By way of a late introduction, we wanted to thank our buddy N-Bug for his detailed postings this past weekend on the various conference tourneys and bracket analysis.  We’ve been insanely busy with our real job(s), and haven’t been able to do much more than catch the occasional game and periodically watch Bob Knight get molested by Digger.  Somebody should call an Amber Alert on Digger and just get it over with – that dude is creepy.  As for Knight, we figure that one of these times where Digger is busily groping his arms and shoulders, he’s going to snap and dispose of Mr. Phelps in the nearest wastebasket.

Anyway, here are a few thoughts on the weekend games and brackets.

• That tornado situation at the SEC Tourney in the ATL was crazy.  We were watching it live and the rumbling locomotive sound for anyone who grew up in flyover land (we did) was unmistakeable.
• By the same token, penalizing Georgia/Kentucky by making it play two games in a single day, and further limiting the fan access to school administrators and families at the Alexander Coliseum was a total bush league maneuver by the SEC.  Does anyone think this would have been the same response (no fans) had the SEC football championship game been interrupted by a natural disaster?  No freakin way.
• Props to Georgia and Dennis Felton though for sticking it right back up the SEC’s ass by winning three games in about 27 hours.
• Seth Greenberg’s diatribe about whether the Hokies were one of the best 65 teams in America has been debated endlessly already.  Clearly, they’re one of the best 65, but that’s not the important measure.  They needed to be one of the best 34 at-large teams, and it’s arguable whether they were.  Then his follow-up response yesterday was pure idiocy, which N-Bug eloquently captured.  It’s about the “experience,” Seth?  If it’s really about the “experience,” then most of your players already got to have the “experience” last season; whereas South Alabama’s and St. Mary’s players will get that “experience” this time around.  What a joke.
• Also can’t believe he brought up the garbage bowls at all, as if any but a handful of bowls are on par with the NCAA Tournement.
• What is it about Pitt in the Big East Tourney?  They completely outmuscled and outhustled the Hoyas all over the court on Saturday night.
• UNC, UCLA, Kansas, Wisconsin.  Pretty much all chalk in those tourneys.  Most likely second-round loser?  Wisky.
• Who else thought Bob Knight was ready to rip into Vitale for the mere mention of him returning to Indiana?  We’re not sure whether Knight is on some gag order as a result of his settlement with the school, but his eyes told the tale.  He was livid, and he quite obviously sees Vitale and Digger as little more than failed coaches turned circus clowns.  He seems to respect Hubert Davis and Jay Bilas, though.  Maybe it’s a players/coaches thing.
• Easiest bracket is the West, with UCLA only facing a serious threat from UConn, depending a) on whether the Huskies can avoid losing in the first two rounds; and b) which UConn shows up (which largely determines the first point).
• Toughest bracket is the East, with UNC potentially facing an Indiana team with enough talent to knock them off in the second round (think: UNC 2000?), an explosive ND squad, and either Louisville or Tennessee potentially in the regional finals.  Any of those three teams are F4-worthy.

Final thing for now – thanks again to N-Bug for helping out and also setting up the Yahoo Bracket for RTC.  Be sure to sign up by Thurs. morning.

I’m working on putting together a first-round analysis along with regional previews, but you might want to take a look at the schedule for the games on Thursday and Friday. All times are EST.

Thursday
12:20 PM #14 Georgia vs. #3 Xavier (West – Washington, DC)
12:25 PM #16 Portland State vs. #1 Kansas (Midwest – Omaha, NE)
12:30 PM #12 Temple vs. #5 Michigan State (South – Denver, CO)

2:30 PM #11 Kentucky vs. #6 Marquette (South – Anaheim, CA)
2:50 PM #11 Baylor vs.#6 Purdue (West – Washington, DC)
2:55 PM #9 Kent State vs. #8 UNLV (Midwest – Omaha, NE)
3:00 PM #13 Oral Roberts vs. #4 Pittsburgh (South – Denver, CO)

5:00 PM #14 Cornell vs. #3 Stanford (South – Anaheim, CA)

7:10 PM #11 Kansas State vs. #6 USC (Midwest – Omaha, NE)
7:10 PM #15 Belmont vs. #2 Duke (West – Washington, DC)
7:20 PM #13 Winthrop vs. #4 Washington State (East – Denver, CO)
7:25 PM #9 Texas A&M vs. #8 Brigham Young (West – Anaheim, CA)

9:40 PM #14 Cal State Fullerton vs. #3 Wisconsin (Midwest – Omaha, NE)
9:40 PM #10 Arizona vs. #7 West Virginia (West – Washington, DC)
9:50 PM #12 George Mason vs. #5 Notre Dame (East – Denver, CO)
9:55 PM #16 Mississippi Valley State vs. #1 UCLA (West – Anaheim, CA)

Friday
12:15 PM #15 American University vs. #2 Tennessee (East – Birmingham, AL)
12:25 PM #10 Davidson vs. #7 Gonzaga (Midwest – Raleigh, NC)
12:30 PM #10 Saint Mary’s vs. #7 Miami (FL) (South – Little Rock, AR)
12:30 PM #12 Western Kentucky vs. #5 Drake (West – Tampa, FL)

2:45 PM #10 South Alabama vs. #7 Butler (East – Birmingham, AL)
2:55 PM #15 UMBC vs. #2 Georgetown (Midwest – Raleigh, NC)
3:00 PM #15 Austin Peay vs. #2 Texas (South – Little Rock, AR)
3:00 PM #13 San Diego vs. #4 Connecticut (West – Tampa, FL)

7:10 PM #11 Saint Joseph’s vs. #6 Oklahoma (East – Birmingham, AL)
7:20 PM #13 Siena vs. #4 Vanderbilt (Midwest – Tampa, FL)
7:25 PM #9 Oregon vs. #8 Mississippi State (South – Little Rock, Ark)

9:40 PM #9 Arkansas vs. #8 Indiana (East – Raleigh, NC)
9:40 PM #14 Boise State vs. #3 Louisville (East – Birmingham, AL)
9:50 PM #12 Villanova vs. #5 Clemson (Midwest – Tampa, FL)
9:55 PM #16 Texas-Arlington vs. #1 Memphis (South – Little Rock, AR)

TBA #16 TBA (Mount St. Mary’s or Coppin State) vs. #1 North Carolina (East – Raleigh, NC)

Whenever I get the regional broadcast schedule, I’ll post it.

I went ahead and created a Yahoo! Sports Fantasy NCAA Group for Rush the Court.

Edited to reflect that the group # is 83948 if you’re trying to find it on the Yahoo site. 

I just realized that if you have been trying to send an e-mail to RTC, I haven’t been getting them because I don’t have access to the official site e-mail. If you need to contact me for some reason, e-mail me at healthcarewatch@gmail.com.

I’ll send you into the night with a few links for you to mull over before you fill out your brackets.

– Bracket bits to chew on
– Super-sized and ready for the Big Dance
– The cream will rise

Have fun with your brackets.

Update: 

1st prize:  an unedited posting on the topic of your choice on the blog.

2d prize:  a beautiful set of steak knives.  *

3d prize:  you’re fired.

I’m not going to claim this is going to be a live blog because to be honest the last hour was kind of exhausting trying to keep up with 2 channels and I’ll be popping in-and-out while making dinner. I’ll be offering my thoughts on what they say in between cooking/eating.

– Apparently, Bobby Knight doesn’t like the current format. He either wants only the at-large teams in or a huge 128-team tournament with a play-in at the higher seed’s home court.
– Digger and Dick Vitale are arguing for VTech getting in the tournament. Dick also agrees that Arizona State should be in. I think Dick would like this to be a tournament where your intramural team could register to play in the tournament. You want 128 teams, Knight? I’ll raise you and make it 512 teams, baby!!!
– Ok, Vitale backs off his earlier comments and he contradicts himself. Nothing new here.
– Seth Greenberg is on the phone now with ESPN. As one of the schools snubbed by the committee, I guess he has a reason to be angry although I pointed out yesterday that he would be headed to the NIT thanks to Mr. Hansbrough. He’s complaining that more teams should be allowed in the tournament to give the kids the “experience”. I think their $30,000 scholarship to some of the top schools in the country (plus whatever is delivered under the table–either by boosters or the co-eds) is more than enough. He also wants people to ignore the RPI. I’m sure that he would be for the RPI if his team was highly ranked in the RPI but had been snubbed.
– Greenberg just pointed out that college football players all get to experience the moment by playing bowls. I just checked and there were 36 bowl games this past year so 72 teams got the “experience”. That means only 7 more football teams get Greenberg’s college experience. I would also argue that the New Orleans Bowl is more comparable to getting into the NIT than the Big Dance (although it could be like the Play-In game).
– It looks like that’s the last of Greenberg for the show. As a parting gift, we’ll leave you with this slideshow of his daughter(she’s 20 so we don’t think this is a Nick Saban’s niece situation).
– It seems like the experts agree with me that the East Regional is brutal. It’s not quite the “Group of Death” from the World Cup, but not exactly a present for the #1 overall seed. Indiana-Arkansas will be one of the best opening round games. It’s amazing that Indiana was ranked 11th (maybe higher) before all the Sampson stuff went down. Less than a month later, they are an 8 seed.
– Louisville as a 3 seed is interesting given how far they fell at the beginning of the season when they were hit by the injury bug. Pitino did a great job of turning their season around. I wonder if he gave them the “Pervis Ellison is not walking through that door. Milt Wagner is not walking through that door. . .” (Ok, I’m a little bitter about the Boston Celtics fiasco).
– Dick Vitale was just silent on camera for a few seconds. I think that’s a record. He thought he had been cut off. I sort of wish he had pulled a Chris Berman and went off on everybody in the room. That would have been great.
– The potential Pitt-Memphis Sweet 16 matchup is intriguing given the contrast of styles and Memphis’s athleticism versus Pitt’s physicality. Should be an interesting game if both teams get there.
– The Committee has a sense of humor setting up the all-nerd matchup with Stanford versus Cornell. It’s sort of funny that the game will be decided by Brook Lopez who was academically ineligible earlier this year.
– It seems like the ESPN guys don’t have faith in Memphis as they seem to be leaning toward Texas getting to the Final 4 in their first year AD (After Durant). Some of them even have the Tigers going out to Pitt in the Sweet 16.
– The West region looks like the easiest out of the four regions with UCLA, Duke, Xavier, and UConn as the top 4 seeds. UCLA should be able to overcome the loss of Luc Richard Mbah a Moute to advance to San Antonio out of this region.
– Wow. Knight just ripped Beasley’s consistency. I’m not sure how he sees that. Let me check his game log.
– With the exception of a 5 and 12 versus Xavier, Beasley has been consistently beastly. Check out his game log to see.
– I think Digger was trying to get Knight to punch him with his “Raleigh” monologue. Knight has done a good job of self-censoring although I am beginning to find him pretty boring. He obviously has a great basketball mind, but I think he’s holding back on the emotion that makes him so enjoyable in his press conferences.
– Side note: Luke Winn of SI.com offers his early thoughts on the bracket.
– Wow. I think Knight just had an aneurysm with Vitale’s little “Knight for Indiana’s head coach” rant. I really hope he goes off.
– Ok. Somebody needs to put that clip of the split screen with Vitale and Knight on YouTube.
– Here are the Final 4 picks from the ESPN guys:
Hubert = UNC, Kansas, Texas, and UCLA with Kansas and Texas in the final and Kansas winning. He has 1-2 in the East and Midwest, but 1-3 (Xavier) in the West and something else in the South (can’t remember).
Digger = UNC, Kansas, Memphis, and UCLA with UNC and Memphis in the final and Memphis winning. The Elite 8 is all 1-2 except for Louisville as the #3 in the East Regional.
Knight = UNC, Kansas, Pitt, and UCLA with Kansas and Pitt in the final with Pitt winning. He has also has Louisville as the #3 in the East and USC as the #6 in the Midwest making the Elite 8.
Bilas = UNC, Kansas, Memphis, and UCLA with Kansas and UCLA in the finals and Kansas winning. The Elite 8 is all 1-2 except for Xavier as the #3 in the West Regional.
Vitale = UNC, Georgetown, Texas, and UCLA with UNC and UCLA with UNC winning. All 1-2 except for Louisville as the #3 in the East Regional.
– I think I got most of their picks although I might have missed something with Knight (and obviously Hubert) as I was trying to catch up on the 3 guys before him.
– Well that’s it for tonight folks unless the blog’s biological father returns and wants to offer some wisdom. I’ll be posting Regional analysis over the next 3 days leading up to Thursday’s games. Based on my predictions from yesterday, I’m assuming that nobody will be stealing my picks for their bracket so the integrity of our pool should be intact.

Note: I just set-up the official RTC NCAA pool on Yahoo. Hope to see you guys there. If people prefer another site, ESPN, CNNSI, etc. Let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

The show is here on CBS. I have never tried a live blog before (rtmsf did once), but I might try it for some of the games this year so I’m going to try this as a test run to try to work the kinks out.

6:57 PM: Both CBS guys go with UCLA to win it all. Kellogg goes with 3 #5s and a #7 as his sleeper. Davis goes with a 6 (USC), 10, 11, and 12. I didn’t catch all the names because I was trying to process it and type this at the same time. Hard to imagine it’s the Duke guy who has the balls to go out on a limb.
6:55 PM: The CBS guys with their Final 4 picks: Clark Kellogg goes with all #1 seeds. Seth Davis goes with Tennessee, Kansas, Texas, and UCLA.
6:48 PM: Tom O’Connor (the head of the committee) is stating the “obvious” answer that they don’t award bids by conference. Packer doesn’t seem that satisfied. Not quite the Packer that we have come to know and hate, but I think it’s all we’re getting today from the old man. . .
6:47 PM: Jay Bilas just made an interesting point that the ACC tends to get more bids when they have a member on the selection committee. Packer is going on about the ACC only getting 4 bids as I type this. . .
6:45 PM: The ESPN crew is going over the snubs. They seem to be all over the Arizona Sun Devils who had a RPI of 88. I haven’t really taken a good look at their case but it seems like they were punished for a weak out-of-conference schedule.
6:43 PM: Are the producers giving Packer and Knight tranquilizer? Both of them seem much more subdued than usual. Just noticed the Marquette-Kentucky 1st round matchup. I wonder if Dwayne Wade and Pat Riley will show up for that game since neither one seems interested in being with the team that pays them. Nice point by Packer about the lack of inside guys in Duke’s path, which I am sure Coach K appreciates.
6:40 PM: Interesting chart from CBS about Power Conference vs. Mid-Major bids. It’s interesting to see how much more consolidated the bids are even though the Mid-Majors seem to be getting more respect in the polls. Back in a bit once Packer goes through the bracket.
6:37 PM: Just noticed Arizona got in as a 10 seed. That’s higher than I expected. Congrats to Baylor getting the last spot (in terms of order announced on the show). What a swing from the Dave Bliss era.
6:35 PM: The West region seems pretty favorable for UCLA with a potential Sweet 16 matchup against Jim Calhoun and the Huskies. Duke ends up in that region too as the #2 seed. It’s too bad Beilein’s offense left with him to Michigan or we might have set a record for 3 pointers if Duke and WVU met in the 2nd round.
6:29 PM: Finally, a commercial break on both CBS and ESPN. About the point Wahl just made, I went to the 2003 East Regional in Albany where Carmelo Anthony’s Syracuse team knocked off the higher seeded Oklahoma Sooners. I always thought it was pretty unfair for Sampson and the Sooners to have to play the Orangeman in that setting since the Sooners were they higher seed.
6:27 PM: Pitt jumps to a #4 seed so Lunardi wasn’t too far off with his #3 seed projection. The South region doesn’t looks pretty fair. We’re definitely hyped for the potential DJ Augustin-Derrick Rose matchup. I’m guessing the NBA scouts are looking forward to that game too. As Wahl correctly pointed out, Memphis will have to potentially win in Houston over Texas to get a Final 4 spot. So they would have earned it.
6:24 PM: I just noticed the Gonzaga-Davidson matchup. Very interesting with 2 of the premier “little people” programs in college basketball. We’ll be checking that one out on March Madness on Demand. If you haven’t signed up, I would suggest you do so now to try and get VIP status.
6:20 PM: The Wisconsin Omaha, NE pod might be the most interesting as I think Wisconsin deserved a #2 and we get to see the battle of super freshman Beasley versus Mayo/Jefferson. That’s my favorite sub-region so far.
6:18 PM: Ok, that confirms my earlier suspicion. The East seems to be much tougher than the Midwest even though I think Kansas was the last #1 seed.
6:16 PM: I know it’s early and I haven’t seen what the other regions look like, but the East seems like a stacked region. I think the 2, 4, 5, and 8 seeds are all better than their seed or as tough as I would expect out of that spot.
6:13 PM: The committee isn’t doing UNC any favors as they put Tennessee in the same region. I would have considered the Vols the best #2 seed, but as Seth Davis said they also get screwed with a potential second round game against South Alabama in Birmingham.
6:10 PM: Roy Williams can’t be happy to see his pod with Indiana as the #8 seed. That will be an extremely interesting 2nd round game if they can get past Arkansas in the first round.
6:07 PM: Ok. I just missed it (since there are shows on 2 channels), but it seems like Bobby Knight and the ESPN crew are getting on the little people saying it should be the 65 best teams in the country, which probably means leaving out the Coppin States of the world.
6:04 PM: Wow. Billy agrees with the committee. I guess we will just have to wait for them to get to the small schools before he gets cranky.
6:03 PM:  I think the 4 #1 seeds are pretty straightforward. I don’t think you can argue with it. Hold on they are going to Billy Packer. . .

Short recaps now since I’m running short on time before the selection show starts.

SEC
– This deserves a lot more attention because UGA should be the team of the day even if they got a huge no-call against Kentucky in their early game and Dennis Felton was whining before the night game about having to play 2 games in a day. UGA managed to beat UK and MSU in the same day, which is a pretty impressive feat. Arkansas beat Tennessee 92-91, which will cost the Vols a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
– Prediction: Arkansas. We think the fatigue will catch up with UGA the day after.

Pac 10
– UCLA overcame the absent Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (sprained ankle) and an injury to Kevin Love (back spasms) to beat Stanford 67-64. This time they used 28 points from Darren Collison instead of shady officiating to beat the Cardinal. The win wraps up the #1 seed in the West for the Bruins who should be good until the Sweet 16 even without Mbah a Moute.

Big 10
– Wisconsin used a big steal late and Michigan State’s inability/refusal to get the ball to Drew Neitzel late to beat Sparty, 65-63. In the other semi, Illinois beat Minnesota 54-50. Unfortunately, we don’t have much to add here because we took the same attitude Bobby Knight had when asked to predict the game on ESPN (“Who cares?”).
– I guess it goes without saying that we like Wisconsin this afternoon.

Big 12
– We could just use the recap of the previous 2 Big 12 tournaments for this. Texas and Kansas advance to the finals for the 3rd year in a row. The winner will most likely get the #1 seed in the Midwest.
– We’re going with Kansas here to get the #1 seed in the Midwest.

We’d also like to congratulate Coppin State for earning a spot in the play-in game as the first 20 loss team in tournament history.

So my predictions yesterday didn’t turn out so well and I might have left out a few things. . .

Ok, if you used my picks in Vegas you are probably reading this blog at a public library because you lost your home yesterday. And yeah, I completely forgot about that small conference called the Big East. I’ll chalk it up to trying to cover one of the busiest days in the sport on my first day.

Big East
– Pittsburgh 74, #9 Georgetown 65: Pitt is rounding into a very dangerous team as they recover from early-season injuries. They basically won this game on the boards as they held a 41-29 advantage on the glass to overcome an atrocious 22-for-44 performance from the line.
– The bigger picture (other than Pitt winning the Big East tourney for only the 2nd time despite 8 finals appearances) is that Georgetown probably didn’t change its seed for the NCAA tournament with this performance. They will likely end up a 2 or 3 seed, which we don’t think will matter in the end. We like Georgetown’s inside/outside combination, but we wouldn’t count on Roy Hibbert to deliver consistently in the tournament. Despite his height, reasonable inside game, and good feel for the game that you see with his passing, we just feel something is missing with Hibbert (read: a desire to dominate). Pittsburgh will be a very interesting team to watch on the selection show. Lunardi has them as a 3 seed based on their post-season performance, but that seems really high for a team that wasn’t even ranked going into their conference tourney. In any case, they will be a dangerous team that nobody wants in their region.

ACC
– Well these games ended up a lot more competitive than we expected. The first semi was a back-and-forth affair that featured big plays from multiple players on both team (we hope you were watching, OJ) that wasn’t decided until ACC and potential national POY Tyler Hansbrough grabbed a rebound and hit a jumper along the baseline with 0.8 secs left to beat Virginia Tech, 68-66. He then proceeded to show us the most awkward celebration we have ever seen. He clearly needs to watch Laettner’s celebration again to see how it is done. In the second semi, Clemson pulled off the upset over Duke, 78-74 (tip of the hat to Vegas Watch). Clemson is a very athletic team that can play with anybody on a given night, but is often killed by its free throw shooting. Amazingly, they went 7/8 from the FT line down the stretch to put the Blue Devils away.
– UNC locked up the #1 seed in the East Regional with their win (and Tennessee’s choke job), which gives them an in-state path to the Final 4. Duke’s loss takes away any shot it had at a #1 seed, and they will likely end up with a #2 seed. Clemson was already getting in the tournament so at this point they are just climbing up the seeding charts. Viriginia Tech will be playing for the right to call itself the 66th best team in the country.
– In today’s final, we’re going with UNC (down by 1 at half). We don’t think Clemson can hit FTs two days in a row.

Back with more from the other conferences later.

Back for the second part of the review after a short 2+ hour nap.

Pac 10
– We’ll get the late game over with first since it was past our East Coast bedtime (had to get up to watch a bunch of 9 year-olds “run” a 5k at 8 am). #11 Stanford beat #22 Washington State 75-68 behind Brook Lopez’s 30/12/3 for the third time this year. Basically the Cougars don’t have anybody who can match Lopez inside and not even a 12/20 showing from 3 could save them. Not much to say here except it sets up a rematch of the most controversial game we have seen this year.
– In the most exciting game we saw all day, UCLA hung on to beat USC 57-54 when OJ Mayo’s last second hesitation 3 was a little long. This was a pretty exciting game to watch and UCLA didn’t even need the refs giving them a 6th man to win this game. It was a back-and-forth affair all night. In the early going, USC controlled the game behind their freshmen (Mayo and Jefferson) who are almost as old as Dwight Howard is. Ben Howland’s vaunted defense looked terrible early as UCLA decided they didn’t want to defend off the screen. Down 6 at half, UCLA woke up and Kevin Love scored 11 of his team-high 19 during a Bruin 15-2 run coming out of half. UCLA built up a pretty good lead going into the closing minutes, but OJ Mayo took over and started to show flashes of what made him the most-hyped recruit in his class for most of high school as he beat up on UCLA and Pac 10 Defensive POY Russell Westbrook hitting a 3 and a tough left-handed layup. Then on the last 2 possessions, he showed us why he dropped off his perch as the next Lebron (not sure how anybody ever saw that) and fell to probably the #3 guard in his class behind Rose and Gordon. On the first possession, he dribbled into traffic and was stripped from behind by Westbrook. Then on the final possession, he had a good look at a 3 from the top of the key to tie it, but added an unnecessary hesitation which may or may not have thrown off his timing to cause a miss. Daniel Hackett grabbed the offensive rebound, but did not have enough time to get off another 3 as Mayo did not leave his team with enough time for another shot. Perhaps the bigger news for UCLA was the loss of Luc Richard Mbah a Moute who sustained a sprained ankle. I haven’t heard anything definitive about how long he’ll be out but I wouldn’t expect to see him for a while as he had a similar injury recently.
– Prediction for tonight: Stanford gets revenge for getting screwed on the call at the end last week at Pauley. The match-up down low should be one to watch as the Lopez twins battle Love who will be without Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (see above).

Big 10
– This seems like it was a pretty interesting set of games unfortunately I somehow missed all of them, but I’m making up for it today by watching MSU-Wisconsin as I am typing this. First, the routine stuff with Wisconsin crushing Michigan 51-34. We’re reserving judgement on the Beilein experiment for another year or two given how unique his offense is and the players it requires. Also Michigan hasn’t been Michigan the past few year, but this year wasn’t that encouraging. Now onto the important games. We’ll start with MSU beating OSU 67-60. It seems like MSU controlled this game as OSU only had the lead once at 32-30, but MSU could never really pull away with their biggest lead being 9 points. OSU will probably make the tournament (one of Lunardi’s last 4 in) unless some “locks” in small one-bid conferences lose and cost the majors a few middle-of-the-pack teams. The two other games were arguably the most exciting of the night not involving falling roofs (we can joke since nobody was hurt, right?). In one game, Illinois continued its push for an improbable auto bid with a 74-67 OT win over #17 Purdue. The Illini were led by Demitri McCamey’s 26 points and now stand 2 more win away from returning Bruce Weber to the NCAA tournament. This road was made slightly easier by the shot of the night by Blake Hoffarber pulling a Christian Laettner with a turnaround off a full-court pass at the buzzer to beat the up-and-down Hooisers 59-58. DJ White did his part for the Hooisers with 23 points, 13 boards, and 4 blocks, but super-frosh Eric Gordon was off as he finished with 16 on 4/13 FG and 5 turnovers. All-in-all, a very satisfying day for Illini fans who made the trip to Indianapolis. With the loss, Indiana might be positioning itself as the scariest #7 seed in a long time (probably a #6 now, but depending on how the other games work out they make drop a seed given their Jekyll/Hyde act the past few weeks). On a sidenote that I’m sure all of you have heard a hundred times already today, Blake Hoffarber is no stranger to miraculous last second shots as his most famous one makes the turnaround last night rather routine.

First, the ESPN highlights from last night:

Which gives me a reason to post the Laettner shot (and to piss off rtmsf):

And it was shown as a flashback in the first clip, but it won and ESPY and won a state title so here is Blake Hoffarber’s most famous shot:

– Since there is still 3 minutes left in the 60-57 MSU-Wisconsin game, I guess I can still make my predictions for the Big 10: MSU and Minnesota.

I am not sure what to call this column because I don’t want to steal rtmsf’s “After the Buzzer” title and it’s too damn early to think straight. If you have any clever ideas for a title, leave a comment and I’ll consider it. I’m breaking this into multiple parts because it would take me roughly the entire day if I tried to do this for every conference tourney. I’ll try to recap the major conferences with more emphasis on the games I actually saw. Since there is just too much stuff going on for one man to cover (thanks rtmsf), some people will get the short end of the stick (apologies in advance to the Big West Conference fans). If you want to add your 2 cents on these games or the ones I skip over, feel free to leave comments on them.

Onto the games/tornadoes. . .

SEC
– Obviously, the big story of the night as the Worldwide Leader told me this morning was the tornadoes/storms that delayed the SEC Tournament (and probably destroyed a few homes and various other buildings). I didn’t get to see much of the game because of other commitments (read: much better games were on), but the finish of Mississippi State-Alabama game was ridiculous. I caught the end of regulation as Alabama’s Mykal Riley hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer that hit every part of the rim and bounced off the backboard before falling through. With the game going into OT, the really weird stuff as the roof tore and the building began to shake. After a hour-plus delay, play resumed and MSU won 69-67 as Riley couldn’t work his magic again at the buzzer at the end of OT. We would say more, but we were already on FSN watching the battle of LA. If anybody who was in the Georgia Dome when this all went down, we would be interested in hearing about it. In other SEC news, Tennessee survived a scare and maintained its bid for a #1 seed as Chris Lofton hit a 3 with 11.4 secs left to give UT an 89-87 victory over South Carolina in Dave Odom’s final game as coach of the Gamecocks.  In the other game of the day, Arkansas beat Vandy 81-75. I didn’t see any of this game (not even the highlights), but I will just point to the HUGE edge for the Razorbacks on the boards (43-20 or 45-24 depending on whether you believe the box score or AP article).
– Play resumes today as the delayed UGA/UK game will be played at noon ET at Georgia Tech. After that, UT and Arkansas will play in thee first at 6 PM. MSU and the winner of UGA/UK will tip at approximately 8:30 PM. This obviously puts the winner of UGA/UK at a huge disadvantage as they will have to pull an Ernie Banks, but in the end I don’t think it will matter. UK is pretty much guaranteed a spot in the tournament and UGA won’t be making the tournament now that players can’t take a Harrick Jr. basketball class. The picks here are UK, UT, and MSU. Yeah, I’m going chalk and I briefly considered taking the Razorbacks, but I’ll go with UT waking up and taking care of business.

ACC
– Normally, I would give more coverage to the most hyped conference in the sport, but this year the conference is UNC/Duke and a bunch of nobodies. So here’s a quick recap of the games: UNC wasn’t firing on all cylinders, but beat FSU, 82-70 (Psycho T chipped in 22 and 6); Duke survived a weak stretch with the lead falling to 52-50, which they are prone to have given the way they play, but won 82-70 (not a typo); Virginia Tech and Clemson both won handily. I don’t even have to look at the match-ups to tell you my predictions: Duke and UNC.

“Other”
– Big 12: I’ll give them more billing on my recap tomorrow, but there was not much that was noteworthy yesterday. Recap: Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas A&M won. Beasley’s 25 and 9 wasn’t enough to lift KSU over TAMU, but KSU still should be in the NCAA Tournament comfortably given the way other bubble teams have performed. Another conference with 2 really strong teams followed by mediocre teams so the picks are Texas and Kansas
– CUSA: Memphis won to reach the finals where they will play Tulsa. Obviously, Memphis is the pick here.
– Atlantic 10: This was actually pretty big news for bubble teams as #10 Xavier lost to St. Joe’s in the semis. St. Joe’s will play Temple for an auto bid. This is particularly important because it means that St. Joe’s can give the conference its 3rd team in the tourney if they can beat Temple. Xavier is guaranteed with Temple and St. Joe’s a good shot regardless of whether or not they win the tournament. I’m going with Temple to win tonight.

I’ll be back later with a recap of the Big Ten and Pac Ten.

Well, I was going to wait for the blog’s daddy to introduce me but it looks like he is MIA and I lack a certain patience to start posting so here goes. . .

I’ll be Rush The Court’s stepfather for the tournament (and possibly longer if the money is right) while the blog’s biological father goes off to Vegas, which I guess is sort of like how the typical real father/stepfather thing unfolds. A quick plug since “rtmsf” won’t allow me to change the site to a Christian Laettner shrine complete with video of a foot stomp on Aminu Timberlake (Sidenote: Aminu appears to be on LinkedIn.com), I normally and somewhat infrequently pen a blog Health Care Watch about the health care industry that gets roughly 1/100th the traffic RTC does or 1/1000th what RTC does when it posts pictures of Erin Andrews. Apparently, Bruce Pearl doesn’t keep up-to-date on health care.

Getting back to the topic at hand, I’ll be posting pretty frequently throughout the week with links to relevant articles/video and the occasional analysis/prediction. I’m planning on trying to live blog (not the fake day-after blog that rtmsf’s boy Simmons does where he miraculously “predicts” what will happen a minute later) for those unfortunate souls who can’t watch the games or like me don’t have passionate college basketball fans around them. I am also thinking about creating an AOL chat room so you can have a real-time chat with each other and give me feedback along with the regular comments section on the site. This is all pending the approval of the blog’s biological father upon his return and that he won’t go apeshit about what I am doing to his baby. Let me know what you think and we will try to convince him.

I’ll leave you with some links for today while I try to figure out what I’m going to write for the next week or three.

– NCAA tourney is the best, but it could be even better: ESPN.com’s Gene Wojciechowski (no relation to the 1998 National Defensive Player of the Year and huge snub from ESPN’s 25 Greatest College Basketball Players of All-Time) does what any writer would do when he has no idea to write about; he writes a list on how to make something better. In this case, he picked our beloved NCAA tournament. I’ll probably end up making a post like this during that interminable wait until the first game on Thursday (if you think I’m missing a game in there that’s a hint about one suggestion I will be making).

– The Bracket, Cracked: From the same geniuses who overvalued subprime mortgages and created the collateral debt obligations that sent the stock market into its recent freefall comes a pseudo-scientific way to fill out your bracket. Actually that’s a little exaggeration since the people who write for the Wall Street Journal are actually the ones who couldn’t get jobs on Wall Street so they didn’t actually cause the credit meltdown. Anyways, it’s a decent read with a couple extra features linked on there.