As usual, the NBA schedule was light on Thursday, but wall-to-wall college ball was a good enough fill-in. No lie, there probably wasn’t a point during the workday when at least a couple of the Dime crew weren’t parked in front of the office TV watching one of the conference tourney games: everything from Big East to Big Ten to Pac-10 to Big 12 to ACC. But we’ll get to that in a minute … In the pro ranks, with everyone talking about the Mavs and Suns, the Spurs have been dominating kinda on the low. Last night they made it 11 wins in a row, knocking off Sacramento on the road. Sixth Man of the Year (if only he qualified) Manu Ginobili scored 31 points on five treys, and hit a bunch of big-time buckets in the fourth that kept San Antonio in it and able to grab the lead for good. One one play, Manu was curling through the lane headed toward the three-point arc, saw his defender guessing, stopped and cut toward the hoop, where Tony Parker hit him with a nice dime for the bucket. Just another of those plays that you don’t see anyone else make by Ginobili … Reigning Western Conference Player of the Week Kevin Martin — whose star turn you could say began when he hit that playoff game-winner over Tim Duncan last year — went for 29 points and 12 boards for the Kings … The Bulls smacked the Magic in the only other game on the slate, leading by 20 at the half and holding Orlando to 76 points total. Ben Gordon dropped 25 points and Kirk Hinrich had 17, as Chicago basically outplayed Orlando in every facet of the game … Tiger Woods was in the building, but even he bounced at halftime … From what we’ve seen, it seems the Magic have been wearing the old Shaq/Penny-era throwbacks every game for the past couple weeks. They’ve also lost 8 out of their last 10 in the past couple weeks. As much as we love the pinstripes, maybe it’s time to go back to the newer unis … Dwight Howard (17 pts, 14 rebs) is learning what it’s like to be in the shoes of a LeBron or KG. He’s doing all he can to carry his team and simply not getting enough help … Joe Johnson will miss 3-6 weeks with a calf contusion. So it doesn’t have any affect on the postseason picture, but not having JJ around could really give ATL a chance at getting one of The Chosen Two (you know who we’re talking about) … The other day we read in the Philadelphia Inquirer about what the Sixers did on a recent day off: paintballin’. And apparently Sam Dalembert (he’s off “Dalembeast” status until he atones for getting hammered on by Bostjan Nachbar) is The Man out in the field. “He has a lot of equipment and everything. He brought a sniper rifle and some smoke grenades and stuff,” Rodney Carney said in the article. Added Wilie Green in the piece, “We are all amateurs when it comes to paintball. None of us are professionals except maybe Sam. Sam had a bazooka. I think he had like two 9-millimeter paintball guns and grenades. He came ready. I had to rent.” … But yesterday was really all about college ball. Fourth-ranked UCLA was upset in the Pac-10 tourney by Cal and recent Dime “What’s My Name?” alum Ayinde Ubaka, who dropped a career-high 29 points on the Bruins. Ubaka hit a huge trey to tie the game with one minute left, then hit a floater with 15 ticks left to tie it again and force overtime, where the Bears took control. And did we mention that most of Ubaka’s 29 came against UCLA star and defensive demon Arron Afflalo? Afflalo scored just 3 points himself … Big Baby kept one of last year’s Final Four teams, LSU, alive for the moment, hanging 25 points and 15 bounds on Tennessee in an SEC tournament win … In the Big East tourney, Georgetown was absolutely destroying Villanova in the beginning of their game; the Hoyas were up 30-5 at one point. Late in the first half, though, ‘Nova started creeping back in it, and late in the second half it was actually a competitive game. Roy Hibbert (14 pts) and G’Town hung on, though, as the Wildcats couldn’t hit the big shots when they needed to … Duke has dominated the ACC tourney over the years, but everyone knows this year’s squad isn’t Coach K’s best bunch. The Blue Devils got knocked off in the first round last night by N.C. State, who got 30 points from freshman forward Brandon Costner. The lefty put Duke’s big men in the blender a couple times … Did you see Josh McRoberts drop the hammer on that kid in overtime? Nasty … We’ve told you already how far Wake Forest has fallen off in the post-Chris Paul era, but they pulled out a huge W last night, beating Georgia Tech in double-overtime. Backup Harvey Hale dropped 21 points in the OT periods (”His performance was Herculean,” said Deacs coach Skip Prosser), including the tying and go-ahead buckets in the second overtime. With all the talk around Kevin Durant and Greg Oden, don’t forget that G-Tech has two of the nastiest freshmen in the country in Thaddeus Young (30 pts) and Javaris Crittenton (16 pts, 6 asts). Keep both of them on your radar … Louisville/West Virginia also went double-OT, as WVU’s Darris Nichols and UL’s Edgar Sosa traded layups in the last five seconds of regulation. Sosa’s was especially huge; down two, the NYC-bred freshman drove the length of the MSG floor (and kinda traveled) before hitting the shot at the buzzer for the tie. Louisville pulled away in the second OT to win … We’re out like Joe …