Welcome to the First Annual Sports by Brooks Final Four Liveblog Marathon and Fish Fry! I’ll be your Fry Guy, Tuffy. Please take a plate, move through the buffet line, and have a seat where you’re comfortable. I’ll be by later to take your drink orders, though we only have orange drink.

Brooks himself, the owner of this here establishment, is on site at the game in San Antonio. We’ll be receiving updates from him during the contests tonight. For example, you can see here that the Final Four is apparently being held at Tomorrowland.

(Look, Ma! A flying machine!)

I will be stationed in the Tuffy Bunker with enough pale ale to knock even Manu Ginobli down. You know how tough that can be.

Pregame: The early matchup pits the University of William Wesley Memphis against recent perennial bridesmaids UCLA. (Admit it; you just imagined Kevin Love in a wedding dress, standing next to Gregg Popovich.) Here are your CBS-approved storylines:

• Hey, look: the Alamo!
• Derrick Rose: Your newest Oklahoma City bomber!
• Andre Allen pisses off
• UCLA chokes! (Or vindicates. One or the other.)
• Memphis hasn’t been tested (NCAA violations regarding this due 2009)
• Kevin Love! Beach Boys! Wes Unseld! Kevin Love cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a winner in his life.
• Memphis, 37-1, underdog

Please feel free to add any storylines I missed in the comments below.

Frankly, there’s a bit of an old school/new school vibe coming off the selling of this game that has unfortunate undertones. Kevin Love reminds old people of their youth in suspicious fashion. Memphis doesn’t care about “fundamentals”. And so on. This picture probably sums up the difference best:

One is straight out of Central Casting, rumpled and balding; the other is Straight Pimpin’ in velour.

Prediction: I’ll take Straight Pimpin’, 82-67. There’s nothing like watching old people twitch. Sometimes, I go down to the elder care center with a bag of popcorn and make them watch American Idol instead of Law and Order marathons.

Pregame (cont.): - Lesley Visser’s helmet is only slightly less impressive than Lord Dark Helmet’s.
- Over/under on number of musical references with Kevin Love: 17.

First Half
20:00: Here’s the kind of in-depth access you can only get at Sports by Brooks:

(Brooks says, “I may technically be in Antigua now.”)

16:13 Oh, Shipp.

16:00 Brooks has found his real seats in the lower bowl and reports more attractive members of the opposite sex in the concourse than were at any bars all week. He’s in the UCLA section instead of the Memphis section, which may explain a lot. Also, Kansas fans are everywhere. Like a Dust Bowl of Roy Williams haters.

14:00 I’m not trying to micromanage your multi-million dollar franchise in the guise of amateur athletics, but you may want to slow the hell down, UCLA. Also, I did not underestimate the creepiness of Billy Packer, but it didn’t help.

12:00 Chris Douglas-Roberts would like to remind you that he plays second fiddle to no freshman. (Except at the NBA Draft.) Also, wasn’t “Love Left Alone” a Joy Division B-side? Remember, these are great defensive teams except when they aren’t. This revisionist history has been brought to you by CBS.

9:51 Let this timestamp note the first time I noticed the shot clocks were installed and active in the Alamodome. Even though the scoring’s slowed a bit, no one is any less open than they were in the first 10 minutes. Hell, Kevin Love was open when he entered the building.

8:00 26-23 Memphis. Ben Howland doesn’t seem to understand the TV timeout system; it’s a shame he has no experience on this stage to rely on.

Brooks update: There’s plenty of empty seats; it would appear Kansas-North Carolina fans haven’t all arrived yet. No wonder the NCAA requires minimum purchases. Also, because it’s an NCAA Tourney contest, no alcohol will be served.

Brooks also notes the overhead crane camera sits to his left; he has plans for the camera that twoeightnine would approve of (and probably thought of already).

4:00 Memphis 32-27. Memphis has hit both their free throws, which explains their success thus far. Hooray, fundamentals!

Americans are still great! We’re going to the Moon! Which China will then buy from us! Tomorrow, on “60 Minutes”!

2:00 Memphis 36-29. Memphis is so long and tall that I am tempted to call them Sally for the remainder of the Final Four. Also, I wonder what technology CBS uses to make it look like Kevin Love is moving at human speed while all the Memphis players dart around him in that blurry way.

0:00 Memphis 38-35. If this is what we can expect from chalk, please rip the whiteboards out of all of America’s classrooms and bring back the old blackboards.

CD-R burned UCLA for 13x points, thanks to the fast break offense off 19 team rebounds. UCLA hangs in the game, thanks to Kevin Love’s sweet-and-slow-as-molasses 10 & 6 and Russell Westbrook’s efficient 11.

Changing threads for the second half. Bring your orange drink to the next thread, please, so the SbB cleanup team can do their jobs.