Appointment viewing

 The TV show you want to park yourself in front of tonight begins sometime after 9 p.m., and it's not A Very Special Episode of "Different Strokes." It's a women's basketball game.

Iowa vs. South Carolina. 30-6 vs. 36-0. Caitlin Clark vs. Aliyah Boston.

Some folks are saying this is the Bird-Magic, Indiana State-Michigan State moment for women's college buckets, and it's hard to argue with them. That showdown in the men's Final Four in Salt Lake City 44 years ago was the origin story for March Madness, and it was the origin story for the modern NBA, too. Bird-vs.-Magic in '79 became Bird-vs.-Magic in the NBA for the next decade, and, with a big assist from MJ, the commercial behemoth of the LeBron-Steph-Luka-Giannis Association came squalling into the world as a result.

No one's predicting that will happen in the WNBA with Caitlin-vs.-Aliyah, because the WNBA is not the scandal-scarred NBA of the late 1970s. It's created its own legends -- Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Lisa Leslie, Elena Delle Donne, on and on -- and thus Caitlin-vs.-Aliyah will only add one more layer to that.

But tonight will be its own historical marker, and it's hard not to see the parallels to '79. As with Bird and Magic, Clark and Boston have been the best players this March, mirroring their lineal descendants.

Clark, brash and cocky and preternaturally gifted, has been the player of the tournament so far, as much for her swagger as the way she's carried an Iowa team that wasn't even the best team in its conference. She's coming off a monster 41-point, 12-assist, 10-rebound triple-double that carried the Hawkeyes past Louisville in the Elite Eight - a game that drew bigger TV numbers than any NBA game this season.

(Acknowledging, of course, that the NBA plays 10,000 games a season and no set of eyeballs can keep up with that endless slog.)

Boston, meanwhile ...

Well, all she's done is be the straw that stirs the drink for the undefeated Gamecocks, who are looking to be the first women's team since UConn eight years ago to run the table. Only nine teams have ever gone unbeaten in the modern history of the women's game.

Boston went for 22 points, 10 boards and five assists in the Gamecocks 86-75 win over Maryland in the Elite Eight, a fairly typical night for her. Like Magic in '79, she has more help than Clark does or Bird did. The Blob's guess is the analogy will therefore hold: South Carolina wins despite another lights-out game from Clark. 

And America, as it did Sunday, will watch as never before.

Play ball

 Opening Day, and again I'm sweating the night away in the airless space beneath the right-field overhang in Fenway Park, and there's a hot dog in a weird sideways bun and an overpriced beer and two small boys a couple of rows down from me, one in a Red Sox cap and one in a Yankees cap.

Opening Day, and I'm riding down to Cincinnati with Clarence Young from the Elwood Call-Leader, because back then the Reds always kicked off the MLB season and we always got credentials and  it was a holiday in the old river town, throngs of people in the streets and a parade if I remember and a joyous release from winter. 

Opening Day, and dammit it's raining, but play ball, anyway. Hope is in the air. 162-0 is still possible. You've got the W flag freshly laundered if you're a Cubs fan, and the All Rise banner for Aaron Judge if you're a Yankees fan, and the Dodger Dog already in hand if you're a Dodgers fan.

Meanwhile, if you're a Pittsburgh Pirates fan ...

"Oh, here we go," you're saying now. "And here you were writin' so pretty up until now."

Oh, come on. You oughta know by now that here in the Bloboverse, you can't mention Opening Day without paying homage to my cruddy Buccos.

Who'll once again pinch pennies until they scream, and stink up their gem of a ballpark, and let Oneil Cruz go to the Yankees or Dodgers or Philly eventually because someday Bob Nutting will have to pay him, and we all know how he feels about paying star money to star players.

In other words, those of us who are stuck with our Cruds will enjoy him while we can. 

And have a great time today visualizing 162-0 until the Cruds lose and they're 0-1.

And then start work on our own banner.

"(Blank) Days Since The Pirates Were Not In Last Place," it'll read. 

Transfer portal blues

Lousy. Poaching. Bastards.

There. I feel better now.

OK, so not really.

Lousy ... poaching ... candy-stripe bastards.

Ah. NOW I feel better.

That more suits the mood of this Ball State alum upon the news the best player on the Cardinals 20-win basketball team, 6-9 forward Payton Sparks, has decided to bolt to Indiana via the transfer portal. Thaaaat's super. Thaaaat's outstanding. Ball State gets him for two years, and then he's off to Bloomington.

As if, I don't know, BSU is just a farm team for Indiana now. 

The plain unvarnished truth is, however, just about every school on Ball State's level of D-I buckets is a farm team now, or at least a potential farm team. This is what the   transfer portal and NIL has wrought, and the Blob can't say it's opposed. It's just that the scales that were so unfairly weighted against college athletes before have become weighted just as heavily in the other direction, because the NCAA had no plan for this and now it's the Wild West out there.

Which is makes mid-majors such as Ball State particularly vulnerable. And which is also why a friend of mine and I sort of half-predicted today's news a few weeks ago.

We were two Ball State grads in Muncie for the Cardinals' last home game of the  season, on a foul Friday night with the students scattering for spring break. The Cards lost to MAC regular-season champ Toledo that night, but Sparks went for 24 points and 11 boards. He scored 17 of Ball State's 24 first-half points, and looked like nothing so much as a mid-major version of Zion Williamson.

At some point that night, my friend and I acknowledged the success of Ball State's first-year head coach Michael Lewis, who played for Bob Knight at IU. Then I nodded toward Sparks and said, "Now watch IU swoop in and steal him. Be just like 'em."

I was kidding, sort of. And then it happened.

And, listen, I don't blame the kid. He's damn good. He's Big Ten good. And he almost hopped the portal for Bloomington after last season. 

But he stuck around Muncie for one more season. So good on him.

Still doesn't keep me from hoping those five ancient  banners at one end of Assembly Hall fall victim to a plague of moths. 

Or that a giant sinkhole opens up beneath the Sample Gates.

Or that Nick's English Hut runs out of beer some Saturday night.

"Wow," you're saying now. "You really ARE bitter."

Ah, not really. I know it's a brave new world, and I'm realistic enough to acknowledge Ball State's place in it. Besides, at least our media and communications school is still better.

So there.

When superfans go bad

 Everyone's talking about the NFL draft right now, and who's going to take which quarterback where, and what's going to happen with Lamar Jackson, who didn't hire an agent and now is pretty much rudderless in his ongoing contract dispute/soap opera with the Baltimore Ravens.

But what about some real NFL news, boys and girls?

ChiefsaHolic is in the wind!

That would be Xavier Babudar, the Kansas City Chiefs superfan who dresses in a wolf suit, a Chiefs jersey and Zubaz pants for every home game. It seems when Babudar isn't dressing as a wolf, he likes to rob banks. Or at least that's what he's been accused of doing.

Babudar was arrested Dec. 16 for allegedly robbing a credit union in Bixby, Okla. (while disguised, naturally). Released on bond with an ankle monitor, he was supposed to appear for arraignment hearing Monday. Instead, he cut off the ankle monitor and vanished.

Now there's a $1 million warrant on his head -- and, listen, this might not be Bonnie and Clyde fleeing Frank Hamer in a stolen Ford V8, but when did Clyde ever dress up in a wolf suit?

Never, that's when. In any event, ChiefsaHolic is on the lam. And, no, there's no truth to the rumor the authorities have set up roving tailgate barbecues all across Chiefs Kingdom to get him to come out of hiding.

Hungry and with his paws up, presumably.

Chalk City

 Fans of chaos have had it all their own way this March, in which the Madness has been more than just a zippy brand invented by the NCAA and HEY LITTLE MOM AND POP STORE IN HOOTERVILLE YOU BETTER NOT USE IT OR WE'LL SUE YOUR PANTS OFF.

Anyway ... where's the love for those who prefer sanity and chalk in their basketball tournaments?

Well, the women's tournament has just what you've been looking for!

It's Chalk City over there, baby, and you're gonna love it. Not only is the women's Final Four two 1-seeds, a 2-seed and a 3-seed, one of the 1-seeds is undefeated. Top-ranked South Carolina will be attempting the perfecto this weekend, and when's the last time we saw that on the men's side?

It was 1976, that's when. Indiana went 33-0, and it was so long ago Bob Knight was still wearing those hideous plaid jackets and still looked young enough to be carded on Saturday nights down on Kirkwood.  

But the women, they're keeping the faith with exclusivity. Last night, for instance, 1-seeds South Carolina and Virginia Tech both locked up their Final Four berths. And you know how they did it? 

By beating 2-seed Maryland and 3-seed Ohio State, respectively. You can't get much chalkier than that.

Even better, the women's Final Four is not only a 3-seed-or-higher private club, the two best players in the women's game are there. That would be Aliyah Boston of South Carolina and Caitlin Clark of Iowa, who just dropped a triple-double for the ages -- 41 points, 10 rebounds, 12 assists, 8-of-14 from 3-point -- to send Louisville packing in the Elite Eight.

Clark and Boston meet Friday night in the second semifinal game. Which means a berth in the title game and Player of the Year honors will be for grabs.

Appointment viewing, if you ask me. And probably a few others.

A Four with more

Well, then: UConn, Miami, San Diego State, Florida Atlantic.

This ain't your father's Final Four.

This ain't anyone's idea of a Final Four, unless you're the anyone who says "Let's throw darts at an NCAA bracket and see who we get." Three of the four schools have never played in a Final Four. The fourth (UConn) has played in six since 1999, but hasn't reached one in nine years -- and it's the first for Huskies coach Dan Hurley.

The most experienced guy in the deal is 73-year-old Miami coach Jim Larranaga, who last coached in a Final Four 17 years ago. And it was at a different school, George Mason. 

A lot of folks out there think that makes this the Faceless Four. Or the Boring Four. Or the "I Bet CBS Is Still Negotiating To Get Duke Or Kentucky Reinstated" Four.

The Blob begs to differ.

The Blob says the TV numbers will actually get a bump because none of the same-old same-olds is there.

I say this because the four programs who'll meet in Houston this weekend have made a name for themselves, in the way teams do when they play hard and well and aren't jerks about it. There's now a whole pile of Florida Atlantic fans out there, and they'll all be watching Saturday evening. And who doesn't love watching this Miami team play, or doesn't know the names Nigel Pack and Isaiah Wong now?

San Diego State may not be a power  conference school, but the success of its football and basketball programs -- and its geographic location -- have a  lot of observers convinced it's the logical choice to be the next Pac-12 addition when USC and UCLA leave in a couple of years. So there's that.

UConn, meanwhile, is the lone blueblood, and your likely national champion. The Huskies were one of the top teams in the nation back when all this began in November and December, but then they hit a bad patch in conference play. Now they're back playing the way they did three months ago, destroying Arkansas by 23 and Gonzaga by 28 in the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight.

No one's come within 15 points of them so far in Da Tournament. They've been the best team in this thing since it began, and there's no reason to think they won't be again in Houston.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, Florida Atlantic has an esprit de corps rare in the brave new NIL I-got-mine world of professional college buckets. Miami has Wong and Pack and unearthly quicks that wear teams down at both ends. And San Diego State knocked out the overall No. 1 seed (Alabama) in the Sweet Sixteen, and, in the Elite Eight, held one of the nation's top scoring teams (Creighton) to 56 points.

The only thing about this tournament we know is we don't know anything. That's been the last two weeks in a nutshell.

I wouldn't call that boring. I wouldn't call it a ratings loser, either.

Know why I say that? 

Because back in 2010, when Gordon Haywood's last-second heave circled the bowl and fell off, permitting Duke to escape with its life against the upstart Butler Bulldogs, 24 million viewers tuned in. It was one of the highest-rated title games in NCAA history, dwarfing the numbers from the three previous years.

Nobody outside Indiana knew who Butler was when Da Tournament began that year, either. But everyone knew the Bulldogs by that first Monday night in April.

And this year?

Been the craziest, and therefore the most intriguing, NCAA Tournament in recent memory. And that draws eyeballs.

The Boring Four?

Nah. A Four with more.

Champions, plus one

 He has never been gone from them, even though he’s gone from them. That's the first thing you should understand.

One of his sons is the point guard. The coach is the assistant he taught, mentored, inspired with his example. The gym floor back home in Fort Wayne has his name on it.

And so -- after falling down an 11-point well at halftime yesterday; after clawing their way back against a team no Indiana school had beaten this season; after Kellen Pickett and Gage Sefton and, yes, Jimmy Davidson, had taken Blackhawk Christian to a third state title in five years -- someone lifted a camera and made a picture.

In it, the 2A state championship trophy is lying on the floor in Gainbridge Fieldhouse.

The game ball, or at least a ball, lies next to it.

The Blackhawk Christian Braves form a circle around these totems, heads bowed, arms around one another. And you know who they're remembering in their prayers.

Marc Davidson is never gone from them. Remember?

He died last May from cancer, but that didn't mean cancer won. Indeed, Davidson coached almost until the end, even when he was so sick he could barely stand. Along the way, he taught those boys and that coach standing in a circle yesterday not only how to live a life, but how to face its end with dignity and courage and a particular grace.

He taught them basketball. And then, at the end, he taught them so much more.

"His fingerprints are everywhere," said Matt Roth, Davidson's protege and successor, on the Gainbridge PA after Blackhawk Christian 52, Linton-Stockton 45.

They were certainly all over this game. All those road nights Davidson somehow made it to the bench after spending the bus ride lying on the floor between the seats because he was so spent? All the nights when he sat in the locker room feeling so sick he didn't think he could get up, but somehow got up and walked out onto the floor and coached his team?

Eleven points back with 16 minutes to play against the No. 1 2A team in the state was nothing, compared to that. It was nothing.

And so Pickett, the gifted sophomore, went for 19 points, nine rebounds, four assists and a steal. Sefton added 16 points and eight boards. Davidson did his part with nine points, seven rebounds, two assists; Aiden Muldoon came off the bench to stick a big corner three with four minutes left and the Braves leading by one.

Finally, Josh Furst, the team's leading scorer, flushed a dunk to put an exclamation point on it as the clock ran dry. They were his only two points, but you think he cared?

Nope. He was a champion, just like they were all champions.

Well. Champions, plus one.

Karma

 This is exactly the level of predictability we expected, which is to say very small. We're into the Elite Eight now in Da Tournament, and left standing are a 2-seed (Texas), a couple of 3-seeds (Gonzaga and Kansas State), a 4-seed (UConn), two 5-seeds (Miami and San Diego State), and a 6-seed (Creighton).

Oh, yeah. And also one 9-seed (Florida Atlantic) that doesn't look or play like any 9-seed the Blob ever saw.

"But where are the 1-seeds, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now.

They're gone, in case you haven't heard. History. Archives. First time since they started seeding this deal 44 years ago that no 1-seed has survived the Sweet Sixteen.

The last two (Alabama and Houston) both hit the bricks Friday night, a hint that the Madness, besides being Mad, has a thing for karma, too. 'Bama, the overall 1-seed, lost to San Diego State, which means we won't have to talk anymore about the three Crimson Tide players who got mixed up in a murder to one degree or another. And as for Houston ...

Well. Kelvin Sampson, who left a proud Indiana program in ruins 15 years ago, got his. And in the most karmic way possible.

See, Miami beat Sampson's Cougars by 14, 89-75.

A kid named Nigel Pack scored 26 for the Hurricanes, including seven threes in ten attempts.

And Nigel Pack's hometown?

Indianapolis.

In other words: Miami took down Kelvin Sampson, and it was an Indiana kid who did the taking down.

Tell me there ain't poetry in that.

In praise of the little guy

 The best part about Markquis Nowell's night Thursday was not the 20 points he scored, nor the 19 dimes he dished, nor the fact he rolled his ankle five minutes into the second half and still was the best player on the floor. 

No, sir. The best part about Markquis Nowell's night Thursday came after all that (plus Kansas State's OT win over Michigan State), when Muggsy Bogues gave him a shout-out on the Magic Twitter Thingy.

Muggsy Bogues! Patron saint of ballin' shorties everywhere.

And, listen, "shorty" is no pejorative in this precinct. It's a badge of honor.

Especially after you watched Nowell, who may not even be all of 5-8, take the game in his hands because Michigan State was not going down unless someone for K-State did.

Fun fact to know and tell: The Spartans, in defeat, made 13 threes in 25 attempts. That's 52 percent to you and me, kids.

Another fun fact to know and tell: K-State responded to that by sticking 11-of-24 from beyond the arc. This included Ismael Massoud's cold-blooded 4-of-6 on his way to 15 points — not bad for a guy averaging 5.5 points on 39.1 percent shooting. 

And Nowell?

Maybe his best play happened in the final minute of overtime, with K-State and Sparty matching buckets as the clock got skinny. 

Nowell had the ball up top. K-State coach Jerome Tang was gesturing something to him from the bench. Nowell was looking at him, gesturing back. 

Then, as if thinking "Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to be doing something," he lifted a perfect, practically no-look lob to Keyontae Johnson for a reverse slam that all but sealed it.

It was his 18th assist of the night. He'd get one more, which broke an NCAA Tournament record for single-game assists that had stood for 36 years.

Amazing stuff. But then, it was a night for little guys doing amazing stuff.

This brings us to Florida Atlantic, a Conference USA school from Boca Raton which won its 34th game of the season last night by beating the Brawny Lad of the SEC, Tennessee. The final was 62-55, and the Owls did it the way they've done it all season, by pushing the rock and expertly spacing the floor to just as expertly find the open look. Eight Owls played at least 13 minutes; all but one scored.

Atlantic shot horribly in the first half, but the Owls got better. To compensate they went to the glass like piranha, out-Windexing the bigger Vols 40-36. And when at least a few of FAU's shots began falling and Tennessee's stopped, it was curtains for Rocky Top; the Owls outscored Tennessee 40-28 in the second half and 24-16 in the last 10 minutes.

Now it's on to the Elite Eight for FAU in only its second appearance ever in Da Tournament. Next they'll face Markquis Nowell and a Kansas State team that was picked to finish dead last in the Big 12.

Little guy vs. little guy, in other words. Let the big fun begin.

Valley of the jerks

 Tonight the Madness revs up again, and that means a good week gets better for coaches who've behaved badly. 

This week, after all, St. John's brought Rick Pitino home to New York City, apparently convinced none of his assistants will be running a brothel out of the basketball complex the way they did on the Rickster's watch at Louisville. Meanwhile, in the Sweet Sixteen, both Sean Miller (Xavier) and Kelvin Sampson (Houston) will send their teams out, apparently having been cured of the scofflaw-ery that got them fired at Arizona and Indiana, respectively.

Yes, sir. It's a good week for redemption, whether or not it's actually real.

It's also a good week for one coach who needs no redemption.

That would be Micah Shrewsbury from Penn State. whose team nearly won the Big Ten Tournament and reached the round of 32 in Da Tournament before losing by five to 2-seed Texas. That wasn't a bad showing for a football school, and Shrewsbury did it right, besides.

That's why Notre Dame hired him as Mike Brey's successor. 

It's a great hire, a character hire, and Shrewsbury will represent Notre Dame the way it likes to be represented. And the Blob said so on the Magic Twitter Thingy.

Which took me right back to the Valley of the Jerks, social media being the hangout for creeps and racist cruds it is.

Not long after I tweeted what I did, see, someone responded that "Ray Charles could have seen that coming." Then he topped that by complaining about all these Woke universities (his caps) hiring black coaches, and how Indiana will probably "hire a black guy ala Purdue" when it fires football coach Tom Allen.

To which I probably should have responded, "Speak up, son, I can't hear you through the sheet and hood."

I didn't, because you never want to encourage these, um, people. Plus, trolls hate it when you ignore 'em. 

But more and more now I wonder what the hell is wrong with people, and it's not just because I'm a certified Cranky Old Man.  It's because people say stuff now they've  apparently always thought, but now have either the cloak of anonymity or the approval of an audience who think it's edgy and bad-ass to be a bigot to say it out loud.

The other day, for instance, some radio foofs in (surprise, surprise) Boston were ranking "top five nips" in a discussion about favorite hard liquors. Then one foof -- producer Chris Curtis - piped up and said of his favorite "nip": "I'd probably go Mina Kimes."

Who of course is ESPN's premier NFL analyst, and who happens to be Korean-American, not Japanese ("Nip" being a long-time pejorative for the Japanese). But, hey, never let accuracy get in the way of a good racist taunt, right?

Curtis tried to walk it back, but succeeded only in making things worse. He tried to claim he meant to say "Mila Kunis," not "Mina Kimes,"  and that he was referring to Kunis' nipples. Hey, I'm no racist! I'm just a sexist pig!

Like one is better than the other.

In any event, so it goes, so it goes. Meanwhile, Kimes, who gets endless crap from the knuckle-draggers because she's a woman and  Wimmen Don't Know Nothin' 'Bout Foo-ball, took it all in stride. She immediately replaced her Twitter photo with a photo of  Mila Kunis.

Now that's funny.

A friend, remembered

 A newspaper clipping hangs on the side of the refrigerator here at the house, held in place by a Chicago fridge magnet at the top and a Niagara Falls magnet at the bottom. It's yellow with age and worse for the wear now, but then it should be. It's 28 years old.

Nineteen-ninety five. That's when Dell Ford drove down to Wells County to interview my dad.

He wasn't John F. Kennedy or Jimmy Stewart or any of the other luminaries Dell interviewed in her long and illustrious career as one of Fort Wayne's newspaper legends. He was just an ordinary man with an extraordinary gift for making beautiful things out of wood, and an even more extraordinary gift for sharing those things. 

A wheelhouse deal for Dell, in other words.

In her 50 years at the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Dell, who died today at 92, wrote about the famous and not-so-famous, and also the gems who were always hiding in plain sight in northeast Indiana. She told their stories in plain English, and the stories were always good because Dell's greatest skill was any journo's greatest skill.

She got people to talk about themselves. 

Her interviews were never interrogations, she used to say, but conversations. A couple of generations and more grew up reading the results. I grew up reading the results, being a Fort Wayne boy whose mornings always began with the JG.

And then one day I was writing for the JG myself. And Dell Ford was not just a byline I'd been reading all my life, but an actual living, breathing colleague.

Gotta admit, it was weird as hell at first, and also a trifle intimidating. Dell was Dell, after all, and I was just the snot-nosed sports columnist. But somewhere along the line, the snot-nosed columnist earned her respect, and she started dropping by my desk on occasion, usually to talk about her beloved Michigan Wolverines.

Pretty soon we were more than colleagues. We were friends.

I was the one, in fact, who told her about my dad, in the interests of full disclosure. And she took it and made something out of it, the way she always did.

One last thing about Dell: She wasn't just a classic journo out of the old school, she was also the unofficial JG meteorologist. We all have phobias, and Dell's was thunderstorms. So after she retired, she'd show up in the newsroom whenever the weather looked threatening.

That's how we knew a bad one was on the way.

Then again, maybe she just wanted to report on it. She was Dell Ford, after all.

Baseball that matters

 The World Baseball Classic came to an end last night, and Hollywood would have laughed. Mr. Big Shot Studio Mogul would have called it the dopiest dopey sports movie ending he'd ever read, and thrown the writer off the lot without validating his parking.

I mean, really? It comes down to one at-bat, teammate-against-teammate, maybe the two best players in the game staring each other down like Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo?

And then Shohei Ohtani, called in to strike out Mike Trout and save the championship for Japan, struck out Mike Trout to save the championship for Japan.

Slider. Swing. Miss.

Japan 3, USA 2.

World Baseball Classic?

More like Wow Baseball Classic.

Japan, after all, got to the title game by ousting Mexico on a two-run, walk-off double off the wall by Munetaka Murakami. A day later, it's Ohtani vs. Trout, two out in the ninth, the count full, Japan clinging to the same one-run lead Mexico had 24 hours before.

Slider. Swing. Miss.

And all the soreheads out there who crabbed that the WBC was a big waste of time, that it got guys hurt in advance of what really mattered -- the MLB season -- were left to mutter and whinge in a corner somewhere. Because it mattered, by golly. It gave us the kind of drama we won't see again until October, if then. What, you think Mets-Phillies in a midsummer series is going to make the earth stand still?

Nah. In fact, watching the replays of that final showdown at-bat, you know what it reminded me of?

It reminded me of last December, Argentina vs. France in Qatar, the French rallying from two goals back to force extra time, then rallying again to force PKs to decide it. And Argentina winning perhaps the most thrilling final in World Cup history when Gonzalo Montiel beat French keeper Hugo Lloris on the deciding PK.

Same feel. Same vibe. Same epic showdown, mano-a-mano, whoever wins their duel wins it all.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Baseball isn't soccer, world stage-wise."

Nope. It isn't.

But it ain't a bad substitute.

B-town blues, with a "but"

 And now the women, too?

Never figured God for a South Beach guy, rocking the green and orange of The U. Never figured he had a mad-on for Eye-U, either.

What, he hates world-class musicians? Ernie freakin' Pyle? Doctors, lawyers and Kelly School of Business grads?

Maybe it's all those four-way stops in Bloomington. Maybe he prefers roundabouts instead.

In any case, this was a hell of a one-two punch Indiana got, and  both of 'em were delivered by Miami. First the Hurricane men ran Trayce Jackson-Davis 'n' them off the floor the round of 32; last night, in Assembly Hall, the 9-seed Hurricane woman stunned the 1-seed Hoosiers on a layup just ahead of the horn.

Miami 70, Indiana 68. In the Hall, no less.

This simply doesn't happen on the women's side, and certainly not to  Indiana's women, who have been so impeccable this winter. Nearly everyone who saw them knew he or she was looking at a Final Four team, and a lot of people saw them. By the end of the season, the women were selling out the Hall, same as the men.

But then ...

But then came last night. Which in an odd way was an affirming one for women's buckets, even if it was another stanza of the B-town blues.

Indiana, see, was the second 1-seed to go down on the first weekend of Da Tournament. Ole  Miss, an 8-seed, knocked out Stanford on Sunday. No 1-seed had ever failed to reach the Sweet Sixteen in the history of the women's tournament; within 24 hours, two had failed to do so.

What this says is the women, like the men, have more players than ever, and they are everywhere. Women's buckets used to be Tennessee and UConn and an occasional Notre Dame, Baylor or Stanford. Now they are those five schools, and also South Carolina and Indiana and LSU and a pile of others. A tournament that was once immune to Madness is now rife with it.

OK. So at least kinda rife with it. 

And how is that not a good thing?

Tales of the Big Tin, Indiana chapter

 Indiana's season ended last night against a quicker, more athletic and more determined Miami crew, and if you didn't see it coming you've been sleeping in class again. Wasn't this season's Hoosier signature all over this?

Play well and get everyone's hopes up one time out; play not-so-well and get punked the next time. Been their pattern pretty much all season.

And so last night here came a Miami team that consistently beat the slower Hoosiers off the dribble, consistently got to the rim because of it, and consistently cleaned up its own messes because it was quicker to the glass, too. The Hurricanes, the smaller team, outrebounded Indiana 48-31, outboarded the Hoosiers 20-12 on the offensive glass, outscored the Hoosiers 46-28 in the paint and 29-11 on second-chance points. 

Across the last 10 minutes, Miami outscored Indiana 30-18. It was 8-0 across the last 2:28, as Indiana, clearly gassed from trying to keep up with the 'Canes track-meet pace, was reduced to hoisting one leg-weary brick after another from beyond the 3-point arc.

The final was 85-69, sufficiently embarrassing that some in the knee-jerk crowd were saying the Hoosiers just plain quit. They didn't, really. They simply were done in by superior speed and tempo, the over-reliance on Trayce Jackson-Davis to save them from themselves, and their own consistent inconsistency game-to-game.

In other words, same-old, same-old.

In further other words, typical Big Tin. Er, Ten.

Nothing outside of sunrise is as sure as the conference rolling snake eyes in Da Tournament, and, voila, it did again. The committee handed the Big Tin eight bids; seven of them, surprise, surprise, didn't make it through the first weekend. 

Only Michigan State survived, because Tom Izzo's Spartans seem to be the only team in the Tin that doesn't react to March the way a vampire reacts to sunlight. Hence the reason some quipsters Sunday were saying the first three months of the year are January, February and Izzo.

The Spartans, a 7-seed, sent 2-seed and sexy Final Four pick Marquette packing yesterday, and did it by nine, 69-60. A few hours later, their lone remaining companion went down to Miami. If you're a Big Tin school, it's lonely at the Sweet Sixteen.

The Hoosiers, for instance, haven't been there in a decade. 

But then you probably knew that.

Fans are idiots

 OK. So perhaps fairness dictates an amendment: Some fans are idiots.

Tip of the hat to an old colleague and superb journalist, Mark Montieth, who on social media yesterday made an astute observation in the wake of Purdue's historic crap-out against Fairleigh Dickinson. He noted that barely a week ago Purdue fans were saying this: "Matt Painter should have been the Big Ten Coach of the Year!"

Now, Montieth went on, some of the same fans are saying "Matt Painter should be fired!"

Fans are idiots. And no respecters of irony, clearly.

Look. I get it. Flaming out in Da Tournament three straight years against a 13-seed or higher is not what any coach wants on his resume. But it's on Painter's now, and the only way he can erase it is by taking Purdue to the Final Four or beyond.

What he did this season is build a basketball team around a 1970s model, and it's to his credit it worked for as long as it did. No one makes a low-post player his go-to option anymore -- that's as dead as Grover Cleveland -- but in Painter's defense, what else could he do? He had a 7-4 behemoth with skills, two freshman point guards and a bunch of fine complementary players. What, he's gonna run the offense through Mason Gillis? Or the two freshman guards? Or Ethan Morton or Brandon Newman or David Jenkins Jr.?

Nothing against those players, but none of them was his go-to guy from last year, Jayden Ivey. You make do with what you have, and what he had was Zach Edey. With whom Painter won 29 games.

Which ain't bad for an antique offense.

Yes, it's true his team looked scared and uninspired the other night almost from the tip. It's true, once Fairleigh Dickinson's hyper rug rats began scurrying past the Boilermakers, that Painter should have at least tried going zone. And, yes, he was too stuck in his ways to do that.

The plain-wood truth: He got outcoached, and his team got outplayed.

But you're gonna fire a guy who got you your first 1-seed in 27 years? Who took a team picked to finish sixth in the Big Ten and won it by three games? And who handled the most embarrassing loss in tournament history with complete and utter class?

The man sat up there in the postgame the other night and answered every question without ducking. And when he was done, and the moderator said he could go, he actually stayed and asked if anyone else had a question.

I don't know what you call that. I tend to call it character.

I also tend to say Painter's still one of the best coaches in the country, and no more nor less flawed than any other coach. But that's just me.

If the glass slipper fits ...

 ... which is another way of saying, “And a big ol' Woo Pig Sooey to you, too."

This after 8-seed Arkansas hung on to clip defending national champion Kansas yesterday, 72-71, and back to Lawrence with you, Jayhawks. At least you're not Purdue.

But we're now three days into Da Tournament and half the 1-seeds are gone, which suggests this is every bit the Wild West show we thought it would be. Eight teams slipped past the velvet rope into the Sweet Sixteen on Saturday, and two of 'em are 8-seeds of higher. The other besides Arkansas is Princeton, a 15-seed who's officially become this year's Little Team That Could.

The Princetons handled 7-seed Missouri with astonishing ease yesterday, winning by 15 and never trailing after Matt Allocco's jumper three minutes into the game made it 7-5 for the Tigers. Whatever shenanigans legendary Princeton coach Pete Carril is pulling up there in the heavenly realm -- Pete died just last August, so don't tell me there isn't something cosmic going on here -- continue to weave chaos and magic.

Surely America has attached its affections to Princeton now, the way it to St. Peter's last year. The Blob will, too, if only because Princeton is the alma mater of Frank Deford, one of the great long-form sportswriters of all time. We are a loyal tribe, we Knights of the Keyboard (as Ted Williams once dubbed the Boston sports scribes). So go, you Princeton, and we'll try to forget one of the worst presidents in American history (Woodrow Wilson) once ran the place.

Princeton gets the winner of Creighton vs. Baylor today, a 6-seed vs. a 3-seed. Which means it's not impossible the Princetons could match St. Peter's march to the Elite Eight last year. And wouldn't that be fun?

Isn't all of this fun?

Upstart bait

 This is not how Purdue and Matt Painter wanted to be remembered, but they're stuck with it now. They're officially the school that keeps the Madness fed.

Or “upstart bait,” if you prefer.  Chum for all those ravenous Little Schools That Could. The One Shiner Moment that makes someone else's One Shining Moment possible.

Fairleigh Dickinson? 

Be honest. You thought Fairleigh Dickinson was a character in a Jane Austen novel.

You thought, as a teensy 16-seed going up against Zach Edey and 1-seed Purdue, it was Fairly Ridiculous to think the Knights were anything but dinner. 

You thought ...

And then the teensy Knights (smallest lineup in the tournament!) from teensy Fairleigh Dickinson started scurrying around the Boilers like fire ants, and the Purdues started going into Dazed And Confused mode, and, hey, look: Is that history I see?

You bet is. Fairleigh  Dickinson 63, Purdue 58. 16-seed over a 1-seed. Matt Painter suddenly becoming not one of America's finest coaches (which he is), but the guy who's now lost to a 13-seed, a 15-seed and a 16-seed in consecutive Dances.

Champion of the underdog, unwitting division. King of March Badness. That's Painter's albatross now.

(Even worse for Painter and Purdue: Indiana cruised past Kent State, which at least some of us saw coming. When so many people are making the Hoosiers a sexy pick to lose to a 13-seed, you can pretty much bet the house it won't happen. Upsets in this deal only seem to happen when no one's looking.)

Where were we again?

Oh, yeah. Purdue.

Who, when you step away from this, probably was facing its worst nightmare last night.

 That sounds absurd to say when the opponent was a team that lost 15 games this season and didn’t even win its humble conference, but not really. FDU is small, quick and unafraid. The Knights relentlessly attacked on offense, and doubled Edey on defense like a terrier with a mailman's pants leg in its mouth. And they can shoot.

All of the above has been the recipe for beating the Purdues all season. And it was last night.

A team that, outside of Edey, has struggled with its shooting confidence for the last six weeks really struggled with it, in the face of all that FDU fierceness. The Boilermakers missed 21 of 26 attempts from beyond the 3-point arc. They shot 35.8 percent from everywhere. You'd say they couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat, but that might be too generous.

It was more like they couldn't hit water if they were knee-deep in it.

And so, down they go. Into the kind of history no one wants to occupy.

All the gurus who thought they were a paper 1-seed, they were right. So was Tobin Anderson, the hilarious FDU coach who called his shot when he said he saw no reason his Knights couldn't beat Purdue. And so were all those IU fans who now have something besides five moldy national championship banners with which to torture their rivals.

Purdue becoming only the second 1-seed ever to fall to a 16-seed? In the entire history of Da Tournament?

Ouch. That's gonna leave a mark.

Yes, the WBC is a big deal

 Sometimes all you have to do is ask an honest question to get an honest answer. Even when it's a question people think you're asking facetiously, because who doesn't know the answer to THAT?

This happened the other day after I read Keith Olbermann's dopey tweet about the World Baseball Classic, which is back again this year and has cost the Mets the services of their ace closer, Edwin Diaz. Playing for Puerto Rico, Diaz came on to douse the Dominican Republic's final embers in a 5-2 upset, then tore his patellar tendon jumping up and down with his teammates in celebration. He's out for the season.

It was an awful and bizarre accident, which means it just as easily could have happened in a spring training game or while stepping off a curb to cross the street. Olbermann, however, despises the WBC, and so he used it as an opening to call for the WBC to be shut down.

It was a ridiculously over-the-top take. But the Blob responded by asking if anyone really cares about the WBC, because the Blob really wanted to know.

Turns out they do care. Like, a lot.

In Japan, I was informed, the WBC puts up viewership numbers that dwarf those of the World Series. Hundreds of thousands of fans flock to the games in other baseball-crazy locales. The WBC, I was informed over and over, is a huge big deal in countries outside the United States.

Which of course is why I didn't know all this.

Provincialism being what it is, I'm an American, and apparently Americans are the least enthused about the WBC. We don't care much about it, and that means, in that annoyingly American way, we think it isn't important. 

Well, it is. And after I asked my question, and after I got flooded with responses, I realized the answer was right in front of me all along.

I remembered that, not a week ago, I went to a local sports bar to eat lunch and watch some college buckets. It was the weekend of the big conference tournaments, so there were a few of us glued to the bigger screens.

Not the guy I sat next to, though.

His attention was riveted on one of the smaller screens, where Puerto Rico was playing Colombia in the WBC. He was from Puerto Rico, it turns out, and so he was there to root on the mother country. They might as well have been playing all those basketball games on the moon for all he cared.

"My alltime favorite baseball player was Puerto Rican," I told him. "Roberto Clemente."

A knowing smile.

"Ah, yes," he said. "Clemente."

And then turned back to watch the next pitch.

Madness! Madness!

 (To quote Col. Lipton at the end of "Bridge Over The River Kwai.")

Or to quote me, sitting in a fine establishment as the final seconds of Princeton-Arizona circled the drain, and it became apparent the Princetons were going to do it again, channeling the spirit of old Pete Carril - who for the first time is no longer with us in body in March.

Pete died back in August. Yesterday, his beloved 15-seed Princetons hit a lot of people's brackets in the head with a monkey wrench, shocking 2-seed Arizona 59-55. You can't tell me that's a coincidence.

Back at the Fine Establishment, the bartender looked at me and said "You really are rooting for the upset, aren't you?"

"Hell, yes!" I replied. "This is what makes this tournament great. I mean, there's absolutely NO WAY Princeton should be able to beat Arizona, but they're doing it!"

And it was glorious.

And 13-seed Furman stunning 4-seed Virginia was glorious, too. Especially since Furman hadn't been in Da Tournament since Jimmy Carter was president, and because the Paladins are an early favorite to win the March Madness Nickname title.

The Paladins! With a name like that, they've got to be good.

It's the Furmans and Princetons who make the first two days of this thing the best two days. It's also why the Blob hasn't filled out a bracket in years. Would I have enjoyed watching Furman and Princeton as much had they just made lasagna out of my bracket? No I would not. 

I also would not have enjoyed watching feisty 16-seed Northern Kentucky hang tough with lordly Houston, had I picked Houston to win it all or something. Or Louisiana scare the daylights out of Tennessee. Or Charleston giving San Diego State everything it wanted, although I really did think the Charlestons were going to be the first 12-5 upset.

Anyway, it's on to today, and more craziness, I hope. What if Fairleigh Dickinson and its goofy coach really do give Purdue a game? What if the MAC strikes again and Kent State stuns Indiana? What if it's Drake beating Miami that's the 12-5 upset?

More hijinks await. Bring 'em on.

Bracketology, or something

 Reggie Miller thinks they'll choke, supposedly.

The coach of 16th-seed Fairleigh Dickinson, who won the right to play them tomorrow, says the more he watches them, the more he thinks he can beat them.

And former President of the United States Barack Obama, confirmed basketball junkie, doesn't think they'll get out of the coming weekend.

Oh, these Purdue Boilermakers. First in seeding, first in West Lafayette, last in the esteem of hoopheads everywhere.

Most of the country, it seems, thinks the Purdues are a paper 1-seed, nothing but a big 7-4 galoot and a bunch of guys Matt Painter scrounged from the downtown Y. Can't handle a press, can't shoot, can't, can't, can't. Oh, and everyone knows no team with freshman guards ever does a thing in Da Tournament.

It's like everyone forgot they ran away with the Big Ten title and then won the tournament besides, even if they struggled to put away the 13-seed and the 10-seed in the last two rounds.

What does the Blob think?

The Blob thinks it's Fairly Ridiculous to think Fairleigh Dickinson can beat Purdue. (Sorry, couldn't resist the standard quip). The Blob also thinks a few other things, all of them suitable for defaming, as the Madness descends on us in a few short hours.

To wit:

* Indiana has all the tools to get to the Sweet Sixteen or even beyond. It might also get beat by Kent State right out of the box tomorrow night. The Hoosiers have exhibited that sort of manic-depressive behavior all season, and there's no reason to think they'll stop now.

Prediction: Hoosiers look great in knocking off Kent State, then lose to either Miami or Drake on Sunday.

* Keep an eye on Duke (I know, it hurts me to say that, too). The Blue Devils are only a 5-seed, but they're 13-1 since getting healthy and they blew through the ACC tournament, beating top-seeded Miami by seven in the semis and 2-seed Virginia by 10 in the championship game. The latter avenged their only loss since January 23.

Prediction: The Blue Devils make a run to the Elite Eight.

* This year's obligatory 12-5 upset: College of Charleston over San Diego State.

* This year's Crater Rating for the Big Ten: Five. As in, "Five of its eight teams will be gone by Sunday night."

* Small team the Blob likes just because: Florida Atlantic.

* Small emergency backup team the Blob likes: Vermont.

* Official Pete Carril Nostalgia Pick Which Probably Won't Happen: Princeton over Arizona.

* Guru sexy Purdue pick: Memphis (or Florida Atlantic) over the Boilers on Sunday.

* Blob's un-sexy Purdue pick: Boilers reach the Sweet Sixteen, where they lose to ... Duke.

And last but not least ...

* Blobophiles' reaction to all this: "You're full of s***."

Yeah, well. Probably.

The wages of sin ...

 ... are apparently not all that high these days, at least in college basketball.

There are miscreants galore manning the benches out there, and we're not even talking about Kelvin Sampson, the repeat offender who turned Indiana into an outlaw program in two years and then was kicked out of college buckets for five years.

Sampson now coaches the University of Houston, which is probably going to win the NCAA Tournament because the gods are cruel and love practical jokes, the nastier the better.

But look around, as the Madness kinda-sorta opened last night with the first play-in games. Infamy loves company.

There's Bruce Pearl, the egregious cheater at Tennessee who underwent the standard makeover and is now a rehabbed Official Genius down at Auburn, whom he coached to the Final Four not long ago. There's Chris Beard, fired at Texas after being accused of choking his fiancee and almost immediately hired by Ole Miss. 

There's Rick Pitino, whose watch at Louisville included an assistant turning the basketball dorm into a brothel, and, having been made over at Iona, now is being floated as a frontunner for the St. John's job. And then there's Will Wade ...

He's a piece of work, old Will is. At LSU he got caught on an FBI wiretap blatantly trying to buy a player back when that was still illegal. Then the NCAA began investigating a whole laundry list of violations in Wade's program, which ended in his firing when the NCAA handed down its official notice of allegations.

But, wait, there's more!

Far from being regarded as a pariah, Wade was hired by McNeese State a year to the day later. What's hilarious about that is McNeese hired him on the condition he be immediately suspended for the first five games of next season -- a condition McNeese hopes will stave off any further penalties stemming from the continuing investigation into Wade's Wild West show at LSU.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Why would McNeese hire a guy so tainted they had to put him in basketball Shawshank to keep the authorities from doing it?"

Well ... maybe because Will Wade won a pile of basketball games at LSU. That matters more than anything in a world where wins equal tournament bids equal stackable cash. It matters in a world where stackable cash matters more than anything else.

"But what about integrity, Mr. Blob?” you're saying. "What about standards? What about a university's reputation as a bastion of high ideals and academic excellence?"

Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha. Ha.

None of that matters, you charmingly naive twits. It's why the Sampsons and Pearls and Beards and Pitinos keep getting plum jobs. It's why, on Friday, Indiana is playing a Kent State team coached by former IU assistant Rob Senderoff, who was banished from a head coaching job for 30 months for his role in Sampson's cesspool.

No worries. He was immediately hired as an assistant at his previous stop, Kent State. Two years later Kent made him its head coach.

Now comes McNeese State, out-ridiculous-ing all of them.

"We got us a winner in Coach Wade," the school's official announcement read. "And he'll be a fine role model for our student-athletes and a credit to the university as soon as he serves his time."

OK. So the announcement didn't say any of that.

But it might as well have.

Quarterbacks, we got quarterbacks

It's a moment or two before the Madness begins, so I guess now is as good a time as any to revisit the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League, where you can't tell the quarterbacks without a scorecard and Aaron Rodgers continues to be weird and narcissistic.

Also, what are the Colts going to do?

But first the quarterbacks.

You got your Jimmy Garoppolo, who's a Vegas Raider now. You got your Sam Darnold, whom the 49ers just signed because Garoppolo left a spot open. And you got your Carolina Panthers, who got fleeced by the Chicago Bears so they could jump up to the No. 1 pick in the draft to get their own quarterback.

Will it be Bryce Young? Will it be Anthony Richardson? C.J. Stroud? Jon Moxon from Brown University?

 (OK, so it won't be him. I just threw his name in there to see if you were paying attention, and also to sneak in a gratuitous "Varsity Blues" reference.)

And what about Aaron Rodgers?

America's most gifted pass-throwing weirdo was at it again yesterday, sending out a brief emoji-laden tweet that didn't really say anything. The Blob's theory is that Aaron just wanted to make sure we were all still thinking about him. Supposedly he's about to fly off to New York to sign with the Jets, but, heck, he might just as easily wind up in Indianapolis with the Colts, the NFL's official Golden Years Retirement Community for senior quarterbacks looking to ease into their tapioca-and-Metamucil years.

And speaking of the Colts ...

Well, they're sitting tight with the No. 4 pick in the draft, which is currently being spun as economically shrewd because none of the quarterbacks available are worth mortgaging the future, such as it is. They're all worthless and weak, or something like that. 

Which to the Blob translates translates as "We'll just sit here and take Will 'Mitch Trubisky' Levis because it DOESN'T REALLY MATTER WHICH OF THESE BUMS WE TAKE."

Or ...

Or maybe they're saving their pennies to make a play for Lamar Jackson.

Said this the other day and then quickly added I was joking, because I didn't want to get laughed at. But apparently serious followers of the Colts are now floating this as a real possibility. 

I don't know if it is. I tend to think some of those "serious followers" are just throwing that out there to get interwhatsis hits. But, hey, Colts fans can dream, right?

Meanwhile, Aaron Rodgers just tweeted he'll achieve total consciousness when he dies. Which is nice.

And the winner is ...

 Oh, come on. You know the Blob doesn't do that on the day after Selection Sunday.

(Although congrats to Indiana for securing its expected 4-seed, and to Purdue for getting the 1-seed in the East Regional and completing the Big Ten double by winning the Big Ten Tournament for the first time since 2009.)

(Which does not mean the Boilermakers aren't perhaps the worst team in America against the press. They are. Good lord, folks, you NEVER go to the corner against the press. They teach you that in Indiana two seconds after you exit the womb.)

Where were we again?

Oh, yeah. Selection Sunday. 

On the occasion of which the Blob celebrates the little guys, the teensy guys, the guys who hardly ever get out of their first or second game alive. They're what make Da Tournament, because sometimes they go off script and beat, I don't know, Duke or someone, and that's what makes this first weekend the best weekend. You say Kansas won last year? Who cares?

It was little St. Peter's that was the star of the 2022 Madness, armed with a great nickname -- Peacocks -- and moxie, lots and lots of moxie. They beat Kentucky! They beat Purdue! They got all the way to the Elite Eight!

And so I'm looking through the brackets now, and even though the Peacocks didn't make it this year, I'm pleased to see Vermont did. This is because I have good friends who live in Vermont, and also because they're the Catamounts, which  is cool because hardly anyone seems to know what a Catamount is.

(It's a sort of mountain lion. Only with a splendidly Vermont-y name.)

I also see Kennesaw State is in there, and Florida Atlantic -- watch out for the Owls, my good friend Jim Saturday says -- and Fairleigh Dickinson. Whom you have to root for simply because it's frequently subjected to sophomoric nicknames like Fairly Ridiculous. 

But the team I'm rooting for this year?

Howard University.

Of course, the Howards (actual nickname: the Bison) would almost have to be the Blob's team. This is because the Blob is a Civil War nerd from way back. And so it's all in for Howard because its founder and namesake was a Union general named Oliver Otis Howard.

Howard commanded the Eleventh Corps in the Army of the Potomac, which got a bad rap because of that unfortunate business at Chancellorsville. That's where Stonewall Jackson routed it with his famous flank march that stupid Dan Sickles mistook for a retreat and so no one warned the Eleventh Corps, although plenty of Eleventh Corps soldiers tried to warn everyone else.

Anyway ... Howard turned out to be a damn good corps commander despite all that. And after the war, as head of the Freedman's Bureau, he founded Howard University in 1867, which today has some 12,000 students and is one of the most prestigious Historic Black Colleges And Universities (HBCU) in America.

Lots of people you've heard of have graduated from there, among them the current Vice-President of the United States, Kamala Harris. Also Thurgood Marshall and Andrew Young and former New York mayor David Dinkins. Also a pile of senators and congressmen, and a handful of governors, and famed author Toni Morrison, and the late actor Chadwick Boseman.

And the basketball team?

Well, it punched its ticket by beating Norfolk State by one point in the championship game of the MEAC tournament. The Bison hadn't gotten past the semifinal round of the conference tournament in 21 years. And the last time it was in the NCAA Tournament was 31 years ago, in 1992, when George Bush the First was president and Keith Richards was only 195 years old.

The Bison are led by two-time All-MEAC guard Elijah Hawkins, senior guard Khalil Robinson and the splendidly named freshman Shy Odom, the MEAC Rookie of the Year. They play Kansas in the first round, so they'll probably lose by a bunch, but, hey, you never know. Teams with veteran guards tend to do well in Da Tournament, and the Bison have veteran guards.

So, go Bison. General Howard is rooting for you.

He's also saying "(Bleep) Chancellorsville." But that's another Blob for another day.

More fading away

 Woke up this morning to an inch or so of fluffy white stuff on the grass and rooftops and trees, and right off I thought of Bud Grant. Ol' Coach Granite Face woulda been ready to line up and get after it on a day like this.

The legendary Minnesota Vikings coach died the other day at the age of 95, and it is a testament to his eternal old-man-ness that most of us thought Bud was 95 back when he coached the Purple People Eaters in the '60s. So it was kind of a shock to realize he was still with us.

You think of Bud, you think of big parkas and frozen turf and cold breath chuffing out of facemasks like venting steam. You think of Bill Brown and Dave Osborne going off-tackle like a hammer and chisel, no dancing and ballerina twirls for them, no, sir. You think of Fran Tarkenton running around back there like a chicken sans head, probably just to stay warm.

And, of course, you think of the People Eaters: Carl Eller and Jim Marshall and Gary Larsen and Alan Page, the quarterback-devouring judge.

You think of mean, industrial Man Football, when you think of Bud Grant's Vikings. And if you're an individual of a certain age, like me, you think one other thing: “Welp. There goes my childhood, fading away bit by bit.”

This is merely nature doing what nature does when the years start to pile up, but the more they do the more the deaths of certain individuals look like Burma-Shave signs, speaking of things gone. You ... Left ... Your Childhood ... A Ways Back, or something like that.

In the last few days two of those signposts popped up, and irony swaddled them. Bud Grant of the Vikings died; a few days earlier, Otis Taylor of the Kansas City Chiefs went. Those two will forever be joined because of Super Bowl IV, when Bud's Vikings lost to the Chiefs and Taylor, the rangy prototype-of-the-future wide receiver, delivered the kill shot on a 46-yard touchdown pass from Len Dawson.

Now both men are gone, and Len Dawson, too. And Super Bowl IV becomes more and more an artifact from a time long past.

Longer every day, of course. That's how this works.

Spoiled meet(ing)

 Pssst. Hey, Penn State. Come over here. I got sumpin' to tell ya.

The state of Indiana thinks you suck.

The state of Indiana hates the crazy way you play basketball, and your stupid campus in the middle of nowhere, and what the hell is a Nittany Lion, anyway? A housecat in a sweater?

We hate you because you jack up threes like they give 'em away free, and yesterday you hit a pile of 'em, and you knocked off 3-seed Indiana in the Big Ten Tournament. This was partly the Hoosiers' fault, because once again they couldn't put two coherent games back-to-back. But it was mostly because you Nittanies outscored them 24-6 from the arc, outrebounded them 38-30 and made the free throws at the end to get yourselves home.

Mostly, though, we hate you because now we won't get Purdue-IU III in the Big Ten Tournament title game. 

Which promised to be even better than "Creed III," and which everyone in Indiana was eagerly awaiting because it would give us one last chance to hate on each other.

("Boy, you people from Indiana sure do a lot of hating," you're saying now.)

("You have no idea," the Blob responds. "Our legislature even hates school librarians.")

Anyway ...

This was supposed to be Boilers vs. Hoosiers. Purdue grads vs. IU grads. IU fans saying Purdue is overrated and Zach Edey is just a lamppost with arms, can't really play basketball the way Trayce Jackson-Davis can; Purdue fans saying, yeah, well, how come he went for a combined 59 points and 34 rebounds in two games against IU -- and, oh, yeah, those candy stripe pants look REALLY STUPID.

Now we won't get any of that.

Now it'll  be Purdue vs. you Nittanies, which is a nice storyline -- lowest seed ever to win the title if Penn State pulls it off -- but not the blood sport all of us in Indiana were looking forward to.

So, yeah. Thanks a LOT, Penn State. Thanks for spoiling our meet(ing).

Maybe your Valley is Happy. But you trashed ours.

The glory of March

 "See, this is what's great about these tournaments," the guy says.

We're looking at the TV, the two of us, where the Big Ten Tournament is on and they're showing highlights of the Ohio State-Michigan State quarterfinal, which just ended a few minutes ago.

"Teams suddenly getting hot at the right time ..." my fellow watcher says.

And then we watch some more as Ohio State -- Ohio State! -- dismantles Sparty, and omigod and holy crap, besides, because the Buckeyes were supposed to be long gone by now.

Instead the 13-seed is advancing to play 1-seed Purdue in the semifinals today, and WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE??

I'll tell you what.

March is going on.

March means Ohio State, a 16-18 team that went 5-15 in the Big Ten and lost to Michigan State by 21 a month ago and again by six just a week ago, is suddenly blessed by the gods or something. The Buckeyes beat Wisconsin. They beat Iowa, which beat them by 17 the last time they played them. And yesterday they beat Sparty by 10 in a game the Buckeyes led from the 12:45 mark of the first half on.

And they did it without their sensational freshman and leading scorer Brice Sensabaugh, who was out with an iffy knee. 

Now they get 27-5 Purdue in the semis.

Last time they played Purdue, on Feb. 19 in Mackey Arena, the Boilermakers sent them back to Columbus in sandwich bags, 82-55.

Just spitballing here, but I don't think anyone wins this one by 27.  And you wanna know something else?

I think if you're a Purdue fan, you'd better use a pencil if you're already writing your team's name on the championship game line of the bracket. Ink might not be your best option here.

Meanwhile in Alabama, Part Infinity Infinity

 ... in which the Blob tries to explain why reactions to incomplete information are frequently  knee-jerkish, because the reactions themselves are therefore incomplete. 

In other words: Context matters.

In further other words: Maybe Alabama basketball coach Nate Oats is not the self-serving look-the-other-way opportunist many of us (including me) originally thought.

This upon reading a ESPN piece by, among others, the Blob's friend and former colleague Michael Rothstein, which puts together a timeline of exactly what happened that fateful night in January when Jamea Harris was shot to death and Alabama star Brandon Miller was pulled into its vortex.

 Two men, including then-'Bama teammate Darius Miles, were charged with capital murder; Miller was not. Which is why Oats declined to punish his best player.

Which is also why a lot of people (including, again, me) sneered that, well, gee, Alabama's got the best team it's ever had, and Miller is a big reason why, and, you know, March is coming ...

A lot of people (me, etc.) concluded this meant 'Bama was a lot more interested in winning basketball games than worrying about minor annoyances like, you know, guns and dead 23-year-old mothers and such.

But then a lot of people -- OK, me -- read the ESPN piece, which includes a timeline of events constructed from police and witness testimony. And we got us some context.

You can read it here. But as a public service to my valued Blobophile(s), let me break down the highlights as they involve Miller:

* Three Alabama players -- Miller, Miles and Jaden Bradley -- headed out for a night on the town at a local restaurant-bar, along with a friend of Miles'. The line to get in was so long Miller, who along with Bradley had a car, decided to go eat somewhere else.

* An hour or so later, Miles texted Miller and said he was ready to be picked up. In the meantime, Miles' friend, Michael Davis, got into a silly argument with Harris' boyfriend because Davis was dancing in the street outside their car. Words were exchanged, and at some point, Davis, who already had several firearms violations on his sheet, asked Miles to go get the gun Davis knew Miles owned.

* By this time, Miller was already driving back to pick up Miles. So investigating officers think it's highly likely he never even saw Miles' text to bring his gun to him. All he was doing was going to pick up a teammate.

* When Miller arrived, Miles and Davis retrieved the gun from under a pile of clothes in the backseat. Again, it's unclear Miller even knew it was there.

* A few minutes later, as Miller sat in his car across the street, Davis emerged with the gun, walked up to Harris' vehicle and opened fire. Harris' boyfriend -- who also had a gun, of course -- fired back, wounding Davis, who continued shooting wildly. Two rounds went through Miller's windshield, after which he wisely got the hell out of there.

He's been a cooperating witness with police since. In fact, you can reasonably surmise that a lot of the narrative investigating officers put together, and testified to, came from Miller and Jaden Bradley.

This narrative is quite different from the one a lot of people (me, etc.) have been selling, which is that Miller knowingly delivered a gun used in a fatal shooting to the shooter and his accomplice.

It also explains why Miller was never charged, and why Oats didn't suspend him.

Now, you can still wonder why an Alabama basketball player had a firearm, although Oats immediately kicked Miles off the team. And you can wonder why three 'Bama basketball players were out partying after midnight, although college students do that all the time, and, you know, they're college students, too.

What the Blob finds hard to wonder now, with more context, is what exactly Miller did wrong.

He went out with teammates. He left them to get something to eat. He drove back to pick one of them up. And then he got caught up in a horrific event with which he had nothing whatever to do -- and of which, in fact, he was lucky not to have been a victim himself.

Wrong place, wrong time. That's Brandon Miller's piece of this.

You can, of course, question whether or not Miller knew Miles had stashed a gun in his car. And if he did, you can reasonably question his judgment. 

But, surprise, 19-year-olds do not always have the best judgment. And this is America, after all. Guns, as our peculiar fetish, are just part of the landscape now. As Miles told his mother when he purchased it, he bought it for protection because someone had once pulled a gun on him.

I wish I could count the times someone (or someones) ended up dead for no reason because someone else bought a gun for "protection." Unfortunately there aren't enough hours in the day.

There also aren't enough hours in the day to wonder how long Miller will carry all this with him.

Quite awhile, I imagine. Another victim of gun violence, you might say.

Mysteries

 And now for a new Blob feature, "Things The Blob Does Not Quite Get," a limited series that could go on for as long as man walks the earth if you listen to some people, most notably the Blob's wife and kids.

Anyway ...

On to the mysteries.

OK, so stuff the Blob finds mysterious:

* It appears the Packers are finally done with their weirdo diva quarterback, Brett F- er, Aaron Rodgers.

Rodgers is back to playing his usual offseason games with the Pack, and the Pack is clearly fed up. They've given their blessing to the Jets to talk with him, which essentially is Green Bay saying "Hey, he's all yours. Good luck with that."

Now, it's not that Rodgers can't still play. But at 39, his expiration date is clearly in sight. So the Jets would be getting a a guy who makes too much money, is thisclose to checking out rest homes and, oh, yeah, did we mention the weirdo diva part?

Hence the mystery, at least for the Blob: Why would the Jets want a Rent-a-Rodgers? And why wouldn't the Packers have gotten fed up with him earlier, so they could move on to either Jordan Love or the next collegiate hotshot?

* What's the deal with Jim Boeheim, anyway?

Yesterday Syracuse announced he would not be returning as its men's basketball coach, shortly after the 'Cuse lost 77-74 to Wake Forest in the ACC tournament. This is momentous, given that Boeheim is a Hall of Fame coach who's been on the Syracuse bench for 47 years, or since Gerald Ford was president. If he's not on the college buckets Mt. Rushmore, he's on the slightly smaller backup Mt. Rushmore.

The mystery here is what actually happened yesterday.

Did Boeheim retire? Or was he kinda-sorta, um, not fired, exactly, but decide mutually with the university it was time to ride off into the sunset at 78?

Hard to say. And Boeheim didn't make it easier with what he said about it in Wednesday's postgame.

"I always have the choice of retirement, but it's (the university's) decision whether I coach or not," he said. "It always has been."

Alrighty then.

* Last but not least, are the Baltimore Ravens really getting ready to push Lamar Jackson out the door?

The 2019 NFL MVP is one of the most dynamic quarterbacks in football, and, at 26, he's not exactly Aaron Rodgers. Before a knee injury knocked him out for the season in week 12, the Ravens were 7-4 and Jackson had thrown for 2,242 yards and 17 touchdowns and rushed for 764 yards and three more scores. He'd completed 62.2 percent of his passes and was averaging 6.8 yards per carry.

In other words, Lamar was being Lamar. And it's not like the Ravens had given him any weapons to work with; their top receiver last fall was a career backup named Demarcus Robinson. 

And yet ..,

And yet, instead of getting Jackson some weapons, the Ravens have apparently decided to risk moving on from him.

By putting him under the non-exclusive franchise tag, they've essentially told him "Go talk to some other teams if you think you can get a better deal." What's weird about this is so far no other team is interested even in talking to him. Best explanation for this is everyone in the league has been scared off either by what they think the Ravens would be willing to match, or by the quarterback salary bubble created by the absurd deal the Browns handed Deshaun Watson, serial tallywhacker exposer.

Did the Ravens know this going in, in which case they might be more clever than we think? And if they did know it, why engage in such a risky strategy to begin with?

If it's the latter, well, the Blob doesn't get it. You'd rather risk having Jimmy Joe Bob as your quarterback instead of Lamar Jackson, simply because he might want a Watson-esque deal (which, when you compare the two resumes, would not be unreasonable)?  

Weird, man. 

Weirder than Aaron Rodgers, even.

And your winner is ...

 I'm gonna make the state of Indiana boo and hiss this morning.

("Again?" you say)

I'm looking at this Big Ten Tournament draw sheet, and I'm seeing Indiana and Purdue are both double-bye teams, which means they don't play until the quarterfinals. And I'm looking at an Illinois team that's won 20 games and will give you fits when it decides to show up, and a 20-win Maryland team that's unbeatable at home but, um, not so much on the road, and a Penn State team that's 19-12 and playing its best basketball of the season.

Oh, yeah, and Iowa, which beat Indiana by 26 in Assembly Hall, and which also has 19 wins. And Michigan, which is only 17-14 but has Hunter Dickinson. And, what the hell, let's throw Nebraska in there, too, because the Cornhuskers have won five of their last six and beat Maryland in that stretch and also Rutgers, which is kind of free-falling and desperate right now,

Know what I see in all that?

I see a bunch of teams that can jump up and beat you if the motivation's right. And the motivation is the NCAA Tournament for at least some of them if everything falls their way.

Know what else I see?

No reason for either Purdue or IU to give a tinker's damn about this deal.

(Which, frankly, is what the Blob thinks generally about conference tournaments. John Wooden told me a long time ago they're nothing but an extra revenue stream for the conferences, and he's right. For teams that have already punched their ticket to the Big One, they're relatively meaningless -- especially if you're, say, Purdue, which has already won the Big Ten title no matter what it says on the trophy they hand to the winner in Chicago).

Speaking of Purdue ...

The Boilermakers are at least a No. 2 seed in Da Tournament no matter what they do this week, and Indiana's a 4 or 5. And Purdue's lost four of its last six and probably wouldn't advance its seeding even if it ran the table in Chicago. 

Indiana, meanwhile, has been on something of a win-one-lose-one roller coaster lately, which likely means the Hoosiers aren't miraculously going to jump up to a 2 or 3 seed if they run the table this week. That they're both away from Assembly Hall and would have to put together more than one good game in a row makes that unlikely.

In conclusion: Neither Purdue nor IU is going to cut down the nets Sunday in Chicago.

I suspect it'll be one of the desperate teams, or maybe Michigan State, which is kinda desperate, too, at 19-11. Plus it's March and March is to Michigan State what spinach is to Popeye.

But it won't be Purdue or IU. You can write that down.

And use it against me if I'm wrong.

The problem with Ja

 Ja Morant is the most electrifying player in basketball. If you don't think so, you've either never seen him play or don't know the difference between a drop step and a cough drop.

He's also 23 years old going on 15. Or so it seems.

Right now, see, he's not playing for/been suspended by the Memphis Grizzlies because he posted a video of himself on Instagram brandishing what appears to be a firearm in a Denver nightclub. Police in Colorado are now investigating, because even though Colorado is an open-carry state, it's illegal to possess a firearm while under the influence of alcohol. It's also unclear whether Morant has a gun permit that's valid in Colorado.

This after an accusation that Morant beat up a teenager during a pickup basketball game last summer, after which he left and then came back flashing a gun in his waistband. Morant claims he was only defending himself -- which doesn't explain why a multi-million-dollar NBA asset was playing pickup ball with a bunch of teenagers in the first place.

I have an explanation: Go back and read the second paragraph of this Blob again.

Now, I'm not prepared to call the kid some of the dog-whistle stuff others have, but I will say he clearly has a lot of growing up to do. There are young men equipped to handle at 23 the mind-blowing whirl of 21st-century athletic fame, and there are young men who are not.  Ja Morant is clearly among the latter.

What ought to concern both the Memphis Grizzlies and the NBA is his apparent fondness for firearms, which is never a good thing when mixed with the sort of immaturity Ja has displayed. Preach (and misinterpret, natch) the Second Amendment all you want, but people tend to wind up dead when you let adults-in-name-only treat guns like some sort of cool status symbol.

The right to bear arms shouldn't include the right to shoot someone just because he looked at you funny (although it might in stand-your-ground states, where it's legal to shoot someone if you feel "threatened").  Yet how many times does that happen when unformed humans buy guns because they think they're cool, and because they're so abundantly available.

I'm not saying that's what we're dealing with here with Ja Morant. But it sure seems the path down which we're headed.

And no one wants to see that. Do they?

Meanwhile, in Alabama, Part Infinity

Remember the other day, when the Blob wondered if Alabama was in the throes of a raging stupid pill epidemic?

I'd like to enter the following into evidence, your Honor.

Seems the organizers of a grade-school rec basketball league in Hoover, Ala., don't much cotton to girls hoops. Or at least the evidence  suggests as much. 

First, halfway through the season, a 5th-grade girls team was told they could no longer use their practice facility (the rec league's gym) unless they paid to play in the Hoover rec league. Of course, the Hoover rec league was a boys league. So the girls either had to end their season, or pay to play against the boys.

 Wait. It gets better.

Turns out this was a pretty darn good girls team. They took up the challenge (because they really had no choice) and, wonder of wonders, won the league championship. But the championship trophy went to the runnersup, because the girls were told before the tournament that they could play in it as long as they didn't win it. If they did, it wouldn't count.

Now, I'm too damn old to really remember what it was like to be a fifth-grade boy. But I would loved to have seen one of the boys on the runnerup team have the character (and pride) to immediately take the trophy over to the girls and hand it to them.

Yeah, I know. Probably expecting too much of fifth-graders.

Also expecting too much for some fifth-grader to get off the appropriate wisecrack: "Hey, look, guys. It's the world's biggest participation trophy."

Now, it must be noted that the City of Hoover and the Hoover Rec Center are looking into this sham. So it's possible they could do wind up doing the right thing after all.

Then again, it's Alabama.

So don't hold your breath.

A few IndyCar thoughts

Binged the latest season of Netflix' "Formula One: Drive to Survive" over the weekend, and then I watched the IndyCar season opener from St. Pete (or as I call it, "The start of real racing in America"). And it got me thinking.

What if Netflix or Hulu or Paramount or HBO were to do a "Drive to Survive" series on IndyCar?

Look, it'll probably never happen, because IndyCar doesn't draw enough eyeballs (outside of the Indianapolis 500) to make it anything but a loss leader. But the IndyCar storylines and the driver lineup and the competition are as compelling as they've ever been. If not now, when?

Let's take St. Pete for instance.

It opened yesterday with a huge crash in the back of the field on Lap 1, which got the race (and season) red-flagged right from the jump. Then you had surprise polesitter Romain Grosjean and Penske rising star Scott McLaughlin battling it out until McLaughlin failed to lift going into a tight right-hander as Grosjean edged ahead.

Both of them wound up crashing into the tire barrier. Grosjean was so furious he pounded his fists on the tires.

Who wouldn't have wanted to hear him on the in-car at that moment, vis-a-vis "Drive to Survive"?

Ditto Pato O'Ward when his engine almost literally hiccupped as he was trying to hold off Marcus Ericsson with  three laps to run. Ericsson flew by for the win.  

Wouldn't you have loved to have heard Pato's in-car at that moment? Wouldn't you have love to seen the "Drive to Survive" cameras follow Andretti Autosport through a frustrating day?

Started one-two on the grid; wound up with only Kyle Kirkwood among their four entries still running. Kirkwood finished 15th, three laps down, after he, too, was involved in a crash.

Meanwhile, old head Scott Dixon quietly finished third. And another old head, defending series champ Will Power, quietly finished seventh.

Lotta storylines there. Unfortunately ...

Unfortunately, if a streaming service were to give the "Drive to Survive" treatment (and fandom boost) to an American racing series, it undoubtedly would be NASCAR.

Ah, well.

Numbers and such

And in NFL Combine news ...

Everyone was all a-twitter yesterday because Florida quarterback Anthony Richardson (whose Draft Stock Is Rising according to all the gurus) absolutely killed it in running and jumping. Ran a 4.43 40, and set combine records for a quarterback in the vertical jump (40.5) and broad jump (10 feet, 9 inches).

What this tells the Blob is whoever drafts Richardson will get a hell of a decathlete.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Aren't teams wanting him to play quarterback?"

Well ... yeah. And therein lies the rub.

See, no one really knows if Richardson can actually play quarterback at the NFL level. Those aforementioned numbers are eye-popping, but they're just numbers. And they don't have a thing to do with whether or not Richardson can read a Cover Two or see a blitz coming or squeeze the ball through the tight windows with which fast-closing NFL D-backs usually leave you.

I suspect he can. His size (6-4, 244 pounds) and athleticism unavoidably remind you of Cam Newton, with whom Richardson identifies. And Cam was good for a few years -- good enough to win the league MVP and get the Carolina Panthers to the Super Bowl one year.

But numbers are just numbers. Especially irrelevant numbers such as how high or far a guy can jump.

Unless they change the rules and add rebounding and dunking from the 10-yard line to football, those skills aren't going to be of much use to a quarterback. Peyton Manning was never known for his hang time, after all. And I never thought Tom Brady and Bob Beamon had a lot in common, long-jump-wise.

Speaking of the two greatest quarterbacks of their generation.

Richardson?

For the Gators last season he threw for 2,549 yards, and his completion percentage was a tick under 54 percent. He threw for 17 touchdowns and was intercepted nine times. His QBR of 71.2 ranked 30th in the country.

In 22 college games, he threw 24 touchdown passes. He also threw 15 picks.

I don't know how you define pedestrian. But that kinda looks like it to me.

"But the gurus say his draft stock is rising!" you're saying now.

Yeah, well. All that means is he really could be Cam 2.0 ... or he could be JaMarcus Russell 2.0, an alltime NFL bust who also killed it at the combine.

The jury deliberates.

Early bracket buster alert

 I was in Muncie last night at the old alma mater, which actually has a basketball team this season and thus was worth the trip to Worthen Arena with my friend and former colleague Greg Jones, who graciously provided the tickets.

Alas, our Ball State Cardinals lost to Toledo, 67-61, on Senior Night. The Cards gave it a valiant try after going down 15 in the second half, but couldn't quite get all the way back. They're a good team that hasn't won 20 games by accident. Remember the name Peyton Sparks, their 6-9 sophomore in the pivot, who's sort of a Mid-American Conference version of Zion Williamson.

He finished with 24 points and 11 rebounds.

Unfortunately for Ball State, the best player in the conference, Toledo guard RayJ Dennis, went for 32. Threw in seven assists, three rebounds and a couple of steals for good measure.

Wait. Did I just use the word "good" again?

Well, if Ball State is good, Dennis and Toledo are ... ridiculously good. Last night's dub was their 15th row, most by double digits. They're quick, they can shoot, they give you fits with their length and ferociousness on the perimeter. Ball State was 5-of-20 from the 3-point line against them.

Toledo, meanwhile, was an absurd 10-of-15 from the arc. That's a tick shy of 67 percent if you're keeping track at home. And Ball State defended the Rockets pretty well their ownselves.

So what am I saying here?

I'm saying if Toledo plays like that in the Madness, they're gonna ruin somebody's day.

I'm saying RayJ Dennis is going to be a headache no matter who the Rockets play.

I'm saying if you're looking for bracket busters, remember them.

"Oh, there you go, getting all carried away again," you're saying now.

Maybe. Probably. However ...

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Youngstown Hate

 Once upon a time Bruce Springsteen wrote a song called "Youngstown" that was an empathetic parable about neglect and abandonment in the American Rust Belt. It  didn't also include a salute to classlessness.

Youngstown itself provided that the other night, when Youngstown State fans at the Horizon League quarterfinal game against visiting Detroit Mercy mercilessly heckled Detroit Mercy star Antoine Davis. As a parting gift, a handful of idiots in the Youngstown student section showered him with trash as he left the floor.

This after Youngstown State eliminated Detroit Mercy, 71-66.

And all Antoine Davis did to rouse the home crowd's ire was try to lasso history.

The son of Mercy coach (and former Indiana coach) Mike Davis and the Horizon League’s Player of the Year, Antoine came up just short of taking down one of the most ancient records in college sports, drawing iron on a 3-pointer over two defenders as the clock raced toward zero. It left him with 3,664 career points, three shy of the NCAA record set 53 years ago by Pete Maravich.

The son of the late Pistol Pete, who died of a heart attack at 40 in 1988, said he thinks his dad would have been rooting for Davis, seeing how Pistol -- especially as he grew older -- never put a lot of store in the records he set. He'd have been "thrilled," according to Jaeson Maravich, had Davis pulled it off.

The folks in Youngstown were not nearly so gracious.

They heckled the kid. They threw stuff. And one of Youngstown's players, Dwayne Cohill, actually told Davis in the postgame handshake line that he didn't deserve to be the Horizon League POY.

"I wouldn't have said that to him if he would've won it," Davis told Tony Paul of the Detroit News afterward. "At the end of the day, God doesn't like ugly."

He does, however, provide us with memories. 

Just now, for instance, I'm remembering the last time I saw Antoine Davis.

It was on a March night 21 years ago, and Mike Davis and Indiana had just upset Duke in an NCAA Regional semifinal. As the Hoosiers left the floor, guard Tom Coverdale scooped up a little guy wearing a No. 1 Jared Jeffries jersey. The kid was no bigger than a minute, and about six kinds of cute.

And his name was Antoine Davis.

I described that scene in my column the next day, because it was just so damn charming. I didn't add that anyone booed, because of course no one did.

Of course, this wasn't Youngstown Hate, either. Excuse me, State.

D(r)afty

Guy asked me the other day what I thought was going to happen in the NFL draft, this being Combine Week and all. I said, "Don't ask me."

No, really, folks. Don't ask me.

If you do, I'm gonna say I haven't the slightest, which is not what you'll hear from the all the draft gurus out there. Every one of them is lying, see. You can tell because every one of them has a different scenario. 

Which means they haven't the slightest, either, but don't want to lose valuable Draft Guru points by admitting it.

Me?

Hey, I got no points in this hunt.

And so the most I'll say is the Bears could trade the No. 1 pick, on account of they don't need a quarterback but need a bunch of other key parts.

And they could trade it to the Texans, although the Texans are sitting at No. 2 and are going to get first crack at a quarterback, anyway, unless they're afraid the Bears trade the top pick to someone else who'll jump the line and get first crack at a QB.

And they could trade it to the Seahawks, because Pete Carroll says they wouldn't be opposed to getting first crack at a QB -- which must really crisp Geno Smith's bacon, seeing how Geno was the Comeback Player of the Year and had an amazing 2022 season for the 'Hawks.

And they could trade it to the Colts, who are sitting at No. 4 and desperately need a quarterback, and like a lot of others want Bryce Young really, really badly. GM Chris Ballard didn't say that the other day, but the Indy media says that's what he meant.

Also, there's Georgia's monster play-wrecker Jalen Carter, who was arrested for reckless driving and racing the other day because of his involvement in a January crash that killed a Georgia teammate and football staffer in the car Carter was racing.

 The timing could not be worse for Carter, who showed  up at the combine fresh from being bailed out of jail. On the other hand, reckless driving and racing are just misdemeanors in Georgia, because it's Georgia and racing is what they do down there, especially if your last name is Elliott and you come from Dawsonville and you do it legally. 

So this might not affect Carter's draft status at all. Or, it might. NFL teams get really hinky about bad judgment stuff like this. 

Does that mean the Bears might be willing to swap the No. 1 pick further down, if they decide Carter's off their board? Does it mean they'd trade the pick to Houston or Indianapolis anyway, because there'll be other pieces they need at No. 2 or No. 4?

Will the Colts get Bryce Young, or will they take Will Levis, this year's Mitchell Trubisky?

Beats me. The only thing I know for sure is this: Whatever happens, the Colts will find some way to screw it up. 'Cause they're the Colts.

Sometimes past performance DOES guarantee future results, you see. Truth.

Meanwhile, in Alabama ...

 At some point, you start to wonder if there's a drug problem in Alabama, and if it's something other than fentanyl or opioids. You start to wonder if Alabama has a stupid-pill problem.

The latest in the University of Alabama's sad basketball saga comes from my friend and former colleague, the esteemed Michael Rothstein, now doing good work in Georgia as ESPN's Atlanta Falcons beat writer. Rothstein reported via Twitter that, after No. 2 Alabama rallied from 17 points down to beat Auburn and secure the SEC title last night, no players were made available to the media in the postgame for the sixth straight game.

Also, the 'Bama SID continued to ignore certain reporters, presumably because they wanted to ask what the hell the school is thinking, allowing star freshman Brandon Miller to continue to play. Or why there was another 'Bama hooper at the scene the night 23-year-old Janae Harris was shot dead with a gun owned by yet another former 'Bama hooper.

Shoot. One of the shunned reporters might even have asked why head coach Nate Oats still has his job, seeing how he seems to have lost complete control of his program.

It's an excellent question, which is why Alabama isn't going to let anyone ask it. That's because the answer is both self-evident and incriminating. 

The answer is Alabama has the best basketball team it's perhaps ever had, and Oats is the guy who built it, and why would you want to mess with that? Because a young woman is dead, and her 5-year-old son no longer has a mother?

Come on now, people. It's March, and the Crimson Tide has BASKETBALL GAMES to win.

Problem is, perception is everything in these deals. And hiding your players from the media and cutting off certain reporters because their questions might be embarrassing creates the perception you know what you're doing is wrong. And that just makes you look worse. 

The question now becomes what will Alabama do when media availability becomes mandatory in the NCAA Tournament? Will the NCAA, helpless to do anything about the situation in Tuscaloosa, protect the Crimson Tide by imposing its own restrictions on what questions can and can't be asked? Or will the same rules apply to Oats and Co. as they do to everyone else?

I guess we'll see. And, in the meantime, remember this: Alabama's offenses against propriety carry their own punishment.

Which is to say, the Tide will be the team everyone wants to see lose in the Big Dance.  Everyone, not just their opponents, will be rooting against them. Every game they play  will be a road game in the most hostile atmosphere imaginable.

That's why, if you're looking for first-weekend flameouts, you could do worse than making 'Bama one of your upset specials. Just sayin'.

Exit, stage (just) right

 Mike Brey coached his one last home game at Notre Dame last night, basked in the love of the faithful one last time, was blessed by the saints or some other celestial beings with one last W.

Final score at Purcell Pavilion: Notre Dame 88, Pittsburgh 81, Brey 315 (home wins in 23 years).

The man has been everything Notre Dame embodies or fancies it embodies for almost a quarter century, and he stayed in character to the end. Mindful that it was also Notre Dame's last home game of the season, here's what he had to say: "It was neat for our seniors to finish like that."

So his first thought on this last night was for his players.

As usual.

Today in overreacting

Your Indiana Hoosiers, America's shiny new Sneaky Final Four Team, got themselves ball-peened in Assembly Hall last night by 22 points, and suddenly everyone's forgotten what they said three days ago. It's as if it happened a century ago.

Three days ago, see, milkmen still delivered and doctors still made house calls and America was wholesome and good, except for the bootleggers and gangsters. And your Indiana Hoosiers were punting No. 5 Purdue into lunar orbit in Mackey Arena, the way the basketball gods intended.

Ah, but then came Tuesday evening, and Iowa 90, Indiana 68 ...

And suddenly the Hoosiers were no longer America's shiny new Sneaky Final Four Team.

Suddenly they were soft. And they had no senior leadership. And Mike Woodson, poor man, couldn't keep his team on task for two games in a row. 

In other words, all the things NO ONE was saying after the Hoosiers strapped Purdue to a rail and ran it up the Monon line (A "Hoosiers" reference for the unschooled.)

Know what the Blob thinks?

The Blob thinks some of you need to pour yourself a cup of hot tea and calm the bleep down.

Yes, the Hoosiers were terrible last night. They were everything they weren't Saturday evening in West Lafayette: Listless, unfocused, uninterested, even. With a share of the Big Ten title still in play, they didn't, well, play.

Iowa outrebounded the Hoosiers 39-27. They shot 55.6 percent and an absurd 56.5 percent from the three-point arc (13 of 23) against token Indiana defense. And for Indiana?

Well, Jalen Hood-Schifino did not go for 35 again. He went for eight, on 4-of-12 shooting. Trey Galloway, so instrumental in the Purdue win, scored seven points. Miller Kopp, also instrumental, vanished into the ether, taking just five shots and making two, with zero threes.

Only senior Trayce Jackson-Davis balled out, putting up a 26-13 double-double with five assists, four steals and a block.

Yet suddenly he was back to being soft again, just like his team. And apparently not a senior leader, either, although 26 points, 13 boards, five assists, four steals and a block sure looks like leadership by example from this precinct.

Listen. You know what last night was?

Last night was a hangover. They happen sometimes in college.

You beat your ancient rival twice for the first time in 10 years -- and not just beat them, but BEAT THEM -- you're going to get a trifle giddy. Especially when the rival is ranked No. 5 in the country and spent several weeks at No. 1. And especially when you've won 10 of your last 13 games and, for the next three days, all these people around the country are using "Final Four" and "Indiana" in the same breath.

(And, OK, so not everyone was doing that. Some people who did not completely lose their minds said we needed to pump the brakes. Which means there was still a little perspective in the room.)

In any event, I think all that talk tends to cloud the mind to the task at hand. Even when it's the doorstep of March and the task at hand is, you know, kind of important. And even when you're facing an Iowa team that was battling for the same piece of ground in the Big Ten standings.

The Blob is generally lousy at surmising, but here's a bit of it: I don't think last night looks remotely the same had it been a Thursday game instead of Tuesday. I think with an additional 48 hours, Indiana's focus would have been better, its sense of urgency better, its intensity better (or at least present).

I also think when Michigan comes into the Hall for Senior Day on Sunday, the Wolverines are going to see a very different Indiana team. I think they're going to see an Indiana team that looks a lot more like the team Purdue saw in the second half in Mackey.

After which the Sneaky Final Four Team talk will resume. Overreacting being what it is.