The first Thursday of the NCAAs is a wonderful day. Four basketball games at once, four time slots…making for 16 fantastic games of College Basketball. One of my fondest memories of my youth is getting lucky one year and having a snow day the very first day of the NCAAs. There’s absolutely no better feeling as a kid than getting a snow day — you wake up, groggily listen to the radio and hope that your school gets announced. And when it does, you shut off that alarm and go back to sleep for those precious hours of sleep. On that lucky day, I slept until noon, turned on the tube, and watched five hours of basketball. Now that I’m working, I try to work from home the very first day of the tourney. It’s not quite the same as a snow day, but it’s still awesome.

A few interesting links that I’ve read over the past few days:

• ESPN Page 2 Guide to the NCAA Tournament: It’s a long, amusing read. Besides giving some props to Ken Pomeroy’s offensive and defensive efficiency ratings, they also bring light to my question from a few posts ago: What’s up with Syracuse’s uniforms? It turns out Nike is bringing out a new set of uniforms just for the NCAAs. Nike’s outfitting Syracuse, Ohio State, Florida, and Arizona in the “tight shirt, baggy shorts” uniform, which they chose to name Nike System of Dress. What’s amusing is that if you go to the site, they show players from each team in the new outfits. One of the players doesn’t belong, because he’s the only one without a shirt on. That player? Yes, he’s on Syracuse. Of course, that’s the only team that didn’t make the NCAAs either. Highly amusing.
• Princeton Basketball News: This is an excellent college basketball blog with in depth coverage of Princeton basketball. What’s touching is that they also cover prodigal son John Thompson III and Georgetown basketball. I highly recommend the post on the Big East Tournament which sums up what’s fun about being at MSG. Also see the youtube video that shows JT3 cutting down the net after the Hoya victory last week.
• Meet Central Connecticut State: From the NYTimes Bracket blog — apparently Greg Oden doesn’t know how the NCAA Tournament works: “The coach had to explain to Oden that the teams play the first round on Thursday and the second round on Saturday. “Then he asked if the game was in the same place.”” I haven’t been impressed with Oden, and now I’ll be rooting against him — how could you possibly not know how the NCAAs work? Honestly, I’ve never seen him passionate about playing basketball this year.
• Penn’s Stephen Danley Hijacks The Bracket: I’ll make it short — Penn baller (and Rhodes scholar finalist) Danley writes about what it’s like to play basketball in the Ivy League. His blog post borders on the pretentious. An excerpt about Penn’s interactions with the media:
  

  It didn’t end there. Just this week someone asked our star point guard, Ibrahim Jaaber, what going to the tournament for a third consecutive season meant to him. ”The marinara sauce on my spaghetti,” he told them. Calling it the frosting on the cake just won’t cut it at Penn.

  Hey Danley — you know what won’t cut it in the real world? Acting like a douchebag. Hilarity ensues in the comments, as the otherwise sedate audience (read: Upper East side investment bankers and management consultants) banter about the merits/demerits of Danley’s post. I love it.

• Name of the Year blog: Found from Bill Simmons’s article yesterday is this gem: a tournament of the greatest names people actually have. My favorites? Yourhighness Morgan, Phyre Quickly Burns, and Conceptualization Gibbs.

Peace out and have a great Thursday. I know I will.

Categories: BlogWatch, NewsWatch, donald