Saturday March 15th, Y2K7

SOUR CITRUS
The one thing we could almost always count on after a long, dreary, snowy winter in Syracuse was the Orange Basketball team lifting up the spirits of Syracusians with hope of another historic run in the NCAA tourney. This year marks the second consecutive year the Orange will be NIT bound -- the equivilant of the groundhog seeing his shadow thus ensuring 27 more weeks of winter. But not all is bad. This pool is back in force for its ninth straight year and we're only a few days away from wall-to-wall college basketball, with or without the 'Cuse. Get your Brackets of Integrity ready and let the games begin!

Saturday March 31st, Y2K7

BRUSH WITH GREATNESS
How's this for an interesting trivia question? This afternoon, while enjoying a delicious chicken salad sandwich on rye at the Brooklyn Pickle, one of the top 50 players in NBA history sat down, a few tables away. He was a 12 time NBA all-star, scored over 19,000 career points and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Who was it?

The first one to e-mail me the correct answer will receive $5 off next year's pool entry fee. Please note that my immediate family is not eligible to win. Only one guess per person, please. Thanks.

Tuesday March 13, Y2K7 9:00pm

ORANGE CRUSHED
SU's Hall-of-Fame basketball coach Jim Boeheim has been known to exaggerate and talk in hyperbole on occasion, but I think he has a valid point in saying the Orange's omission from the NCAA tournament on Sunday was the "worst leave-out in the history of the tournament". The issue has been over-analyzed and beaten to death over the past 2 days, so I won't bore you with the details. What's done is done. As hard as it is, we have to move on and try to enjoy the tourney as much as humanly possible.

• If you need help filling out your brackets, click here for an overview of each team.
• Are you one who misses the days of filling out brackets with a pen and paper rather a mouse click? Here's to the good old days and a curse on the new generation of tournament organizers (ahem, Hendery) who have taken over.
• Here's some so-called experts' predictions on what to expect in the next 3 weeks.
• I don't think I've ever seen a bracket broken down like this before.
• For some more links including Boeheim defending his non-conference schedule, 5 teams that will suprise/5 teams that will disappoint, and a Jack Bauer Kill count site, click here.