Happy Earth Day everyone. 

• Mississippi St.’s Jamont Gordon announced today that he will be testing the waters of the NBA Draft. 
• ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski has an opinion about the spate of 1-and-dones from the last two seasons – i.e., they suck!
• In the wake of Travis Ford’s departure to Oklahoma St., former Minuteman and current Memphis assistant coach Derek Kellogg will take over as the head man at UMass. 
• Draft Express used its contacts to get the lowdown on what several of the marquee names still on the fence about the draft.  For a more exhaustive list of all draft-eligibles, see Chad Ford’s. 

I provided my instant (revised) analysis very early this morning and rtmsf will be providing his a little later today. I thought I would provide you with some of the thoughts of various other sportswriters.

–At the Alamo, this was one to remember: Bob Ryan, who most of you may know from his frequent appearances on ESPN, offers his thoughts on the game and the Kansas team, which may get lost in all the talk about missed FTs and Chalmers huge shot.

–It takes more than talent: Stewart Mandel on one of the biggest title game collapses ever.

–The Shot Heard ‘Round the World: RTC’s most well-known fan (and SI writer/CBS college basketball studio analyst) Seth Davis provides a short Q&A in between the game and his early-morning wakeup call to be on Mike & Mike.

–Chalmers, Kansas get One Shining Moment: Pat Forde on the defining moment of the tournament (with apologies to the Davidson fans).

–Calipari: We let national title ‘slip out of our hands’: Andy Katz with one of the million columns on how Memphis let the title slip away.

–Chalmers’s Effort on Both Ends Keys Jayhawks’ Win: Camille Powell credits Mario Chalmers’s play on both ends for the title, which most writers missed because everybody has focused so much on his 3 with 2.1 secs left.

–Plenty of Twists, One Final Turn: John Feinstein, author of the famous “Season on the Brink”, offers his perspective on the title game.

–Without Collins, there are no Chalmers heroics: Dana O’Neil credits Sherron Collins with keying the Jayhawks’ win on Monday night.

–Self should ignore the dollars and stay at Kansas: Gene Wojciechowski implores Bill Self not to leave Kansas for Oklahoma State and Boone Pickens’s money.

–Sharp Defense Gives Jayhawks Edge in Matchup of Top Guards: Joe LaPointe argues that it was defense that led Kansas to victory. We agree although the missed Memphis FTs didn’t hurt. . .

–A Dominant Half by Rose Falls Short by One Shot: Thayer Evans breaks down Derrick Rose’s performance that was one shot (either Chalmers’s 3 or a made FT by either Rose or Chris Douglas-Roberts) away from being named MOP.

– Mario’s Miracle: Kansas Is The Champ: Luke Winn breaks down the Jayhawks’ comeback/Tigers’ collapse and Chalmers’s huge shot.

– Rock Chalk, Champions: Grant Wahl offers his extensive analysis of the Jayhawks victory. This is probably the most thorough piece we have seen on the championship game so far.

– What is the Best Shot in NCAA Tournament History?: SI’s Andy Gray offers his take on the top 5 shots in NCAA tournament history. We’d be interested to hear where you think Chalmers’s shot ranks.

– NCAA Championship Grades: It seems fitting to end our link post with title game grades (courtesy of Bill Trocchi) for the student-athletes.

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.