The good news is, the Notre Dame-George Mason game will be the primary ~9:30 game on the Knoxville CBS affiliate Thursday night. Sweet!

The bad news is, contrary to what I guessed last night, USC-Kansas State won’t be the primary ~7:00 game. I guess they think Belmont, a Nashville university with 4,700 students, has a large enough following in East Tennessee that it makes sense to prioritize #2 Duke vs. #15 Belmont over the super-frosh showdown of Mayo vs. Beasley. Ugh.

I just hope our Comcast connection can handle MMOD. (Speaking of which, if you want a "VIP pass," you’d better sign up now — they’re 86% full!)

Knoxville's Krutch Park in bloom. … Meanwhile, I just got a text message from Kristin in South Bend -- where I'm guessing it's decidedly less springlike -- reporting that Notre Dame Law School has been evacuated due to a fire alarm. Hmm.

UPDATE: Our intrepid NDLS correspondent reports: “All ok, incident involved a microwave, a sandwich wrapped in tin foil, & a styrofoam plate.” Heh.

Beeeeat Eagles!

Winner gets Pitt tomorrow at 9:30.

UPDATE: Marquette wins, 89-79.

Cal will get a rematch tomorrow of its controversial season regular-finale against UCLA.

That’ll be at 5:30 PM on FSN, right after the 3:00 game between USC and Arizona State. I’m hoping to get to work early tomorrow, and to work through lunch, so I can come home for at least the second half of that one. :)

If the Trojans and Bruins both win, then my bet with Mike will be decided Friday night. If, on the other hand, either team loses tomorrow, the season series remains split 1-1 and the bet’s a wash.

Also tomorrow, at 9:30 PM on ESPN: Notre Dame vs. Marquette or Seton Hall. All in all, it’s going to be a big day in Irish Trojan land…

Luke Harangody, as expected, is the Big East Player of the Year — and Mike Brey is the conference’s Coach of the Year for the second straight season. (Hat tip: JohnMac.)

Brey was apparently unsatisfied by the crow I ate last year, and decided to continue coaching like a champion, thus making me look like even more of an idiot for my endlessly repeated demands back in 2005, 2006 and 2007 that he be fired. :)

Seriously: Great job, Coach Brey! Fire Brendan Loy! Go Irish!

Back in January, when I wrote about how the major candidates for president were campaigning "in or near practically every single place I used to live…as well as a place I may someday live…but NOT the place I currently live" — a phenomenon which I referred to as "a vast left/right-wing conspiracy to piss me off" — I noted that the only former Brendan Loy domicile they hadn’t visited was South Bend. Then, as an afterthought, I added:

And come to think of it, if the Dem race really does drag on, there’s an
excellent chance they’ll eventually hit South Bend! Between
Pennsylvania (April 22) and West Virginia (May 13), the only primaries
are in Indiana and North Carolina, both on May 6. So there’s a two-week
window for campaigning in just those two states. If Hillary and Barack
are still going at it by then (probably unlikely, I admit, but
certainly not impossible), they’ll have more than enough time to travel
up and down the entirety of the great state of Indiana trolling for
votes, stopping in every major and minor city along the way. So they’d
certainly make it to South Bend, which is [one of the] biggest cit[ies] in northern
Indiana. Heck, forget South Bend, I bet they’d end up coming to Notre Dame itself,
perhaps for a rally (or rallies) at the Joyce Center (as President Bush
did on his Social Security Unplugged tour back in 2005).

Again I say, harumph.

Well, here we are, just over five weeks later, and that "unlikely…but
certainly not impossible" scenario looks, well, likely. Unless Hillary loses Pennsylvania, you have to think the campaign will continue into May. And you also have to think Hillary, fresh off victories in Ohio and Pennsylvania, will focus heavily on the next logical target in her tour of economically depressed "rust belt" areas: northern Indiana. Forget visiting South Bend, she might practically move in. :) Obama, for his part, will presumably spend most of his time in large population centers with reasonably large black populations — which would put South Bend high on his list, as well.

So basically, it looks like every single place I’ve ever lived except East Tennessee (Greater Hartford, NYC, Phoenix, L.A., South Bend), plus my possible future home (Denver), will have played host to one or more major candidate visit by the time this campaign is over. Jealousy, thy name is Brendan Loy.

P.S. With my luck, we’ll probably end up moving from Tennessee to Colorado sometime in between the Democratic National Convention in Denver (August 25-28) and the presidential debate in Nashville (October 7), thus missing both events. ;)

Notre Dame edged South Florida on Saturday to finish tied for second place in the Big East — ND’s best finish ever. The Irish went 24-6 overall, 14-4 in conference. Woohoo!

Black & Green writes: “Coach Brey is third behind only Jim Calhoun and Jim Boeheim in all time Big East victories. There’s a good trivia question for your next party. A guy who was on the hot seat two years ago is now going back to a top seed in the Big East tournament and could win his second straight Coach of the Year award.”

Next comes the always-exciting Big East Tournament, starting on Thursday. Notre Dame will be the #3 seed, and will play the winner of Wednesday’s 6-11 game between Marquette and Seton Hall (or Cincinnati?). Go Irish!

I’d be remiss in my basketball-blogging duties if I didn’t point out that Gonzaga beat St. Mary’s yesterday to take the WCC lead and probably wrap up an NCAA at-large bid, if they need it. As long as the Zags beat 6-7 Santa Clara tomorrow night, they’ll win yet another regular-season conference title.

Also, Notre Dame eked out a win over DePaul. Joe Lunardi currently projects the Irish as a #4 seed, Gonzaga as a #6, and USC as a #7. (But that was before ‘SC lost to Arizona State yesterday.)

BEEEEAT CARDINALS!!!

That is all.

UPDATE: Um, so yeah, it’s not going too well. Louisville 42, Notre Dame 27 at halftime.

UPDATE 2: Louisville won, 90-85. They were way ahead for most of the game, but Notre Dame mounted a valiant comeback late, with five three-pointers in the last minute-and-a-half — three of them by Luke Harangody, who hadn’t hit a three all season! Harangody ended up with 40 points.

UPDATE 3: USC-Arizona is now underway on ESPN. The Trojans lead early, 26-14.

UPDATE 4: Trojans pick up a huge road win, 70-58. Sweet!

The orange blazer had no magic last night, as #1 Tennessee lost to Vanderbilt.

So, who’ll be #1 in the polls next week? Does Memphis take it back? Or perhaps North Carolina? More importantly, is Tennessee still a #1 seed? I’d think that, if they win out (including the SEC Tournament), they’d have to be.

Now, enough of this Go Big Orange business. :) It’s time to start getting excited about tomorrow night’s Notre Dame-Louisville game. GO IRISH!

Barack Obama isn’t the only frontrunner who will be on national TV tonight trying to defend his recently acquired top-dog status against a rival’s onslaught. At 9:00 PM EST — the same time as the Democratic debate on MSNBC — the #1-ranked Tennessee men’s basketball team will face #18 Vanderbilt on the Commodores’ home floor. The game will be on ESPN, and Bruce Pearl will be in his orange blazer.

Go Vols & Go Barack!

P.S. I’m looking ahead a bit now, but take a gander at the Big East standings, and then ponder for a moment Thursday night’s big game: Notre Dame at Louisville, 7:00 PM on ESPN. Holy cow. Mike Brey’s boys playing, maybe, for a Big East regular-season championship? I love it! Oh, and did I mention it’s part of an Irish Trojan doubleheader? USC visits Arizona at 9:00 PM Thursday, also on ESPN. Sweet.

(more…)

Bill Kelley, former deputy counsel to President Bush and current Notre Dame Law School professor, got a taste of life at a slightly more liberal university when protesters disrupted an event he was participating in last week at UC-Berkeley. There’s a photo:

He looks somewhat perturbed. The Daily Californian article doesn’t say, however, whether Professor Kelley was branded a "war criminal" by the protesters. (The event’s moderator, Professor John Yoo, was.)

As usual with such protesters, they were very interested in free speech, so long as they were the ones speaking. "As the panelist discussion progressed, protestors continuously shouted at Yoo," according the Daily Cal.

And their shouts weren’t even relevant to the topic at hand — while the protesters were rambling about torture and executive power, the panelists (who included USC professor Susan Estrich, another noted war criminal*) tried to have a discussion about why voters should carefully consider potential Supreme Court nominations in making election decisions this fall, something you’d think the protesters would agree with. But, you know, heaven forbid scholars get together to talk about such things. They must be shouted down! They’re war criminals! They’re evil fascists!! Bush=Hitler!!! *sigh*

Said Ethan Rarick, director of the Center on Politics at the Institute of Governmental Studies: "We’re fine with people coming to express their opinions, even on the panelists and participants, but it should not disrupt the event."

*…and by "war criminal," I mean "antiwar liberal feminist."

I’m expecting a busy afternoon and evening, and thus probably won’t be able to watch as much basketball as I’d like. But there’s plenty to talk about, with the day’s biggest games being Drake @ Butler at 5:00 PM on ESPN2 (the BracketBusters marquee game) and, of course, Tennessee @ Memphis at 9:00 PM on ESPN2. Although, don’t sleep on Kent State @ St. Mary’s at midnight on the Deuce, which Kyle Whelliston says is potentially the most consequential ‘Busters game of them all, bubble-wise.

Anyway, here’s the scoreboard. If you’re watching the games and you feel like commenting, fire away.

P.S. Nice wins for USC and Notre Dame on Thursday night, eh?

P.P.S. Check out 4th through 9th place in the Pac-10 standings. Wow. Is that conference balanced or what?

UPDATE: Tennessee wins, 66-62! Come Monday morning, the Vols will be #1 in the nation for the first time in school history. (Er, on the men’s side, that is.)

And so ends Memphis’s bid for an undefeated season. The Tigers were 8-for-17 from the free-throw line, and they didn’t hit a single three-pointer after their white-hot start in the game’s first 12 minutes.

Oh, and Drake beat Butler in another very exciting game.

Here is the obituary of Notre Dame 2L Timothy Aher, who died in London over the weekend. News articles about his sad and untimely passing have also been published in the Notre Dame newspaper and in the local Connecticut newspaper of the area where he grew up. A memorial mass was held at the Basilica on Tuesday (video here) for Tim and Connor McGrath, the Notre Dame sophomore who also died over the weekend.

There’s much more, including a photo from the CT paper, in the Tim Aher & Connor McGrath memorial post, which I’ve updated several times. (There’s a fair amount of search-engine traffic coming to that page, so I’m trying to keep everything related to the tragedies consolidated there.) You can also find more photos of Tim at this Photobucket page. According to Chicago radio station WHPK, "friends from law school have started [it] to compile a photo album to give to Tim’s family."

Also, from the obituary: "In lieu of flowers, the family asks
that contributions be made to Connecticut Legal Services, Inc., 62
Washington St., Middletown, CT 06457, in Tim’s name."

The university has released the name of the Notre Dame student who died in London over the weekend. As I feared, it was a law student: 2L Timothy Aher.

In addition to being a Domer, Tim was also a Nutmegger, a resident of Brookfield, Connecticut. He was 25. The university says he "died tragically and unexpectedly Sunday (Feb. 17) in Ilford, England, a suburb of London."

He’s the second Notre Dame Law School student to die in just over 10 months. On April 7 of last year, 3L Ryan Rudd died of cancer, less than a month-and-a-half before he would have graduated. He was awarded his J.D. posthumously; his mother received it in a very emotional moment at commencement.

I imagine the Class of 2009 will be torn up about Tim’s death in much the same way that ours was about Ryan’s. What a tragedy.

Anyway, in the same press release, the university also released more details about the unrelated death of Notre Dame sophomore Connor McGrath, a 20-year-old who intended to major in business:

A resident of Siegfried Hall, he had spent the night in the room of a friend in Dillon Hall, where he previously had resided. His body was discovered by friends at approximately 1:40 p.m. … Investigators from the unit and the county’s deputy coroner made a preliminary evaluation, pending an autopsy today, that the death appeared to be from natural causes, possibly related to McGrath’s history of diabetes.

A memorial Mass for both students will be held Tuesday at 10 p.m. at the Basilica.

May they both rest in peace. And I know we’ll all be keeping their family and friends in our thoughts and prayers. I think particularly of the parents, as I sit here with Loyette sleeping peacefully in my lap; I can’t imagine the wrenching pain of losing a child just as they’re becoming an adult. May they find some source of comfort in the terribly sad days, indeed years, ahead.

UPDATE, 2/19: Here’s a Tim Aher remembrance, with a photo, from blogger Mark Solotroff. Solotroff is in a band, and last November, he and his bandmates were hosted by Tim while in London on tour. A couple of earlier blog posts about their adventures can be found here and here.

Also, another blogger remembers Connor, with several photos. And a Facebook group has been created in his honor.

The Notre Dame Observer has separate articles today about Tim’s death and about Connor’s death. An excerpt from the article about Tim:

Aher, 25, was a music lover with eccentric interests and a warm personality, his friends said.

"He was a beautiful and rare and amazing person," [Adam] Zayed said.

A memorial Mass was celebrated Monday afternoon in the Alumni Hall chapel. Father John Coughlin, a law professor, presided. Approximately 100 people, mostly students and faculty from the Law School, attended the Mass.

"People from all walks and cliques in the Law School were there today," [Artie] Merschat said. "He brought the Law School together."

Read the whole thing, including an amusing anecdote about Tim’s "hipster subjugation of death metal culture."

UPDATE, 2/20: Here’s an article about Tim’s death from the Danbury News-Times in Connecticut. It includes a photo, of which I’ve added a scaled-down version to the top of this post (along with a photo of Connor from his Facebook group).

UPDATE, 2/21: Here’s Tim’s obituary.

In addition, via Chicago radio station WHPK — where I guess Tim used to work — I learn that "friends from law school have started to compile a photo album to give to Tim’s family." It has 45 photos and counting. And there’s also a Tim Aher blog.

The memorial mass for Tim and Connor was held at the Basilica on Tuesday. Here’s the Observer article about it, and here’s a WNDU article, with video.

Also from the Observer: a letter to the editor praising the campus for coming together in unity at the memorial mass, and an op-ed by Father Lou DelFra titled, "Tragedy: a time of God’s absence or presence?"

Funeral arrangements in Connecticut are as follows: "The family will receive friends at the Valley Presbyterian Church, 21
West Whisconier Rd., Brookfield, CT between the hours of 3:00pm and
5:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 23, 2008. A memorial service will be
held at the church at 5:30 p.m."

Also: "In lieu of flowers, the family asks
that contributions be made to Connecticut Legal Services, Inc., 62
Washington St., Middletown, CT 06457, in Tim’s name."

P.S. Out of respect for the families, please let’s not speculate on anything that hasn’t been made public, and/or widely reported by a reputable source, with regard to the individual circumstances of either student’s death. Thanks.

P.P.S. Also, please let’s keep any arguments about side-issues from the previous post confined there, rather than allowing them to spill over to this thread, which should really be for memorialization and mourning.