Updating my earlier college basketball post… Villanova beat Bucknell rather easily, 79-60. As it turns out, the big upsets of the evening were in the Midwest: Indiana State over Indiana and Northern Iowa over Iowa.

Congrats to the winners… and also, major kudos to all three ranked teams for being willing to play their mid-major opponents on the road. It’s nice to see big-name programs willing to do that.

This reminds me of last week’s Seth Davis column, which I’ve been meaning to link to. Davis argues that the “mid-majors” are for real, and they’re here to stay:

Take a look around the country. Nevada is ranked No. 20 in this week’s AP poll. Bucknell, Northern Iowa and Hawaii are in the top tier of “others receiving votes.” Old Dominion, Creighton, Ohio U. and Utah State can play with anyone. And, lest we forget, Gonzaga, which is currently ranked sixth and looking like a Final Four team, plays not in a power league but in the West Coast Conference.

What does all this mean? I believe it means we are in a genuine Golden Age for mid-major schools. This is not a one-year phenomenon. It is a fundamental change in the national hoops landscape that has been a decade in the making — most notably since the NCAA reduced the scholarship limit per team from 15 in 1992 to 13 in 1994. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this. I’m telling you, anybody can beat anybody,” Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim says. “I guarantee you we didn’t play that badly against Bucknell. The so-called mid-majors have moved up and the top teams have dropped quite a bit. These [mid-major] teams are pretty good now, and there’s not just a few of them. There’s a bunch.”

Read the whole thing.

In other hoops news, #14 Michigan State beat #6 Boston College in a game that MSU grad Brian Foster called “a classic in the making.” It was BC’s first loss of the season… but somehow, “Six [clap clap] and one [clap clap]” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Twenty [clap clap] and one [clap clap].” :)

For our bio-oriented readers: CNN reports that a new species has been discovered on the island of Borneo. It is described as looking like a mix between a cat and a fox, and has been caught on camera twice. It would be the first carnivorous mammal to be discovered on the island for over a century.

However, it may be endangered before ever being seen by a human: a plan for the world’s largest palm oil plantation would result in the clearing of a huge swath of rainforest. The project, backed by the China Development Bank, “is expected to cover an area of 1.8 million hectares, equivalent to about half the size of The Netherlands.”

Wow. Wiping out a rainforest to make a plantation that can be seen from space is Not Good, IMO. How much palm oil does the world really need?

Posted by Brian (Briandot)

Following up on my previous post… it’s squeaky-close (though not quite Florida-close or King County-close) in the cheerleader voting between the not-all-that-attractive Kelly Dupree of Kentucky and the totally-way-cute Lara Benninger of West Virginia. At this hour, Kelly inexplicably leads, 39,173 to 38,507. (Even more inexplicable is the poor showing of hottest-girl-in-the-finals Megan Martz of Indiana, who has just 6,157 votes. I suspect anti-Hoosier bias!)

Anyway… Save America! Vote for Lara!

P.S. Back in Round 2, WVU’s Lara just barely defeated IU’s Megan in a result that was Florida-close: 90,797 to 90,764. (That’s a .018% margin!) So what happened? Where did all of Megan’s fans go?

Tonight in college hoops action, #4 Villanova (4-0) will try to build on the momentum of its big win over then-#5 Oklahoma, while unranked Bucknell (5-0) will try to earn its first-ever Top 25 ranking by pulling yet another colossal upset. You may recall that the Bison, as a #14 seed in last year’s NCAA Tournament, stunned #3-seeded Kansas, just as I predicted. Then, last month, in a game that was somewhat overshadowed by the epic Gonzaga-MSU game the same night, Bucknell won at Syracuse. Currently, the Bison are at or near the top of the “others receiving votes” category in both polls.

Go Bucknell!

USC football blog From The Sidelines, whose co-bloggers Nathan Gotsch and the lovely Alexis Jones provide original reporting on the Trojan football team, will bring their behind-the-scenes approach to New York on Saturday for the Heisman Trophy ceremony. I know I’ll be checking it out.

Speaking of which, with nearly 100 ballots now declared, StiffArmTrophy.com is continuing to project a landslide Heisman victory for Reggie Bush. Only 10 voters have chosen anyone other than Bush first. (8 for Vince Young, 1 for Matt Leinart, 1 for Brady Quinn.) 83 have picked Bush first. It’s not going to be close.

HeismanPundit has more, including word that Young may be “eyeing” the NFL Draft — clearing the way for Quinn to be the undisputed pre-season Heisman favorite next year, assuming Bush also goes pro.

Speaking of which, Notre Dame’s position heading into this year’s Fiesta Bowl is freakishly similar to Texas’s position heading into last year’s Rose Bowl. A very good team, certain to be a national-championship favorite next year, with a very good quarterback, certain to be a Heisman Trophy favorite next year, gets an at-large bid to the BCS bowl that will host next year’s title game — against a Big Ten co-champion, no less! Now, if the Irish can just do what Texas did and, you know, win, Quinn will have his chance to channel Young after the game and proclaim, “We’ll be back!!!”

In other news, the coaches’ poll has, for the first time ever, revealed the coaches’ votes in the final regular-season poll, in an effort at transparency. (Hat tip: Scientizzle.) The headline is that Mack Brown voted USC #1 and Texas #2. (Pete Carroll doesn’t have a vote.) Among the other noteworthy votes:

Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis had his team fourth, two spots ahead of Oregon (10-1). The Fighting Irish (9-2) were ranked No. 6.

Oregon coach Mike Bellotti put the Ducks fourth and Notre Dame ninth. …

SMU coach Phil Bennett had Oregon 15th.

Ohio coach Frank Solich placed LSU fifth, 10 spots ahead of Georgia, which beat the Tigers 34-14 in the Southeastern Conference championship Saturday.

South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier had Notre Dame 14th, his own team 21st, and in-state rival Clemson 24th. The Tigers beat Spurrier’s Gamecocks 13-9 to close out the regular season.

Oh, and lest I forget, one last piece of very important bowl-related news: the grand marshal for the Rose Parade will be Sandra Day O’Connor. (Hat tip: David.) But who will she root for? The Longhorns, because she was born in Texas? Or the Trojans, out of Pac-10 pride (she went to Stanford)?

P.S. This is funny:

“I have no idea what I’ll do to console myself if we lose,” said Leinart from his sedan chair borne aloft by naked, comely USC coeds. “I’ll…I’ll just move on, I guess,” he said, clearly overcome by the emotion of his final home game as a Trojan and dabbing at his tears with a crisp hundred dollar bill.

LOL!

Epsilon, the impossible storm, is still a hurricane, though just barely, according to the 10am advisory.

If ε hangs on much longer, 2005 will set a couple more records, according to Dr. Jeff Masters: “most number of hurricane days (50, set in 1995) and most number of days with a named tropical storm (120.5, set in 1995).”

Speaking of records, TheSnowman has a list of all the tropical records that have been broken this year. It’s quite lengthy.

I’ve discovered a new NDLS blog, by a 1L named Becca. It’s called The Mercied (a title which is explained in her first post). More recently, she’s got some pictures of the snowy scene here at ND, something I’ve been lax in posting photos of. She also asks a very sensible question about the weather, and has good news for her fellow 1Ls: reportedly, they all passed Legal Research. Heh. Anyway, check it out!

Elsewhere in the “Brendansphere,” Brooke offers some “insane law student humor,” while Irish Buckeye Alex is looking forward to the Fiesta Bowl. Meanwhile, Scientizzle and Chris are still basking in the glory of the Bruin Beat-down Bowl. Oh, and Chris McLemore’s awesome photoblog “My Day in London” has a new address.

Isn’t it a little over-the-top to predict that King Kong will challenge Titanic’s all-time box-office records? Yeah, it’s bound to do very well at the box office, and yeah, it’s been getting early rave reviews, but still… Titanic numbers?? That’s an awfully bold prediction.

Titanic got those numbers in large part because of crazed Leo-loving teenage girls who saw the movie eight times apiece. Will the same thing happen with Kong? If any Peter Jackson movie was going to challenge Titanic, it seems like Return of the King — with its hordes of crazed Tolkien-loving nerds (myself included) seeing the movie multiple times — would have been the more logical choice. But it fell well short.

Anyway, Kong comes out a week from tomorrow, and I can’t wait!

More immediately, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe comes out this Friday. The early reviews are positive for that one, too. Here are some trailers and clips.

39-year-old David Cameron has been elected the new leader of Britain’s Conservative Party. He promised a “modern compassionate Conservatism,” according to the beeb.

InstaPundit writes:

I’ve noticed lots of Democrats on various TV shows calling for Bush to replace Rumsfeld with Joe Lieberman. Given that the Democrats don’t exactly see eye-to-eye with Lieberman on defense matters, I wonder what’s going on? Are they trying to get him out of the Senate for some reason? Do they expect things to get a lot better in Iraq before 2006, and want to split the credit? Do they think Bush is going to do it anyway, and want to make it look like they pressured him into it? … Or is there some other agenda I’m missing? Because it sure seems to have coalesced as an across-the-board talking point very quickly.

Lieberman would, of course, be replaced by a Republican if he were to leave the Senate, as Daily Kos — whose analysis of Lieberman’s role in the party I obviously don’t agree with — points out.

Political Wire has more, while Stop The Spirit Of Zossen observes:

Who knew the “secret” annex to the White House “National Plan for Victory in Iraq” was to carpet bomb the insurgents with some white phosphorus Joementum?

Heh.

Becky and I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire again tonight. (I know, I know, I should have spent that time studying for finals… but some things are more important, dammit! :)

Anyway, good stuff!! Having now seen the movie twice, I hope to finally get around to posting my thoughts on it one of these days, but for now, I just wanted to highly recommend Track 3 from the soundtrack, “The Quidditch World Cup,” which can be purchased (along with the rest of the album) at the iTunes Music Store.

source file

The second half of the song (i.e., the Bulgarian part) is the music that ABC used for the USC/ND portion of its football-season highlight reel during the BCS Selection Show on Sunday. It was awesome. Seriously, if anybody TiVo’d it, let me know…

Boi From Troy was at the USC-UCLA game on Saturday, and he writes, “The USC Trojans put up so many points at home this season that the Coliseum scoreboard couldn’t handle it — breaking midway through the fourth quarter with the Men of Troy up 59-6 over cross-town rival UCLA.”

Heh. Read the whole thing.

Lexicon also has a first-hand report from the Coliseum.

Meanwhile, Boi From Troy notes that the Iraq war isn’t the only thing inspiring a flood historical revisionism these days — an awful lot of commentators seem to have forgotten everything they said and thought about the USC-Oklahoma Orange Bowl after last year’s regular season:

Yesterday afternoon, during the Capital One ABC BCS Bowl Selection Special, presented by Citi, the hyperbole was overwhelming. For his first question, Pete Carroll was asked, “Can you remember the last time that two teams were 1-2 throughout the regular season and met in the title game?”

Carroll chuckled and said, “Yeah. Last year.”

It seems USC’s destruction of an Okalhoma squad many had considered the overwhelming favorite over-shadowed the four months of football being played by 117 teams leading up to that game. But the effects go further. As Heismanpundit notes, “there’s also a good bit of historical revisionism going on with last year’s title game. Suddenly Oklahoma, a team with two Heisman finalists and an NCAA-leading 11 NFL draft picks, was just out-talented by the Trojans.”

Unfortunately for the media–the script they’re reading off of sounds alot like a sequel to the 2004 season…and to make people believe that the ending will be any different, they have to re-write–or better yet forget altogether–what happened the first time around.

I personally think Texas will put up a much better fight than Oklahoma did. Jason White was always overrated; Vince Young is not. But it is absurd to pretend like this USC-Texas matchup is far and away the most hyped, most anticipated, most amazingly awesomely incredible OMG OMG BEST TITLE GAME EVER!!! when in fact, the buildup to last year’s title game was pretty much the same.