Via ESPN

“ESPN’s second annual College Hoops Tip-Off Marathon — featuring 12 consecutive live college basketball games in 24 hours Tuesday on ESPN — will include extensive coverage across the ESPN platforms to celebrate the beginning of the 2009-10 season. ESPN games will tip off every two hours, starting at midnight ET with Cal State Fullerton at UCLA.”

I somehow missed this one last year, but the idea sounds interesting. I’ll have to pass on those middle of the night games though.

Via WIBC:

NCAA president and former Indiana University president Myles Brand has died at age 67. Brand had been battling pancreatic cancer.

In many people’s minds, at least around Indiana, Myles Brand will always go down as the guy who butted heads with Bobby Knight.  Over at the NCAA Brand had a pretty uneventful tenure other than your normal nonsense of cheating/violations.

Here are the 2008 NCAA Final Four matchups. All games are on CBS and played in the Alamodome (San Antonio, TX).

Saturday, April 5, 2008
6:07 pm EDT (1) UCLA (35-3) vs. (1) Memphis (37-1)
8:47 pm EDT (1) Kansas (35-3) vs. (1) North Carolina (36-2)

Monday, April 7, 2008
9:11 pm EDT (1) North Carolina / (1) Kansas vs. (1) Memphis / (1) UCLA

So we’re still in line for my Memphis over North Carolina prediction in the final.

While this is the first time four number ones made the finals and many are praising the selection committee for that, overall I can’t agree. Yes, you probably have the four best regular season teams, but teams like Davidson and Butler were clearly better than their seedings (just to name a few). Yes, they want the “Cinderella” story line. I get that. And yes, it’s a drawn out task to select 65 teams within the selection guidelines. But when teams should clearly be seeded substantially higher it would seem that something funny is going on or that someone doesn’t know what they’re doing. But what do I know? I don’t even really care about basketball except for tourney time.

For those of you who care, here are the “Sweet Sixteen” matchups (all games are on CBS, and to my knowledge, Katie Couric is NOT commentating)…

Thursday, March 27, 2008
7:10 PM ET No. 7 West Virginia at No. 3 Xavier
7:27 PM ET No. 4 Washington State at No. 1 North Carolina
9:40 PM ET No. 12 Western Kentucky at No. 1 UCLA
9:57 PM ET No. 3 Louisville at No. 2 Tennessee

Friday, March 28, 2008
7:10 PM ET No. 10 Davidson at No. 3 Wisconsin
7:27 PM ET No. 3 Stanford at No. 2 Texas
9:40 PM ET No. 12 Villanova at No. 1 Kansas
9:57 PM ET No. 5 Michigan State at No. 1 Memphis

I’ll say that overall the matchups seem pretty lame. (Chalk one up for the selection committee.) While there’s a really decent chance that 3 or 4 #1 seeds move on to the Final Four, I’ve still got to root for the Big Ten (even though my Boilers are out). However, I’m sticking by my initial predicting for the final game: North Carolina vs. Memphis with Memphis winning. But what do I know, I only watch college hoops a few weeks a year.

A word of advice to Kelvin Sampson. “DON’T MESS WITH THE STANGER! Or you’re bound to get stung.” (Cheesy I know, but hey, if Emmis can get away with that sort of thoughtless promotion, so can we.)

Apparently Sampson is not a fan of Jeff Stanger, baseball, Bloomington or books. I’m a Purdue grad, but come on, are you serious? Sure, Rick Greenspan might lay down the law and Michael McRobbie will get his first test due to the recruiting violations , but what is their stance on the remarks towards Trolley Dodgers, Jeff Stanger, baseball, the city of Bloomington and the future release of Kansaska? That my friend is the real story.