Photo Finish

The Elite 8 today gave us the best game of the tournament so far after a bunch of blowouts in the sweet 16. Villanova and Pittsburgh played a beauty at Boston today. Nova won 78-76 after almost giving it away. The long-range, in-bounds play that Nova guy tried with the game on the line was one of the craziest things I have seen in a long time. Goes to show how these guys are still college kids who can do really dumb things. How do you throw that pass at the point in the game? Thats what makes up good drama I guess. So Pitt ties the game up with 5.5 secs to go. Nova then ran a great in-bounds play as if to erase the horrible previous effort and Scottie Reynolds drove all the way to the paint and hit a tough shot. Game over for Pitt and one more blow to my bracket.

Big East is dominating the elite 8 this year with 4 teams with the Big-12 sending 2 and one each from the Big-10 and the ACC. The Pitt-Nova game was a great advertisement for the Big East and U-Conn made it a great day for the conference when they handled Missouri. That game was close at times, but U-Conn really had this one covered for the most part. I am really excited for the NC-Oklahoma game tomorrow. What makes this game unique is that it has almost NBA-level star-power with Blake Griffin and Psycho-T and all the other Carolina names. Hope it lives up to the hype. Louisville on the other hand should handle Michigan state rather easily and send Rick Pitino to the Final-4 again. Speaking of Pitino, Kentucky apparently found out Billy Gillespie was not Pitino as they got rid of him amidst some weird drama after just 2 seasons. I was surprised how quickly this thing went south.

I was hoping for a photo-finish in the NBA playoff race, but the Suns are trailing Dallas for the 8-Th spot by 3.5 games with 9 games to play. Looks like it's over. I would have liked to have seen them play under the new coach and the old system with a healthy Barbosa and Amare. They have been playing better lately, but the Porter era put them in a big hole they couldn't get out of. Then the injuries happened and now I am not even sure if I want them to make the playoffs just to get eliminated by the Fakers. I would rather let some other team suffer that ignominy. At least if Amare and Bobo were healthy, we could kid ourselves that the Suns have a legitimate shot at an upset, but this group will have issues in the first round of the playoffs. Lets hope Dallas screws up the last 2 weeks, but at this stage it's nothing more than a hope and a prayer.

Good game tomorrow on ABC as the Mavs visit the Cavs and the King. Anytime LeBron is on TV, it's becoming must-see TV. He is fast becoming a phenomenon much like MJ was. LeBron had better numbers last year, but he is blowing up this season because of where his team is and how he is playing lesser minutes because of the blowouts and home dominance. In other news, Gilbert Arenas stopped blogging and started playing today after a year. He started off in style by hitting his first 3. But he needs to put in a couple of solid years to erase the last few to avoid being remembered as the next Penny Hardaway or Grant Hill. Both those guys played for the Suns well past their prime and I hope I don't see Gilbert Arenas in a Suns uniform in 2014 making 20 mill a year.

Bracket Break

The first weekend of the NCAA tournament is done and we are getting ready for the sweet 16 now. I started at the top spot after day 1 and in four days, slipped to the fourth spot in my bracket. Thats right on track for my bracket to end up 10-Th or so by the time the championship game is over. But the tournament itself had a decent weekend. No major upsets through this point though Cleveland state and Arizona both won in the same division as the 13-Th and 12-Th seed respectively. But then Arizona eliminated Cleveland state to remove a true cinderella. Arizona is technically a 12-Th seed, but they are still the big, bad Arizona and they don't really qualify as a cinderella.

Bad weekend for me as an ASU fan. Not only did Arizona advance, ASU was eliminated. There's a lot of talk about how James Harden hurt his draft status with his performance in the NCAA tournament. Harden was really lost in the Syracuse zone. Lets see where he goes in the draft. Top-10 for sure, but is he top-5? Not a great weekend for Pac-10 except for Arizona. President Obama had all the Pac-10 teams eliminated by the second round and he was almost right. I was pulling for Washington and it's laser-quick guard Isaiah Thomas, but Purdue survived. We have some interesting match-ups in the sweet 16. I am especially looking forward to the Villanova-Duke game. I am not sure if Gonzaga can hang with Carolina and same with Syracuse against Oklahoma and Purdue against U-Conn.

Game on!

This is one of the best times of the year if you are a sports fan. I am big on the NCAA tournament, but then again who isn't? I have not been following the college action the last couple of weeks this year, but I still had to fill in 2 brackets. I seriously considered just copying President Obama's bracket. But I did my own with very little knowledge. And as you might expect, I am doing much better with my brackets than usual. I got 15/16 correct including the day's biggest upset - Western Kentucky over Illinois. Not many upsets today, but we got the usual 12 over 5. The only game I missed was Michigan's upset of Clemson. Tomorrow is another day in the tournament. I am excited for ASU, who have qualified after many years thanks to the greatness of James Harden. Mr.Smooth will be asked to do his thing tomorrow.

In the NBA, another day, another triple-double for King James. The ridiculousness, also called LeBron James, dominated the game, especially late, on both ends of the floor to protect home-court. This team is over-achieving big time and they now have a game lead over the Lakers for home court throughout the playoffs. Amazing place to be for the once lowly Cleveland Cavaliers. LeBron-V-Kobe might actually end up being the NBA finals and the suits in New York will love it. Of course it would be fun for us fans too. As if we didn't have enough basketball games today, TNT featured both LeBron and Kobe in their NBA double-header. Lets see how tomorrow goes. Both for me and my bracket.

Who is the MP3?

43-12-8. Those were LeBron's numbers today against a very good Magic team. And those are becoming typical numbers for LeBron every day. On top of that, he hit a game-clinching 3 at the end to seal the deal. Recently he had a 50+ point game and before that had 3 straight games with triple doubles. The Cavs are 54-13 and are leading the East and as of today, the entire league. This to me is a MVP resume if there ever was one.

One of the hottest topic in all of sports right now is who's the MVP of the NBA? LeBron, Kobe and Wade are all playing at an extremely high level and all 3 are legitimate candidates. I don't think there has ever been such a strong MVP field in recent years. In fact, some people may argue that even the dudes who won the award in some of the recent years don't deserve it (Nash and Nowitzki). I don't agree with those doubters, but this year, all 3 are deserving candidates and you can't complain if any one of those guys get it.

But LeBron is still the king. LeBron is carrying his team more than Kobe, who has a tonne of talent around him. May be Wade is working with less, but he has not carried his team all that far. Thanks to Wade, Miami is 36-30, but they are still a solid 17.5 games behind LeBron and the Cavs, Cavs excellence needs to be rewarded and what better way to do it than to give LeBron the MVP. It's a 3-way race right now that might go all the way to the last game of the season, but as of today, it's LeBron's award to lose. Wade is second and Kobe is third.