Sports: Almost time for March Madness!

My poor Anteaters. At best they will finish in conference 7-7. Alas, their final game in the Big West is against the top team Long Beach State.

In the Big West, the higher you finish in the regular season, the fewer games you need to play to win the post-season tournament. If the Eaters finish sixth, where they are now, they would have to win four games in the tournament to get to the NCAA tournament.

It is a pretty good year for the Big West. In the Mid-Major Top 25 (as of 2/12/07), Long Beach State is ranked 18 and Cal State Fullerton is rated 15. Usually, it has only been the top team in the Big West that might show up in the poll.

Meanwhile, in the Pac-10, it is probably going to come down to the final weekend to determine the regular season champion.

UCLA beats ASU tonight but it was a struggle. When I turned on the radio, they were down 10 in the middle of the 2nd half!

The Bruins are a gutty little team that is more than the sum of its parts. They have a number of deficiencies that could sink them in the NCAA tournament: they have trouble attacking zones, they miss a lot of free throws, they are vulnerable to athletic guard play that mixes in good three-point shooting (when the UCLA guards get too aggressive they get beat off the dribble and when they back off, three-point sharpshooters have caused trouble) and the Bruins front line just isn't big nor deep (Mbah a Moute, Aboya and Mata get the lion shares of the minutes and nobody is thinking any of these guys are going to go early to the NBA).

But the team plays pretty good defense and have just enough offense to eek out wins. They simply believe that they can win despite what everyone else says!