NCAA Final Four picks

Right now a lot of people are in a mad dash to determine their tournament brackets. To take a line from Kornheiser "Who ya got?" In the Chicago regional Illinois will face a difficult Sweet 16 matchup against Alabama, and an elite eight pairing with Oklahoma State, but they will end up winning the region. Illinois's guard play with Dee Brown, Luther Head, and Deron Williams is just going to be hard to match up with. Their late season loss to Ohio State was exactly what they needed to take the pressure of perfection off their season. The Illini will also rally around coach Weber, who recently lost his mother. That will be a great thing for their resolve.

The Alberquerque regional is a minefield with Georgia Tech, Louisville and Wake Forest. I think Louisville got jobbed in their seeding at #4, and their placement in the Alberquerque reigonal. Wake and Louisville is going to be a great elite matchup. I like Wake to win this region, but Louisville will give them a run for their money. Larry O'Bannon, and Francisco Garcia are healthy for tournament time this year, and Louisville has won 19 of their last 21 games. Their loses to Memphis and Houston were just bumps in their road to peak for tournament time. Wake Forest on the other hand has been up and down all season. The Chris Paul crotch punch has been a recent focus. His play was sorely missed in Wake's early exit from the ACC tournament.

The Syracuse reigonal is going to be pretty cut and dry. I'm just not impressed by the recent play of North Carolina. In a difficult sweet 16 matchup they will fall to red hot SEC champion Florida. Florida coach Billy Donovan is a master of the tournament run, and his team will face defending champion UConn Huskies in the elite eight. That game is a toss up, but I think UConn will win out. They have great interior defense with Charlie Villanueva and Rudy Gay. They managed to block more shots this season despite Emeka Okafor's graduation.

The Austin Regional is supposed to be Duke's to lose. Someone will just have to remind Duke that Syracuse is going to win this region. The sweet 16 matchup between Syracuse and Duke will be the best game in this bracket. Syracuse will overmatch Kentucky in the elite eight. Kentucky is a good basketball team peaking for tournament time, but they just suffered a 17 point loss to Florida in the SEC championship. Syracuse suffered an 18 point blowout loss to UConn, and turned it around a week later in the Big East tournament semi finals and beat UConn by 4. Syracuse is on the rise and they are just winning games. Their 1-3-1 match up zone defense is hard for most teams to get good looks at the basket or drives to the basket.

The burning question now is who makes the championship game. In the "Battle of Orange" Illinois will beat Syracuse finalizing the NCAA's first 37 win men's hoops team.

The Inquisition starts at 10 am.

The truth has finally come to light. The declaration this morning by David Marin, a spokesman for committee chairman Rep. Tom Davis "No witnesses have been or will be granted immunity,’’ Are they after the truth, or is it going to be a witch hunt. What is the incentive to do anything but plead the 5th amendment? No one is going to incriminate himself before congress. Did you notice how much detail was revealed before congress in the Iran-Contra affair in the 80’s? If it wasn’t for Ollie North’s immunity deal in 1987 no details of the Iran-Contra affair would have ever come to light. The congressional committee on steroids, and the public want the tabloid details on the players. Who used steroids? When did they use them? Did they give them to anyone else? Why did they use them?

In an interview over the weekend a member of the committee wanted to take it a step further and ask the players under subpoena to renounce steroids and their use. This member felt they were sending the wrong message to kids. The message is that by using steroids you can become a better athlete than someone who doesn't use them, and as a result the fairness in sports is somehow irrevocably harmed now. Why do baseball players have to renounce steroids if California Gov. Schwarzenegger can sing their praises while hiding behind the fact that they weren't illegal when he used them? I find that to be the biggest double standard since separate but equal.

In case you forgot Schwarzenegger at one point was the head of the President's Council on Physical Fitness. The council has the same reach to children as baseball to promote physical fitness. The council helps set national standards of physical fitness in children. I just don't understand why a single staffer can get Schwarzenegger to keep his mouth shut on steroids. He just doesn't have any tact at all. I think its ridiculous that a movie star politician can make those statements in the press, and not be called in himself to talk about how rampant steroids were, or are in the world of bodybuilding. A few weeks ago Schwarzenegger went to the Arnold Classic bodybuilding tournament and still he was proud of his past steroid use. Has anyone noticed how enormous and ripped most bodybuilders are? I am not attempting to accuse all bodybuilders of using steroids, but not all baseball players used steroids either and now they're all under the spotlight.

Rep. Davis has publicly stated that congress can form a committee to investigate anything at anytime for any reason. You run the Government Committee on Reform and you overlooked many pressing business issues. What about President Bush's connection with Enron up to and including the use of their private jet during the 2000 presidential campaign? Rep. Davis were Halliburton's no bid contracts and obvious conflict of interest concerning VP Cheney's 400,000+ shares of stock that were never placed in the stock trust he claimed they were in not of interest? What about the fact that 5 major automobile lenders have settled out of court or lost class action cases involving the systematic overcharging of African American loan applicants? What about the rampant fraud that is commonplace at Citigroup, who is accused of hiding some of deposed Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's ill gotten gains, and involved in the sale of stocks and bonds for bankrupt WorldCom. Why not investigate the connections of all the corporations that had to restate earnings because of accounting fraud?

Moving on to things closer to Washington D.C. itself, why not look at Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, who have government charters to set national loan standards, yet they both hid massive accounting problems. Why aren't you looking into the gambling lobby funded trip of Rep. Tom DeLay? When DeLay got back from his trip he voted against gambling legislation. Aren't those the relationships your committee is supposed to investigate? DeLay is also being investigated for 2004 Presidential campaign fundraising violations for the republican party. Why not look into the practice of salvage title fraud that State Farm car insurance just settled with 48 state Attorney Generals? What about the complete intelligence failure on Iraq? The non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? What about the lack of affordable health insurance for US citizens?

Are steroids in baseball so important that it moves to the head of the class? This witch-hunt, chemical McCarthyism at taxpayer expense is unnecessary. Why not let baseball actually enforce the implemented 2005 policies on steroids. Congress has no place to decide on labor laws, or labor policies of MLB if they can't understand the agreement between MLB and MLBPA. The players who tested positive have been on the decline by MLB's own admission. At one point it was at 5%-7% in 2003, and 2% in 2004. The fact of the matter remains that cheaters are everywhere and that will never change, but is it congress’s job to enforce parity?

The race for the #8 seed is heating up.

The #8 seed is still up for grabs in the western conference. Currently the Lakers have a half game lead over the Denver Nuggets, and they have a game and a half lead over the Minnesota Timberwolves. Minnesota lost on Sunday to the red hot Houston Rockets 102-93 to fall off the pace a bit. On Saturday night Kobe Bryant had a great game against the Charlotte Bobcats. He scored 21 of his 32 points in the fourth quarter, and he hit the game winning shot with 0.9 seconds left. The Lakers won consecutive road wins for the first time this season, which is good news for them since they’re in the midst of a six game road trip. They play eight of their next nine on the road. This week they play the Washington Wizards, and the Philadelphia 76ers on back-to-back nights. After a day off they play another back to back against the red-hot Miami Heat and Indiana Pacers. The game against Miami is a rematch of Shaq vs. Kobe. Currently Shaq is 2-0 this season over Kobe. If the Lakers are lucky they'll find a way to go 2-2 this week and win at Philadelphia and Indiana. If not, they could lose three games this week and give up ground to both the Nuggets and Timberwolves.

The Denver Nuggets have survived a bittersweet weekend with a surprising split of their games. They won on the road Saturday night in San Antonio against a team without All Star C Tim Duncan and fellow All Star SG Manu Ginobili. San Antonio is NBA's best team at home with a record of 28-3. The Nuggets struggled with bad officiating; bad shot selections, and still overcame a seven-point deficit with less than three minutes left in the fourth quarter. Sunday night in the second game of a back to back the Nuggets lost to Phoenix 106-101. The Nuggets were in this game until the end, and then an official blew a call that cost them the game. Phoenix PG Steve Nash drew a loose ball foul on Denver PG Earl Boykins, when it was an obvious over the back foul on Nash. The score was 104-101 with six seconds left. The Nuggets should have gotten an inbound because of the foul on Nash, and an opportunity to tie the game. I guess those are the breaks. The Nuggets have their next six games at home. On the season they are 19-10 at home.

The Nuggets should be 5-1, or at the worst 4-2 in the next 6 games of their homestand. They should be able to beat the Charlotte Bobcats, LA Clippers, Milwaukee Bucks and Sacramento Kings. The Washington Wizards and LA Lakers games are hard to guess the outcome, but they're winnable games. The Nuggets are bound for a bump in the road on the homestand but they can make a lot of headway towards securing a playoff position by winning the games they should win.

The Vikings cleaned up in free agency.

Yesterday the Vikings made another free agent acquisition. They signed S Darren Sharper, formerly with NFC North division rival Green Bay, to help shore up the secondary. If they can acquire Jacksonville Jaguars S Donovin Darius in a trade the secondary will be completely new over the last 2 seasons. That has to mean S Corey Chavous, and S Brian Russell might be backups, or they might be looking for a new team. With S Donovin Darius the secondary would be one of the fastest, hardest hitting, secondaries in the league. CB Fred Smoot and CB Antoine Winfield are great in coverage, play the run well, and they can cover most receiver tandems in the league.

With a good secondary the Vikings defense should be able to get more pressure on the quarterback from their D-Line. They'll be able to mix up their coverage and blitz packages with their linebackers as well. The just need to draft LB Derrick Johnson, who is a standout player from Texas, to come in and make plays for them. If they can make one of their LB a playmaker they'll improve the main source of pain over the last few years. The defense has let down at times, gotten tired at times, and were outworked and overpowered by opposing offenses. Now all of the playmakers on defense will be playing a ball hawking style focused on creating turnovers.

Last season the Vikings couldn't create turnovers when it mattered and it made them suffer. They had 11 interceptions and 11 fumble recoveries on defense, but the offense turned the ball over 18 times. QB Daunte Culpepper turned the ball over 15 times himself. QB Daunte Culpepper is great when he is on, but when he is off he turns the ball over. He had a career year last season starting all 16 games with a quarterback rating of 110.9, a completion percentage of 69.2, 4717 passing yards, 39 touchdowns, 11 interceptions, fumbled 9 times and turned 4 of those over. He was also sacked 46 times, and lost 238 yards.

On the average getting sacked 3 times a game to lose 15 yards may make Culpepper rush his decisions. With some help from the defense causing turnovers, their potent offense on a short field will help the Vikings score more points. If Culpepper can cut down on his mistakes with the football, and the defense can cause turnovers the Vikings will win the NFC North and look to play for home field advantage in the playoffs.