Daily Tourney Talk (Wednesday)

this will be updated throughout the day...

This rumor has legs??? Steve Alford to New Mexico? Neither team is playing in the post-season, so they are not constraited as far as making future/forward-moving decisions...

Mascot Wars: Two similarly-sounding nicknames are facing off tomorrow, Louisville Cardinals (the birds) vs Stanford Cardinal (the tree).

This may affect your brackets: Arizona's defensive minded reserve guard Daniel Dillon is suspended for the Purdue game after a DUI arrest. This will be a factor if Arizona needs a defensive stopper off the bench.

You can watch all the NCAA games online for free at MMOD (March Madness OnDemand

What to watch and when? Let Gary Parrish be your Bracket Tour Guide as he recommends what games to watch and when

Rating the Bracketologists: Gary Parrish of CBS sports has a segment on how the different bracketologists and bracketology sites have faired after the NCAA tourney was announced. Ironically the most famous bracketologist, ESPN's Joe Lunardi (aka Joey Brackets) finished towards the bottom of the pack!

There is still plenty of time to fill up your multiple brackets! The cutoff time for most websites is just before the game tipoff tomorrow (Thursday noon ET/9am PT). Brackets are all over the place, CBS, ESPN, CSTV, Fox Sports, and just about any major website that covers sports! You could win fabulous prizes if you get them right. And if you use my picks, please don't forget to send me a gift too :-)

You can watch NIT games on the ESPN family of networks, but you can also watch some NIT games online via XOS Live Streaming! (I do not know if it is free to watch them online). Details and schedule at the official NIT page

Taco Bell has a clever publicity stunt - they want to make Thursday March 15 a National Hoops Holiday since a lot of people will be paying more attention to the NCAA tourney and less attention to their jobs. They even managed to include a letter to the Federal Reserve Chair. (It would be interesting to see what Alan Greenspan would have said had he been the Chair). This coincides with the March 19 introduction of their 99c Zesty Nachos. Their website is a messy Flash site so I can't link directly to the letter, but you can get to it from the main page by mousing over the "Our Company" button and clicking on "Latest News". Thanks to blog reader EP for the tip!

Press Conference Highlights

From what I have seen so far, surprisingly no one (other than Bob Knight) has said anything exciting or out of the blue. The coaches seem to have been ...coached well so as to say the right things and avoid anything controversial.

Bob Knight: Ideally he wants a tourney of the 32 best teams chosen in some way without any automatic bids given... No issues with expansion in the current format since it would only add one more game (128-team pool)... He wants former coaches on the selection cmte such as Dean Smith, John Thompson, Gerald Meyers instead of "amateurs"... He wants Gary Waters to be a "permanent chair of the cmte" because he is both a basketball mind and a smart guy... Knight declined to answer the question "would your team be one of the best 32" in typical gentle Bob Knight fashion ;-)

Pitino on playing at Rupp Arena: "It's all about the teams and execution, not the fans"... "my 87 Providence team beat UAB on its home cot" (cot = Pitino-speak for court)... On Palacios: "expecting some quality minutes"... On the one-year NBA limit: "I take the opposite view of Bob Knight", "I lost four of them without the rule plus guys like Rondo", "I have two of them now that are discovering they are not ready for the NBA" (presumably referring to Derrick Caracter and Earl Clark).

Doug Gottleib is sitting in the ESPN News studio analyzing games in between press conferences. A must for "Gott Hoops" fans.

March Madness Drinking Game: Every time Jim Nantz says "Billy" (referring to Billy Packer). And by drinking I mean drinking water, orange juice, green tea, milk, soy milk, or diet soda :-)

My attempt to fill up the brackets while trying to capture the randomness of NCAA single-elimination games is right here.

Right now and throughout the day, NCAA Regional Press Conferences on both ESPN News and CSTV!

AOL's Fanhouse editor appeared on ESPN's Cold Pizza and talked about some of the hottest topics on the blogosphrere: Joakim Noah (his dancing and his alleged video-interview to DimeMag saying "when I enter the NBA draft"), Psycho-T (Tyler Hansbrough), the bloggers waking up and figuring out all the BS Coach Dirty-K has been spewing, including an excellent column at JoeSportsFan.com

Quotes

Bob Ley on most of the Cinderella dreams in the NCAA tourney: "smashed by the gravity of reality's anvil".


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Pistol Pete's Homework Basketball videos are available as Amazon Unbox downloads for $10 each. You can also rent them for $4 each. These are not DVDs, they are online videos for downloading. Before buying make sure your computer system is compatible with the Unbox downloads and read the technical details and terms. They are:

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