It's that time again...

It's that time when both NCAA Division 1 basketball tournaments come down to four teams each.

Got to admit...I've slacked off a bit since last year when it comes to follow college hoops (2025 has been a year to deal with health issues, among other things)...but I'm still a fan.

I'm typing this in the middle of a game...but I'm going out on a limb to make predictions, anyway.

Women's: South Carolina over Texas, then Connecticut over UCLA...then the Gamecocks taking care of the Huskies on 4-6-2025.

Men's: Auburn over Florida, followed by Duke over Houston...with the Blue Devils stopping the Tigers on 4-7-2025.

Okay...now it's back to watching the games to find out what'll really happen.

Hope your favorite teams are still standing!

Too close to call...well, I like to think so!

Screenwriting has kept me away from posting more blogs all this time.

Speaking of screenwriting...you can't really write a better script than the way this season's two NCAA Division 1 basketball tournaments have been turning out.

Okay...I'm cheating...I'm typing this during the third quarter of the North Carolina State-South Carolina women's basketball game. But I'm still going to go out on a limb and make predictions for how college hoops' final six games of 2023-24 will turn out.

Here goes: WOMEN: South Carolina over North Carolina State, Connecticut over Iowa (but I smell a Hawkeye victory tonight over the Huskies), then the Gamecocks staying unbeaten at the expense of the Huskies...whose 2015-16 team was the last D-1 squad, men's or women's, to get through unscathed.

MEN: Connecticut over Alabama, North Carolina State over Purdue...followed by the Huskies taking the Wolfpack down on 4-8-2024 for a second consecutive title (something not done in D-1 men's hoops since Florida doubled up in 2005-06 and 2006-07).

But what a season it's been...especially with Iowa's Caitlin Clark breaking records left and right and Purdue's Zach Edey picking up where he left off.

And we're at a point in the season where any of those eight teams could win it all.

Well...time for me to get back to the South Carolina-NC State game. But before I go...I can't help but ask:

Which teams do YOU think will win it all here in 2023-24?

Vive la difference!

Great to see some different teams than the usual ones win regionals in this season's NCAA Division 1 men's and women's basketball tournaments.

No Number One seeds left at the moment in the NCAA D-1 men's tourney (Alabama, Purdue, Houston, and defending champion Kansas all went down before the regional finals)...and two remaining in the NCAA D-1 women's tourney (Virginia Tech and last season's champ, still-unbeaten South Carolina).

The Hokies and Gamecocks spearhead a women's D-1 Final Four that includes a Louisiana State team that hadn't won a regional final since 2008...and an Iowa squad making just its second trip to the women's D-1 Final Four. (The first happened in 1993.)

Now...how about the D-1 men's side? Three teams in the men's D-1 Final Four for the first time ever!

Two of those first-time teams (Florida Atlantic and San Diego State) taste it up tomorrow...when Miami (FL) takes on one of its old rival from its Big East days, Connecticut. That's right...a University of Connecticut basketball team made the Final Four after all.

Dan Hurley's...not Geno Auriemma's. So...2022-23 is the first season the Huskies' men's team got to a Final Four since 2014 and the first campaign where the Huskies' women's squad got left out of a Final Four since 2007. And, here in 2022-23, not a single Number One seed among the men's D-1 regional semifinalists...a first. All right...I'm going to try some predictions about the last team standing in each D-1 NCAA tourney this season. WOMEN: Louisiana State over Virginia Tech, South Carolina over Iowa...and then on Sunday, an all-SEC final in which Dawn Staley's Gamecocks make it back-to-back titles.

MEN: Florida Atlantic over San Diego State, Connecticut over Miami (FL)...with Hurley's squad cutting down the nets late Monday night for its first title since 2011.

The watchdogs chalk it all up to the transfer portal...something that's redistributed the talent in both women's and men's Division 1 hoops. (You know what I say? Right on for the portal!)

I'm going to be watching...hope you'll be watching, too.

Hey! We've been here before!

Have you been following either or both of this season's NCAA Division 1 basketball tournaments?

I was disappointed at both Iowa basketball teams, pleased at how far both Iowa State hoops squads did, but...I wasn't surprised at how the season ended for Nebraska's women, Creighton's men, and Creighton's women.

Now each tourney is down to four clubs...and here's how I think it'll all end:

WOMEN: South Carolina over Louisville, Stanford over Connecticut (although I smell a win for the Huskies against the Cardinal), and South Carolina ending Stanford's reign.

MEN: Villanova over Kansas, Duke over North Carolina, and Duke sending Mike Krzyzewski into retirement in style by stopping Villanova.

There you are: Eight teams that've already been to the Final Four before...seven of them have won it all before. (Only Louisville's women have yet to be the last to cut down the nets.)

Well, let's just sit back this weekend and see what REALLY happens.

Killing the Game?

This year, I've been following more NCAA Division 1 women's basketball tournament games than NCAA Division 1 men's basketball tourney ones.

The big reason: I'm upset at CBS CEO Les Moonves for crowing that the sexist, racist, homophobic, religiophobic, etc., etc. rantings of Donald Trump and other 2016 Republican presidential candidates are "good for CBS." Moonves likes how all the excrement slung by the Elephants' office seekers means more advertising money for the folks at the Eye Network. (Never mind the continuing corrosive effect the propagation of hate has on the collective American conversation.)

So while I'm watching ESPN and ESPN2 whenever they show D-1 women's tourney contests, it's TBS and TNT for me when it comes to seeing D-1 men's tourney teams play. (To get truTV, I'd have to pay my local cable outlet for another tier of channels.)

Speaking of ESPN2...I was watching this afternoon's Tennessee-Syracuse game (the Orange won the Midwest Regional final, 89-67, to get into the D-1 Women's Final Four for the first time in program history) when I saw the scroll on the bottom of the screen: "Geno Auriemma won't apologize for his team's success." 

Why should he?  

Yesterday, his Connecticut Huskies mauled, crushed, demolished, and crucified Mississippi State, 98-38,

for the biggest victory margin in any regional or Final Four game since the NCAA started conducting a Division 1 women's hoops tourney in 1982. (The 60-point margin topped the 51-point difference between UConn and Texas in one of last season's East Regional semifinals.)

It was the 72nd straight time Breanna Stewart and Co. won a game; Stewart led the way with 22 points, 14 rebounds, and five blocks.

After the game (one in which the Huskies put in the game's first 13 points, enjoyed a 32-4 lead on the Bulldogs, then stretched it to 61-12 at the end of the first half), Auriemma fielded a reporter's question about whether Connecticut's total domination of D-1 women's b-ball- three straight championships and ten overall coming into this 2015-16 season- is killing the sport. 

The head coach with the most Division 1 women's basketball titles ever wasn't pleased with the question.

"When Tiger (Woods) was winning every major, nobody said he was bad for golf," said the Man from Philadelphia. In fact, Woods' phenomenal success drew more fans to golf as the 20th Century was getting ready to make way for the 21st Century.

What's more, Tiger's presence on the links made the other PGA golfers step up their game. 

Result: Since the current century began, golfers like Phil Mickelson, Padraig Harrington, Zack Johnson, and- more recently- Rory McIlroy, Bubba Watson, and Jordan Spieth have shown they can frequently come away with The Big Check, too.

Same thing happened in NCAA Division 1 men's basketball...which, from the 1963-64 campaign to the 1974-75 season, was in the grip of one team: John Wooden's UCLA Bruins.

The Bruins took ten of the twelve D-1 men's titles offered during that span of time. It would've been twelve straight if Texas Western hadn't stopped Kentucky, 72-65, to end the 1965-66 season- a season where Oregon State interrupted UCLA's reign in the old AAWU (now, of course, called the Pac-12); and if, in 1973-74, North Carolina State hadn't beaten Marquette, 76-64...after the Wolfpack dethroned the Bruins, 80-77, a couple of days earlier.

By the way...a year after their school won it all in men's hoops, Texas Western College of the University of Texas officials changed their institution's name to the University of Texas at El Paso. 

Wooden showed that he could get UCLA to the top with any kind of team, be it a run-and-gun kind, a patient team, or one headlined by a certain 7-2 center who, while still in high school, had college recruiters all over the country knocking each other over to sign him.

Lots of other head men's hoops coaches breathed heavy, heavy sighs of relief when John decided to hang up his whistle after the 1974-75 season...a campaign that ended when UCLA thwarted Kentucky, 92-85. 

That's how the 37th NCAA D-1 men's hoops tourney ended. Before the Blue and Gold seized control of men's D-1 roundball, 18 different squads had won the first 25 NCAA D-1 men's basketball tournaments, starting with Oregon (the 1938-39 kingpin). And Kentucky was the sport's gold standard, with four championships- 1947-48, 1948-49, 1950-51, and 1957-58. 

By the time the 1974-75 season ended, 21 teams had won the 37 NCAA D-1 men's b-ball tourneys. Since then, 14 others had taken the pot of gold for the first time ever.

And men's college basketball has grown exponentially in popularity since then...to the point where the gender's D-1 Big Dance is the NCAA's most lucrative event. (An event where this country's president fills out a bracket every March, just like millions of other Americans.) 

While the 78th NCAA D-1 men's hoops tournament is going on, the 35th NCAA D-1 women's basketball tourney is also happening. 

And, as Geno will tell you, it's all taking place at a time similar to what was happening in men's Division 1 ball during the 1963-64/1974-75 era.

Connecticut's first D-1 women's title came at the end of the 1994-95 season. Before that, eight different clubs claimed the first 13 NCAA Division 1 women's basketball tournaments, with Tennessee leading the way (the Volunteers, then under Pat Summitt, were tops in 1986-87, 1988-89, and 1990-91). 

Since UConn got that first notch, teams headed up by Auriemma and Summitt nailed down 14 of the next 20 titles in D-1 women's roundball...with Tennessee grabbing three championships in a row from 1995-96 to 1997-98,

then triumphing in 2006-07 (the act that angered Rutgers fan Don Imus) and 2007-08.

Five other teams accounted for the other six championships of the 1995-96/2014-15 period- Purdue (in 1998-99), Notre Dame (whose 2000-01 title prevented what ultimately could've been a UConn five-peat), Baylor (the only one able to go for seconds; the Bears followed up their 2004-05 championship by ruling in 2011-12), Maryland (the winner in 2005-06), and Texas A&M (which took it all in 2010-11).

So, that's it...coming into March Madness 2016, 14 different squads have won the first 34 NCAA D-1 women's b-ball tournaments. 

At this very moment, the Huskies are working on a four-peat.

But first, they'll have to take the Longhorns out of the way tomorrow night to win the East Regional. 

Two more victories after that, and Auriemma will get his eleventh title as a head coach...and he'll pass Wooden in the process.

The way I see it, Connecticut's success (that's putting it mildly) in D-1 women's basketball isn't killing the sport.

Media apathy toward the game is.

I mean, it hurts to turn on one of Disney's ESPN networks each March and find a good, good game being played in front of...rows and rows of empty seats. 

It hurts, too, that these same media people- even those at Disney- don't lavish the same attention on women's ball as they do on men's ball. The scrolls themselves offer a clue: Rarely this season were you told how many points Stewart had in this or that game. (By contrast, Georges Niang's name was almost always seen in the scrolls here in 2015-16.)

Listen...Iowa State's Niang and Connecticut's Stewart were two of college basketball's leading players these last four seasons. Let's give 'em BOTH shout-outs! 

And that speaks to something else.

How committed are many of the NCAA's Division 1 schools to their women's basketball teams? 

Not just in money...but in spirit. 

It's been 44 years now since Title 9 became law...and it hurts that, 44 years later, lots of resentment continues to exist over the law. The resentment not only shows up on TV and on sports radio, but in no telling how many athletic departments at no telling how many schools here in America. 

How much support do the Breanna Stewarts really have, given- let's face it- America's anti-female heritage?

Breanna herself had one real answer to giving women's NCAA basketball a boost: 

"Teams need to get better, players need to get better, and that starts from before we even get to college." 

John Wooden had no problem with women's college basketball. He, in fact, called it a purer form of the sport than the men's kind.

I've always thought athletes were athletes, regardless of gender.

How about you?

Haven't We Had ENOUGH by Now?

Like the overwhelming majority of Americans right now, I've got last Friday's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT on my mind.

It's the first time ever that kindergarten children lost their lives at the hands of a mass murderer in an American place of learning.

This time, along with six adults, twenty children- many six years old, the others seven- were killed.

It's been 37 years since the first time a school shooting taking place here in the United States (it happened in Alaska in 1975) grabbed headlines.

And yes, back then, we were discussing whether or not America's gun-control laws ought to be strengthened.  

Since 1975, busloads- planeloads- of people here in this country have been killed by mass murderers...especially at this country's schoolyards and shopping malls.

And every time it happens, we keep asking: "Why?"

We KNOW the reason it keeps taking place.  

It's that we sure love those guns here in America. (I mean, the love of guns WAS a founding principle. We didn't break off from England by just talking it out.)  

Speaking of England...in 1996, a 43-year-old man invaded an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and picked off sixteen kindergartners and their teacher. Then he pulled the trigger one more time and bumped himself off.

In time, the British government conducted an investigation...and the inquiry led to laws that ended legal private ownership of handguns in Rob Pattinson's native country.

America's lawmakers don't have the guts to come up with anything close to that kind of a law. 

What's more, way too many of the people in Washington are TOO DOGGONE CHICKEN to discuss any of this with the National Rifle Association...much less stand up to the NRA itself.

Well, I'm glad to find out US Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) wants to have that talk with NRA officials. (And Manchin admits he's a gun lover.)

It's long been time for lawmakers to have that long, long overdue talk with the gun lobby. And while this country's senators and representatives are at it, they need to also invite officials from the nation's big media companies. (After all, the Adam Lanzas, Allen Muhammads, Jared Loughners, and Robert Hawkinses couldn't enact their sprees if they didn't, at one time or another, see examples on TV or at some neighborhood movieplex.)

And invite rank-and-file citizens, too, by all means...because the experience in each community- urban, suburban, rural- is different in one way or another.  

Let's strengthen the gun laws we've already got. Let's make it harder for people to get them. (After all, state after state just got through pushing legislation making it harder to vote- even if that legislation basically backfired!)

You mean to tell me we can't find a place of common ground here in America when it comes to gun control?