Basketball Saturday. Some observations.

 It was a great big Saturday for buckets yesterday, one of those Saturdays that remind you high school basketball still lives and breathes in Indiana.  And it was one of those Saturdays that remind you college hoops can still draw you to the tube in March, no matter how devalued some think they've become.

And so congratulations to the Leo Lions, who survived -- barely -- and advanced to the first semistate game in the school's history. And do we really have to wait six more days to see Caleb Furst and Blackhawk Christian get Luke Brown and Blackford in the semistate up at Elkhart?

And never mind that we haven't even gotten to what happened with the college employees yesterday ...

* That was Patrick Ewing over there celebrating Saturday, for all the Madison Square Garden security personnel who just thought he was some large anonymous human wandering its corridors the other day. And how perfect was that?

First he gets flagged by security in the building he virtually owned as a New York Knicks icon -- his freaking jersey hangs in the rafters, for pity's sake -- and then, wonder of wonders, his eighth-seeded Georgetown Hoyas shock the world in the Big East title game.

The Hoyas, with their greatest icon now coaching them, obliterated favored Creighton, 73-48, to earn their first NCAA Tournament bid in six years. And somewhere in the Garden, some security wanker no doubt had one of those epiphany things.

"Oh, so THAT'S who that guy is," you can imagine him saying.

Indeed.

* Look, I get it. This is the most play Iona's gotten since Jeff Ruland played and Jim Valvano coached there.

But, please, let's not make this some sort of redemption story, a creature some media folk find as irresistible as M&Ms. Yes, Rick Pitino's the coach now, and, yes, after Iona won the MAAC championship in his first season by beating Fairfield, he became only the third coach in NCAA history to take five different schools to the Madness.

But, please, people. Please. Let's remember why he's coaching in the MAAC now instead of the ACC.

He's there because he ran a dirty program at Louisville whose lowlights included an assistant coach running a brothel out of the basketball complex, and another assistant allegedly serving as the bagman for sneaker cash payments to a prize recruit. The FBI uncovered the latter in its investigation into college basketball.

Pitino was fired but otherwise has skated so far. Although the FBI probe is ongoing. 

So hold the adulation. Please.

* I don't know if Illinois is going to win the Big Ten Tournament today, or if beyond that the Illini go on to hoist the big trophy on the first Monday in April. But they sure are the flavor of the minute right now.

More and more folks out there are jumping on the Illinois bandwagon, mostly because more and more folks have seen them play. Yesterday they kicked Iowa to the curb by 11, and they looked pretty darn unstoppable doing it.

This is a team that can throw the best guard in the Big Ten at you (Ayo Dosunmu), and when you get tired of chasing him it can throw Trent Frazier and Andre Curbelo and Adam Miller at you, too. The Illini can play fast or faster -- and if you want to bang inside. Kofi Cockburn, a mountain range of a man at 7 feet and 285 pounds, will gladly take you to the low blocks and crush you. 

This is a hell of a team that can play any way you want to play, in other words.

Of course, March eats those teams for breakfast sometimes. It actually takes pleasure in doing that. So we shall see.

But, lord. Won't the seeing be fun?