's strongest recruiting class during his coaching tenure. Larry Brown's second piece of advice to Crean: never stay at a job longer than 2 years. Last year, Marquette signed Crean to an extension through 2017. Oops. More »
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1. Seriously, They Actually Did That. We'll be talking about what Georgia did during the SEC tournament for years, but dammit, we need to acknowledge again, just so that the fickle hand of Internet history records that we recognized. The Bulldogs won four games during the SEC regular season (they also lost at home to East Tennessee State) ... and then, in the midst of a tornado and TWO GAMES IN THE SAME DAY, they won four during the tourney to clinch a bid. They weren't even particularly hot coming into the tourney; they'd lost five of six and 10 of 12 going into Atlanta. More »
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1. Mama Said There'd Be Years Like This. Syracuse fans have just about seen it all this past season. Consider: More »
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1. My Left Foot. BYU lost to UNLV for the second straight year in the Mountain West championship game, but one has to wonder if things would have been different had the Cougars' 6-foot-11 Vuk Ivanovic still been on the roster. Ivanovic, a native of Serbia and Montenegro, broke his foot during practice in January. But one wonders why he just didn't heal himself, being that he's a genetics and biotechnology major. Also, the senior lists his hobbies as Formula 1 Racing, chess, ping-pong and playing the piano; you know, the typical stuff. More »
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1. The Saving Grace of South Florida Sports. South Florida is not exactly considered a college hoops hotbed. The Canes have long been an afterthought even for their own students and the community. But with every team associated with the Miami area deciding to suck all at once, the Canes basketball team has emerged from relative anonymity at the start of the season to be the saving grace of South Florida sports in 2008. The Canes' 22 wins this season are more than the Hurricanes football team, Dolphins and Heat combined. It will also most likely rival the number of wins the Marlins pick up this season. More »
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1. Philly's Phinest. An afterthought at the beginning of the season and seemingly since the departure of John Chaney, second year head coach/former Penn coach Fran Dunphy has transformed the Owls into a contender more quickly than anyone could have imagined. While everyone was raving about A-10 flameouts Dayton, Rhode Island and UMass back in December, the Owls laid low and got hot at the right time, winning their final seven games and defeating city and conference rival Saint Joseph's to win the A-10 title in AC. The Owls also assure the City of Brotherly Love that it won't be shut out of the Big Dance, which last happened in 1977. More »
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1. Retriever Fever. Every March, we are presented with a mid-major that you can't help but root for. This year, that team is the UMBC Retrievers. You have the fantastic nickname of "Retrievers." Then, you have the hyphenated university name, which unfortunately sounds like a school that you find advertised on the side of a bus. But don't let the fun names fool you, this team can ball. The Retrievers are 24-8 with an RPI of 89, boasting one of the most balanced scoring attacks in the nation. More »
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1. Should of Just Been a Duck. The Oregon student section, or The Pit Crew, was awesome enough to get mentioned (with an accompanying picture) in Sports Illustrated as one of the nastiest, most verbally abusive, over-the-line student sections in the country. Oh wait, not so awesome. When Portland native Kevin Love made his way up to Eugene in January, The Pit Crew exacted their revenge on his going to UCLA instead of Oregon (where daddy Stan played with Ernie Kent) by posting his cell phone number on Facebook (leading to death threats), throwing things at his family in the stands (including his Beach Boy uncle, Mike Love) and chanting things about Kevin Love that I won't get into here. Ok fine, they insinuated that he enjoys the peen. More »
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1. So THAT'S what she meant! While vacationing in Boston one summer, I met a lovely girl. After spending a week with her, she told me she loved the Minutemen. Unfortunately for me, I was the wrong kind of "minuteman." The University of Massachusetts mascot comes from the Revolutionary War era where the soldiers were ready to fight at "a minute's notice." If you did not know this fact, then well, you are NOT smarter than a fifth grader. More »
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1. This Year's Team, Nothing Like Last Year's Team. 32.3 minutes, 11.6 points, 5.1 rebounds and 2.4 assists. Those were the combined averages of the three Gators left over from last year's championship team. In all, the Gators lost 87 percent of last year's scoring, including their entire starting five and top reserve (not to mention 100 percent of their dress-wearers). This year's Gators are a young bunch, led by do-everything Freshman Nick Calathes (think Kirk Hinrich) and sophomore forward/center Marresse Speights (think Al Jefferson). They're joined by freshman guard Jai Lucas, son of former NBA coach John Lucas, who can apparently cure you of a marijuana addiction. Most important, one familiar face that did return from last year's team: head coach Billy Donovan. Billy D got to third base with the Orlando Magic in the offseason (down the pants but no penetration), but decided to come back to Gainesville, possibly helped by a $3.5 million-per-year contract. Donovan immediately set out on the recruiting trail, signing Lucas and five of next year's top 70 high school seniors. More »
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1. How Many Passes before You Shoot? Hawks sophomore guard Garrett Williamson came to Saint Joseph's from Lower Merion High School, where he was the second all-time leading scorer, behind Jelly Bean Bryant's kid. Somehow in the transition to college, he turned "scorer" into "defensive specialist" and has averaged fewer than three shots a game. More for the non-existent post game, I suppose. More »
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1. Depth That Rivals A Wading Pool. If we were comparing depth, a team like Tennessee might be an aging porn actress while the Wildcats are a young virgin, still contemplating how long "true love" actually lasts. The Wildcats have three (3!) players that are averaging over 8.8 points a game and only five players averaging over four points a game. Along with the problems of balanced scoring, only one player is averaging more than 5.3 rebounds a game and only two cheerleaders are charting more than six back-handsprings a game, down from last year. More »
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1. Where Did You Come From? Drake graduated four starters last year - Al Stewart, Aliou Kieta, Nick Grant and Ajay Calvin. It would have been five graduating starters had Klayton Korver not medically redshirt his junior year. Enter Josh Young, Adam Emmenecker, Jonathon Cox and Leonard Houston. Not surprisingly, Drake wasn't expected to do all that well this year. Instead of the 9th place finish that was the preseason prediction for the Bulldogs, they locked up the No. 1 Seed for the MVC Tournament for the first time in school history. More »
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1. Joe Morgan disapproves. According to the VORPies over at Basketball Prospectus, Kansas has the #1 Pythagorean winning percentage in all the land. In addition, they are ranked #1 in both offensive and defensive efficiency. I have no idea what this means (other than Mario Chalmers clogging up the bases, obviously), but, hey: We're #1! More »
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1. Team of the 2000's? OK, that may be taking things a bit too far, but let's review what the basketball Badgers have accomplished since the year 2000. One Final Four, 2 Elite Eights, 3 Sweet Sixteens, 3 Big Ten Regular Season titles (2 outright) and 1 Big Ten Tournament title. Although the casual fan might most easily identify with Indiana or Michigan State as traditional Big Ten powers, Indiana has not won an outright Big Ten regular season title since 1993 and Michigan State hasn't won one since 1999. The most amazing stat is Wisconsin has made the NCAA Tournament in 10 straight seasons. Coming in to this season, only five teams can top that streak: Arizona (23), Kansas (18), Kentucky (16), Duke (12), Michigan State (10). Not bad company. What is even more amazing is that prior to this run, Wisconsin only made the NCAA Tournament twice since their 1941 national championship; the 1994 Michael Finley-led team and the 1997 squad. More »
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1. "Well, Jack Likes It." Remember when Dukie V and the state of Tennessee blew their collective load when "big time celebrities" Peyton Manning and Priscila Presley showed up at the Memphis-Tennessee game? Yawn. As the greatest basketball program in NCAA history, situated in the heart of LA between Beverly Hills and Bel Air, it's commonplace for celebs to catch a game at Pauley. It's nice, but we could really care less. However, I'll gladly admit that we were a little star-struck in the Pac-10 Clincher vs Stanford. After Russell Westbrook's offensive rebound and score with 49 seconds to go in the 2nd half, the camera cut to Jack Nicholson enthusiastically throwing out 13 fist-pumps in celebration of the Bruin comeback. Jack doesn't mess around, kids. He only shows up for the best. UCLA is as good as it gets! More »
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1. You Ain't From Around Here, Are Ya, Boy? Ten of the eleven players listed as eligible on the UTA roster are from the state of Texas. The eleventh is 6'1" Guard Brandon Long, who hails from Richton Park, Illinois. The Junior was scoring 12 ppg before an injury vs. Texas Christian put him out for the season. More »
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1. That Confusing Nickname. Saint Mary's, out of the West Coast Conference (aka Gonzaga's Conference) cannot be found on a map by many (or any?) but is 20 miles from Oakland and San Francisco in the hills of the East Bay. They may suffer from having the most confusing name in college basketball. To Clarify, a Gael is not a bird, nor a storm, nor wizard, it is a Scottish or Irish knight who fought on foot. More »
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1. Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Conference Champions. On February 16 , Michigan State went to Indiana to face lame duck coach Kelvin Sampson, and, despite leading by double digits early in the first half, they lost the game by 19. Twelve days later, they scored a whopping 42 points in a loss at Wisconsin. Three days after that, they broke 100 for the first time all season and smoked those same Hoosiers by 29. (Guess Bloomington should have held on to the guy, huh?) They somehow led their conference in field goal percentage, but only managed to score 36 against lowly Iowa. (Yes, that was for one entire game.) They had only one non-conference loss all year (to then No. 1 UCLA), but blew winnable games against Penn State and Purdue and never had a shot at the Big Ten title. So what does it all add up to? Fuck the heck if I know. Come tourney time the Spartans could be done by the first weekend or go through to the final game and I wouldn't really be surprised either way. I'd lean toward the the latter though, because ... More »
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1. There's Only One Big Red! While a number of other schools claim to be the Big Red, there is only one mascot that fits the bill ... our Big Red. He's without a doubt the most famous alumnus of our school. He's been featured in ESPN's "This is SportsCenter" commercials, and some of those silly Capital One Mascot commercials. More important, Big Red recently attempted to start an International dispute with the ItalianTV star, Gabibbo. Gabibbo is Big Red's long lost brother. Rather than nurturing our international brethren, we did what all Americans would do ... we sued him. You heard me, we sued the Italian Big Bird. You should also know that the TV station (along with most) that owns Gabibbo is owned by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. I don't need to tell you how this ended. I'm betting our court-appointed attorneys didn't speak Italian. More »
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1. Fluffin' Ain't Easy. Guess who's scored the most points in a D-I game this year. It's not Michael Beasley, it's not O.J. Mayo, and it sure as hell isn't Tyler "I can't get this look off my face" Hansbrough. No, it's Rob "Fluff" McKiver, who dropped 52 on Southern Miss to break Larry Bird's single-game record of 44 points scored at the Hof. Fluff, the nation's No. 11 scorer, is relishing the opportunity to play under the retired jerseys of some of the game's greats. UH boasts three of the NBA's 50 greatest players, and McKiver is proud to have his name mentioned alongside Otis Birdsong, Elvin Hayes, Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon. Phi Slama Jamma, maybe not, but I'd still bet there aren't a lot of 5- or 6-seeds that want to get "Fluffed," no matter what you may have heard about it. More »
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1. Who are these guys? The Rebels lost four starters from last year's Sweet 16 Cinderella squad, including their leading scorer, rebounder, shot blocker and assist man. While they were expected to be rebuilding towards a contending season next year, UNLV has ridden a great defense led by "veterans" Wink Adams, Curtis Terry and Joe Darger. These same guys have helped UNLV lead the Mountain West in three pointers attempted, averaging 23 attempted 3's a game, many of which are H-O-R-S-E style shots. The great equalizer combined with great defense has helped UNLV dramatically overachieve this season. More »
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1. The Herbivores. The Tempe fans have nicknamed themselves the "Herbivores," in loving deference to second-year head coach Herb Sendek, late of NC State. And let's face it: Herb Sendek is a just a terrible name. At least someone is having fun with it. Though I'd like to think the fans got the name after eating at the Crapplebee's on ASU's campus. Its slogan should be, "In sober — out a vegetarian!" Every night they have half-priced beers after 9 p.m., which are expected to make up for the Rottweiler-meat burgers. They do not. The nachos, however, are excellent. More »
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