O Glorious Day! The zenith of nascent spring has arrived! Today, you can call in sick to work (tell them you need to prep for your World Series-winning colonoscopy), crack open a beer before 9:30 am on the West Coast, and stare intently at teenagers in short pants for four straight days without so much as a cocked eyebrow from your loved ones.

(2008 Final Four coverage from SPORTSbyBROOKS)

(Hint: timing’s everything on this one. One weekend in the wrong direction and you’re stuck programming your GPS to stay 200 yards from schools for the next five years.)

Here’s what you need to thrive today:

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Nevada Council on Problem Gambling

(2007 teaser from SPORTSbyBROOKS coverage)

Here’s your morning NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament storylines:

• UNC guard Ty Lawson will not play against Radford in the first round.  Please adjust your money line bets accordingly.
• However, Michael Jordan’s son will likely play more for Illinois during the tourney due to injuries.  (Odd how MJ doesn’t even provide a drop quote for his son to the NEW YORK TIMES, leaving all the talking to Mom.)
• And Levance Fields feels much better, making him available for Pitt.
• Mike Krzyzewski got his back out of whack when he heard President Obama didn’t even pick Duke to go to the Final Four.  (Worse: he picked Lawson’s team to win it all.) Don’t get excited, Coach K… he did pick your team to be prepared for a little thing called “life”.
• Gus Johnson will call games in Memphis with as much gusto as he calls out bad service in a restaurant: loudly enough to get handcuffed.
• Finally, if you haven’t filled out your brackets yet, follow our advice: you can never go wrong shaking the Big Ten teams off your sheet like Mateen Cleaves works a towel.

Since you now have a few hours to kill, here’s the hail of bullet points to distract you while considering why you’re getting sex advice from China’s last eunuch (and how they tested for this):

• The United States lost to Venezuela 10-6 in second-round WBC action with slightly more meaning than a rerun of “Maude” since both teams had already advanced to the semifinals.
• More pressing: why aren’t you all out there supporting the U.S. squad? Don’t you know Tommy Lasorda said you’d go to hell if you didn’t cheer loudly enough? (And does this make the U.S. team a Bizarro Tinkerbell?)
• If you want to see what poor support at home looks like, follow Cuba back to the island after they were eliminated by Japan in a repeat of the 2006 final.

• Continuing the international baseball thread, Manny Ramirez and his balky hamstring enjoyed the game of cricket yesterday in the desert. Four out of five doctors agree that many ailments can be cured or temporarily assuaged by applying an appearance fee to the affected area.
• As always, you can stop Mexican drug wars temporarily if the local soccer team does well.
• If you’re a referee, you’d probably rather not have a potential replay rule change named after you. Too bad, Ed Hochuli.
• Donté Stallworth is very sorry that someone died.
• Grandpa Warner has hip surgery. His helmet next season will come with a radio and a hearing aid.
• Things are getting interesting in New York City sports talk radio. And by “interesting”, we of course mean “catty”.
• The Cubs are retiring the number shared by Fergie Jenkins and Greg Maddux. Cubs fans would have settled for retiring Dallas Green before letting Maddux escape to Atlanta in his prime.
• Also, you don’t apparently have to live near the USOC to lay off 13 percent of your staff. And we doubted the USOC CEO!

WOOOO! YEAH! AMERICA ROCKS! OUR FOREIGN POLICY HAS JUST BEEN VINDICATED BECAUSE WE KICKED SOME ASS ON THE DIAMOND! YEAH! The score was USA 15, Venezuela 6 in first-round World Baseball Classic action last night, and with a 2-0 record in pool play, the Americans are assured of advancing to the next round. Your heroes are Chris Ianetta (3-run double in 6th inning) and Mark DeRosa (4 RBI). Wait, those guys are actually on America’s roster? Seriously?

(DeRosa, proving that refs totally listen to you when you say you’re safe.)

As to whether we can glean too much joy from beating the tar out of a team from a country with a GDP that’s roughly the same as the state of Iowa? (By the way, you’ve got to click that link; I don’t know if Alabama’s or Texas’ corollary is funnier or more offensive to their residents.) Sure. For as meh a country as Venezuela is on the global stage, their lineup was filled with starting-caliber talent. The meat of the Venezuela order, consisting of Bobby Abreu, Miguel Cabrera, Magglio Ordonez, and Carlos Guillen, is downright All-Star quality. If only their pitching wasn’t garbage.

In college basketball, we now know five teams that’ll be losing in the first round of the tournament, plus North Carolina smacked Duke down for the ACC regular season title, 79-71. The men of the match were Tyler Hansborough, giving the Dean Dome 17 points in his last home game, and Ty Lawson, who was doubtful to play (oh, please) with a sprained toe but poured in 13, 9, and 8 in the win.

(Scheyer Face alert! Code red! This is not a drill!)

UNC’s now 6 for their last 7 against the Blue Devils, who were beaten for the second seed in the ACC tourney by Wake Forest. Suddenly, even a 2 seed in the NCAAs doesn’t seem so assured for Coach K’s charges. FIRE THE BUM!

As for hockey (or as they call it in Europe, “football”), we do need to commend Washington Capitals fans with a spirited, to say the least, attack on Sidney Crosby’s worth as a hockey player and as a man. The singular fatal flaw in their plan, however, was the fact that Crosby’s still one of the five best players in the NHL. As it turns out, Crosby made Washington pay dearly: one goal, one assist, and the clinching goal in the shootout to give Pittsburgh the 4-3 victory. But hey… nice work on the signs, fans.

(And you can’t spell “Penguin” without “P-U-N!” Wakka wakka wakka!)

As for Alex Ovechkin, the Caps’ superstar, he had a magnificent performance of his own. No, it won’t show up in the stat sheet… but it will show up on TV and YouTube, because it’s incredible. Courtesy of the DC SPORTS BOG:

Some links to consider while you recover from being run over by a bull…

• Rajon Rondo, out for 10 days. Now Celts fans will have to excoriate Memphis for not beating Boston by enough (?!).
• Speaking of the Celtics, do not expect any love from Paul Pierce if you show up in a Lebron jersey:

• Did you ever watch that “Real Housewives of Atlanta” show? No? Us neither. But apparently the one who’s the ex-wife former Atlanta Falcon Bob Whitfield’s being sued by Whitfield for about $87,000. Honest mistake on her part, we’re sure.
• The Toronto Maple Leafs GM, on whether the NHL will ban fighting: “I will personally challenge anyone who wants to get to rid of fighting to a fight.” Um, that’s a joke, right?
• Fat Ronaldo’s back from that horrific injury, and his first goal is a game-winner in injury time. Naturally, it comes replete with fans going completely ballistic and fences being torn down. Because hey, it’s soccer, and that’s just, y’know, what you do.

• It looks like it’s 5 more years for Boston hurler Jon Lester. Do we mean a contract extension… or life expectancy after his cancer returned? The world may never know! (It’s a contract extension, relax.)
• Stephen Curry gets to light up the NIT this year.
• ESPN, devaluing journalism one skeleton bone at a time. Poor Karl Ravech.
• According to (scarcely SFW) BUSTED COVERAGE, this Ohio State cheerleader supposedly runs a 4.4 40 and might make the football team. Hey, you know what’s more fun than playing football at Ohio State? Grabbing cheerleaders’ asses in front of those same 100,000+ people while the football players are the ones getting hit all the time. If only there were a way for him to do that instead…

I’m not going to suggest that the Boston Celtics weren’t completely focused last night, but…for God’s sake, they lost to the freakin’ Los Angeles Clippers! I know that they were without Kevin Garnett, and then Paul Pierce dislocated his thumb in the third quarter. And I know that the axiom that there are no easy road games in the NBA.

Except when you are playing the Los Angeles Clippers - I don’t care where you play them or what the circumstances are, that should be an “easy game” for any team. If they can’t beat the Clippers, then I guess we can eliminate the Celtics as legitimate NBA Finals contenders. We might as well go ahead and crown the Lakers…

…who lost to Sacramento earlier this year, who actually somehow have managed to be worse this season than the Clippers. OK then, how about the Cavaliers?  What, they lost to Washington earlier this season? We’re going to wind up with the Spurs as champions again, aren’t we. The point is: it was a really, really bad loss, but no worse than any other team has during the course of a season. Let’s not freak out to much about it yet.

Nothing against Nolan Smith, but doesn’t anyone who isn’t a Duke fan feel good about seeing a Blue Devil get laid out by a vicious screen? Maryland’s Dave Neal was the one delivering the shot, flooring Smith and causing Mike Krzyzewski to fume. Smith had to be helped off the court but didn’t appear to be seriously injured, allowing us to enjoy our little moment of schadenfreude:

Of course, as the CHARLOTTE OBSERVER points out, that screen might have been the worst thing that could have happened to the Terrapins, as Duke’s Gerald Henderson came out of the ensuing time out as a man on a mission, scoring 11 of his 19 points in the game’s final 15 minutes and change afterward. Or, it could just be that Duke is a much better team than possibly NIT-bound Maryland; either way, Duke won 78-67.

Meanwhile, this is how bad it’s gotten for Indiana: they were swept by Northwestern. The Wildcats did what would have seemed improbable going into this season, breaking a 35-game losing streak at Indiana on Wednesday with a 75-53 victory. Then again, even with a young, inexperienced team, thinking that Indiana would be 6-21 overall or 1-14 in the Big Ten would have been pretty loopy before the season started.

More sports news as you fire up your NES and decide whether to play “Wrestle Jam” as Randy “The Ram” Robinson or The Ayatollah:

• Remember those Powerade commercials that had LeBron James sinking one full-court shot after another to the amazement of a local reporter. After watching this pre-game video found by BALL DON’T LIE of King James swishing a more than half-court shot - underhanded- I’m starting to wonder how much editing trickery was used:
  

• Congratulations to Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun for notching his 800th career victory, a 93-82 victory over Marquette. Go buy yourself something nice and extravagent, and make sure you send the receipt to that idiot writer.
• Further proof that Alex Rodriguez just doesn’t get it: FOX SPORTS says that after hitting a home run in his first Spring Training game, he left the stadium in an SUV … with his cousin Yuri Sucart, the same cousin who was allegedly his steroid supplier.
• Updating a story about 82-year-old former professional wrestling star Verne Gagne allegedly killing his assisted-living center roommate, the AP says a coroner in Minnesota has ruled the death a homicide.
• REUTERS says Australian swimmer Nick D’Arcy - pulled from the Olympic team after allegedly caving in another athlete’s face during a barroom brawl while celebrating making the team - will have to wait another month to learn his fate.
• I know it’s from the Celebrity Game during All-Star Weekend, so it’s a little bit old, but seeing ESPN’s Jon Barry bite this hard on the old Harlem Globetrotters “Confetti in the Bucket” trick is worth it. Didn’t he ever watch the Globetrotters on “Wide World of Sports” as a kid?:
  

• Another day, another investment scam impacting sports. This time NEWSDAY reports that two former New York Islanders executives have been arrested and charged with “with misappropriating more than $500 million in client investments, including tens of millions allegedly taken for things like expensive stallions and pricey Teddy bears.”
• More news in the slow, inevitable slog towards Manny Ramirez finally signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers:  the LA TIMES reports that the team has made him a two-year, $45 million offer that he could respond to as early as today.
• CANES COUNTRY has another sign that either newspapers are dying or economy is falling through a well (or both): the News & Observer has decided to not send reporters to Carolina Hurricanes away games, likely for the rest of the season and possibly beyond.
• The PALM BEACH POST reports that Michael Jordan and his 30-year-old paramour, Cuban model Yvette Prieto, are moving in together in a house in suburban Miami. Michael: if you find Charlie Sheen coming out of your house at odd hours of the night, you have bigger things to worry about than your underwear.

You have to hand it to the Cameron Crazies. Not so much for dressing a student as Beaker from “The Muppet Show” to point out the resemblance with North Carolina star Tyler Hansbrough. Frankly, this is old news. But having said Duke student/Muppet wear a T-shirt that says “D League,” as the CHARLOTTE OBSERVER noted. That’s classic - even North Carolina players were laughing over that one.

But then again, it was the Tar Heels and Hansbrough who had the last laugh again, as North Carolina pulled away in the second half to take down the Blue Devils 101-87 at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Which made Hansbrough and senior teammate Danny Green the only two players to play in four straight victories at Duke since Mike Krzyzewski took over as the Blue Devils’ coach.

The spark for North Carolina was Ty Lawson, who scored 21 points in the second half to help the Tar Heels rally from an eight-point halftime deficit. (Good thing there is nothing the Duke fans could have given him grief about.) But as usual, the story was Hansbrough, whether he was hitting key three-pointers, getting compared to a Muppet, or getting cracked in the jaw by a Kyle Singler elbow:

You have to love the crackerjack ESPN crew of Mike Patrick and Dick Vitale totally missing the elbow. But at least Vitale - once he noticed what was happening - actually admitted that a Duke player did a bad, bad thing. Unlike Billy Packer, who probably would have chided Hansbrough for ramming into Singler’s elbow with his face.

And what’s the best way to celebrate a big win if you’re a North Carolina student? Why, burning a Christmas tree, of course. Take that, Christmas! (Why they still had a tree in February is another question.):

Speaking of Christmas…it’s time to give you the gift that keeps on giving: Brett Favre is finally gone. After the Jets’ meltdown to end the season, it was obvious what was going to happen, but it’s official: he’s filed his retirement paperwork with the league and is apparently done. No teary press conferences, no 24/7 ESPN media watch, just an old man making sure, as the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS reports, he gets his severance pay like an auto worker reaching retirement age.

So our national nightmare is over. Unless Favre goes online and reads stories like those from Dan Pompei of the CHICAGO TRIBUNE, who immediately wrote a column that suggested Favre could still “lead certain teams to the Super Bowl.“ Certain teams meaning “Minnesota Vikings.” For God’s sake, Pompei, let’s not give him any ideas - this is like Edward R. Murrow going on the radio and suggesting that Joseph McCarthy should try exposing gay in the military instead of Communists.

Other sports stories that happened last night as you regretted eating peanut butter and peanut sandwiches for dinner (with peanut brittle for dessert):

• CNBC says that jewelry maker Robindira Unsworth received a surprise when one of her creations wound up dangling from the neck of Bar Refaeli on the cover of the SI Swimsuit Issue. Which makes me wonder: has anyone even noticed her necklace while looking at the cover? Perhaps boyfriend Leonard DiCaprio bought it for her, a nice gift - as the LA TIMES says some people think the SI cover was.



• GOAL.COM says Mexico soccer captain Rafael Marquez is really sorry that he drove his spikes into US goalkeeper Tim Howard’s thigh, earning him a red card in his team’s 2-0 loss in a World Cup qualifying match in Columbus last night.  He might want to apologize to Mexico coach Sven-Goran Eriksson, who is now in danger of losing his job after El Tri have only won one of their last seven games.
• Remember the testing program Lance Armstrong was going to undertake during his comeback to prove that he was free of performing-enhancing drugs? What a shock - it’s been scrapped, as KCRA-TV reports that he now claims that it’s too expensive and complex to pull off this year. I guess getting rid of Favre is all we could ask for.
• Just what the already-volatile Dallas Cowboys’ locker room needs: Ray Lewis. The DALLAS MORNING NEWS reports that Terrell Owens has been making phone calls trying to recruit the Ravens’ linebacker/non-murder to play for Dallas this season.
• Despite claims in a lawsuit filed by his ex-girlfriend, Roberto Alomar tells ESPN that he’s perfectly healthy and does not have AIDS. And he’s willing to spit anywhere needed to prove it.
• Former Congressman Tom Davis tells NBCSPORTS.COM that it’s time to “cut your losses,” and that you can expect charges against Roger Clemens for lying under oath soon.
• A woman in Fresno put up her old baseball card on eBay for $10, but decided to pull the item after receiving way too many e-mails asking if it was real. It turns out that the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings card was real, and worth a lot more than she thought: the AP says she sold it yesterday for almost $65,000.
• Speaking of eBay, IDIOTS ON SPORTS found this beauty up for sale on the auction site, although I doubt it’s worth $65,000:



• The WACO TRIBUNE reports that Baylor football recruit Willie Jefferson was arrested 10 days before signing his letter of intent and charged with marijuana possession after cops found a “small bag of marijuana, a marijuana cigarette and several cigars in a cavity on the floorboard of the vehicle” Jefferson was driving. This is why you don’t by a used car from Tommy Chong.
• See, Sirius XM isn’t going bankrupt. If it was, why would they be flying Chris Russo out first-class to spring training- twice! - as he told Howard Stern yesterday. Just like there’s no way the banks could be going under if they can still afford to fly their executives out to expensive resorts for annual meetings.

At Duke, camping out for basketball tickets in Krzyzewskiville, the tent city outside Cameron Indoor Arena, is an annual pastime. At colleges across the country each year, outbreaks of meningitis are also annual pastimes. You can already see where we’re going with this, can’t you …

(They’re covered in germs! All of them!)

From North Carolina news station WRAL 5:

A Duke University freshman was diagnosed Tuesday with meningicoccal meningitis and was being treated at Duke University Hospital, officials said.

The unidentified female student had been camped out in Krzyzewskiville, the location near Cameron Indoor Stadium where students wait for basketball game tickets, to get tickets to Wednesday night’s game against the University of North Carolina.

Not only did the poor girl get meningitis, now she’ll miss the UNC game, too.

Read more…

For all those Michigan fans still pining over the much publicized demise of their football program, they finally have something good to talk about: Evidently they’ve got a decent basketball program again!

(Pyleoflist is dead on. Playing the role of Luke Skywalker: John Beilein.)

Just 16 days after being embarrassed in New York by Duke, Michigan beat the very same team on their home court, 81-73, in front of a crazed Crisler Arena and second-year coach John Beilein, who exorted his team to do anything possible to avenge their earlier loss an, finally, earn a win over a top-5 team. Done and done.

Read more…

• Gina Carano wrestles with fellow MMA fighter Tonya Evinger - in a match made more fitting for late night Cinemax than primetime CBS.

• Speaking of bedside manners, a college b-baller’s caper of stealing condoms from Wal-Mart is finished prematurely.

• Retired NFL veterans are in the money, as they’re finally getting some of that sweet scratch long overdue from EA Sports.

• Do we know who won this year’s World Series of Poker? You bet!

Read more…

Hey, readers! Time for another offering of SbB’s Clever Caption Contest! As you may or may not know, the NCAA men’s basketball season officially got underway Monday night as Duke pummeled mighty Presbyterian. (Next week, the Blue Devils follow up with Southern Methodist, North Carolina Wesleyan, California Lutheran and Non-Denominational Tech.)

So you tell us - what’s Coach K crying out loud about, for crying out loud? Submit your hilarious, hellacious & humdingerious suggestions right to the comments section. Winner to be triumphantly announced during the end-of-the-day recap.

(Contest note: Responses with the overused FARK cliche “Duke sucks” will automatically be disqualified. However, various interpretations of said cliche may be allowed on a case-by-case basis. Happy writing!)

The college basketball season will be here before you know it, and right now all over the country schools are playing out exhibition games in preparation for the year. This includes everybody’s favorite men’s basketball squad, the Duke Blue Devils. The Dukies finished their exhibition schedule on Wednesday night, and even though they beat Lenoir-Rhyne 95-42, there was something about the game that left a bitter taste in Mike Krzyzewski’s mouth afterwards (cue the J.J. Redick jokes).

(”I will rip your soul out with my bare f#@%ing hands!”)

You see, since his team was playing such an inferior opponent, Coach K didn’t have to do all that much coaching last night. This left him with a lot of time to take in the atmosphere around Cameron Indoor Stadium, and as he was doing so he noticed something troubling. There were a lot of empty seats in Cameron, and now Coach K is ticked off.

Read more…

• Jenna Jameson happily announces that she’ll soon deliver a new li’l Tito (or Titoette) Ortiz into the world.

(DVD obsolescence would be good for her adolescent)

• Did Tony La Russa stop Bruce Springstreen from stepping on the St. Louis stage on time?

• The FBI is looking into Lindsey Hunter’s involvement in some shady suburban housing shenanigans.

• NBC notes nothing about a gold medal-winning Aussie diver’s alternative lifestyle.

• The LPGA demands that all their players learn to speak English good.

Read more…