1. Georgia Tech incoming freshman Corey Heyward will likely miss the entire 2012-13 season because of a torn ACL injury that he suffered in a pickup game late last week. The six-foot guard who spent a postgraduate year at Hargraves Military Academy was expected to contribute immediately as a backup for starting point guard Mfon Udofia, but short of a miraculously quick recovery between now and the new year, Brian Gregory will have to wait on Heyward’s first minutes in a Yellow Jacket uniform. Gregory has an experienced group of starters returning next season from a 4-12 last-place ACC finisher, but it remains to be seen whether all that returning talent will equate to wins.
2. A total of 10 schools lost lottery picks in last week’s NBA Draft, with Connecticut, Kentucky and North Carolina combining for seven, equivalent to half of the lottery selections. Jason King takes a look at how each team plans on replacing the lost talent, ultimately concluding that most of the programs that put players in this year’s lottery will just move on to its next generation of stars. A couple of programs are notable exceptions, though — Weber State’s Damian Lillard was a once-in-a-lifetime type of player for the Wildcats, while Illinois’ Meyers Leonard‘s ascent up the draft boards this year was a bit flukish and, as such, it will take John Groce some time to get his program turned around in Champaign.
3. We noted in a piece yesterday that a number of prominent seniors were left at the draft altar last week, thanking them for four years of memories and wishing them the best of luck in pursuing their professional dreams wherever they end up. Matt Norlander took us two steps further with his article Monday dissecting the commonly held perception that recognizable and talented seniors no longer exist in college basketball. His back-of-the-envelope analysis of the number of seniors drafted in the one-and-done era shows that roughly a third of the draft is populated by the likes of Festus Ezeli, Tyler Zeller, Damian Lillard, Draymond Green, and others each year, and it is many of these folks who drive the sport forward just as much or perhaps even more so than the much considerably smaller one-and-done percentage that gets so much of the annual hype. Interesting piece — read it and see what you think.
4. It’s a light news week, so what the hell… ESPN’s college basketball and football princess, Erin Andrews, has left the network and will move on to Fox Sports as a college football, MLB and NFL reporter. For a period in the middle part of the last decade, Andrews’ basketball broadcasts were very nearly must-see TV for males under the age of ever 50. As her personal brand grew, her hoops appearances became increasingly fewer but it appears that in her new gig at Fox she’ll no longer have access to the hardwood where she earned so much of her cred. We certainly want to wish her nothing but the best as she moves on to the network featuring none other than Joe Buck and Terry Bradshaw.
5. If you’re not cheatin’, you’re not tryin’ — so goes the old adage about life in the SEC. Charles Barkley minces no words about his stance on the issue of paying amateurs to attend certain schools (ahem, Auburn) with this hilarious clip from a celebrity softball game where he describes a teenage Dirk Nowitzki destroying Team USA in a 1997 exhibition game. The choicest series of quotes went like this: “So I call Nike and I said, ‘find out about this kid and tell him I’ll give him anything he wants to go to Auburn. Just tell him, anything he wants, we’ll get it done.’ […] “In the SEC, dude, we make sure you’re well taken care of.” Barkley went on to say that an alleged payment of $200,000 for Cam Newton seemed like a pretty good deal, considering that he led the Tigers to a national championship in his only season on the Plains. When is the Chuckster running for governor again?

Now it’s getting serious.  College basketball teams across the country now fall into one of four camps: bored, because they know their NCAA bid is secure; resigned, because they’ve known for a long time that they’re out; relieved, because they think they’ve played their way in; and downright antsy, because they’ve still got work to do.  That last group are the most interesting ones at this time of year, and there are plenty of them out there.  We’ll be keeping an eye on all of those games and, of course, commenting on any game we can find on the tube in today’s three-man weave version of BGTD.  We hope to hear from you while we’re at it.  Here are the games on which we’ll definitely be keeping tabs, though we’ll probably find more throughout the day:

• 12 PM – Notre Dame @ #13 Georgetown on CBS (regional) – RTC Live
• 12 PM – #2 Kentucky @ #17 Tennessee on CBS (regional)
• 12 PM – Michigan @ #9 Ohio State on ESPN
• 12 PM – Northeastern @ George Mason on ESPN2
• 2 PM – North Carolina @ Wake Forest on CBS
• 2 PM – #21 Texas @ #23 Texas A&M on ESPN
• 2 PM – Mississippi @ Arkansas on ESPN2
• 4 PM – #1 Kansas @ Oklahoma State on CBS
• 4 PM – Florida @ Georgia on SEC Network
• 6 PM – Mississippi State @ South Carolina on ESPN
• 8 PM – Illinois State @ #22 Northern Iowa on ESPN2
• 8 PM – Missouri @ #6 Kansas State on ESPN-U
• 8 PM – Southern Miss @ Memphis on CBS College Sports
• 9 PM – #8 Villanova @ #4 Syracuse on ESPN

We will start with our coverage at 11 AM. Feel free to drop by throughout the day and ask questions/comment on anything that is happening in the world of college basketball.

11:05: Well it certainly is very orange in Syracuse. And Bob Knight with the first shot of the day mocking fans who would pay $750 to watch this game. Nice. Evan Turner just signed a “Evan Turner” home-made trophy being held by some kid wearing a home-made “Villain” t-shirt.

11:06: Knight just admitted he is rooting for Steve Alford and New Mexico tonight. Not a surprise, but still amusing. I’m sure the BYU players will have something to say to the media after the game.

11:10: We would love to interview the fan who sits in that seat or the row of seats that Erin Andrews just featured. The almost looks like Final Four type seating or what we saw earlier this year for the game at the new Cowboys stadium.

11:17: Hubert Davis calling out the Mountain West and BYU. Can we get Shawn Bradley on the phone to mock UNC? Jay Bilas comes to BYU’s defense by comparing them to and crushing Virginia Tech. He’s not going to be a popular guy the next time he visits Blacksburg. Digger makes the best point of the entire discussion by saying that the reason we are talking up the mid-majors is because the PAC-10 is awful this year.

11:20: “This is the weakest at-large field ever. The weakest at-large field ever.” – Jay Bilas. He should be fun on Selection Sunday.

11:21: Does Digger have a yellow highlighter today? Is this the first time he has went with the traditional yellow for his highlighter?

11:35: Nice feature about Hank Gathers. I still remember hearing about it the day it happened on SportsCenter the night it happened. Still jarring to see the video. Nice shout-out to RTC fan Jeff Fryer. It’s too bad they ran into the buzzsaw that was the 1990 UNLV team. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing that “30 for 30” documentary.

11:45: I love seeing the replay of the Scottie Reynolds shot. Not because I root for Villanova, but because it is the craziest basketball moment I have ever seen in person. Just the ecstasy of the Villanova fans that followed their utter despair after they had almost blown the game moments before.

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1. Appropriately, we begin with D2 Philadelphia University’s head coach Herb Magee winning his 902nd game on Saturday, which ties Bobby Knight for first place on the all-time NCAA victories list for a men’s basketball coach.  Magee, to whom the guys from our Backdoor Cuts feature devoted their column last week, has been at Philadelphia for 50 years — as a player from 1959-63, an assistant coach from 1963-67, and head coach since then — but his record-tying win wasn’t secured until the game’s very last second, when Philadelphia U.’s Jim Connolly hit a three-pointer to win it over Post University, 70-67.  Magee will go for win #903 at home against Goldey-Beacom College on Tuesday.
2. Great stuff here from The Big Lead.  If you’re a college basketball player, it’s always important to listen to your coach, right?  Especially in a very important late-February game between a conference’s two best teams.  That can be tough, depending on what distractors are in the area.  In Saturday’s intense Kentucky vs. Vanderbilt game, while John Calipari was drawing up a play during a time out, the Wildcats’ DeMarcus Cousins was busted eyeballing an undeniably strong distractor in the form of a certain ESPN sideline reporter, not that we’re castin’ any stones…
3. New York Times college sports reporter (and excellent tweeter) Pete Thamel had the privilege of spending his Saturday in Tempe, Arizona, the site of the secret little talks going on between USC and the NCAA’s infractions committee.  He logs an excellent summary here, with the reactions of two USC coaches (one current, one former) catching our eye:  1) we were moved to downright guffaws by the moral ascendancy Tim Floyd appears to be claming, as he opined that appearing before the committee was “the right thing to do,” and 2) we loved Lane Kiffin’s admission after the three-day hearings, proclaiming “I’ve never moved less in a 72-hour period,” which was only slightly shorter than his tenure in Knoxville.
4. We also give Mr. Thamel an assist on this one, which we started checking out because of a tweet of his (seriously, he’s really good)…but it just keeps getting worse for Binghamton.  They’re now down to two coaches, now that assistant Marc Hsu has been placed on leave following a report by the school alleging that Hsu gave money to a player and did coursework for several members of the team.  Hsu hasn’t been on the bench for the last three games, and this suspension is indefinite.
5. Oklahoma’s Willie Warren missed Saturday’s loss to Kansas State due to mononucleosis, a diagnosis that also caused him to sit out the Sooners’ loss to Oklahoma State two games ago.  Warren played in the loss at Colorado this past Wednesday, which struck us as odd, given the debilitating nature of mono and the fact that the older you are when you get it, the worse you usually feel.  If you’ve never had it, it causes flu-like symptoms but it absolutely drains you of energy.  What’s worse, in some cases it can cause enlargement of the spleen, an organ you don’t want to bust open, which is why kids and adolescents with mono are told to stay away from contact sports/ballet/wrestling with siblings/etc until further notice — usually at least a month.  You can also still spread it (through saliva) anywhere from six to 18 months after having it, and even though most people recover to full strength, the only treatments are the tinctures of time and rest.  The Sooners aren’t going dancing this year, and Warren’s health comes first, so we couldn’t blame the OU program if official word soon came down that Warren was going to miss the rest of the year.  Mononucleosis is no picnic, despite the fact that it gets glossed over quite frequently, so we hope Warren is back to his old self soon.

1. From the we’re completely shocked department, Oklahoma players Steven Pledger and Andrew Fitzgerald were suspended from the team prior to the Sooners’ game with Texas Tech last night.  Was there poetic justice?  Absolutely, as Oklahoma lost by a single point.  Do you think that just maybe those two players could have been worth a single bucket in tonight’s game?  Great decision, fellas.
2. If you guys haven’t been there already, you should try out a site called Lost Lettermen, which tracks old players of all sorts from over the years.  In recent weeks, they’ve tracked down former college stars John Gilchrist, Michael Doleac, Drew Neitzel, even Harold Freakin’ Miner.  Our favorite, though?  The whereabouts of the members of the 1985 national champion Villanova Wildcats.
3. With news today that he had secretly videotaped sixteen tv personalities and celebrities, the Erin Andrews stalker has now officially moved from a misguided idiot to a total creepster.  Twenty-seven months in prison seems like a gift.
4. Three words:  Felony.  Snowball.  Throwing.  JMU guard Ryan Knight (and accomplice Charles Gill) made Pledger and Fitzgerald (ab0ve) look like brainiacs with their decision to throw snowballs at a plow and inside an unmarked police vehicle last weekend.   The last part of that statement is what really interests us.  Who hasn’t thrown a wayward bomb or two at a passing car or plow in their lives?   But to start unloading on people getting out of the car that comes to aid the plow?  You gotta have a better escape plan, fellas!
5. Your must-read of the day is George Dorhmann’s piece on CNNSI that meticulously gets to the bottom of the self-imposed sanctions that Arizona put itself on late last week as a result of Lute Olson’s illegal letter to boosters in 2008.  The fact that there was so much gray-area rule-skirting going on at the Cactus Classic involving such prominent names as Josh Pastner, Mike Dunlap and Miles Simon (all tangentially related to this) suggests considerably more culpability than Arizona brass suggests with their ‘crazy old man’ theory.

Before I get started, I want to reiterate our stance against the scumbags who surreptitiously videotaped Erin Andrews in the clips that apparently came out almost 4 months ago and somehow remained unknown before exploding on the Internet one week ago. . .

As you may know by now the past week has been a particularly trying one for the sports media overlords in Bristol as they have been hit by the aforementioned peephole video scandal, which their own sister network claims might have been an inside job [Ed. Note: Can ESPN sue its parent company?],  and the Ben Roethlisberger fiasco where they waited several days to announce the news that one of the most recognizable athletes in America had a sexual assault charge filed against him. Perhaps the most interesting story out of Bristol this week was that ESPN had decided to blacklist all New York Post staff members from appearing on any ESPN or any of their outlets after the Post ran screencaps of the infamous videos that left little to the imagination. On a basic visceral level, most people would agree to ESPN’s decision as they would  be disgusted by the decision of the Post brain trust to run the screencaps.

The situation becomes a little more dicey when 2 other major media outlets (CBS and FOX News) decided to show the actual clips on their news broadcasts. If the front office people at ESPN actually had a policy or stance regarding the use of these illegally filmed clips, they should have taken a similar stance against CBS and FOX staff members. This raises an interesting question: Why did ESPN single out the New York Post? While some may argue that it was the way the Post utilized the images, we find that rather hard to believe. Although CBS and FOX were not as sensational in their presentation of the clips as the Post was they are in fact doing the same thing–using the illegal footage to try and further their story. For our money, there is a simple answer as to why ESPN singled out the Post staff members for their blacklist–because they can.

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Hey, we love Erin Andrews as much as any other red-blooded American sports blogger, and we hold a particularly special place for Ms. Andrews considering she earned her national rep as an ESPN sideline reporter for college sports, most notably football and our beloved game.  But the news that broke last night that some  surly troglodyte filmed her getting dressed in a hotel room through a peephole in the door is reprehensible, unconscionable and utterly criminal.  There is absolutely no excuse for this kind of behavior, and RTC hopes that if we ever have the chance to encounter Andrews in the future at any college basketball games or events, we’ll be able to personally tell her that not all blogs are equally willing to go down that road.  Our hope is that the feds get involved and quickly nail whoever subjected Andrews to such a blatant and sick invasion of her privacy.

In typical Dan Patrick fashion, he spent part of his show yesterday talking to SI swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker. I guess he has a good thing going. Why talk about sports to people who actually follow them for their career when you can talk to gorgeous women and occasionally get your picture taken with them (see below) even if you end up having to go home to your wife and children?

During his interview yesterday, which I’m sure that SI wanted to promote the Swimsuit Issue even though it came out over a month ago, Patrick did the usual stuff about trying to get Decker to compare supermodels to the top 4 seeds. Her list:

• Gisele Bundchen = UNC
• Adriana Lima = Pittsburgh
• Marisa Miller = UConn (without all the text messages)
• Natalia Vodianova = Louisville (lack of respect for #1 overall–I don’t even know who she is)

Being modest, Decker compared herself to Gonzaga, a school that is up there but has a way to go to catch the #1 seeds. The most interesting thing for us (other than the fact that she has a “crush” on Gisele–Tom Brady and Andy Roddick need to make this happen) is that she would like to become the Ashley Judd of UNC (albeit without actually going to school there).

With Kentucky rapidly descending into mediocrity (at least until they make another big-name hire) and Ashley Judd getting a little older does this mean college basketball could have a new #1 fan and Rick Majerus could find someone new to save him a little money on the hotel bill? All we have to say is that the ball is in Dick Baddour‘s court and this might give SI a new idea for next year’s bodypainting issue even if sales in Durham, NC would plummet.

IT’S. FINALLY. HERE.

If there’s one thing in life you can count on, it’s that every spring the Taxman will ask for his pittance and the NCAA Tournament will have you screaming at the top of your lungs with excitement. There is no more compelling annual event in all of sports. Every year, schools you’ve never heard of take on the ones you’re sick of hearing about and, for just a moment, a mere sliver of time, they stand as equals, where how well you play the game is all that matters. No computers, no RPIs, no BCS, no BS… just an orange ball and five players a side battling for the same goal – to survive and advance. This is why we’re all here. Let’s tip it off…

If you’re just now managing to get caught up to the fact that the Tournament starts today, get a life make your way over to the RTC 2009 Tournament Portal, which has all the information you’d ever want on the games and to watch for. Game previews, team previews, columns, etc. It’s all there.

Mike Lemaire will start the madness with the first group of games at the Noon hour, beginning with two difficult-to-read 8/9 games. Nvr1983 will be back in his usual spot in the cockpit for the second block of games at 2pm. Schedule below (all times EDT):

Noon Block

12:20 pm – #8 LSU vs. #9 Butler
12:25 pm – #2 Memphis vs. #15 Cal St. Northridge
12:30 pm – #8 BYU vs. #9 Texas A&M – RTC Live is there!

2 pm Block

2:30 pm – #5 Purdue vs. #12 Northern Iowa
2:50 pm – #1 UNC vs. #16 Radford
2:55 pm – #7 California vs. #10 Maryland
3:00 pm – #1 Connecticut vs. #16 Chattanooga

Bridge Game

4:55 pm – #4 Washington vs. #13 Mississippi St.

7pm Block

7:10 pm – #7 Texas vs. #10 Minnesota
7:10 pm – #7 Clemson vs. #10 Michigan
7:20 pm – #3 Villanova vs. #14 American
7:25 pm – #4 Gonzaga vs. #13 Akron

9pm Block

9:40 pm – #2 Duke vs. #15 Binghamton
9:40 pm – #2 Oklahoma vs. #15 Morgan St.
9:50 pm – #6 UCLA vs. #11 VCU
9:55 pm – #5 Illinois vs. #12 W. Kentucky

Let’s get it started….

12:07 pm. Hey All, its your faithful RTC intern here, and this will be my first attempt at Boom Goes the Dynamite. I may have technical troubles so bear with me, but I am diligent, and I will be watching all the games starting with Butler and LSU.

12:10 pm. Questionable music selection, but if you aren’t excited by CBS’ tournament memory montage, then there is something wrong with you. Quick update on point guards Ty Lawson and Chester Frazier: Neither player is 100% healthy, but I seriously doubt those two guys will miss a game, they are just too competitive.

12:22 pm. The tip is up and we are under way. Quick start for LSU and Bo Spencer as the Tigers are up 9-0 zip already and Spencer hit a three, then stole the ball and made a layup. Good timeout by Butler coach Brad Stevens, the last thing he wants is for LSU to take off.

12:30 pm. Since the early flurry by LSU both teams have settled in 11-3. It looks like the Bulldogs will have a tough time on the glass. Matt Howard is going to need to play a huge game if they want to win. In other news, Cal. State Northridge has an early 7-2 lead on Memphis…..upset anyone?

12:35 pm. Quick tangent, I know this Tournament is an advertising bonanza, but do the commerical breaks seem longer than usual or is it just me? Its been 13 minutes since the start of the game and they have played less than four minutes of basketball.

12:38 pm. The Bulldogs don’t have anyone that can match-up with LSU’s Tasmin Mitchell, especially now that Matt Howard is out with two quick fouls. It just seems as if LSU is more physical right now. Score checks: 14-6 LSU, 11-11 CSU v. Memphis, and 11-5 TXAM.

12:43 pm. Important things to know from the first few minutes. Matt Howard has two fouls, so do Robert Dozier and Tyreke Evans of Memphis. Texas A&M has come out on fire and is up 18-7 early on BYU.

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Welcome back to the weekend edition of Boom Goes the Dynamite. First off I’d like to commend rtmsf for his strong work on yesterday’s BGtD. You guys really have no idea how exhausting it is doing a full day’s worth of this is and he managed to do it with only a short break although it almost caused me to give up working on the site after being forced to endure the American–Holy Cross game yesterday. As he outlined in his After the Buzzer post last night/this morning, there are 12 conference championship games today. For the sake of maintaining our sanity and having enough energy in the tank for our huge March Madness preview, we’ll be taking multiple shifts but we promise to coordinate it so you won’t miss anything during our handoffs.

6:00 AM: Yes. That’s actually the time I’m starting this thanks to a “short nap” that ended up going from 9 PM to 5 AM. Obviously my posts will be infrequent in the early morning hours, but I’ll be passing along some news and links to you before the games start at 11 AM. The New York Times has been stepping it up with their college sports blog “The Quad” recently and has an interesting post on Louisville‘s Terrence Williams and his pre-game ritual of the giving himself a pep talk during the national anthem. Before anybody thinks this might be a Chris Jackson Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf situation, it should be noted that Williams actually stands during the anthem and is supposedly talking about family members that he has lost and asking that everyone on the court avoids injuries. Of course, we can’t verify this, but if we have any lip-readers in our vast legion of RTC readers, we would love hear your take on this particularly if you have seen this is in person.

7:00 AM: Before I head out for a few minutes to take care of some errands like stocking up on groceries for the coming storm where I probably won’t leave my apartment for 3 weeks. I thought I would pass along one of my favorite things we are doing at RTC right now. We enlisted the help of our correspondents and got them to send us their favorite March memories. We narrowed down the submissions to the 16 best entries and are counting down to #1, which will be revealed on Wednesday (the day before the tournament starts). I’d encourage you to check out the entries we have so far and keep on coming back throughout the day to see what they selected as their favorite March memories and then chime in with your memories on those moments.

8:45 AM: Ok. False alarm on that grocery run. Apparently Costco doesn’t open until 9:30 so after this post I’ll be on a short break. So today’s RTC East breakfast is brought to you by Flour Bakery and consists of their Bobby Flay-slaying “Sticky Buns” and a twice-baked brioche. Here’s a quick run-down of the games (title game in red–there’s a lot of red) that I will be focusing on today:

Early Games

• UMBC vs. Binghamton at 11 AM on ESPN2 for the America East title
• Memphis vs. #3 Tulsa at 11:35 AM on CBS for the Conference USA title

Afternoon Games

• Mississippi State vs. #16 LSU at 1 PM on ESPN2 and Raycom in the SEC semifinals
• #6 Michigan State vs. Ohio State at 1:30 PM on CBS in the Big 10 semifinals
• #1 UNC vs. #22 FSU at 1:30 PM on ESPN and Raycom in the ACC semifinals
• Tennessee vs. Auburn at 3 PM on ESPN2 and Raycom in the SEC semifinals
• Maryland vs. #8 Duke at 3:30 PM on ESPN and Raycom in the ACC semifinals
• #25 Illinois vs. #24 Purdue at 4 PM on CBS in the Big 10 semifinals

Evening Games

• #23 Arizona State vs. USC at 6 PM on CBS for the Pac-10 title
• Baylor vs. #15 Missouri at 6 PM on ESPN for the Big 12 title
• Temple vs. Duquesne at 6 PM on ESPN2 for the Atlantic 10 title

Late Night Games

• San Diego State vs. Utah at 7 PM on Versus for the Moutain West title
• Morgan State vs. Norfolk State at 7 PM on ESPNU for the MEAC title (Periodic score updates for this one)
  
• Buffalo vs. Akron at 8 PM on ESPN2 for the MAC title
• #5 Louisville vs. #20 Syracuse at 9 PM on ESPN for the Big East title
• Jackson State vs. Alabama State at 9 PM on ESPNU for the SWAC title (Periodic score updates for this one)
• Utah State vs. Nevada at 10 PM on ESPN2 for the WAC title
• Cal State-Northridge vs. Pacific at 11:59 PM on ESPN2 for the Big West title (This one is questionable)

10:55 AM: Ok. I’m back from my extended Costco run and have enough food to last me through the week. A quick summary on the early games. In the America East, Binghamton is a 5-6 point favorite (depending on your gambling establishment of choice). Honestly, I’m surprised that they aren’t bigger favorites since they come in at 22-8 while UMBC comes in 15-16 and the game is at Binghamton. It could be interesting though as they split the season series in the regular season with Binghamton winning the last game of the regular season at home against UMBC 71-51. I’m guessing the America East commissioner is rooting for UMBC to avoid the embarrassment of the CBS announcers having to explain why the conference’s regular season leading scorer (D.J Rivera) was left off the all-conference team. In Conference USA, Memphis is a 14-point favorite against Tulsa. Memphis might be playing for a #1 seed even with their ridiculously easy schedule. We’re hoping this game is more like the first time they met (a 55-54 Memphis win) rather the last time they met (a 63-37 Memphis win). I have a sneaking suspicion that it is going to be more like the latter, but we’ll be following it anyways to get a last look at Memphis before CBS’s new Billy Packer rips the NCAA selection committee for putting them over a Big East team.

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We are finally here. Today is the last day of the college basketball regular season. What’s that? St. Mary’s didn’t get the memo? Ok, after today 99.99999% of the programs will be done with the regular season. After we attempted to write the college basketball version of War and Peace for yesterday’s Boom Goes the Dynamite, we get a little break as there aren’t quite as many high quality games today, but the ones that we do have look like they will be pretty entertaining. Here are the games that we will be following today:

• Noon: #20 Purdue at #8 Michigan State on CBS
• 2 PM: Virginia Tech at #24 FSU on Raycom, ESPN Full Court, and ESPN360.com
• 2:05 PM: Illinois State vs. Northern Iowa on CBS
• 3 PM: Old Dominion vs. Virginia Commonwealth on Comcast, ESPN Full Court, and ESPN360.com
• 4 PM: #7 Duke at #2 UNC on CBS
• 5 PM: Northwestern at Ohio State on The Big Ten Network
• 6 PM: #19 Clemson at #10 Wake Forest on FSN
• 6 PM: College of Charleston vs. Davidson on SportsSouth and ESPN360.com

There are a couple of big story lines here. Outside of the obvious ones happening in Chapel Hill (Tyler Hansbrough‘s last game in the Dean Dome, UNC’s quest for a #1 seed, Duke’s last gasp effort for a #1 seed, and all the injuries including the under-reported–not by RTC–injury to Ty Lawson), we’ll be looking in on East Lansing where the Spartans will be looking to solify a #2 seed (forget all the talk about them getting a #1–not happening), Saint Louis where the Missouri Valley will award a ticket to the NCAA tournament, and Chattanooga where Stephen Curry and his Davidson teammates will be battling for their NCAA tournament lives as they will not get in if they don’t win their conference tournament.

There are also some great games out in Las Vegas for the West Coast Conference tournament with Gonzaga vs. Santa Clara, which will be featured as our RTC Live event, that will be followed by Saint Mary’s vs. Portland (aka “The Return of Patty Mills“). Unfortunately, that’s past my bedtime on the East Coast (tips at 9:30 and 11:30 PM ET respectively) although if you’re really nice you might be able to talk rtmsf into staying up late for you since he’s on the West Coast.

11:30 AM: It looks like we only have 2 games (Purdue-Michigan State and Alabama–Tennessee) worthy watching in the noon time slot. Unfortunately, they’re both on CBS so most of the nation will only be able to follow one on television. Luckily, I’m getting the better of the two games (Purdue-Michigan State), but I will be following the game in Knoxville on GameCast as well. If any of you are in Tennessee or Alabama, feel free to send in your thoughts in the comment section so the rest of us will know what’s going on in the game beyond the box score.

While we’re waiting, I wanted to pass along a photo I found on Deadspin this morning featuring Erin Andrews, who found something in Freedom Hall a little disturbing (probably Rick Pitino‘s yelling).

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