March Madness

Kent State is like 24-1 if they are ahead at half-time.....that makes it really tough...they put on a clinic today...bama Caught up....Almost...........



:hat:ScottyJ:hat:

My picks got officially raped today. OSU, my champs, just had no heart or game in them at all vs. Mizzou today... And then Alabama falls....

Crap.

At least Cincy is still in!

Go Cincy!

And Fayded, if you watched the game, the refs didn\'t give Duke the game.  The Irish did.

We\'ve already had this argument on AIM, shock.

How \'bout them Jayhawks, whoopin up on Stanford. Hinrich was awesome, with a bad ankle. Just proves that he is one of the top point guards in the country.

Just have to point out your ignorance where ever you put it

And wait til the Jayhawks play a decent team...like the Illini.

And Kansas didn\'t play a decent team all year? I mean, they went 16-0 in the toughest conference in college bball.

But they didn\'t win when it mattered: in their conference tourny.  THey choke.  They always have.

I\'m going to admit it.. I don\'t follow college basketball at all... thus my awkward picks.

Originally posted by Vapor Snake
I\'m going to admit it.. I don\'t follow college basketball at all... thus my awkward picks.

uhhh, yeah me too.

marquette to the final four WHAT WAS I THINKING!

I only have one pick to the Final Four left... and thats Maryland.

Mississippi State let me down.....

Cincy got robbed against UCLA. Right before the end of regulation the Cincy player got fouled and all he had to do was make 1 and there would be no OT. And Cincy would still be alive. Oh well. Here\'s a pretty good article about Steve Logan.

By Anne Marie Cruz
ESPN The Magazine


PITTSBURGH -- As Steve Logan stepped onto the Mellon Arena court Sunday -- amid the thunderous cheers of thousands of tourney-mad fans, a few boos from the Pac-10 partisans, and the caterwauling of Coach Hugs -- he only heard the voice of the one who is not there.

It was the same voice he had heard all season, the one staying on him to keep up grades, to stay out of trouble -- just like the voice he heard when she used to be here.


Be a good man, Stevie. Don\'t make me come down there.

When he looked up in the stands to catch a family member\'s eye, his small smile of acknowledgment hid the gnawing grief that his grandma Shirley Logan wasn\'t there to smile back. And when the end of a season came suddenly in double overtime, she also wasn\'t there to offer support.

Shirley Logan lives only in his memories, no longer bustling about her kitchen in the downstairs half of their home in Cleveland. Shirley sat at her table by the front window every day, right the shades all the way up as she waited for him to come home. Who called him by his middle name, Deontay, as she hugged him tight when he ducked in downstairs to tell her how his day went. Who always had an encouraging word and a plateful of fried chicken ready. Who made him swear he would earn his college degree before he pocketed his first NBA penny.

At the core of all the happiness and promise in Logan\'s life is this steady sense of grief. Every school record, national award and tourney win is tinged with sorrow. Senior Day was steeped in sadness, his family never more painfully aware of Shirley\'s absence. When he went home to hold his newborn son, Steven Deontay Logan II, in mid-February, the shades were still pulled down on grandma\'s window. Steve still can\'t bring himself to go downstairs when he comes back home to their two-family home in Cleveland. One month after this coming Wednesday, Logan\'s 22nd birthday, will be the anniversary of her death.

When Shirley began to starve herself, flatly refusing to eat anything, institutional slop or otherwise, Grandpa Scott wrung his hands, stunned by her sudden, incongruous surrender of will. And Steve left his Bearcats right after they made the Sweet 16 a year ago, after drubbing Kent State last March, jetting out on the red-eye from San Diego. Just as Grandma had buoyed him with her gentle words of encouragement, Steve would help heal her with advice of his own.

It was a cruel reversal of fortune: Less than a year after a stroke from which she seemed to be steadily recovering, the woman who had been a longtime nursing home aide herself was now bedridden. Shirley\'s diabetes had reared its ugly, pitiless head, rendering her once busy feet gangrenous. Convinced the doctors would amputate, leaving her bound to a wheelchair, Shirley saw months of hard, hopeful work infected by futility.

When his mother called a month later, on April 20, Steve already knew before she spoke the words: Early morning rings never bear good news. And he was crushed. "She was his heart," said Steve\'s mom, Melody Adamson. For two days, Steve couldn\'t speak to anyone except his older sister Lakeisha, who shouldered the funeral arrangements, cooked the food for their grieving relatives, and even combed Grandma\'s hair before the burial.

"Lakeisha showed me how to be strong, and take one day at a time," says Steve. "She was the big key to getting me through my Grandma\'s death."

Logan needs that strength to helm a Cincinnati program pockmarked by violence and drugs. The second-highest career scorer for the Bearcats, second only to Oscar Robertson, he himself was charged with a DUI in August of 2000.

So while a career ends, and the titles continue to pour in -- two-time Conference USA Player of the Year, All-American, Player of the Year finalist -- Logan looks to June, not for the NBA Draft, but for his graduation day.

"This whole season is inspired by my grandma," says Logan. "She\'s the one who started me on this course. It\'s going to be tough to go through graduation without her. I wish she could be there to watch me finish."

Logan smiles once again. But now, it is the smile of a man armed with an unshakeable faith.

"She\'ll be there with me," he says. He lifts up his shirt to reveal an image etched onto his abdomen. Shirley Logan\'s kind face peeks out from underneath his jersey. "R.I.P. Grandma, 4-20-01," reads the tattooed inscription. "Promise kept."

Ann Marie Cruz is a senior reporter at ESPN The Magazine. Email Cruz at anne.marie.cruz@espnmag.com

On two of my brackets I\'ve got 2 Final Four picks left and on the other 2 I\'ve got 3.  Hopefully Illinois can beat Kansas.  Fayded if you think Kansas is such a great team then why do they struggle against weak teams?  For example Holy Cross, Nebraska, Ball State...?

I dunno why they struggle against weak teams, but they do great against tough ones. They tore apart Stanford. Illinios might give thema challenge, but they should win. Why does everyone doubt Kansas? Everyone is against them.


My Final Four teams are all left, but the early rounds killed me.

Originally posted by unfocused
On two of my brackets I\'ve got 2 Final Four picks left and on the other 2 I\'ve got 3.  Hopefully Illinois can beat Kansas.  Fayded if you think Kansas is such a great team then why do they struggle against weak teams?  For example Holy Cross, Nebraska, Ball State...?

Yeah..well...blah.

And Fayded, why did you have to post that entire thing? You could have just linked us, but yeah. Cincy did not get robbed, it\'s the way the game goes, the Refs let the teams play.

As for Nebraska, we\'re goona be awesome next year. Can anybody say 11th seed in the Big Dance? Speaking of which, Go Mizzou. Sure, I hate their guts, but go Big XII, representin. Kansas is always evil, but against Illinois, go Kansas...

*laughs at SEC*

See Yuz.

I\'m rooting for Indiana and Kent State right now.