March Madness

Well it has been a bit of time since I last posted here. Home life has been great and Evie is really starting to grow and become aware. You can see the changes daily, she is quite mature for only being 10 weeks old. The job has gotten quite a bit busy with some folks moving on some I am trying to survive and thrive in that the best I can. When I last posted Ernie Kent and the Ducks were in a free fall. Nice to see what a home sweep of the Northwest schools can do for a team but even then I think that prior to the Pac 10 tournament Oregon looked liked a likely 7 or 8 seed. Fast forward three games and the Ducks and their hot shooting find themselves a 3 seed in the easiest bracket in the country and have a great line to get to the Elite 8. Oregon’s domination of the rest of the Pac 10 in the tournament was unprecedented though they sure lucked out without having to face UCLA. The Ducks have regained their sea legs and swagger and with a Friday game in Spokane should be quite well rested before they play Miami and then the winner of Notre Dame/Winthrop. I don’t think the Ducks could have asked for a better position than they got. I don’t foresee an issue with Miami and I’d actually rather face Notre Dame than Winthrop who has the better front court. Wisconsin is a vulnerable 2 seed though a better team than Memphis in my opinion. If someone like an Arizona or Maryland can knock off Florida (who I think the Ducks would just not match up to very well) you can’t discount Oregon actually making a Final Four. Had Oregon lost to WSU at home and then to Arizona in the tourney you have to think they would have been sweating out Selection Sunday just like Stanford did. Kudos to the Committee for rewarding dominant play in the tournament, both from Oregon but also for schools like UNC, Kansas and Florida. There is no doubt that UCLA losing to Cal played themselves out of the #1 spot in the West. Thankfully for the Bruins they didn’t get shipped out of California and I still like their chances to get back to the Final Four. I’d be surprised to see any other Pac 10 teams outside of UCLA and Oregon in the Elite 8 and I think that WSU is particularly vulnerable to being the first 3 seed knocked out.

It's January!

Well it is late January now and as you can tell from the photo I have my hands full these days! Here I am holding my beautiful baby daughter Evangeline Rose who was born on 12/31/2006. She has already sat through 4 duck games with me and her viewing record is 3-1 with a last second loss to USC. Becuase I haven't been able to watch much hoops this year outside of Oregon I won't be doing a power poll for basketball, hopefuly I'll be back at it next season though and up on my game again. Well as anyone who knows me well knows I have been quite down on Ernie Kent for about 2 years now but I have to give him and more so the Oregon players credit for turning things around. Going in to the year I thought tthis team would be around a 20 win team with about 10 wins in the conference and borderline NCAA but from the performance so far the Ducks have to be judged as perhaps the nation's biggest suprise on the upside (could be the boys from Pullman too, no one saw that happening) in what tunred out to be a very strong league. Obviously there is a lot of basketball to be played but the Pac 10 should bag at least 5 bids to the NCAA's with another 2 teams on the bubble. For a league that usually gets 4 bids , 5 or even 6 bids is monumental. The league is tops in OOC RPI which is quite a feat. I expect more of the same everyone in the Top 8 beating eachother up with 4 schools gaining top 6 bids and two more in the 7-11 range.