The brown-colored snow that was reported throughout the state of Colorado last week was not — I repeat, not — the result of efforts by third-graders in the town of South Park to produce an extremely low-pitched note, thus causing Mother Nature to have an accident on their state. :) Rather, the brown snow is the result of a dust storm in northern Arizona.

The Washington Post is reporting that Christian mobs in Nigeria have lashed out at Muslims, resulting in dozens of deaths. The article cites long-standing ethnic tensions as the primary cause of years of fighting:

Deaths in other Nigerian cities totaled 50 from the five days of rioting, according to news reports, and many Nigerians braced for more retaliatory attacks. The violence has revealed again the deep ethnic, regional and religious differences in Africa’s most populous nation, split nearly evenly between a Muslim north and a Christian and animistic south. In the past decade, thousands of Nigerians have been killed in political, ethnic and religious violence.

However, lest any convenient reason go unnoticed, the issue of Muslim rioting over cartoons has been used as an excuse:

“We have to retaliate,” said Justin Ifeanyi, 24. “It is a shame to us if we don’t kill them.”

Ifeanyi expressed amazement that cartoons published in Europe could set off violence in Africa.

“This thing happened in Denmark,” Ifeanyi said. “How could that be causing havoc in another part of Nigeria?”

I think the answer is that, like Muslims burning embassies elsewhere, existing tensions are being manifested by the present violence. All it needed was a spark.

This morning the WaPo reported that death toll was updated to 127. I expect it to grow.

Posted by Brian (Briandot)

The Olympics are over, and the United States finished second — both in terms of total medals and gold medals — to Germany.

The USC Trojans have officially clinched at least the #6 seed in the Pac-10 tournament — which means they’re guaranteed a bye into the quarterfinals — and it’s all thanks to the hated UCLA Bruins.

UCLA beat Oregon, 70-53 on Sunday, to drop the Ducks to 7-10 in conference play. USC, which lost to Oregon on Thursday (missing a chance to clinch the #6 seed right then and there) but then beat Oregon State yesterday, is 8-8.

Even if USC loses its last two games — at Stanford and at Cal next Thursday and Saturday — and even if Oregon wins its final game at Oregon State on Saturday, the Trojans (8-10 in that scenario) would still beat out the Ducks (also 8-10) for the #6 seed. The two teams split their head-to-head meetings, so the tiebreaker rules (PDF; see page 53) dictate that the teams’ records against the conference’s top teams would determine their seeds. USC and Oregon would have identical records against Cal, Washington and Arizona, but the Trojans would have done better against Stanford and UCLA, so no matter what order those top five teams finish in, USC has the tiebreaker edge over Oregon.

It’s actually still mathematically possible for the Trojans to finish with a #4 or #5 seed, if things break just right. I go into detail about those scenarios over at YocoHoops. Really, though, in a league with no single dominant team, I’m not sure how much it matters whether you’re #4, #5 or #6. What really matters is that you’re in the Top 6, so you can win the Pac-10 tournament and earn an NCAA berth simply by winning three straight games (rather than four). And the Trojans are now guaranteed of that opportunity.

Fight on! And, thanks, Bruins! :)

P.S. There’s a certain poetic justice in the Bruins “winning one for the Trojans.” Two years ago, the Trojans won one for the Bruins, clinching them a spot in the Pac-10 tournament (back when only the top 8 teams got in). Moreover, the Trojans’ win bailed the Bruins out from a loss earlier that day… to Oregon.

P.P.S. Also over at YocoHoops, I ask the question: Is Villanova overrated?

…I apologize for the extent to which basketball is taking over the homepage. That always happens this time of year, but without categories or an “Extended Entry” feature, it’s especially problematic. And it seems, based on the number of comments, that I don’t have nearly as much of a “basketball audience” as I did a “football audience” last fall.

Because this problem will only get worse as Selection Sunday approaches (two weeks and counting!!!), I really want to get WordPress set up in the next few days (which requires getting the new server set up) because it will hopefully allow me to create a “non-sports” version of the homepage for those who want to avoid it all and view only the other posts. Even if I’m unable to do that, WordPress will, at the very least, make it easier to scroll past the abundance of basketball posts to get to the other stuff, since the longer basketball posts will be “Extended Entry” posts (i.e., only the beginning of the post will appear on the homepage), and also, the blog will be paginated (meaning there will be a “Page 2,” a “Page 3,” etc.). Unfortunately, forces outside my control are slowing this process down. I can only promise that I’ll do the best I can to get things up and running soon.

Money quote: “For both parties, facts do not drive ideology; ideology drives facts.”

After one last set of games Saturday, the Missouri Valley Conference’s regular season is over — here are the final standings — and the bracket is set (PDF) for the MVC tournament, which Becky and I will be at starting with Friday’s quarterfinals.

We’re slated to sit in the Creighton section, which I picked because I had to choose a section, and I was told that the Bluejay faithful are the “craziest” and most fun fans in the league. But, as luck would have it, the team I’m sort of tentatively rooting for, Bradley, earned the #5 seed, and will play #4 Creighton in the second quarterfinal game at 2:30 PM Friday. So that should be interesting.

Incidentally, in the most recent edition of Bracketology, ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi had four MVC teams in the field: Wichita State and Creighton as #8 seeds, Northern Iowa as a #9 seed and Missouri State as a #12. Southern Illinois is the first team left out of Lunardi’s field of 65. (Bradley isn’t mentioned.) But that was before Southern Illinois beat Northern Iowa and Missouri State beat Creighton on Saturday. Go figure. “The MVC went from a four-bid lock conference to a huge mess the last couple weeks,” writes Bracketology 101. “At this point, making it to the conference tourney semis is imperative for everyone.” That makes two quarterfinals, Creighton-Bradley and Missouri State-Northern Iowa, potential elimination games. (Although, most analysts seem to think Northern Iowa is a lock… but who knows? ESPN’s Bubble Watch says UNI has “dropp[ed] out of mortal lock status,” which, ahem, means that “mortal lock,” as ESPN uses it, is a misnomer… you can’t drop out of “mortal lock status,” properly defined.)

In other, non-MVC-related hoops news, an utterly disgusting eBay auction for Adam Morrison’s bloody nose gauze from the Pepperdine game has been yanked offline. Heh. (Hat tip: NCAA Hoops Today.)

Oh, and Becky doesn’t like Mike Brey. Doesn’t like him one bit. Nope.