Much to Brendan’s chagrin, the University of Tennessee Lady Vols have won their seventh women’s basketball NCAA Championship tonight, defeating Rutgers 59-46.

This is certainly not the best of Coach Summitt’s teams at UT, but they do have some excellent players, led by Candace Parker. However, the team played as such, a unified team of players, not just 4 girls and one superstar. Congrats to the Lady Vols!

And, for a little late-posted extra goodiness, here’s the team with the trophy:

Well, I’m trying to beat Brendan to the punch on his own blog on something Potter-related…

Here’s the American cover art for the seventh and final installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

You can watch the countdown till release date over on Brendan’s left sidebar. Cheers.

UPDATE BY BRENDAN: Thanks, Jay. Here’s a more panoramic version of the cover art, in which you can see Voldemort apparently sneaking up on Harry:

(Hat tip: Mark West.)

Here’s the British version of the cover.

And if anyone wants a more precise countdown, here you go:

That counts down to the release in Eastern Daylight Time (GMT-5), since that’s the time zone I’ll be in. As explained here, the first release anywhere will be six hours earlier, at midnight (er, 12:01 AM) British Summer Time (GMT+1):

On 1 February 2007, it was officially announced that Book 7 will be released in English-speaking countries around the world at 00:01 British Summer Time on 21 July 2007. In the U.S., however, the book will be released at 00:01 local time.

Why the hell not? This is a serious slugfest of a game between two really freaking good teams.

If you’re not getting it broadcast locally, go to March Madness on Demand.

Seriously. Great game.

Let the coaching carousel begin. Tubby Smith, according to Andy Katz of ESPN has accepted the head coaching job for the Minnesota Golden Gophers, leaving one of the biggest coaching jobs in America wide open.

Do the Wildcats want a guy like Billy Donovan, a Pitino clone, to come to UK, even though he’s at Florida? Is it one of the up and comers from a different conference? They may want to try to squeeze John Calipari from my Tigers, but I don’t think they can get him.

Anyway, it should be fun to watch the chips fall down the line as coaches start to move around.

The Memphis Tigers hold serve against Houston, to take down the C-USA Tournament Championship, 71-59. All teams on the bubble breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The Tigers extend the nation’s longest winning streak to 22 games, and head into the NCAA Tournament with aspirations of improving on last season’s Elite Eight run.

Wow.

I can’t believe that B-Loy hasn’t picked up on this, as it’s an interesting convergence of journalism ethics and college basketball. I kinda thought that those two things were pretty much right down his alley.

As some of you may know, and as you can all tune into on ESPN tonight, the Florida Gators are coming into Knoxville to take on the Vols. ESPN is bringing in the big guns, i.e., Dick Vitale for the game as well.

Here’s where the fun starts. Local sports radio (WNML-FM) has a morning show from 10am-Noon called “The Sports Page.” It’s hosted not by professional radio guys, but rather by an occasionally rotating cast of sports writers from the local newspaper, the Knoxville News-Sentinel.

Yesterday morning, February 26, 2007, during the regular airing of “The Sports Page,” the hosts, specifically Mike Griffith and John Adams, had called up Dick Vitale for a pre-scheduled interview in anticipation of the big game. There’s where the fun begins.

Dickie V is sitting in a restaurant in Florida eating breakfast, apparently with an open cell phone, somehow doesn’t grasp that he’s actually on the air. Mike Griffith opens up with a lead in to welcome him to the show, and then, well, it’s kinda nothing. Then, all of a sudden, we hear Dickie-Baby chatting it up.

Unfortunately for Dickie-Baby, he’s not chatting it up with his Knoxville based interviewers, but rather some locals in his restaurant in Florida. Here’s how the initial, and pertinent portions went down:

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Just saw the news on Drudge. Former President Gerald Ford, the “Accidental President,” has died at age 93.

Guess Brendan missed this one.

Just a law school blogging weather nerd…harumph.

Well, Domers of the world, you may be squeezing an excellent talent from the prospective ranks of future Volunteers next season.

Harrison Smith, a 6′2″/201 RB/LB Senior from Knoxville Catholic High School (with 4.3-4.4 speed), has been in the middle of a huge recruiting battle, primarily between Notre Dame and Tennessee.

Harrison just recently made his official visit to Tennessee, but today, Knoxvillians have been graced by the portly presence of Charlie Weis, in an attempt to get Mr. Smith to go to South Bend.

Harrison has had a tremendous season in an incredibly tough league this year, leading his Knoxville Catholic Fighting Irish to an undefeated regular season, losing to the ultimate state champions in the state quarterfinals. He’s being recruited as an “athlete” and would be a great addition to either the Irish or the Vols on either side of the ball.

His dad, a UT alum, is somewhat ticked at UT, and Harrison has been leaning toward ND in most people’s opinion. Don’t know if we’ll know anytime soon, but I’m guessing the Weis home visit won’t hurt.

I’d suggest the story of Patrick Willis, Ole Miss senior linebacker for you.

I remember following this kid’s progress as a high school player for tiny little Bruceton-Hollow Rock High School in rural west Tennessee back in my sports radio days. The kid could play, and deserved to win the Mr. Football award in his classification his senior year.

He’s had an incredibly difficult life, including the death of his younger brother this summer, and yet remains positive, focused, and committed to his family and team.

Last night, he properly won the Butkus Award as the nation’s top college linebacker. This spring, any NFL team that needs a dominant, intensely dedicated middle linebacker to patrol the field on Sundays should snap him up in a heartbeat.

Congratulations, Patrick Willis.

Leading the way on Drudge this morning is this article from the Tampa Tribune website.

Basically, it seems like there was a bit of crow eating from a number of forecasters, with a copious sprinkling of “dry Saharan dust.” Seems that this dust may have taken some of the oomph out of any prospective tropical storms/hurricanes, leaving us with a very quiet season this year.

Whatever the cause, I can’t say that a quiet hurricane season is anything other than a good thing. I’m personally quite glad that Brendan hasn’t had that much foul weather about which to go all geeky.

Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winning economist, has passed away at the age of 94.

Friedman will certainly go down as one of the most influential thinkers on economic theory from our time. His insight and revival of the concepts of free and open markets, removal of government interference in matters such as interest rates, through the Chicago School of Economics are crucial to our ongoing success and growth.

Milton Friedman is a paragon of libertarian thought, and the world is worse off without him in it.

UPDATE: By the way, I meant to recommend that you go to YouTube and search for Milton Friedman’s excellent work on the PBS series “Free to Choose.” There are a great number of the episodes uploaded there, and you would do yourself a great service by watching these episodes as a primer into fundamentally sound economic theory.

As I hope I have conveyed in most of my posts, my political leanings most closely seem to resemble the Libertarian Party. I am brutally fiscally conservative, in favor of an extremely limited federal government (only what the Constitution says you can do, ladies and gents), and reasonably liberal as to social matters. The only big thing (and granted, it’s pretty big) where I swerve from the Libertarians is on the war in Iraq. I’m quite hawkish, and really complain that were not doing MORE in Iraq (more aggressive with troop deployment, offensives to eliminate threats, etc). If you want to get the troops home, I think that’s the best way to accomplish it quickly.

My “liberalism,” with regard to social issues, such that it is, is certainly not because I think certain social behaviors are right or moral within my worldview. Personally, I’m not a fan of homosexual marriage, abortion, and other hot-button things. However, I certainly don’t think the federal government should be the ones to dictate to others who want/need to exercise those choices for their own lives.

In all honesty, I think that a large portion of the American population probably feels the same way as I do on this. Most of us would probably prefer to have the government generally stay out of the way, to let us experience the “pursuit of happiness” without external interference. Tax us only to the limited degree necessary to provide for the general welfare (through truly open markets, not by redistributing wealth) and to provide for the common defense, so that we may safely pursue these ambitions.

This election turned on a large number of the population who are simply fed up with the way things have been going in Washington recently. While the Democrats did a very nice job at persuading this mass of people that it was the Republicans who were hindering this pursuit of happiness, I’m not entirely sure that they really sold the public on the fact that the Democrats were the ones to enable the pursuit. It’s just that they didn’t have any other real choice.

The “we need a third party” mantra is recited on countless occasions after an election, yet no one ever seems to do anything with it. Past third party choices were really based on individual “cults of personality,”, i.e., Ross Perot. After that person tires of the strain of campaigning, or after America tires of that person, the third party movement they started is dead. Anyone remember a Reform Party candidate on your ballot yesterday? I don’t.

The LP has gotten some national attention from Fox News in the election aftermath, and in my opinion, must act immediately to spread the word about what they believe. The time is quite ripe for the Libertarians to move in to place to get their views heard, explain the reasons to start voting for them, and to recruit viable, serious candidates who can get elected.

Of course, this takes money, the lifeblood of politics. It takes a mass media who will give some semblance of equal time to Libertarian spokespeople to sit in the midst of the Hannity & Colmes crowd as the voice for this large group of citizens. The middle ground doesn’t have to be filled up with moderates who don’t believe in anything strongly, much as I believe it is today. In fact, there doesn’t have to be a “middle ground,” as that perpetuates the notion that there are simply two sides to every issue.

The Cato Institute has published an excellent policy paper on the potential impact of the voting block who either are Libertarian (or are, but don’t know they are).

I hope it’s time for the Libertarians to speak up and make a meaningful statement in the upcoming two years. I’m going to do my part by continuing to sound off and speak my peace.

Looks like 99% of vote in, with one small county left, and the Democratic challenger, Jon Tester, seems to have a lead over Conrad Burns by about as many votes as there are residents of that county.

It’s looking like a Democrat sweep of both chambers of Congress.

Well, in retrospect, there are a couple of important life lessons to take from the elections of tonight for those on both (or any of multiple) sides of the political fence.

So, as my personal favorite Neal Boortz says, it’s “time to stir the puddin”

I remember an old quote from Rush Limbaugh, when people would suggest that his show would go in the tank after Bill Clinton left office. I think Rush is pretty instructive here with this nugget of wisdom:

“my success is not determined by who wins elections”

This is really true, or should be, for all of us. As I’ve noted before, this nation is great not because of its leaders, but because of its PEOPLE. Average ordinary Americans, doing extraordinary things, thinking of incredible ideas, and achieving great milestones is what the country is about.

All the winners of elections can do is make decisions that are supposed to represent these people on matters over which we have ceded some control based on the Constitution. In reality, all those elected officials can do is fetter or unfetter the public, as their votes may lean.

Americans can, should, and will thrive despite (definitely never BECAUSE of) who we elect as our national and state leaders. To think that every success in the economy, every failure in the economy, and any other random thing that happens is because of the House, Senate, and/or President is to attribute too much to them.

So, as one of my other favorite talk radio guys, Glenn Beck says, “Get out your duct tape, and wrap your head, because this will make your head explode.” Let the rhetoric and other miscellaneous nonsense commence with a fury.

Thanks again to Brendan for letting me horn in on your show.