Gary Kirby’s odds of winning the 2nd annual BrendanLoy.com NIT Pool increased to 75% on Wednesday as two of his predicted semifinalists, Louisville and Michigan, advanced to Madison Square Garden.

Seven contestants were eliminated by Wednesday’s games, which also included a win by Old Dominion. Jamie McGinnis and defending champion Tom K. were knocked out when Old Dominion won; Dennis Chow, Rick Boeckler and Mike Quinn were knocked out when Michigan won; and Jay Johnson and Terry Jones were knocked out when Louisville won.

Tom Greca, John Feeney, Brad Miller and Andrew Long are the only contestants still mathematically alive to beat Kirby. Greca and Feeney will finish tied for the pool championship if Cincinnati wins the title game over Old Dominion. Miller will win outright if South Carolina wins the championship. Long will win if South Carolina beats Cincinnati tomorrow, but then loses to Louisville in the semifinals, which in turn beats Old Dominion in the title game. Kirby wins in all other scenarios.

Needless to say, then, tomorrow’s Cincinnati-South Carolina game is crucial. If the Bearcats win, Miller and Long will be eliminated. If the Gamecocks win, Greca and Feeney will be eliminated.

Complete standings here and after the jump.

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The recently much-maligned Nick, Indiana grad and fellow NDLS 2L, sends along a tip that the Fox affiliate in Indianapolis is reporting that Indiana has already talked with Gonzaga coach Mark Few’s attorney about “length of contract and money” (per this message board post). But Nick is skeptical, so am I, and so is this poster.

UPDATE: Better summary here:

“College insiders”, and mulitple other sources, have told the Fox reporter that Gonzaga coach Mark Few’s “representatives” have spoken with IU representatives about numbers and salary. … it’s important to note that Fox’s reporter did not say [IU’s athletic director] or Few were actually talking. Only their representatives.

Here’s the Gonzaga perspective.

UPDATE 2: Here’s a post from the Spokane Spokesman-Review’s Zag blog, posted about a week ago:

GU coach Mark Few was questioned after the game about a remark he allegedly made about being willing to listen if Indiana wanted to talk to him about the Hoosiers’ head coaching job, which will become vacant at the end of the year when Mike Davis steps aside.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever said I’d listen,� Few said. “Some (reporters) have asked me, but I said this is not the time to be talking about that stuff.

“I’m just dialed into keeping us playing. I want to keep playing with these guys. I want to keep helping them as much as I can.�

Another relevant post here.

UPDATE: The original content of this post is now obsolete, as the contestant in question has now fully identified himself — he’s Drew Wildak; see comment — and thus he will not be disqualified.

Original text of the post after the jump.

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Has former Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins been offered the head coaching job at Kansas State? That’s what CBS Sportsline is reporting.

A porn star is getting rave reviews — not for her, uh, acting abilities, but for her wine.

He claims he meant to say “coup,” but a St. Louis radio talk-show host has been fired for calling Condi Rice a “coon.”

“I was trying to say ‘quite a coup’ but it came out ‘coon,”‘ he said. “I caught myself and apologized. It wasn’t anything I was meaning to say. I never use that word.

“I think she’s a fantastic woman. I was even talking about if she ran for president, I’d work on her campaign.”

Reminds me a bit of the “Hubert Horatio Hornblower” incident.

So, I must say, the changes made by the NCAA to the format of the NIT this year have really helped bolster the legitimacy of that tournament. Letting in conference champs, seeding the teams, giving the better-seeded teams (not necessarily the more prominent teams) home games, etc. … very cool. But I gotta ask: how on earth did Louisville get a #1 seed over Missouri State, which was universally acknowledged as one of the “first teams out” of the NCAAs (indeed, the highest-ranked RPI team ever left out of the Big Dance), whereas Louisville wasn’t even seriously in the discussion? All of the #1 seeds, in fact, were major-conference teams (Louisville, Maryland, Cincinnati and Michigan), while Missouri State joined Florida State, Creighton and St. Joe’s on the #2 line.

I hadn’t really considered, until now, the implications of this secondary snub of Missouri State — but it’s actually quite significant, because the Cardinals and Bears are in the same region, and both advanced to the quarterfinals, so they play each other tonight… at Freedom Hall in Louisville! By all rights, this should be a home game for Missouri State, but instead, Louisville gets that unearned privilege. Bah. Here’s hoping the Bears use that as motiviation, kick Louisville’s butt, and advance to the NIT Final Four at Madison Square Garden. Now that Creighton’s out, I’m hoping for a Hofstra-Missouri State championship game… with Hofstra beating Michigan to get there, and Missouri State beating Cincinnati. Billy Packer will love it!

Anyway… three quarterfinals tonight, including an all-CAA battle between Old Dominion and Hofstra. (The Pride, inexplicably a #3 seed, got there by winning at St. Joseph’s. ODU won at Colorado. Nice.) Here’s the scoreboard. Here’s the bracket. And here’s a refresher on the implications of tonight’s games for the 12 contestants still alive in the BrendanLoy.com NIT pool.

Yahoo! Sports columnist Dan Wetzel says Adam Morrison is obviously better than J.J. Redick. Money quote, from an NBA scout: “Adam Morrison is a 20-point-a-game scorer in the NBA for a long, long time. The son of a b*tch can score on anyone.” Heh. Says Wetzel:

Just imagine if the two players switched teams. If Morrison had high school All-American teammates, an offense that would get him open threes and the best media exposure in the game, he’d run away with the award.

Put Redick at Gonzaga, where he’d be the sole focal point of opposing defenses, and he not only wouldn’t be the best player in the country but he also wouldn’t be the best player in the state. Washington guard Brandon Roy is a better all-around player than Redick, especially considering his defensive skill.

Another good quote came from another NBA scout, who, when informed that “the media” thinks Redick is better than Morrison, replied, “Yeah, but aren’t all you media guys from Duke?” LOL! (Hat tip: Steve Bergum.)

Most people’s brackets say we won’t get to settle the argument with a Morrison-Redick showdown in the Final Four because the Zags will lose either to UCLA tomorrow or to Memphis on Saturday. My bracket says we won’t get to see it because”Baby Shaq” and LSU will stun Redick and Duke tomorrow. A Duke-Gonzaga game certainly would be fun, though.

{Yeah, I know, that Straddles the webmeister’s Categories but I couldn’t resist the Title. / Hi Brendan. :}

UPDATE: The three guys who accidentally foul-hooked, caught, weighed, Didn’t measure, and then Released the 25-lb. 1-oz. largemouth bass in California have decided Not to submit the spawning female Micropterus salmoides as the official World Record. Too controversial.

The 3 Bigbass-specialist fishing buddies couldn’t comply with all the pertinent IGFA documentation regulations ~ especially re a Certified Weigh-in ~ without letting the enormous egg-laden Mama Bass expire from being a Fish Out of Water for too long. (In addition to this commendable Humaneness, you also Don’t want to remove Those particular chromosomes from the lake’s Gene pool. :) So, they Put her Back. / Good for them. Class Act, gentlemen. (They Might not have gotten the record Recognized anyway, because the unintentional Foulhooking ~ i.e. in the body rather than in the Large Mouth ;> ~ without an Immediate release, made it technically an Illegal catch under CA state regs, whereas the IFGA Record rules say the catch must be locally Legal. )

Angling legend has it that world recordholder George W. Perry, after hauling in his 22-lb. 4-oz. prize on June 2, 1932 way down in Georgia :), took it home to his family for their Dinner. / Hey, times they were Hard and the Wages Low. :>

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In Other news which some skeptics understandably view with a Fishy eye, the Basque-separatist terror organization ETA ~ Euskadi Ta Azkatasuna, Basque Homeland and Freedom ~ has proclaimed a supposedly Permanent cease-fire. / We shall See. Hopefully a Political Peaceprocess can now commence.

(If the story sounds vaguely Familiar to followers of Northern Ireland news ~ it Should. / Btw the IRA & the ETA have long had Ties. Professional Courtesy, ye know. :| Perhaps the newlyDecommissioned peaceloving Boyos of Oglaigh na h’Eireann ;> have Influenced their Euskadi Ta Azkatasuna brothers in the direction of nonviolent Democracy. :/

Like I Said: we shall See.

A law professor at the University of Memphis is under fire from her students for banning laptops in class. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.) I just hope these poor students don’t have class with Professor Entman during tomorrow’s Memphis-Bradley game!

If NDLS professors started following suit, both the traffic and the frequency of posts at BrendanLoy.com would see a nonnegligible decrease… :)

Iowa State has hired Northern Iowa’s coach, Greg McDermott, to take over the Cyclones’ top job.

I’m calling this post “Part I” because I’m guessing McDermott won’t be the last Missouri Valley coach who gets hired by a big-conference school in the next few weeks. In particular, Wichita State’s Mark Turgeon (the MVC coach of the year) seems to be on everyone’s short list, including Indiana and Arizona State.

Becky’s five-year-old iBook has been on its last legs for some months now. Its CD-ROM drive hasn’t worked consistently for years; its LCD screen has been blotchy ever since a certain unfortunate incident involving lemonade last spring; there’s a loose connection between the screen and the computer, so if you don’t have it tilted at just the right angle, nothing will dislpay (and this keeps getting worse and worse); the computer periodically forgets where its hard drive is; it runs incredibly slowly, and is basically incapable of doing more than one process at a time; files and applications have been mysteriously disappearing; the battery life is 10 minutes at best; the space bar broke last week; etc. I could go on. The point is, it was long past time to put it out to pasture, or wherever it is that old iBooks go to die.

So, armed with a gift certificate to Amazon.com (thanks Uncle Stan & Aunt Phyllis!!), we finally bit the bullet and, in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, bought a new iBook for Becky. (Conveniently enough, Amazon has the best deal on new iBooks right now anyway.) Because the iBook line has improved a lot since 2001 (obviously), the new computer has twice as much RAM, four times as much hard-drive space, and 2.66 times the number of, uh, hertz, as the old one — plus, it’s a G4 processor instead of a G3, so bottom line, it’s a lot faster. Also, it has a slot-loading CD/DVD drive, instead of the fragile ejecting drive that the old one had. And, even more important than any of that, it promises to actually, y’know, work.

We ordered the free “SuperSaver Shipping,” which is supposed to take 5 to 9 days. But, miraculously, the computer just arrived at our door, roughly 36 hours after we bought it! Amazing! I’m now in the process of transferring files from the old iBook to the new one.

From left: my 17″ PowerBook, Becky’s old 12″ iBook, and Becky’s new 12″ iBook.

Needless to say, I am now officially annoyed that Becky has a newer computer than I do. :) But the good news is, because we replaced Becky’s old iBook before it completely died, I’ll probably be able to make some sort of good use of it (er, what’s left of it). I’m already envisioning gutting the hard drive and reinstalling the OS from scratch, hoping for a boost in functionality, and then using it as a mobile webcam server (with my cell phone attached, of course) so I can do a live webcast of our road trip to Buffalo next month. Dunno if that’ll actually happen, but it would be fun… and much easier than with my even clunkier old Dell laptop, circa 2000, which was the last machine that I tried to do a roving webcast with.

From my web stats…

1500 nude venezuelans
allan ray eye video
stanford tree ejected
lesbian cheerleaders
billy packer mvc
remember remember the fifth of november
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And, last but certainly not least:

fire mike brey

An interesting post about wartime casualties, sure to spark more partisan sniping in the peanut gallery comment section here on the blog. (Hey, at least it’s not basketball, right?)

Today, for the first time in a week, there’s no NCAA Tournament basketball (men’s or women’s). Tomorrow, the men’s Sweet 16 begins (GO ZAGS!!!). During this brief respite (pay no attention to the NIT behind the curtain), I thought now would be the perfect time to offer something almost as exciting… seven-year-old high-school girls basketball reruns!

Okay, perhaps that doesn’t sound so exciting after all. :) But this is a highlight video that I made for the 1998-1999 Newington girls basketball team’s end-of-season banquet. (’98-’99 was my senior year in high school; I was the team manager.) I recently unearthed the video while digging through old files. It’s set to CBS’s “One Shining Moment” theme, circa 1995.

Considering that I made it with no digital technology whatsoever, using a VHS-C camcorder and a creaky old VCR that was very hard to control precisely, I’m rather proud of the final product. I could make something far better on iMovie if I was doing it now, of course, but given what I was working with, not bad.

source file

(And yes, fellow language nazis, the apostrophe at the end drives me nuts too. But that’s not my fault… I didn’t make the sign, I just videotaped it! Harumph. Also, yeah, the camera work is rather jumpy at times. The thing is, I primarily used my videos to extract still images for the Living Room Times newspaper, so it was more important to capture individual moments than to create a smooth video — hence my tendency toward very sudden panning.)