76-66, final. So it'll be Florida vs. Ohio State in the title game, and Arash Markazi vs. Scott Robertson for the pool championship.

Florida is killing UCLA, 56-40, with eight minutes left. UCLA sucks.

More than 10 minutes into the game, it’s 9-8 Florida. Heh.

It’s early yet, but so far the OMG Best Final Four Ever!!! isn’t exactly living up to billing. It’s been a sloppy first ten minutes of Ohio State vs. Georgetown, with a number of missed open shots and layups (especially for the Hoyas) and 10 of the Buckeyes’ 14 points coming off Georgetown turnovers. Greg Oden picked up his second foul less than 3 minutes into the game (it was a legit offensive foul, IMHO, but man, if that call had been made in the Florida-Butler game, the Bulldogs might be in this Final Four instead of the Gators), and Hibbert hasn’t done much of anything, so the much-ballyhooed matchup of big men is a bust so far. The score is 14-7 Ohio State, which puts the teams on pace for a scintillating 56-28 final score. Thank God there were no Cinderellas in this tournament, so we can be assured of such high quality of play in the later rounds! ;)

Incidentally, here again are the pool scenarios for who will still be alive heading into the title game, depending on what happens today:

If Ohio State and Florida win: Scott Robertson (OSU) vs. Arash Markazi (UF)
If Ohio State and UCLA win: Ginny Zak (OSU) vs. Sören Hammerschmidt (UCLA)
If Georgetown and Florida win: John McBride (G’town) vs. Arash Markazi (UF)
If Georgetown at UCLA win: John McBride (G’town) vs. Ryan Dalidowitz (UCLA)

UPDATE: 27-23 Buckeyes at the half. So now they’re on pace for a 54-46 final. Who replaced Ohio State and Georgetown with Butler and Southern Illinois? ;)

UPDATE 2: Ohio State wins, 67-60. So we’re now a Florida victory away from the nightmare scenario, a rematch of the football title game. Ugh. It kills me to say it, but: Go Bruins!

The Buckeyes’ win means that, with just two games left, a record four contestants — the maximum possible at this point — are still alive in the 12th annual Living Room Times men’s pool. Scott Robertson needs Florida to win tonight, then lose to Ohio State in the title game; Arash Markazi needs Florida to win tonight and win the title; Ginny Zak needs UCLA to win tonight, then lose to Ohio State in the title game; Sören Hammerschmidt needs UCLA to win tonight and win the title.

Robertson is a University of Utah grad student and Irish Trojan blog reader since Hurricane Katrina. Markazi is a 2004 USC alum and a Sports Illustrated writer; he would be the first Trojan ever to win a Times pool. Zak is Becky Loy’s mother and a resident of Gold Canyon, Arizona. Hammerschmidt is Zak’s son-in-law, and a one-time exchange student at the university he now needs to win two straight games, UCLA.

Two contestants were mathematically eliminated by Ohio State’s win: Ryan Dalidowitz, a Newington High School senior, and John McBride, who, contrary to previous reports, is not a current student at the University of Iowa. (He earned his Master’s of Social Work from Iowa in 1980, after earning a Bachelor’s degree from John Carroll University and a previous Master’s and Ph.D. in from the University of Illinois.) Dalidowitz’s elimination guarantees a non-Newington winner for the third consecutive year; from 1996-2004, eight of the nine men’s pool champions were Newington High School students, alums or teachers.

I’m heading over to a friend’s house to watch UCLA-Florida, so any further updates will be cell-phone posts, and I may not update the blog at all until after the game is over and I get home.

Last night at Barrister’s Ball (a.k.a. law-school prom):

Good times.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take as many photos as I usually would, because my beloved Canon PowerShot A95 has been experiencing the dreaded E18 error. I discovered yesterday that the problem can be temporarily solved by putting the camera in a freezer (or similarly cold environment) for a few minutes, but all three times I did this (the third time was actually at the ball, and since there was no freezer available, I put the camera inside a plastic cup and put the cup in a pitcher of ice), the effect quickly wore off and the E18 error returned. So as a result, like I said, my photo collection is decidedly limited. But after the jump are a few more shots.

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Texas freshman phenom Kevin Durant is the AP player of the year, making him the first frosh ever to win that award. Durant also won the Rupp, Naismith and Robertson awards. But will he come back for another crack at maybe winning those awards again, and possibly a deeper tournament run than this year’s second-round loss to USC? Most people assume he’s going pro, but Durant says it’s a tough decision and he truly hasn’t decided yet. Texas fans certainly hope he stays.

Also winning AP honors Friday was Washington State coach Tony Bennett, named coach of the year. Which reminds me of something I’ve been thinking in the wake of Notre Dame’s first-round loss to Winthrop and Georgetown’s run to the Final Four. If the Big East Coach of the Year was being awarded today, instead of before the Big East Tournament, who would win it: Mike Brey or John Thompson III? Just asking! ;)

Oh, by the way, in case you haven’t heard, the men’s Final Four is tonight. :) It starts at 6:00 PM. Go Georgetown and… uh… well, I’m not really sure who to root for in the fUCLA-Florida game. I really dislike both teams. I think I’ll root for the Bruins for the sake of Pac-10 pride, and so I don’t have to hear that infernal “dah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-GO-GATORS!” song any more than absolutely necessary. I’ll root for fUCLA especially if Ohio State wins the first game, since another Florida-tOSU championship game would be just ridiculous, whereas a fUCLA-tOSU championship game would set up the highly amusing Zak-Hammerschmidt family feud on Monday. That said, if the Bruins lose, I’ll totally make fun of Mike Tran regardless.