Folks, we’re only five weeks from the first games… just sayin…

• Sixteen months after agreeing to return to Florida after about-facing on the Orlando Magic job, Billy Donovan finally signed his contract. 
• Fooling with the Thurs/Fri/Sat/Sun setup of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament because of gas prices is pure folly – surely the NCAA isn’t that stupid, is it?
• This is a pretty interesting NY Times article on how YouTube is changing the world of prospect identification and recruiting. 
• More foolishness involving the Gazelle Group – they’re apparently trying to move UMass to a different subregional in the CvC at the last minute.
• The difficulty of playing in the Big East, where 9 teams could be top-25 worthy this year.  Although Jameson at B/R makes a compelling argument that Georgetown is wildly overrated this year.
• Ok, so it turns out that the George Mason F4 rings on Ebay were stolen and will be returned to the rightful owner, Dr. Scherrens.  Nice investigative work by Chris Brooks over at B/R. 
• Gary Parrish continues with his ‘seedy underbelly’ offseason theme.
• So what you’re saying is that the SEC will get seven teams in the NCAA Tournament next year (and deserve four)?
• So who wants to bet on which coach will have the better 08-09 campaign – Marquette’s Buzz Williams or Indiana’s Tom Crean?

Man, we really hope that GMB‘s take on this is true, and this ring belongs to some administrative office schlep that wasn’t really a part of the greatest Cinderella story in a generation.  

So how much would you bid for a claim to history? 

Maybe some enterprising UConn fans could pool their trust funds to buy up all of these and erase all evidence of their epic E8 loss to George Mason from public consciousness. 

Ebay auctions are here and here.