Add another chapter to Dirk Nowitzki and Steve Nash’s rivalry/bromance — this year going down as the one when Dirk symbolically closed the door on Nash’s championship window from more than 500 miles away … Going into last night’s schedule, the Suns’ anti-magic number was one; either one loss or one Dallas win away from being eliminated from the playoff race. Read More »

A couple of themes dominated last night’s NCAA tourney Sweet 16 games: Defense and Onions. First you had UConn defensive stalwart Hasheem Thabeet putting together his first dominant game of the tourney (15 pts, 15 rebs, 4 blks) to push the Huskies past Purdue. Then Villanova slapped a stifling total team defensive effort on Duke, ball-pressure and denial for which Coach K’s boys seemed totally unprepared. And then Missouri’s new-school “40 Minutes of Hell” paved the way for them to get past Memphis … As for the onions? Look no further than Levance Fields. Read More »

While No. 1 seeds UConn and North Carolina had little trouble getting through the first two rounds of the tourney and into the Sweet Sixteen, Louisville and Pitt haven’t looked nearly as strong. Yesterday, Pitt was tied with Oklahoma State around the 2:30 mark of the second half, struggling again to put away a lesser-talented team before Levance Fields took over. Read More »

If Day One of the NCAA Tournament lacked the drama everybody expected, Day Two more than made up for it. Put it this way: two of the late-night batch of games went into overtime (one to double-OT), and they still got outshined by another game in that same time slot. The biggest story was 13-seed Cleveland State knocking off Wake Forest, who if you remember was the No. 1-ranked team in the country not too long ago. This wasn’t your storybook Bryce Drew/Princeton-backdoor kind of upset, either; Read More »