Mush

  My head is turning into mush. Maybe it’s because of the onset of Spring and the sudden blooming of every early flower and bud possible. Forsythia in full bloom before Passover and Easter--who knew?

Or perhaps its from the combination of two different kinds of doctor-ordered massages in four days. The first one was more a Swedish massage. But the second, a true medical massage, was a doozy. I am still trying to recover and drink my way out of it—water is the preferred beverage—but if there was something stronger which didn’t interact badly with my medications, I would surely imbibe. 

Maybe I am over exercising. At age 72 I am trying to keep my body lean to ward off getting old and fat. Walking, recumbent biking, legs days and two sessions of tortuous physical  therapy isn’t allowing my body to recover like it used to. Which leads to stiffness and soreness if I don’t stretch and hydrate enough—those massages are supposed to get rid of the kinks aren’t they? 

And please let me have a good night’s sleep. I can wake up groggy and I don’t have caffeine to jolt me from my morning stupor.

Possibly my uneasiness is also sports-related. Throughout Spring Training, I have been closely monitoring the Anthony Volpe situation on the Yankees. He’s the almost 22 year old phenom from nearby Watchung, NJ by way of Delbarton High School in Morris County. The former number one pick of the Yankees has skyrocketed through the minor leagues, earning an invitation to his first Spring with the big club. 

Volpe muscled his way into a competition with Isiah Kiner-Falefa, last year’s disappointment at shortstop, and Oswald Peraza, who came top late last year and performed like a veteran.   Not many people realistically thought that Volpe could win the job; he was too young, too inexperienced. Triple-A was his likely destination for 2023.

Except that no one told Volpe that. He absolutely shined in exhibition games, showing speed, pop with his bat and good defense. Volpe was going to make it hard for the Yankees brass.

Yankees fans were ecstatic. They knew what they were watching. While Peraza can play in the big leagues, Volpe generates star power. Not unlike another phenom who started at shortstop on Opening Day in Cleveland in 1996—Derek Jeter. 

Fans saw the potential. They wondered if the executive suite had the willingness to make the right call. To flush away what Volpe didn’t have in overall experiencer and instead look at what he was doing before their very eyes. 

I was in that group. I looked at sports news many times a day, waiting to see if the Yankees pulled the trigger. Finally, on Sunday, the decision was made. Anthony Volpe was going to be the starting shortstop for the New York Yankees. 

No one knows how he will handle the pressure. What Volpe has is the support of Aaron Judge, Anthony Rizzo, Giancarlo Stanton, Gerrit Cole and Nelson Cortes, the core of the Yankees team. He appears to be the real deal.

Remember, the fans are on his side—he’s one of us. When I was at the Franklin and Marshall-Montclair State doubleheader on Friday, I ran into a baseball alum who was visiting a Delbarton player on the F&M squad. Their last comments were about Volpe. This alum bet his son that Volpe would not make the team, yet he said he was rooting hard for the kid, who he said was “rock solid.” (For the record, F&M split with the #23 Red Hawks, winning the opener 12-2, losing the nightcap 8-2)

It is things like this which is why it weighed so heavily on me that the Yankees, a team which has not won the World Series since 2009, needs a jolt to put them over the top. Even with the early season injuries which have upset the pitching rotation and made the outfield rotation a bit messy, there is true optimism that this could be the year. Buoyed by Anthony Volpe. 

The NHL is winding down. The New Jersey Devils have been inconsistent in their play of late. On Saturday  night, the team came alive just enough to secure a playoff berth for the first time in ages. Now the work is ahead to keep ahead of the rival New York Rangers and to try to catch the Carolina Hurricanes to secure a better playoff seed. 

To that end, my son and I will be on the road again come April 1, resuming our quest to see the Devils in all of the Canadian cities. We will be in Winnipeg for a game on April 2. The temperatures this week will be below zero, but will moderate by time the game is set to be played. While it will be in the sixties here in New Jersey. We will feel much warmer when we return. 

So, too, is the NBA season reaching an end to its regular season. The Golden State Warriors are playing better ball of late in an effort to avoid the play-in round. Now that they are home, the late games on the West Coast do nothing to help my sleep habits. Including Sunday’s self-destructive loss to Minnesota.

What I think has contributed the most to my malaise is the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. What has seemed like a constant barrage of tight games and upsets (nineteen according to one source) has controlled my brain. I had to get my normal functions in, cook and eat, watch Ted Lasso, the end to Your Honor and NCIS among other programs just to be ready for the plethora of games on TruTV, TBS, TNT and CBS. 

Then there was the byplay with my wife, who I defeated by two points in our annual March Madness pool, avenging my loss of last year. Imagine living with that tension for a whole year. I can identify with the Miami Hurricane players who burned about losing in the Elite Eight last year and waiting another year to advance to where they felt they belonged. 

My equally basketball-crazed college roommate and I kept up a constant barrage of texts from start to the end of Sunday. Because the level of play was that good. Thursday would seemingly morph into Friday that fast. Saturdays and Sundays were a blur. 

I am not going to recount the games. Just know that this Final Four will be like no other, as #4-5 and 9 seeds will be meeting in Houston. How they got got this point is as unforeseen as to who will win the title. 

UConn has championship pedigree from a long time ago. They demolished teams in their run to the West Region crown. San Diego State played like a big time program.  Miami was the best team out of the ACC and had desire and heart. Yet they might not be the best team from South Florida, as the final entry to the exclusive groups, the Florida Atlantic Owls from Boca Ration, has defied all odds to get to play another weekend. 

At least I will have some time to relax—as long as I don’t start watching the Women’s Tournament, or more NBA. I am certain I will be watching the Yankees home opener on Thursday. 

Sleep, hard enough as it is normally, is a precious commodity this time of year. Maybe I will get some in Canada. Even with an early enough return flight on April 3. Oh yeah, the Miami—UConn game is on at 7:40 PM CDT. My son went to UM Law School. Guess what I’ll be doing…

When will I stop seeing Charles Barkley commercials? Lily for AT&T? When will my brain be ready to calm down? It’s like the way things have gone for Warriors, Devils, the NCAA’s and the Yankees. So unpredictable.

Just don’t show me any oatmeal right now. I don’t think I could handle that kind of mush.

I Am Preoccupied With College Basketball

  I have suffered from sensory overload this week. Seemingly wall-to-wall basketball, both college and pro. Upsets and close finishes. Disappointments more than I want. All with my editor sojourning in Spain (Basquing) and nobody to proofread this blog but my own bleary eyes—compounded by my devouring a “beach read” paperback for our book club entitled People We Meet On Vacation. And cold weather lingered one more day before Spring arrives—in the same week which we actually had snow remain on our lawn for almost 12 hours, a new seasonal record for 2023.

Sure, Rutgers fell to Hofstra in a stirring finish to an overtime NIT game at Jersey Mike’s Arena. Take away all that talk about RU being slighted by not making the NCAA Tournament. The Pride—I longly wanted to call then the Flying Dutchmen once more—simply wanted this game more. Speedy Claxton, a Hofstra star who played in the NBA, returned to Hempstead and made his team better. The hustle, the second chance rebounding and inside scoring were all a product of an intensity which I saw in the NCAA’s this weekend by the teams which produced the wins. 

Forget that Hofstra went home and played badly in a second round loss to amore formidable Cincinnati squad. At least they won a post-season game. 

For that matter, Seton Hall, the other “top” New Jersey team, also lost to Colorado by one point in an opening round NIT match played in Boulder.  Two losses by a hair and these programs had nothing to show for it. 

Conversely, New Jersey started out 4-0 in the NCAA Tournament. That’s because Fairleigh Dickinson—every sports fan now knows who they are, and the school isn’t named after Emily’s brother—went out and smoked Texas Southern to get into the main draw and then smote mighty Purdue in maybe the greatest upset in tournament history. The second time in 152 tries a #16 seed beat a #1 seed—five years and a day after UMBC demolished Virginia 74-54.

With Princeton drawn into the same conversation with wins over first #2 seed Arizona and then #7 Missouri, the Tigers are a sweetheart team in the Sweet 16. Anybody who thought they were just another Ivy League team and did not warrant enough attention thought wrong—hey you on the Selection Committee, I’m not happy with you for a lot of reasons. This was the 10th best rebounding team in the nation and that was on full display against Mizzou. 

FDU gave every small team great hope. I mean that literally because Purdue was the tallest team in the country with 7’4” Zach Edey, while undistinguished FDU was the smallest team in Division I. 

FDU had heart. They weren’t even the winner in the Northeast Conference. Merrimack won the conference tournament title and since the North Andover, Massachusetts school hadn’t finished the four year probationary period assigned by the NCAA when transitioning to Division I, the second place Knights received the automatic bid. 

FDU was the last team placed in the tournament. Number 68. The oddsmakers had them listed as a 23.5 point underdog. Now the Knights can claim that they were the lowest seed EVER to win a first round game and they overcame the biggest odds to win a game—which will resonate heavily in New Jersey, Nevada and online. 

You have to hand it to Tobin Anderson, the FDU coach. After winning versus Texas Southern, he brashly commented that he saw weaknesses which could be exploited against Purdue. And that’s what the Knights went out and did. Plus it didn’t hurt that the Boilermakers disintegrated at the end of the game and they couldn’t seem to get the ball to their tall star in the post. 

These kids shouldn’t have been in the tournament let alone have the ability to stand up to mighty Purdue out of the Big Ten. Yet, inspired by the basketball lifer, son of a coach who coached at Division III schools Clarkson and Hamilton and Division II’s St. Thomas Aquinas prior to landing in Teaneck, his team achieved the nearly impossible. With grit and determination any team would want to have. 

Alas, the bubble burst. Florida Atlantic downed the Knights but never will this loss end their memory of a lifetime. 

Princeton took care of the Pac 12 winner in Arizona and a ranked SEC school in Missouri. Their dead eye shooting without fear showed, just like the smiling confidence of their coach Mitch Henderson, himself a Princeton grad who was a star on the Tigers squad which downed a vaunted UCLA team and whose leap in joyous celebration has forever been captured in Princeton lore. Do not believe that this team might not do more damage next weekend in Louisville. 

I thought the Selection Committee did another lousy job. Already, two top seeds were eliminated by the end of the Round of 32. Only Houston and Alabama are alive as #1’s, and they had to work hard to survive. If there are a number of upsets, this shows that the ratings the committee formulated weren’t very accurate. Just look at St. Peter’s last year—exciting but another abysmal failure to properly rank teams. 

We had other upsets along the way, just not as monumental. Snake-bitten #4 Virginia fell to #13 Furman, an upset a number of pundits touted. #11 Pittsburgh had to defeat Mississippi State in a play-in game on Tuesday, then came back to handily dispatch Iowa State, which left the state of Iowa 0-3, as the Cyclones joined Iowa and Drake on the sidelines. A tough Xavier team took care of the Panthers’ hopes. 

Penn State, coming off its second-place finish in the Big Ten Tournament, throttled Texas-A&M before losing to a better Texas Longhorns team. Should Houston and Texas win next Friday in Kansas City, they battle for the Midwest Regional crown and a trip to the Final Four. 

Northwestern valiantly battled UCLA before falling to the Bruins. How about the UCLA bench player with the dyed yellow hair with the blue paw prints? San Diego State has quietly looked good, as has Houston, but the Cougars were expected to be a title contender while SDSU is more of a long shot. 

Duke was a hot team heading into the the tournament. Then a key player was injured. Tennessee played a level of thuggery which the officials didn’t reign in and executed better. No surprise that the Vols advanced. 

Kentucky, with its elite talent, was one-upped by a diminutive guard for Kansas State by way of Harlem, The Patrick School in New Jersey and the University of Arkansas-Little Rock. Markquis Nowell introduced himself to those who did not know him. Get used to this kid—he just might make it to the NBA.

Michigan State and Marquette engaged in a slugfest. Just like revered Marquette coach Al Mc Guire would have liked it—and how present MSU head man Tom Izzo, current possessor of the longest consecutive number of NCAA appearances with one school apparently liked it more, as the Spartans prevailed, setting up a tremendous matchup with K-State at Madison Square Garden. MSU is the only one of eight Big Ten schools to survive to next weekend. 

Arkansas dethroning Kansas was not that big a surprise; I believed the Big 12, like the Big Ten to be a bit overrated. So the final accounting of the Sweet 16 is this: SEC 3; Big East 3; Big 12 2; and the ACC, West Coast, Big Ten, WAC, Conference USA, AAC, Pac 12 and the Ivy League have one representative. 

My wife picked Duke to win it all. I picked Gonzaga. Her final four was Alabama, Duke, Xavier and Gonzaga. Mine was Duke, Gonzaga, Arizona and Indiana. She feels she is finished. I know her bracket is very much alive and well, potentially poised to vanquish me two years in a row. She has Xavier, Alabama and Gonzaga alive to the Final Four. I only have Gonzaga. Do the math. 

In between all of the March madness, I managed to watch the Golden State Warriors lose three games on the road this week in Los Angeles against the Clippers; in Atlanta without Draymond Green, who was suspended for attaining his sixteenth technical foul versus the Clippers; and then Saturday night at Memphis, minus Ja Morant. 

Somehow, the Warriors are not the same on the road as they play when in the Chase Center. Without Andrew Wiggins, the team seems to be devoid of a key presence, both offensively and defensively, to take the pressure off of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. Look for a very quick exit from the playoffs if things don’t change—which I cannot imagine they will. 

While I have reveled in the Golden State championships, I long for much more from my teams. Ergo, I have come around to the thinking that the Jets should go all in for Aaron Rodgers, provide the needed players and make one concerted push for a long-awaited second title. Rodgers does not have much more quality playing time left in his Hall of Fame career, and I am not going to wait forever on the heretofore ineptitude of the franchise. 

Let me also chide Rutgers. You are a behemoth. Act like one. Sure, three appearances for men’s basketball in the post-season is fine. But you can do much better—it isn’t that hard to be Northwestern, Maryland or Purdue (although coach Matt Painter seems to be snake-bitten by double digit seeds and New Jersey teams) or even Indiana in basketball and challenge yearly for the Big Ten crown. And it is not enough to know that Rutgers football produces talents like Isiah Pacheco of the Kansas City Chiefs but cannot peek at .500 in the conference. My patience runs thin. 

With no Yankees baseball until March 30 and Rodgers’ trade has not been formalized, I am preoccupied with college hoops for another week. 

My Love Affair With Basketball

  I have kind of been glued to my TV set this past week. For it has been wall-to-wall coverage of college basketball—both men’s and women’s. With a healthy measure of the NBA thrown into the equation. And I cannot get enough. 

This is not to say that I haven’t been living an ordinary life (for me). There are the usual chores, exercise, physical therapy, shopping, cleaning and I do the bulk of our cooking. I sometimes find time for a nap in addition to my normal night’s fitful sleeping—a thing that occurs regularly to people in their 70’s and older. 

Sure, there are other sports going on. I routinely check the NHL scores, as the New Jersey Devils have had a youthful renaissance after too many miserable years. I also am more than cognizant of the Boston Bruins incredible pace to break a number of records for wins in a season, points, and home and away overall records. Plus I look to see which teams are in the playoff picture as the season heads to its conclusion; of course, in the New York area, we are clued into what the Rangers and Islanders are doing, too (both presently are in position to secure playoff berths.

Baseball is in the midst of its exhibition season in both Florida and Arizona. MLB has reinstated its World Baseball Classic, which I have little interest in—is it truly a World Series when Aaron Judge, Gerrit Cole, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer are not participating? Besides, why would I even be interested in late start times from Phoenix which could keep me up until 1:00 am with the advent of Daylight Savings Time? To watch Great Britain or Canada play the U.S.—no thanks. 

Yes, I read the papers and what is online about injuries and how teams are doing. The Yankees already have a number of important players suffering maladies which will preclude them from beginning the season on time. I will be primed and ready for the season opener on March 30—even if there are other distractions and my son and I will be resuming our Devils through Canada saga with a trip to Winnipeg in early April when, hopefully, the temperatures and precipitation will be as cooperative as it was during our trip to Edmonton—when we landed five days after the last below zero cold snap. 

Ranking the sports in the order I care about them, it would be baseball first, closely followed by basketball, then hockey and football. (Tennis, swimming and golf were leisure activities, no matter how much I worked at them) I can even break those categories down based on professional and college teams.  Notice that football is last—I am, after all, a long suffering New York Jets fan and the talk of Aaron Rodgers coming to be a savior is irksome, to say the least. 

Baseball will always be number one. I could play it with relative ease compared to any of the other sports I had any ability in—I could not stop as a skater which is why I have played only once or twice as a lad on the frozen ice of the ponds at Johnson Park in my hometown of Highland Park. With football I was too small but my stubbornness caused me to have a brief one year career on the Highland Park H.S. freshman team before being concussed (it hurt like hell for a couple of days but in 1964, you sucked it up and continued to play) and realizing I didn’t belong out there.

Whatever level I played baseball—if it was a catch on my home street or in the driveway, a pick up game at Hamilton School, stickball, or organized youth leagues, I more than held my own. Obviously, I played baseball well enough to forge a very undistinguished career at Franklin and Marshall. One thing I always knew about baseball was that I understood it and I could always hit and throw fairly well, despite my size and lack of speed.  

Moreover, my baseball prowess helped me get my first real job with the Public Defender, Appellate Section and I made many friends along the way because of my love of baseball. Offer me a chance to go to a MLB park, I’ll be there if I can. This is why I am so adamant about getting to the last 5 remaining franchises’ ballparks. 

Most people don’t really know my history with basketball. It is long and it is a bit complicated. I always wanted to shoot baskets—my father nailed a backboard (it had to have a net to be official) over our garage, and I was out there, in the cold or heat, with or without wind or elements. From balloon balls to more appropriate orbs, I always had a basketball. 

In my youth, I watched plenty of Knicks games from Syracuse, Rochester and Philadelphia. I watched national TV games with Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell—my first NBA game was in January, 1962, when I saw the Wilt and the San Francisco Warriors annihilate the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. 

I played recreation league baskets all with a running clock in the Hamilton School gym. I wasn’t that bad, but I really was just okay. But I didn’t know better. That is where I learned how to keep score, which led to my high school career as the scorekeeper and statistician for the freshman and varsity teams. 

Just as much as I watched the NBA on television, I watched college basketball. I saw early games such as when Loyola of Chicago won the NCAA Tournament in 1963, the National Invitation Tournament before that with NYU, St. John’s, Bradley and Dayton all coming to play at the old Garden on Eighth Avenue. Bill Bradley and his Princeton Tigers were a Saturday afternoon favorite. I thought the gyms at Manhattan and Fordham were dingy. I learned of the scandals at CCNY and LIU. UCLA was an absolute phenomenon and I read a ton about their coach, John Wooden. I became a very willing student of the game. 

Besides seeing my high school play at the Asbury Park Convention Hall—the first portable floor I had ever dribbled on—I practiced with the varsity at times in my duties as a manager. I would try to make as many free throws in a row as I could and take shots from half court daily. That was because in my freshman year, I actually suited up in our road maroon uniforms with my low cut black Converse All-Star sneakers like the Boston Celtics (we lost and I did not enter the game). I did play in three games involving my high school—a trip to the State Reformatory at Annandale which I will never forget as I actually scored five points and made a foul shot—I was so nervous; a Teachers-JV game where I was horrible; and an Alumni-Varsity game in December, 1968 when I scored three points against a squad that went to the State semi-finals, which left me elated. 

Did I play pick up games? You bet I did. At Rutgers; in both the Dillon and Jadwin Gymnasiums at Princeton; many times at F&M, including after baseball practice. I played on the second tier team for my intramural group and once scored 31 points bombing away. I went to the YMHA in West Orange, shooting when had the opportunity while playing vertically challenged defense. At lunchtime, while the Public Defender office was in East Orange, I played almost every work day at the Orange YMCA, with some guys who played college ball, including the legendary Feldman brothers, who were high school stars in Newark and at George Washington. They couldn’t have been nicer to me. 

While I have continued my love of watching televised basketball for over 65 years, when I went to my first live college game at the old College Avenue Gym on the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers, I was hooked. Rutgers and then F&M became my teams. 

I have seen Rutgers at home so many times against so many teams and I still go when I can. I have traveled to Penn State and Cincinnati to watch RU play, as well as at MSG. While in law school, I was able to get into the locker room when the Scarlet Knights faced the University of Delaware in 1974. I met stars Phil Sellers, Mike Dabney and an assistant coach named Dick Vitale.—the same one who is in the Basketball Hall of Fame for his legendary broadcasting. 

Although I had studies and work for baseball, I hardly missed a game at F&M during the 3 1/2 years I was on campus. I watched Glenn Robinson win his first varsity game and I was in the stands for his record-breaking 667th win—most in Division III. 

I have been to a Division III Final Four; the NIT Championship game; and a NBA Finals game. I made a pilgrimage to the old Boston Garden. I have driven by numerous arenas to burn the image in my brain. I have shot one shot—a swish—at a vacant Rutgers Athletic Center. I made a foul shot at Littlejohn Coliseum on the Clemson campus. I had to go inside the Dean Dome at North Carolina and see the beehive floor at the old Charlotte Coliseum. I was able to toss an errant ball back to Michael Jordan before a game at the Meadowlands. The list goes on and on. 

On Saturday night, I watched Steph Curry go on a shooting rampage against the Milwaukee Bucks, the best team in the NBA, pulling out a dramatic overtime win. This was with me alternately watching the Duke-Virginia ACC title clash while texting my F&M roommate, an avowed college basketball junkie and a Maryland fan for many years. I probably watched games in eight or nine conferences over the course of four days, while checking on the progress of Centennial Conference teams from Johns Hopkins and Swarthmore in the DIII Tournament. This is me. 

My wife and kids learned early on to stay away from me when the Selection Show comes on CBS in early to mid-March. I am always excited to see how the brackets unfold, and this year I was praying that a subpar Rutgers team gets in. Which, in my prior blogs I believed they were not worthy of getting into the NCAA’s, and I was right. Except for the snobs at the University of North Carolina, who nixed an invitation, there is nothing wrong with extending a team’s season by playing in the NIT.

On a warm night in June I will be glued to the NBA Finals. I saw the Grant Hill pass to Christian Laettner for his miracle shot. I remember Jordan hitting the winning shot for UNC just like he did for the Chicago Bulls. These are just a few of my thousands of memories. 

There is so much more I can relate about basketball which is etched in my mind. I wish I still had our in ground basket on the side of our driveway. I could recreate Bobby Lloyd of Rutgers dribbling and shooting. Or Larry Bird sinking a long shot. Or I could just be lost in the fun of shooting an orange ball through a metal rim with some nylon below it. 

This is my continuing love affair with basketball.

Let The (March) Madness Continue

  On Sunday, I counted 18 men’s college basketball games being televised. Seven women’s hoops games made it to TV. College hockey, four college wrestling championships, five NBA contests, two NHL matches and a slew of auto racing, golf, tennis and rodeo permeated the airwaves. Not to mention the XFL and the NFL combine. Plus exhibition baseball. Sounds like over saturation?

Rutgers laid two more eggs this week. The once-formidable Scarlet Knights lost a game at last-place Minnesota on a last ditch three point shot that won it for the Golden Gophers. 

Then on Sunday night, Northwestern came to Piscataway. Unlike the game earlier this season in Evanston, this was a tale of two teams. One which nobody picked to end up in second place in the Big Ten (Northwestern), while the other (Rutgers) picked by some during the season to win the conference title and obtain a high seed for the post-season. 

What I saw was a mismatch. Northwestern had better players and it was apparent how well those players had been coached. The Wildcats deserve to be in the NCAA Tournament. Rutgers does not. 

Rutgers decline was palpable on both the offense and defense. Unable to score, shoot free throws and stop the other teams which had a plethora of open shots, this was not a good recipe for success. 

The Big Ten Tournament begins this week in Chicago. In the 8-9 game, Rutgers plays Michigan. The Wolverines gave a very good Indiana team all it could handle, taking the Hoosiers to OT in Bloomington before losing. And Michigan trounced the Scarlet Knights in February at Jersey Mike’s Arena. 

Who do you blame here? It’s not the players alone—although they are making some bad decisions. That’s too bad. 

Instead, Head Coach Steve Pikiell’s optimism does not work anymore. Sometimes a coach needs to see how he can change things—shake up a bad stretch with some noticeable changes. Trouble is that RU does not have the talent to let Pikiell make those tweaks that his team so desperately needs. 

Moreover, what will this disastrous end to a promising season mean for recruiting? Things are not right with Rutgers basketball. This season may have detrimental consequences for years to come. 

While I loved going to the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden when RU was part of that conference, I really don’t like those kinds of events. Play the regular season out and do not make good teams go thorough another test—injuries occur and sometimes teams come from virtually nowhere to win the automatic bid to the Big Dance. In the smaller conferences, the best team does not always reach the NCAA’s. Exhibit #1 is St. Peter’s University last year, which defeated a good Iona team directed by Hall of Fame coach Rick Pitino.

Invariably, there will be some Cinderella team which wins its conference tournament. Could it be 11-22 Lafayette downing the Patriot League regular season champs, Colgate? Or FDU, which was so-so in the Northeast Conference regular season, but is going to the NCAA’s because the top team, Merrimack, is ineligible as the school transitions to Division I? And maybe Shaheen Holloway can once more astonish us by leading Seton Hall to a Big East tile and trip to the NCAA’s. He does have the pedigree. 

I am happy that UCLA ended up winning the Pac 12 regular season crown. Yet I wonder if the Bruins have to play Arizona for a third time, will UCLA lose a possible top seed as a result of a loss?

There were many upsets this last weekend of the regular season. Kansas actually lost and still managed to stay in the top four of the AP Top 25.  Number one Houston won at Memphis on a buzzer beater. Alabama faltered with a loss at Texas A&M—the Aggies rose from #24 to #18 with that win. Baylor went down three spots to #10 with a loss to Iowa State. Yet St. Mary’s advanced from #17 to #16 with a loss at #9 Gonzaga. 

Expect plenty of carnage this week. I will hold off on my Final Four picks until I see the brackets. Of course, I will let you know my wife’s picks, because she apparently is the current expert in this household. 

Troubling news came from the NBA, college basketball and college football. Memphis star Ja Morant was seen flashing a gun at a night club in the Denver area. As a result of his indiscretion, Morant has separated himself from the team for an undetermined time. Police are investigating and charges are possible—even in an open carry state like Colorado. This was not the first time that Morant had flashed a gun nor been in trouble with the law, reports stated. 

Georgia defensive lineman Jalen Carter was involved in an auto accident which took the lives of two others. The allegations of drag racing, which resulted in criminal complaints and a brief trip to the jail before Carter was released, did not deter him from returning to the NFL combine in Indianapolis.

Texas Tech’s men’s basketball coach was suspended by the school for using racially insensitive language to his team. His apologies immediately afterwards weren’t good enough. He claimed he was citing the Bible to make a point. Nor were the statements from Davis and the need for Morant to distance himself from the NBA to seek “help”.

All this comes on the heels of Brandon Miler, the star Alabama basketball player, who allegedly supplied a gun which was used by teammate Darius Miller in a homicide. Miller was not too contrite when he faked a pat down search after the news broke about his supposed involvement. At least Alabama got it right by dropping Miles from this team—one which many believe can win it all. They fumbled the pat down situation. 

Everyone is presumed to be innocent. This is sacrosanct in the legal system. But in the court of public opinion, each of these incidents received scathing condemnation. 

Certainly time and circumstance dictate how an individual responds to negative stimuli. What was absence was the NBA, NFL, the colleges or even the SEC keeping these individuals from participating in their sports. 

I will not guess how these transgressions will turn out. I will say that these individuals definitely placed themselves in jeopardy by their own actions. 

If Ray Rice and Colin Kaepernick are examples of punishment by the NFL, Davis might be sitting out some time in the future and his high draft stock may have taken a serious hit. 

What will happen with Morant? The NBA should have zero tolerance for guns. Period. Not to worry. Nike and Gatorade still support him—they have lots of money invested in his brand. Which we might be seeing isn’t too good. 

Texas Tech suspended Mark Adams for his insensitivity and the school is investigating if Adams allegedly spit on a player earlier in the season. Hopefully they will educate him in the use of the Bible as a teaching guide for college players. 

For all the good inherent in sports, these types of incidents give the teams, conferences and leagues image problems. Maybe they need to be more proactive with discipline. Wouldn’t that be a good teachable moment?

I leave you with this: the most exciting players in sports right now are Connor McDavid on the Edmonton Oilers and Caitlin Clark, the star of the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team.

McDavid has crossed the 100 points mark already and has scored 50 goals. He is the runaway M.V.P. in my mind. He reminds me a bit of a cross between Sidney Crosby, the star of the Pittsburgh Penguins, in his prime, and the Great One—Wayne Gretzky. High praise indeed.

Clark has almost single-handedly led Iowa to the Big Ten championship with a triple double in the finals. Iowa is now #2, behind the dynamo known as South Carolina. Keep your eyes and ears on how this might become a great championship game in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament. She might be the next Diana Taurasi or Sue Bird. 

Baseball is less than four weeks away from the start of the regular season. Cold weather is predicted for the next couple of weeks. I am really looking forward to those frigid nights in April and seeing how the pitchers will react to the pitch clock. 

With so many sporting events televised to distract us, isn’t it just easier to find a good book or watch Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick than to see the reality of life unfolding? You be the judge (not Aaron).

Then again, let the (March) madness continue.