Sports this 'n' that

The NCAA men's final four in basketball is now set, but only one regional #1 seed remains.

Virginia managed to survive an overtime game vs. Purdue in one of two games that saw ACC vs. Big 10 over the weekend. Michigan State won the other, upsetting overall #1 seed Duke, 68-67. The other teams in the semi-finals are Texas Tech (Big 12) and Auburn (SEC).

The most intriguing story, at least in this writer's opinion, is Michigan State, which will play Texas Tech on Saturday night. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Spartans' most famous NCAA tournament game, the 1979 final, which introduced America to future NBA Hall of Famers Earvin "Magic" Johnson (Michigan State/Lakers) and Larry Bird (Indiana State/Celtics). Has Spartans coach Tom Izzo even schooled the current team on Magic's heroics in '79? Well, there's always YouTube.

Auburn alumnus Charles Barkley routinely embarrasses himself on national television. If it isn't in the studio for TNT or CBS, it's usually what has become an annual tradition during tournament time, and that, of course, is doing some lame Capital One commercials with Spike Lee & CBS' Jim Nantz joining Barkley and Capital One pitchman Samuel L. Jackson. This year's series is too lame to even be posted here.

I'm just going to go out on a limb and say it'll be Michigan State vs. Virginia next Monday.
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With two weeks remaining in the regular season, Alliance of American Football chairman Ron Dundon, also the owner of the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes, thinks the league would make a good developmental system for the NFL, and is trying to negotiate some sort of deal with the latter league's players association.

Which begs to ask. Why didn't anyone think of that before?
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I originally was going to include this next item over at Tri-City SportsBeat, but, nah.

Connecticut is going to another women's final four. Yeah, yawn over that if you like, but the Huskies aren't the dominant force they had been in past years. Still, they dispatched UCLA on Friday, then struggled early before putting away top seeded Louisville on Sunday at Times-Union Center. UConn will play the winner of tonight's game between Notre Dame & Stanford next Sunday.

Attendance at the TUC was just under 10,000 on Sunday, or, just above average for a Siena men's regular season game. Total attendance between Friday & Sunday came to over 17,000.

Next year, the TUC will host a men's regional, and then, the women return in 2021.

Bank on this. TUC GM Bob Belber is hoping Syracuse gets into the regionals next year.
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One weekend in the books isn't enough to justify everyone's predictions in baseball.

So Philadelphia swept defending NL East champion Atlanta. Big whoop. Atlanta was missing some front-line pitchers due to injury. The Mets are a game back at 2-1 after failing to complete a sweep of their own at Washington on Sunday after Trea Turner hit a walk-off homer, his second dinger of the game, off Justin Wilson, in the bottom of the 9th. New York travels to Miami tonight.

During ESPN's broadcast on Sunday, Alex Rodriguez repeatedly referred to Phillies first baseman Rhys Hoskins as "Haskins" until someone off-air finally convinced him he'd goofed. A-Rod and his current honey, actress-singer Jennifer Lopez, were spotted at Saturday's game between the Braves & Phillies by FS1 cameras, so the announcers, referencing that Rodriguez is also a studio analyst for Fox, suggested he "get back to work".

As for the Mets, it seems GM Brodie Van Wagenen looks like a genius early on by placing rookie first baseman Peter Alonso on the roster. Unfortunately, manager Mickey Calloway stupidly benched utilityman Jeff McNeil on Sunday, despite four hits on Saturday, claiming he didn't like the matchup with Nats starter Patrick Corbin. Whatever happened to playing the hot hand?