Prepping for a hectic weekend

      Comments Off on Prepping for a hectic weekend

It’s going to be a very busy weekend, what with conference-tournament craziness all weekend, plus the St. Patrick’s Day parade Saturday morning, a Great Big Sea concert Saturday evening, and of course, the Selection Show and the start of the 15th Annual Living Room Times NCAA Pools on Sunday. Meanwhile, Loyacita and Loyette are both a bit sick, so Becky’s & my hands will be full on the home front.

All of this means that, even though Selection Weekend is practically a religious holiday for me, I’ll probably have even less time than usual for long-form blogging. Thus, rather than let the homepage become totally cluttered with endless tweets, I’m going to put a CoverItLive ScribbleLive window in a new post above, which will suck up all of my tweets & FriendFeed links. (This will also give me a chance to test out the CoverItLive ScribbleLive app on my new iPod Touch.) That post will be marked as “sticky,” and will stay on top of the homepage all weekend; any new blog content will appear below it.

I also probably will not do a full-fledged “live blog” of the Selection Show, as I had planned. Oh, I’ll still do some tweeting and whatnot during the show, no doubt. (I couldn’t resist doing that if I tried!) But no live-updating “Bubble Scoresheet” this year, sorry. Instead, I’ll probably just open up the live-tweet window to live-chat comments Sunday afternoon, so if people want to stop by and chat, they can. But nothing formal.

Selection Weekend live-tweeting

      3 Comments on Selection Weekend live-tweeting

This weekend, all of my tweets, links, etc., will appear in the ScribbleLive window below. This post will stay on top of the page. See below it for any other new content.

There will be a Selection Show Live Chat here on Sunday, starting around 3:45 PM Mountain Time. Stay tuned! (For now, you can comment in the usual way, through WordPress comments.

UPDATE: After the jump, a complete transcript of the live-tweeting.

Continue reading →

After Thursday’s bubble carnage, is William & Mary back in the mix?

      Comments Off on After Thursday’s bubble carnage, is William & Mary back in the mix?

If “March Madness” hadn’t officially arrived yet, it definitely made its presence felt yesterday. ‘Twas a crazy day of hoops, capped off by a buzzer-beating bank-shot 3 for West Virginia, beating Cincinnati and ending the Bearcats’ longshot NCAA hopes:

The day’s theme was bubble teams doing their damndest to play themselves out of the conversation, as SI’s Andy Glockner explains:

Ugh. What a day of bubble carnage. At-large contenders nationwide spit the bit, leaving a gaping hole in the bottom of the bracket and a plethora of uninspiring options for the committee to sift through.

Hey, who wants a 96-team tournament? ( … chirping crickets … )

Most notably, Memphis, UAB and Arizona State all likely killed their at-large chances with quarterfinal losses to 6- or 7-seeds, and in the process rekindled the hopes of teams like Seton Hall, which had very slim aspirations 24 hours earlier. Florida and Georgia Tech took steps forward by not losing. Washington may nail down an NCAA bid merely by beating Oregon State and Stanford. Teams like William & Mary have every right to raise their hand at this point.

Latter in the Bubble Watch, here’s what Glockner says about William & Mary:

William & Mary (21-10, 12-6, RPI: 58, SOS: 104) suddenly looks a lot more viable after so many others lost on Thursday. The quality nonleague and road wins are there, but so are three bad league losses (two at home) and a terrible national TV showing at Iona in BracketBusters. The Tribe are now rooting really hard against teams like Mississippi, Mississippi State, Illinois, Rhode Island and Washington, and pulling for UTEP and Utah State to win their auto bids.
Good Wins: at Wake, at Maryland, Richmond (also beat CAA No. 2 Northeastern twice)
Bad Losses: UNC Wilmington, at James Madison, Towson, routed at Iona

Let the record show that I’m rooting for those outcomes, too — sorry, David K. and Dmytro — both because I love chaos and because I’d love to see the Tribe get their first-ever NCAA bid. Up the underdogs! Down with major-conference mediocrities!

Meanwhile, here’s how ESPN’s Mark Schlabach summarizes yesterday’s events:

Continue reading →

Toddler art, digital edition

      Comments Off on Toddler art, digital edition

With the exception of the green line in back, all of this was drawn by Loyette (using the Scribble app on my new iPod touch). She seems to think it’s pretty cool. 🙂 P.S. Can you believe all the bubble teams losing today? Crazy!