Certainly, Duke is Duke...

This time the Butler didn’t do it! Itwas the little Devils from Duke that have once again climbed to the top of the Mountain, but it wasn’t without a lot of drama. It came down to the wire and down to the last 3.6 seconds and a Hail Mary half court shot that just rimmed out and was mere inches from rattling in and taking over the video of "The Shot" that CBS would play every March of Christian Laettner taking that in bound pass from Grant Hill in the 1992 NCAA Tournament vs Kentucky.

The National Championship game was one of the best finals that has been played in recent memory. Not only was it a close game but it was also a well played game. There was offence, defence and grit. If you look at the game from just a seedings point of view this was a mismatch but Butler came into the game with a win streak in the high 20’s and were the hottest team in the nation..Butler. The coach looked younger then half the players on his team, he makes a respectable $400,000 a year but put up vs Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski’s $4.4 Million there is a slight discrepancy. In that same light Duke spends $400k per player on the basketball team, Butler spends $400k for their entire team. I think coach may be in for a bit of a raise in the very near future. The good thing for Butler going as far as they did is all the good coaching vacancy’s are filled so they shouldn’t have to worry about loosing theirs...at least this season. I am guessing a 33 year old who just took a "Small" school to the finals would and will be in high demand.

Kyle Singler was the difference in the game offensively and it was the contributions that Zoubek gave as the big man in the middle for Duke that clogged things up and changed the game in Duke’s favour. What Butler has going for it is that they can return a majority of their team and if Hayward stays they may be even better next year. A scary thought even if the tournament expands to the proposed 96 teams next season.

I guess that there now has to be a question to the average fan: What will you remember the national title game for? Duke winning their 4th title or Butler losing?

Either way this was one of the best tournaments in recent memory. It is always great but this one seemed to be a bit of a topper. This is why it is the greatest self contained tournament/sporting event.

Shots From The Point

Mats Sundin says he has no regrets over his decision to play for the Vancouver Canucks and has yet to decide if he wants to return next year to play or not. He said that it wouldn’t be a money issue if he were to return to play.
Just like last year that money wasn’t an issue and then signed for a pro-rated $8+ million. He better make up his mind in a more timely fashion this year. It took a long time just to get close to game pace and game shape let alone be a serviceable player. Between him and Brett Favre, retirement questions have just become insufferable.

Greg Paulus is returning home to give football one final shot. Paulus will battle for QB job at Syracuse for the Orange. The former point guard for Duke is a former 2 sport star in High School.
Paulus is jeopardising advancing his career as an NFL QB by going to the ‘Cuse and not Michigan, where he was rumoured to go. Everyone knows that the Michigan pedigree for QB’s is legend....wait for it....ary!!!

MLB’s replay policy has taken down the first 2 home runs following a review. Adam LaRoche and Ross Gload both had home runs taken off the board.
"If I could have bet the day this started, I would have put a lot of money on myself to be the first," LaRoche said after the game.
I am all for getting the call right for Home Runs and have no problem with the replay system. I just don’t want to see them on ball/strikes or base calls for the same reason that the steroid issue matters more in baseball then football. It becomes a matter of purity, numbers and history. It is the human element that helps make the game great.

Former Dancing with the Stars contestant and one time decent football player has fox-trotted his way back to the Miami Dolphins. Jason Taylor is set to rejoin the Dolphins for 1 year, at $1.5 million, far less then his past salaries.
I guess Parcells believes that Taylor may actually want to play football again and not go Hollywood just yet and has brought him back to Miami. At his well reduced rate if he is a bust it will be easy to throw him back into the sea.

Road to the Sweet 16

Round 2 of the tournament is in mid swing and the first line up of games were just like the seedings would predict and that made for some games that were never close. The Villanova game for example falls in that category.it wasn’t until the 5pm games that things started to get interesting. The North Carolina Tar Heals had more then their hands full with LSU and may have been forced to use their star guard Lawson more then they would have wanted. I had that game streaming as I have UNC to will it all in my brackets and it is way to early for them to be upset and blow things up for me. The other game that I had streaming was MY Michigan Wolverines. Sure I knew that they were going to loose but as a true fan it is my duty to watch and cheer. They were right there for 3/4 of the game and offered a glimmer of hope for an upset. Unfortunately in the end they fell to the #2 seed Oklahoma. The 3rd game that I had up on the stream was Purdue-Washington..I had Washington in the bracket and that one was the true down to the wire game that screwed up my perfect West region that I had going...jerks.

While all this was going on I managed to have the Ottawa Senators-NY Islanders hockey game audio on and the Toronto Maple Leafs-Montreal Canadiens Game on the TV. Nice to have multi games available on a Saturday night!!

Lakers-Bulls and Vancouver-Coyotes game for the tv and the 12 seeded W. Kentucky-4 seeded Gonzaga and Duke-Texas streamed on the computer. Texas looked like they may have put themselves into a position to become an upset in the making but Duke being Duke managed to beat Texas and sent them home...more times then Leave it to Beaver, reruns. The Gonzaga game was more tournament like...wow that was a wild finish. It is crazy that some of these kids have the mental make-up to execute in some of the pressure situations that they are put into. W. Kentucky was clearly seeded wrong as they may have been one of the best #12 team I have seen in a long time.

Day 2- March Madness

After an excellent opening day to the NCAA Tournament one would figure that day 2 wouldn’t be able to equal or match the quality or excitement...thankfully that was not the case. Day 2 started the day with 2 edge-of-your-seat games. Tennessee-Oklahoma State and Utah State -Marquette. Both games were back and forth and it was all that The Score to do to keep up with each game flipping back and forth between the two during whistles and time outs. MADNESS!

The next round of games in the 2pm schedule also had its share of excitement. 16 seed East Tennessee State gave one heck of a performance vs 1 seed Pitt. No #16 has ever beaten a #1, that trend continued this time but very late in the game it look like it may be possible. Pitt survived a nice scare for sure. As for the upset game it was Dayton vs West Virginia. I know that there weren't too many people who saw Dayton taking this game, in any event it was a very exciting game.

It will be interesting to see if the 7pm games will offer up the same sort of excitement as the afternoon games, only time will tell.

As for the best event from day 1 was North Carolina’s Tyler Hansbrough's taking the ACC all time scoring lead. It is a great fit for the fact that not only did Tyler go to school, stay in school the full time, put up this amount of points and become one of, if not the greatest college player ever (whether that equates to NBA success remains a huge debate). Most importantly he took the record from not only a player from the Tar Heals biggest rivals from Duke but that player was none other then JJ Reddick. Reddick as I have suspected for many years was at Duke for like 8 years, It seemed like he would just never leave and that is why he was able to put up so many points. Reddick is like the Carlo Colaiacovo of college basketball, you know, the guy who was a top prospect for like 6 years.

Day 1 - Let The Madness Begin

Day 1 of March Madness is now in full force and many of the games have been played with just the late games left to be played. There was little in the way of major upsets so far. There were a couple of 7-10 games that went the way of the 10 seeds but none more impressive then those feisty boys from Ann Arbor. Yes that is right, my Michigan Wolverines managed to pull off the upset over Clemson in a tight hard fought game that Michigan managed just to hang on to win. 1 win in the first round shouldn’t make me that happy but for this Michigan team it is huge. I don’t expect them to win another in the tournament, and in fact I am just happy that they finally made it back. It has been 11 years since the Wolverines have even qualified for the big dance. Sure there may have been some NCAA discipline that may have prevented them for a few of those but now they are in. This is no Fab Five for sure but it is a start.I would have liked to see them in the classic yellow or white jerseys not the navy but maybe next game.

As for the rest of the day thus far, games were what we should expect, some blowouts from the #1-16 games and some very close games that went down to the wire.

I had the set up going- 1 game on the TV and used the March Madness on Demand to get 2 others streaming on the computer. It was a great set up and allowed me to stay on top of 3 games at the same time. Madness times call for Madness measures I guess. I did have to break that a bit and throw up the Senators-Canadiens game but had the Michigan game on the computer, so all was good.

I know all about the close games as I decided to play a few tickets on Proline even broke down some games and hedged my bets to cover myself and ensure even just a small payout and.....well lets just say... that needless 3 pointers late in a game that you are clearly going to loose helps NO ONE! Win by 6, tell that to the players, it is like that useless field goal in a football game. It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth, like kissing your sister (I know your sister, and that would not be a cause for celebration for sure). My great plan was crushed and that was some well wasted money. So outside of the 4 brackets that I filled out that is where my outside interest stops. I will watch the games for entertainment and the fun of the brackets but no more Proline. Apparently I have done something to anger the OLG (Ontario Lottery and Gaming).

Time now for the late games! OOHHH, look who we have up....Duke and as we all know “Certainly Duke is Duke. They're on TV more than Leave it to Beaver reruns” - Former Providence coach Pete Gillen