Those are my picks for Saturday. I’d like to go with George Mason, but… I think Florida combines an organized, multiple-option offense that’s difficult to defend, with disciplined, poised, play, and freakish athletes. I don’t think they’ve played a team yet with that kind of combination. Wichita State lacked the freakish athletes. UConn and Michigan State lacked the organized, disciplined play. UNC lacked experience, poise, and focus.
It wouldn’t shock me if Mason won, though… they are that good. I could envision them really slowing the game down, feeding the post, getting Noah and Horford in foul trouble and taking their chances with some big-balls plays down the stretch. That’s going to be hard to execute, though.
It’s not that I don’t think Mason is good, I just think Florida’s better. I feel bad about it… I do want them to win. I’ll be rooting for them. I just don’t think it’ll happen.
And by the way, it would be a real nice change of pace for a team to win a tournament, and then take the microphone and say, “Hey, no one thought we could do it, no one believed in us,” and have it not be complete horseshit. I don’t think that’s happened since the 2004 NBA Finals.
On the other side, I like LSU. And again, it’s not because I think there’s anything particularly wrong with UCLA, but LSU has just mowed through everyone, teams who play a variety of styles. They’re peaking at the right time, they’re getting good decision-making from their guards, and their post players are just buck nasty. I think they’re beating UCLA by 10 or more. I like LSU on Monday night, too.
You?


Jim Boeheim and a few other coaches have gone on record as saying that they’d like to see the NCAA tournament expand the field. The argument is that there are more teams now, and in fact, more good teams, which is something I agree with. I still don’t know that it makes it necessary to have more than 64 teams in a tournament to crown a national championship, but it’s true… the mid-majors have really closed the gap on the big guys. Now, I’m not sure if these proposals are designed to get more Hofstras into the tournament, or more Michigans… but it sounds nice in theory.
Sorta. New Vikings head coach Brad Childress had some things to say recently about Daunte Culpepper’s choice of off-season rehab locations. Childress wanted him to come to Minnesota and use the team facilities.
Kris Benson, seemingly normal guy, is probably standing in the middle of a muddy creek right now, thunder and lightning illuminating the sky behind him, dripping wet, arms stretched to the sky, rain pounding his face, tasting the sweet taste of freedom. Anna Benson, crazy whore,
Aaron Hill and Russ Adams, infielders for the Toronto Blue Jays, noticed that pitchers Roy Halladay was spending a lot of time with A.J. Burnett, his new training partner. So Hill and Adams had them a couple of t-shirts printed up with Burnett’s and Halladay’s pictures on them, and under the pictures were the words “Brokeback Mound.”
A bunch of old guys that I’d like to hang out with pulled off a pretty sweet little trick… in 1963, some guys were sitting around in a bar came up with the idea of founding a fake institution of higher learning. They called it “Maguire University” and they used it to hoodwink the NCAA into giving them free Final Four tickets.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if they did their investigation and came back and said, “Well, we just can’t find any evidence that Barry Bonds used steroids. Not a shred. The guy’s clean.”
These are pulled from