Beltway Basketball Bonanza-- Big Least...

Whoa... March Madness began like a lion with 7 lower seeded teams winning... while starting and ending with overtime games and an underachieving conference. Which is why we love these two days more than any other on the sports calendar.

Georgetown lost to Ohio 97-83 in the day's biggest upset. The Bobcats shot 57% from the field and three point range... while turning the Hoyas over 19 times. My hoops expert White Shoes says the Hoyas lost the game by not driving and penetrating early and often in the first half--instead settling for jumpshots. While Georgetown could have played better, it wasn't as though the Bobcats were hitting uncontested threes-- OU outplayed them for 40 minutes. Take heart, Hoya fans...you have everybody coming back next year.

Big East blunders... it wasn't just the Hoyas loss that gave league backers queasy stomachs. Notre Dame (and Brenda Walsh date lookalike Luke Harangody) lost a heartbreaker to Old Dominion where the Irish scored 7 points in the final 7:48... while Marquette coughed up an 11 point second half lead to a Washington team that needed to win the Pac-Ten (worst big conference during the regular season) just to make the field. Can't we just kick Marquette and DePaul out of the league and be done with both schools? It would so help out with travel and when Notre Dame joins the Big Ten it'll make so much sense...then we'd only have to lose Seton Hall's phone number until they get the hint before the league gets back to a manageable dozen.

Network nitpick... CBS still sends us away from primary games to show dead spots of other contests... instead of running highlights during dead spots. I want to stay locked into Georgetown for the full forty minutes-- no cutaways! Even with a double digit deficit and under two minutes to play, a quick three or two can change things dramatically-and I was forced to watch the Hoya seconds tick off in the upper left hand corner of a TV screen. Almost makes ESPN's run for the Tournament rights bearable.

Maryland Moment-- Terps tangle with Houston... and the nation's leading scorer in Aubrey Coleman. While much of the focus will be on how they defend Coleman and how Greivis Vasquez responds to his worst outing in months (6-21 against Georgia Tech with 6 turnovers)...the supporting cast (Tertiary Terps) needs to respond with a big effort. This is where Eric Hayes and Landon Milbourne shine as alternate options. This is where Jordan Williams introduces himself to the basketball world.


Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thoughts... what an underwhelming induction ceremony. Genesis minus Peter Gabriel? I know the band was better, if less hitmaking with you up front-- and I know In Your Eyes crushes Sussudio... but you should have stood with your former mates (and who would have thought less than a decade after being cut by the Redskins, Tony Banks would be a hall of famer). ABBA with only one A and one B? Seventies cheese only works when there's a full-fledged reunion, folks... let that be your Waterloo. The Hollies bereft of the actual members still with the band? Tony Hicks and Bobby Elliott were playing a concert in London and didn't make the trip- gentlemen, how do you not take the day off and join Graham and Allen (plus the bassists whose names we can't recall). Clarke and Elliott were amusing bookends to a highly underrated band. Tony looked like he was 15 and Bobby was bald... a nice juxtaposition... and Clarke's jangling guitar plus Elliott's scattershot drumming gave the Hollies a sound apart from the rest of the second-tier British Invasion groups.