Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Oh, Wolf, how I'll miss your calls...

By Brendan Loy

With no primaries or caucuses until April 22, tonight presented the last opportunity for the next six weeks to see Wolf Blitzer "call" a state -- complete with his typical pattern of stammering, stalling and repeating himself, as well as his gratuitous overuse of the word "now," his self-referential commentary, his time-wasting restatements of obvious facts (Democratic primaries are proportional, superdelegates are party leaders, etc.), and his "questions" to CNN's other correspondents and analysts that aren't actually questions at all, but are in fact declarative sentences that again repeat facts that Blitzer has already reported two or three times. Wolfie, you're doing a heckuva job!

Nobody wastes as much time listening to himself talk -- while reporting "breaking news" -- as Wolf Blitzer. And oh, I do love it so.

By the way, with 77 percent of the precincts reporting, Obama leads 58% to 40%. And exit polls find that nearly half of the voters said she isn't honest and trustworthy. These are Democrats, remember.

Daily Trojan staffers to "grill" Bill Clinton

By Brendan Loy

USC Daily Trojan staffers will get to ask Bill Clinton questions as part of a mtvU series designed to "take some of the top college reporters from across the country and have them grill key policy makers and influencers." The forum will be taped on Sunday, and "highlights" will be posted on mtvU.com Sunday evening, followed by a full broadcast on March 26 at noon. The other college newspapers participating are the Howard Hilltop, Smith Sophian and Tulane Hullabaloo. More info here and here.

Blogger Alex Weprin writes, "The hope is that in selecting top college journos, the forums will be serious, substantive talks, and not gossip," so "I wouldn’t expect too many 'boxers or briefs' questions here."

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

CNN projects that Sen. Barack Obama will win the Mississippi Democratic primary.

Brey, Harangody win Big East honors

By Brendan Loy

Luke Harangody, as expected, is the Big East Player of the Year -- and Mike Brey is the conference's Coach of the Year for the second straight season. (Hat tip: JohnMac.)

Brey was apparently unsatisfied by the crow I ate last year, and decided to continue coaching like a champion, thus making me look like even more of an idiot for my endlessly repeated demands back in 2005, 2006 and 2007 that he be fired. :)

Seriously: Great job, Coach Brey! Fire Brendan Loy! Go Irish!

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Correction: Exit polls show Obama leading Clinton in Mississippi. CNN has not projected this race.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Barack Obama wins the Mississippi Democratic primary, CNN projects.

The perfect Billy Packer storm?

By Brendan Loy

It occurs to me that bubble-related events may be conspiring to produce a Billy Packer Eruption on Selection Sunday that will make his 2006 explosion look like a walk in the park.

Think about it: with San Diego's win and South Alabama's loss yesterday, it looks very likely that the West Coast Conference will get three teams in the NCAA Tournament, and the Sun Belt Conference will get two. Meanwhile, several huge "name" programs from Packer's favorite conferences are in precarious positions: Syracuse could be left out (again!) if it beats Villanova but loses to Georgetown; Ohio State is probably out unless it beats Michigan State in the Big Ten quarters; Maryland could very well advance to the ACC semifinals, maybe even the final, and still be left home; Florida is in much the same boat as Maryland in the SEC. Heck, even Arizona, which played the #1 schedule in the country, could be in trouble if it loses badly to Washington State Stanford in the Pac-10 quarters, or, heaven forbid, loses to Oregon State in the first round tomorrow.

Imagine Packer's blubbering outrage if two or three of those teams just barely miss the tournament, while the WCC gets three bids and the Sun Belt gets two. OH, THE HUMANITY!!! It would truly be a sight to behold.

LSU contacts USC coach Tim Floyd

By Brendan Loy

Not content with pissing all over USC's football championships, now LSU wants to steal our basketball coach. :P

Floyd responded with a non-denial denial. I'm sure Les Miles will be rushing to the microphone any minute to castigate the media for reporting on such rumors when Floyd is busy trying to focus on winning a Pac-10 and NCAA championship. ;)

(Hat tip: Jay.)

Mississippi predictions?

By Brendan Loy

Polls close in Mississippi at 7:00 PM tonight. Anyone care to hazard a guess as to the candidates' percentage totals?

And, as a bonus, at what date and time will Eliot Spitzer resign?

Unwatchable Zags

By Brendan Loy

La Rev on last night's Gonzaga-San Diego game:

I think it's safe to say that the Virginia game last season was probably the only time the Mark Few Zags have ever been as completely unwatchable as they were last night. They were pathetic, and I don't care to ever talk about it again.

Gonzaga has had an unfortunate habit of not bringing its "A" game to the WCC tourney in recent years. They've barely skated by several times, but last night, it finally caught up with them. Hopefully they find their "A" game sometime between now and next Thursday/Friday.

La Rev also predicts St. Mary's will be snubbed by the selection committee. "Nothing the Committee has ever done dictates that they'll let three WCC teams in," he says. "Every year there's got to be a snub that all the media-types get all huffy-puffy about for the TV audience, and this year, I think it's going to be Saint Mary's."

Lunardi has St. Mary's as a #9 seed, safely away from the bubble. So if they aren't picked, it will indeed be quite a kerfuffle -- particularly since the only plausible explanation for such a snub would be the three-WCC-bids thing, which would blatantly contradict what the committee always says about how it "doesn't look at conferences."

Lunardi: Syracuse, ASU bubbles burst

By Brendan Loy

Joe Lunardi's updated Bracketology page is out. He thinks South Alabama is still in, but drops them from a #9 seed to a #11 seed, just barely avoiding the "last four in" list. (The seed implies that they're one of the "last seven in.") Yesterday's bubble-bursting wins by MTSU (over USA) and San Diego (over Gonzaga) ousted Syracuse and Arizona State from the field, according to Lunardi.

Of course, the Orange and Sun Devils can still play their way in. ASU probably just needs to beat USC (which raises the intriguing question of who Becky roots for, under the circumstances), while Syracuse may need to defeat both Villanova and Georgetown. In potentially deeper trouble are the bubble teams whose seasons are finished, like Illinois State, which has dropped into dangerous territory as one of the "last four in" (and also a #11 seed), and VCU, which Lunardi has now dropped to the bottom spot on the "last four out" list.

Tennessee: center of the basketball world

By Brendan Loy

With the state of Tennessee having such a great basketball year, I've been wondering how we stack up against other states in terms of our number of NCAA Tournament teams. Now, thanks to this nifty Wikipedia map, I have the answer.

If Middle Tennessee State knocks off Western Kentucky tonight in the Sun Belt title game, Tennessee will have six teams in the NCAA Tournament -- meaning exactly half of its 12 Division I schools would be dancing. (MTSU would join at-large locks Memphis, UT and Vanderbilt, and automatic bid winners Belmont and Austin Peay.) If that happens, Tennessee would probably finish tied with California for the largest number of teams in the Big Dance, and would either tie Indiana or finish first all by itself for the percentage of its Division I teams going dancing (among states with at least five Division I teams).

Wanted: basketball pool logos!

By Brendan Loy

All right, artsy readers, it's time for another Irish Trojan design contest.

My 13th annual men's basketball and 11th annual women's basketball pools will be starting up on Sunday, and once again, I need a logo. Two years ago, Marel Nasinnyk won the design contest, while last year, I skipped the contest process and simply commissioned Tom Greca to create the logos, in Halliburton no-bid-contract-like fashion. :) This year, I'm going back to the open contest model.

[Details after the jump. This post will stay on top of the homepage for a while. New posts will appear below.]

The New York papers on Spitzer

By Brendan Loy

(Via the Newseum. More after the jump... including a few New Jersey and Connecticut papers thrown in for good measure.)

Space Shuttle blasts off

By Brendan Loy

The Space Shuttle Endeavour's wee-hours launch was a success. Endeavour is scheduled for the longest Shuttle mission ever, 16 days. I hope the crew members aren't hoops fans! They're going to miss Selection Sunday and the always-exciting opening weekend of the tourney! :)

Anyway, the Shuttle is scheduled to dock with the ISS late tomorrow night, and undock on Monday the 24th at 7:55 PM EDT. There will be an excellent viewing opportunity here in Knoxville about 24 hours after the time of scheduled undocking, so hopefully everything stays on schedule this time.