And another thing...

Instant replay?

Oh, come on. This can't happen, can it?

Just looked up at the TV screen, and I see that Ohio State has extinguished Georgetown 67-60 in one national semifinal. Florida and UCLA are early in their game.

This means we still have an excellent chance that for the second time in three months, a national championship game could come down to Florida and Ohio State. I don't have anything against either of these schools, but can you say "overexposed"?

I mean, I've seen more of Brutus Buckeye lately than I have the Geico cavemen. And if that goofy Gator in the turtleneck (Freddy? Floyd? Hey, I don't get paid to know this stuff) shows up on the nation's TV screens one more time, Anderson Cooper will sue for infringement of face time.

This won't do. I say it's time to petition the NCAA, which frankly doesn't have nearly enough legislation on its books to suit me. I say they need to add a new rule: No Gators and Buckeyes in any more national championship games until either 2020, or Woody comes back from the dead and goes all Charley Bauman on Urban Meyer's preppy little keister.

Works for me.

-- Ben Smith

Fusion redeems itself

Well, the third quarter is just about to say so long here at Memorial Coliseum, so I guess it's time to give props where props are due.

The Fort Wayne Fusion isn't the bastard offspring of Rinky and Dink after all.

Gotta hand it to them, they pulled off their inaugural game in style, and not just because -- as the third quarter runs out -- they're spanking Green Bay 22-7 and their mascot, a goggled cartoon character named Reactor, is mugging in front of the Green Bay coach. They didn't draw the 6,000 or so GM Mike McCaffrey was hoping for, but there's probably 4,000 in the house. The production has been slick and polished and carried off with panache.

And the stat crew just brought around not only third-quarter flash stats but defensive stats, with actual names to go with the numbers. So already they're miles ahead of that joke of an exhibition two weeks ago.

Wow, look at this. Cody Hodges just threw another touchdown pass. The boys can definitely play.

So can the franchise itself.

--- Ben Smith

I'd like to buy a vowel . . .

This just in from the NIT, aka the National Invitation Tournament, aka the All Them Others Open:

Apparently the NIT gets all the second-rate spellers, too.

In other words, Da Tournament gets Akeelah, and the NIT gets the Bea. In further other words, how do you spell "West Virginia," guys?

The NIT-wits who made up the champion Mountaineers' commemorative T-shirts spelled it "West Virgina."

(Please, hold the jokes. This is a family blog, except on those occasions when I'm watching replays of the Ball State-UNLV Sweet Sixteen game and Mike Spicer tries to pass the *%$#!! thing underneath again instead of taking the $!&*&#!! three, COME ON, YOU BLEEP, SHOOT THE BLEEPIN' ROCK . . . ).

Sorry. Where was I again?

Oh, yeah, "West Virgina," and, wow, what an embarrassing moment for the NIT. Yet another example of the decline of American higher education, I suppose. One more piece of evidence that the NIT is and always will be second rate.

I mean, you'd never see any of us who are either associated with or have covered Da Tournament spell Jokim Noa's name wrong. Or Greg Odin's either.

-- Ben Smith 

             

Peerless prognosticator

On the off, off, off chance my sister is reading this . . . this one's for her.

It's for all the times she's called me to help fill out her NCAA Tournament bracket, and I warn her -- in the strongest possible terms, no less -- that asking me to help fill out her bracket is like asking Max. And Max is her dog.

It's for all the times she has ignored my warning, taken my advice, and then cratered worse than the Sea of Tranquility. 

It's for all the times she then picks up the phone, dials my number and begins the conversation this way: "I thought you said . . ."

"I TOLD you not to listen to me," I always reply.

Well. Except for this year.

Alert readers (and come on, there's got to be a couple of you still awake out there) will note that the Final Four this weekend comprises Florida, Ohio State, UCLA and Georgetown. And if they're exceptionally alert, they'll realize that this sounds familiar because those are the four teams I picked in print in this newspaper at the beginning of the tournament (with, OK, Wisconsin as a hedge bet).

I picked the Gators to win it all. So we'll see.

In the meantime, your congratulations are most heartily accepted.

Not yours, though, Sis.

-- Ben Smith   

Selwyn Lymon stabbed

If you haven't caught this already, Purdue wide receiver and former Harding star Selwyn Lymon was stabbed in the chest outside a West Lafayette nightspot in the wee hours this morning.

Lymon arrived at St. Elizabeth Medical Center in West Lafayette at 2:45 a.m. with a stab wound to the upper chest and told medical workers he was attacked at a nightclub just off campus, according to the Associated Press. He is listed in critical but stable condition.

Police were called to Nick's Nightclub at 2:15 a.m. to break up a reported altercation in the parking lot, but it's unclear how or if Lymon was involved in the incident. The Journal Gazette's Stacy Clardie is on her way to West Lafayette as I write this, so check her Purdue blog and online and print editions of the JG for further updates.

Lymon started 12 games for the Boilers as a sophomore and caught 33 balls for 580 yards and three scores. Purdue is in the middle of spring practice; the obvious question is what Lymon was doing at a nightclub at 2:15 in the morning, all things considered.

The equally obvious answer is he's a 20-year-old college kid, and 20-year-old college kids are not always prone to the best of judgment.

Not, of course, that any of that remotely matters at the moment.

-- Ben Smith

Slow Dancin'

Is it just me, or has Da Tournament wrung itself dry a week early?

(That was a rhetorical question, by the way. Ninety percent of the time when I start a sentence "Is it just me . . .", it really is just me. I swear I spend more time by myself on islands than Robinson Crusoe).

Anyway . . .

I don't want to say the committee did us all a disservice by doing such a spot-on job of seeding this thing, but couldn't we have had at least one 5 beat one 12 like usual? Or seen, say, an 8 or 9 reach the Elite Eight?

Instead, we've got top seed Ohio State beating second seed Memphis to get to the Final Four, and second seed UCLA beating top seed Kansas to get to the Final Four. Today, No. 1 Florida is playing No. 3 Oregon and No.1 North Carolina is taking on No. 2 Georgetown for the other two slots -- and as I write this, sure enough, Florida's up 10 on Oregon in the second half.

Altogether now: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Sure makes it hard to stay awake when the only underdog in the Final Four so far is UCLA, which was only ranked No. 1 for half the winter. And it sure blows a hole in that whole rise-of-the-mid-majors deal when the only mid-majors to get past the first weekend -- Butler and Southern Illinois -- are imposter mid-majors, seeing how they both drew top five seeds.

The heavyweights might be exactly where they're supposed to be. But the only thing heavy about that are my eyelids.

-- Ben Smith

 

Kobe, Kobe, Kobe

Hey, I don't like Kobe Bryant all that much either. But the man's on a different astral plane right now.

If you don't follow NBA hoops (and who does until, oh, May or June), check this out: Last night he dropped 60 on the Memphis Grizzlies, hitting 20 of 37 from the floor, 3 of 7 from the arc and 17 of 18 from the stripe.

It was his third straight 50-plus game, putting him in some rather select company. Only Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan and Elgin Baylor had ever scored 50 or more points in three straight NBA games before Thursday.

Wilt, Elgin, MJ. Not much room at THAT table.

But, yeah, Kobe belongs there. He's not the league MVP -- that's Steve Nash, who proved it with his lights-out deal against the Mavs a week or so ago -- and I still think LeBron and D-Wade are his equal when they're right, but no one's more consistently unstoppable. Apparently you'd need an armored column to do it right now.

Kobe Bryant, best player in the world.

I guess I'll get used to it.

-- Ben Smith

Tubby clears out

This just in: Tubby Smith is bailing on Kentucky (presumably before they bail on him) to take the vacant Minnesota job, where he's expected to make a cool $1.8 million a year.

And so continues our annual round of coaching musical chairs, which today also includes the apparent defection of Steve Alford to New Mexico, another case of pre-emptive fleeing.

As for Tubby . . .

Well, he won a national title, averaged 26.3 wins a year and went to four Elite Eights in his decade in Lexington, impressive numbers everywhere but Lexington. This was, after all, Kentucky, not Western Kentucky. One FinaI Four with Rick Pitino's players and not much since wasn't going to cut it.

Fact is, as decent a man and good a coach as Tubby is, he wasn't good enough for UK. He couldn't recruit well enough to maintain one of the nation's premier programs in the manner to which it had grown accustomed, and so he's gone.

And you thought your job was a tough gig. 

-- Ben Smith

   

Debacle of Tomorrow?

First of all, a Topic Alert: I am about to write something about NASCAR.

(Blog law requires me to issue this warning. I am a gearhead. Occasionally I am going to write about gearhead stuff. If you are not a gearhead, or are allergic to references such as "trackbar," "lugnut" and "takin' the air off my dadgum spoiler," please exit this site now).

Now, then. On to the Car of Tomorrow.

If you don't know about this, it's NASCAR's attempt to legislate an entire vehicle -- which is to say, it's the vehicle all Nextel Cup drivers will be racing on a full-time basis next year. Designed with safety in mind, it's radically different from the standard Nextel Cup car: boxier, wider, longer, with a pronounced rear wing. Tony Stewart calls it "prehistoric," and he's not far off. Think Richard Petty's winged Dodge Charger, circa 1972 or so, and you've sort of got it.

Anyway, NASCAR's phasing it in slowly, which means it will use the COTs in 16 races this year. First up will be, of all places, Bristol, and the NASCAR boys couldn't have picked a worse track for the rollout if they'd tried. Which apparently they did.

I mean, Bristol's a knife fight in a closet even on the best of days. Now NASCAR's going to throw 43 largely untested cars out there -- no one's run a full 500 miles in one of these things -- and tell 43 drivers who are largely unfamiliar with them to go racin'. The people who have tested the COT to any extent say it handles like pure USDA pork, so lord knows what will happen when 43 of them get together on Bristol's mean little bullring half-mile.

The most pessimisstic observers expect wall to wall flying logos. Stewart told David Newton of ESPN.com he's hoping all 43 cars crash so that "we don't have to drive them anymore," but added they probably couldn't get that lucky.

I think I'll watch anyway.  If only to see if the Lowe's quarterpanel is more flightworthy than the Home Depot one.

-- Ben Smith                

Fire-dot-sale

Insecurity, thy name is Iowa. Or at least thee begin with the same letter.

Insecurity . . . arrogance .  . . there are a lot of words that describe the University of Iowa these days, none of them good, now that the school has taken it upon itself to try to silence fan displeasure. It's done this by (and, no, I'm not making this up) purchasing seven Internet sites specializing in negative chatter about football coach Kirk Ferentz, men's basketball coach Steve Alford, women's basketball coach Lisa Bluder and athletic director Gary Barta.

"We're simply attempting to protect an institutional staff member from today's environment," Rich Klatt, associate AD for external affairs, told Randy Peterson of the Des Moines Register.

Bull. They're simply attempting to stifle dissent is more like it.

I don't think I need to tell you how many kinds of wrong that is in a country that allegedly cherishes the free exchange of ideas, even if the idea is that Kirk Ferentz couldn't coach his way out of a paper bag. Or Steve Alford, for that matter.

Alford's been under fire for some time in Iowa City, and this week he interviewed for the vacant New Mexico head coach's job -- a move that smacks of a guy reaching for the parachute. But if the fans have been on him, that's their right. Alford's a public figure, after all. The target on the back comes with the job.

Now comes the University of Iowa, loftily deciding that's not so. Shame on it.

The whole thing makes me want to go out and start my own Web site, just on general principle. How's kankirk.com sound? Or alforDumping.com?

Buy away, Iowa. I got a million of 'em.

-- Ben Smith