Oh, so it’s Fuel smuggling izzit.

Cannot make this stuff Up:

$1.3M Seized From Reputed IRA Chief’s Barn

News Summary: Tommy “Slab” Murphy. Bigfat Oglaigh na h’Eireann man. Alleged kingpin of Fuel-smuggling empire. Cash & Computers seized from beneath bales of Hay in the fambly Barn on the fambly Spread in the Border Banditcountry. (Coincidentally, Fuel-laundering equipment also found.) / Slab was not at Home at the time, probably awa’ making holy Pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick. He remains In the Breeze at present. / Following decades of nervous Surveillance, hundreds of Gardai went in Heavy, with Backup from British & Irish Armies ~ and this after IRA Decommissioning, prior to which the place was, your Correspondent Infers, a veritable Arsenal. (Read the story closely; you’ll See why.) / Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams sez yer man is “not a criminal” but rather “a good republican.” Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams appears to Purport that in his view the Two are mutually Exclusive. “To me right fol too ra laddie, too ra lee / There is no one who can Tell a Lie like me…” ~ from, “The Liar”, Hibernian edition.

What’s the point of being Irish if you don’t Read it & Laugh & Weep.

Reviews for the Toronto stage production of The Lord of the Rings (previous post here), which opened on Thursday, have been, um, pretty bad, for the most part. See, for example, the devastating New York Times review. On the other hand, the Detroit Free Press liked it, as did Canada’s National Post. But most critics have been less kind; more examples here.

That said, there are some indications that the show may be “critic-proof.” Time will tell.

P.S. The Boston Globe liked it, too.

The Seattle Times’s Bud Withers looks at Gonzaga’s future, including the “possibility [of] a game with Duke in December at Madison Square Garden” next season. Oh, that would be SWEET!!! A year too late for a Redick-Morrison duel, but still sweet! I would so be willing to pay a lot of money for tickets to that. :)

Eugene Volokh: “It’s not Islamophobia when there really is something to fear.” Worth reading, not bigoted, and guaranteed to start a flame war in 5… 4… 3…

Stanford women’s basketball player Jillian Harmon says: “We love the Tree. And we wish the Tree was here with us.”

The Tree: “I think the NCAA’s ‘No Fun Allowed’ attitude is wrong, and I will lobby to have it stopped. If there are cameras on me, I will dance again.”

Heh.

Looking back at this post, it occurs to me… if Gonzaga had won on Thursday, I’d still be mathematically alive to win my pool.

Harumph.

Here are the scenarios — who the leaders will be, and who will still be alive to win the 11th annual Living Room Times men’s NCAA pool — for Saturday’s two regional finals:

(more…)

UCLA alum and Notre Dame 2L Mike Tran had another fantastic day of NCAA predictions Friday, going 3-for-4 to earn an overall record of 7 out of 8 teams in the Elite Eight, the best of anyone in the 218-person Living Room Times men’s NCAA pool. (Tran’s only incorrect Elite Eight pick was Michigan State, a team that lost back in the first round to George Mason — which won Friday!)

Tran has 271 points out of a possible 352. He would win in 44 of the 128 scenarios that could occur in the tournament’s final seven games.

Ben Eng is second with 267 points. Andrew Long is third with 259 points. Neither of them, though, has as good a statistical chance to win as Logan Pugh, who is fourth with 257 points but would win in 32 scenarios, second only to Tran. Jay Johnson (a.k.a. “DrawingDead”), currently in 19th place, is the only other contestant whose scenario total is in double-digits, with 12. (The Tennesseean will go as far as the Memphis Tigers take him; they’re his national champion pick.)

Tran, Long and Pugh all have a chance to break Brian Kiolbasa’s all-time record of 368 points in a men’s pool. Each would need to get the maximum possible number of points for the remainder of the tournament (i.e., to be perfect in all remaining games, except for teams that are already eliminated — BC in Long’s case, MSU in Tran’s case).

Nine other contestants are still mathematically alive to win. Friday’s results were the best possible in terms of keeping as many contestants alive as possible. However, Don LaPlante and John Chung were knocked out when Villanova edged Boston College, Greg Shtraks was eliminated when Florida beat Georgetown, and Rick Boeckler and Jason Cowans were eliminated when UConn “won” against Washington. Full scenario info here.

Full standings here and after the jump. Stay tuned for information on tomorrow’s scenarios.

(more…)

The entire state of Washington has just been put on suicide watch. :)

Okay, look. I was born in raised in Connecticut. I grew up a Husky fan, and I still root for them most of the time. But UConn does not deserve to be in the Elite Eight. They got in because of horrible refereeing. It should be the Washington Huskies, not the UConn Huskies, playing for a spot in the Final Four. Period.

This isn’t something I believe because I’m a Washington fan. I’m not. I was rooting for UConn when the game started. But I know an injustice when I see it, and what happened to UW wasn’t right.

It’s not UConn’s fault, of course. Well, perhaps Jim Calhoun badgering the refs had something to do with it — but that’s part of the game, and it’s the refs’ job to tune it out and make the right calls. Tonight, they didn’t.

What really pisses me off is, you know most of the newspaper and TV accounts of the game won’t say anything about the refereeing, except perhaps a passing reference that says there were some “controversial calls” or something like that. It’s like there’s an unwritten rule that you can’t call a spade a spade when refs literally decide a game. Yet it happened today. I haven’t seen anything this bad in the tourney since the Tennessee-Baylor women’s game two years ago.

“What a shame,” says Bill Raftery of Washington’s loss. But he won’t tell us what, exactly, the “shame” is. Why not? You saw it, Bill! You know what happened! So say it! The referees — and I’m not saying it’s intentional, that doesn’t really matter, what matters is the result — handed the game to UConn, because they did a TERRIBLE job! Washington was robbed!

It’s not just the massive free-throw disparity. As I’ve demonstrated elsewhere, those numbers can be deceiving. But if you watched the game, you saw the individual, completely incorrect calls that went against Washington at several absolutely crucial points in the game, and you saw that there were no equivalent bad calls that went against UConn.

P.S. Another thing that pisses me off: if Lorenzo Romar exercises his First Amendment right to mention that, oh by the way, the referees stole from his kids an opportunity to play in the Elite Eight, he’ll be fined and reprimanded. The code of silence about this sort of thing really bugs me.

After the jump, lots of examples of people who agree with me.

(more…)

Goaltending is now legal in the NCAA Tournament.

A third Washington player just fouled out when he fouled Marcus Williams Marcus Williams tripped over his own feet, and the refs called it on Washington.

I don’t believe there is any deliberate bias at work, but this is the SECOND time today that the refs are at risk of changing the outcome of a game by being awful. Villanova did not deserve to beat Boston College (BC should have won in regulation), and UConn does not deserve to beat Washington (UW should have won in regulation). Hopefully the Huskies from the Pacific Northwest pull it out. That’s right, I’m rooting against my home-state Huskies, because at this point, a UConn win would be an injustice. Re-damn-diculous.

Uhhh… and isn’t goaltending illegal?

Just in case you forgot…

source file

The rematch is underway.

UPDATE: Again with the quick T! In an eerily similar situation to what happened to Indiana’s Marco Killingsworth (yeah, it helped my Zags, but it still objectively sucked, as I acknowledged here), Washington’s Brandon Roy just got hit with a personal foul and then a very quick technical during a brief trash-talking session with Rudy Gay. Gay got a technical too, but the big deal is, it was Roy’s fourth personal foul, following immediately after his third personal (the foul that precipitated the trash-talking). Roy is now out of the game, and Washington looks like it’s falling apart, while UConn is re-energized and is on a big run.

Regardless of which teams it helps or hurts, it’s really unfortunate that overzealous whistles are having such an impact on so many tournament games. (Something similar happened to Pitt against Bradley, as I recall.) I don’t know how specific — or nonspecific — are the rules that govern when officials can give out technicals, but my impression is they have an awful lot of discretion, and I think maybe they should be tightened up a bit. Players should not be picking up technical fouls in tournament games for brief bouts of trash-talking, at least not if they haven’t previously been given a warning. It’s the postseason; emotions run high. C’mon. Give technicals for out-of-bounds physical aggression, or for repeated infractions along the lines of trash-talking and ball-smashing, but not for this chippy s**t.

Now, whereas the refs didn’t decide the UCLA-Gonzaga game, they are in great peril of handing the BC-Nova game to Villanova right now.

UPDATE: Overtime!

UPDATE 2: Villanova wins, 60-59 in OT. It’s a shame — by rights, the game probably shouldn’t have gone to overtime in the first place. But props to the Wildcats for pulling it out. They came back from a big deficit.

Don LaPlante, who was tied for the lead in the men’s pool after the second round, is eliminated, as is John Chung.

Meanwhile, as they might say on American Idol, “David Kreutz, Jay Johnson, and Kirby Bullard, you are safe!” They join Mike Tran, Logan Pugh, Matt Wiser and Edward Jackson as contestants who definitely won’t be eliminated today.

UPDATE 3: Oh, and Wichita State lost to George Mason, so the Missouri Valley is finished. But the Colonial has a team in the Elite Eight! They’ll play the winner of UConn-Washington for the right to advance to the Final Four.

UPDATE 4: In terms of the standings, Tran still leads, but Ben Eng has leapfrogged into second place, ahead of Andrew Long. Latest pool standings here and after the jump.

(more…)

I have a whole bunch of miscellaneous thoughts about yesterday’s UCLA-Gonzaga game that have been bouncing around in my head over the last 21 hours or so. Rather than try to organize them into a coherent post, I figured I’d just share them with you piecemeal.

* I agree with Ken Pomeroy, a longtime Zag skeptic who writes that Gonzaga proved itself worthy last night, despite the ultimate heartbreak. Pomeroy writes: “It only took 33 games, but the Zags finally earned my respect. They were the better team for 38 minutes, getting the best of one of the better defenses in the land and playing some legitimate D themselves.” I wrote something along the same lines to Nick via e-mail earlier today:

I think Gonzaga proved during the first 37 minutes last night that they are a legit team and a worthy Top 3 seed. At times, they were able to score at will on UCLA’s vaunted defense (the streak of holding opponents under 60 was over by midway through the second half), and to even my surprise, the Zags played some decent defense themselves! Not that they can take all the credit for UCLA’s cold shooting in the first half, but if you watched them on the defensive end, they looked legitimately impressive at times. Too bad they then proceeded to pull one of the most incredible choke jobs I’ve ever seen.

Nick agreed, incidentally, that Gonzaga played well and did their fans proud. Another convert to the Zag cause. :)

* Not that the moral victory of earning some belated respect makes the loss any easier. It’s sacrilege, I know, but honestly, I think I might be more heartbroken by Gonzaga’s loss to UCLA in the Sweet 16 than I was by USC’s loss to Texas in the Rose Bowl. With the Trojans, I had the comfort of looking back on two straight championships and 34 straight wins. Yeah, the loss was painful, but c’mon, we had to lose sometime. There was no such comfort to be found last night. As Ted Miller writes, they were “poised to dispatch Indiana and UCLA — college hoops storied aristocracy — in consecutive NCAA Tournament games. … It’s hard to imagine anything more excruciating for the Bulldogs’ program, which moments before was on the cusp of answering — once and for all — its doubters. It’s as though the college basketball gods simply won’t let the Zags take that final step as a program.”

* I can’t help but wonder if that was the high-water mark for Gonzaga. I certainly hope not. But will they ever again be able to put together a team that good, with that reasonable of a path to the Final Four? With the NBA’s new rule bringing superstars like Oden back into the major-conference fold — and with J.P. Batista certainly leaving, Adam Morrison almost certainly leaving too, and questions hovering around Mark Few’s future — it’s easy to imagine the Zags tumbling precipitously next year. As Bud Withers put it:

This one will sting at Gonzaga for an eternity, from fabled Jack and Dan’s Tavern in Spokane to the souls of the Zags who watched it dribble away from their grasp. …

It was a golden opportunity lost for Gonzaga, which had already played Memphis on the road earlier this season and played tough enough Thursday to believe it would have had a shot at the Final Four.

Instead, a terrific effort went for naught, and the Zags will rue it forever.

* Even as a fan watching on TV, I understand what Morrison meant when he said the ending was a “blur.” It felt that way for us, too. And then, when it was inexplicably over, it felt like this.

* I like this line from Chris Dufresne’s article in the L.A. Times: “Ten years from now, in the midst of possibly an all-pro career, Morrison might wake up in a sweat at some swank NBA hotel after a flashback of the UCLA defeat.” Yeah… it was that kind of loss.

(more…)