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I've never seen a decent to good 3 point shooting team go so cold before. In their last 5 games, IU is: 25 for its last 115. That's 21.7 percent. That's absolutely atrocious, and IU doesn't have 3 dominant post men to make up for that. Unless IU can find some way to shoot better, they'll get beat, and they'll probably get beat badly in their first tournament game.

Was that close to being in or what...Miss St. wins by 2 as Alabama's 3 pointer rims in and out at the buzzer. It was very similar to the shot that tied the game in regulation, it just couldn't get the same bounce.

As an Alabama fan, that is a question I am asking. And IMO, the GA/Kentucky game SHOULD NOT BE PLAYED tonight. Push the tournament back a day if need be, but that crap was scary, and there is no way Alabama/MSU are going to be focused to finish the game, or GA/Kentucky are going to be confident they can get the game in. So push the tourny back, playing it tonight, doesn't make a lick a sense. The tourney cannot be pushed back. They already only finish the final game of the tourney 3 hours before the Selection Show. It would be great if they could, but there really isn't any feasible way to delay it. I have been in stadiums before where tornados were near...I've never actually seen one hit it though, or have I ever seen gameplay be stopped for it. It's a pretty rare situation. But yeah, that was definitely scary.

If Indiana can win tonight, that game will be a lot of fun tomorrow. And if IU does win tonight, I'll be rooting for whoever wins tomorrow to win Sunday. At this point, if IU can't win the tourney I hope Illinois does. It would be a great story.

St. Joe's beat Xavier 61-53, officially making the A-10 at least a 2 bid league.

My guess is that they wouldn't throw Lieber today unless they planned to. You always want to give your starters some warning about when to pitch. It probably was supposed to be Dempster for 4/Lieber for 4 and then somebody for the 9th, and the early exit of Dempster meant that a couple extra relievers ended up pitching.

Make that 4 innings now...same other statistics as before. Lieber has had a fantastic ST. Even if all 5 pitchers (Lieber/Marquis/Dempster/Marshall/Gallagher) were in an open competition, Lieber has clearly won the job over the other 4.

Lou has to be driven crazy by Dempster's lack of control. That's 6 walks and 2 hit batters in 10 2/3 innings this spring. He has gotten some really quick innings as well, but that control is simply not acceptable over the season, no matter how few basehits he gives up.

I wonder if this changes anything. Marquis and Lieber have both pitched very well in the spring games, so I don't know how much leash Dempster has before his spot is in jeopardy.

Sorry, that's the way the emails come in from the Cubs media relations dept. Blanco is the guy competing with Cedeno for backup ss. He also had the game winning hit the other day. I think you're confusing Blanco with Cintron. Cintron is the person who is the main competition to Cedeno, and Cintron was the person who had the game winning hit yesterday (although it sounds now like there's a decent chance that both Cintron and Cedeno make the roster). Blanco was just roster filler who never had a chance to make the major league roster.

i would consider that ok with me for an all-star 2B Mark Loretta is an all-star 2B. Do you want him to? not a good comparison....loretta is almost 40 You're missing the point. I'm not saying Loretta is as good as Roberts. I'm just sick of people using the "all-star" thing to validate the Roberts trade. We get it, he's good. Pointing out that he's an all-star just makes you look desperate. Being an all-star is meaningless when looking at trades. Absolutely meaningless. Especially when its the lone pitty All-Star every team has. I agree the all-star moniker is meaningless. Roberts has legitimately made the All-Star team both times though. He would have made it even if he wasn't the Orioles only representative.

I wouldn't give them all 3 pitching prospects. That's too much potential combined. I would give them Gallagher, Cedeno, Veal, and Epatt though. Epatt's value is only going to go down as the year goes along because of his age and position questions, and he really only has value to a team like the Orioles who can let him play at 2B at the majors for a year or two and see if he can work his issues out. I don't personally think Veal will put it together this year, so he will probably have lower value then he does right now. That's just my opinion on him though, not compared to Patterson where I think it's very reasonable to expect the drop in value. Gallagher will likely have around the same value. I expect him to pitch well in AAA, and maybe get a major league start or two. I don't believe anything besides him coming up and playing well in the major leagues for 5+ starts is going to inflate his value at this point. Cedeno is a complete tossup. He could be starting for the Cubs and doing well and having great value (in which case the Cubs wouldn't want to give him up), or his value could be almost nil by the deadline. I'd do the deal now because I don't think the pieces will be worth as much as a whole later with the way the Cubs will use them, and so I'd rather get the best deal I can with them now. Roberts is probably around a 3 win upgrade overall, and that could be significant.

Do you really want us to go down that road? Sure, we'll put ASU in, but we'll have to knock UCLA down a seed for their 2 losses last week :D.

http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080313&content_id=2424348&vkey=spt2008news&fext=.jsp&c_id=chc I like it. He pitched well in September, he has pitched pretty well in ST. He deserves the spot to start the season. It looks like Lahey will either be gone or a trade will be worked out to keep him in the organization, because I don't see him grabbing a bullpen spot right now. That last spot is probably a fight between Piggy and the loser of the Dempster/Lieber/Marquis battle (if one of those 3 doesn't get traded before OD, which is somewhat probable).

2 things 1) I don't believe major league teams probably see them as too similar when they've put up these numbers (ERA+): Lohse: 80, 105, 98, 89, 106, 78, 100 Silva: 120, 90, 112, 129, 75, 103 So Silva has had 3 seasons better than Lohse has ever had. If you look at last year, Silva was almost .5 better in ERA, and .13 better in WHIP. Most of that was due to the ballparks they played in, but that tends to get forgotten about, especially since Silva is given too much credit for playing against AL Central offenses. 2) From what I remember, Lohse rejected a contract from somebody earlier in the offseason because he wanted to get paid Silva money and didn't want to accept even good money if it was less. He waited a couple weeks too long, and everybody looking for pitching started to look for it in trades. Then he got left out there all winter and this is the result.

Just a crushing loss for Baylor. They may still be in, but there will be a lot more sweating going on until Sunday now. Northwestern still up double digits on Minnesota.

Colorado-Baylor moves on to double overtime.

Baylor and Colorado in OT. Baylor could slide right from should be in to squarely on the bubble if they can't complete their comeback and win this one.

I don't recall reading anything that says Hendry offered or MacPhail requested. Everything I've seen to this point is speculation as to the names involved. Who point those names in there, I don't know. Fair enough. My point is this though, if Hendry feels that he has put his best foot forward and MacPhail is the one jerking him around, then walk away. If Hendry is jerking around MacPhail, then he needs to pull his head out and get on with it. I'm in agreement. I'm no Hendry apologist, I just don't think there's enough evidence to suggest that he's guilty of a lot of the accusations that have been flying around. If there is hard evidence that he's offering way too much or that MacPhail is trying to screw him and he doesn't have the sense to walk away, so be it. I haven't seen it yet. Bottom line is that Hendry has to know that the reporters are all over his players getting their opinions on Roberts and the potential trade. He also has to see that his team is 5-10 in the spring so far. Are those two things connected? I don't know. But I know that if I were the GM and I saw the players' (especially DeRo's) reactions to these questions, and saw how my team was performing, I would do something as soon as possible to put that to rest. Either make the trade, or come out publicly and say we are not pursuing Roberts anymore. Considering the starters have left several of these games with a lead, I really doubt that the Roberts trade is causing the Cubs minor leaguers and NRI's to be terrible and lose games. And I haven't seen a ton of interviews dealing with Roberts with the Cubs players. There have been a few, but not too many. Besides, most of the starters have been hitting the ball well in ST. Where's the distraction?

They may have been lightly dicussing this for 3 months, but there really haven't been firm negotiations for nearly that long. Bruce said that that after the initial discussions, the Orioles wanted to wait until after the Bedard trade was done, so that tabled the discussions for quite a while. Even when the discussions have continued now from media reports they have been somewhat sporadic, and there have been numerous reports that the delay has been largely based on that the Orioles want to do some further scouting of the Cubs minor leagues before coming to a decision. Now, I would agree that the discussions should be tabled for a while if we hit Opening Day with no deal. I just don't really care if there's a small distraction over the team in Spring Training.

Huh, Gordon still makes the same mistakes he did in high school and really didn't show any improvement under Sampson and has been passed on many people's draft boards by Rose and Bayliss. Huh. Huh, Sampson lasted all of a year and a half, but really it was just illini fans bitching about nothing, huh. how about gordon's the best player in the big ten and deserves to be first team and poy? as much as i hate the kid, i cannot player hate. He may be the best talent, but D.J. was the best (most productive at least) player in the league this year and was deserving of the award. He was extremely efficient and if he actually had guards that got him the ball consistently, they would have been even better. To be fair, he was partially extrememly efficient because they didn't get him the ball that much. D.J.'s not a great post up player. He'll make a good second post person in the NBA. He can rebound well, he shoots the jumper well. Playing back to the basket is not his game, and passing out of doubleteams isn't either. It usually resulted in bad things for IU when they tried to run the offense through him. At the same time, he's unbelievably valuable to have on the floor.

Couldn't it be argued that Gordon shoots from so deep because he struggles to get enough space to shoot the three? Wouldn't that be more of a problem in the NBA where most of the defenders are bigger? It could, although I argue that space for 3 pointers is more about your teammates. 3 pointers in the NBA typically come off 3 things: 1) A screen, either with the screen inside and the player runs out for the catch and the quick shot, or the ball screen on the outside to free the player up for a 3. 2) Transition 3 3) doubling of the inside player causes people to be open for a 3. Gordon gets none of those advantages. There is nobody that can set a screen well that is any type of offensive threat, so both defenders go to Gordon. Even if White sets a screen, which is not his strong suit, both defenders go to Gordon anyway and they switch off to White, which leaves the power forward wide open. IU ran a decent amount of this early in the season and then threw it to the open power forward, who promptly fumbled it out of bounds. IU's offense doesn't use any transition 3's, and nobody ever comes off of Gordon to be the doubleteam on White. That's why Gordon has to shoot from 5 feet behind the line all the time, and I don't think that will be the case in the NBA. Well in the NBA he will get a lot more transition threes. He is likely to be picked high enough to a team though, that will not have a post player who warrants a double team. I don't think his percentages will jump at all in the NBA. They rarely do. With the comment about his percentage rising, that was more about the injury. His 3 point percentage has plummeted since he re-hurt his wrist a month ago. He's 10 for his last 50 after being at 41.1 percent on February 10th.

Couldn't it be argued that Gordon shoots from so deep because he struggles to get enough space to shoot the three? Wouldn't that be more of a problem in the NBA where most of the defenders are bigger? It could, although I argue that space for 3 pointers is more about your teammates. 3 pointers in the NBA typically come off 3 things: 1) A screen, either with the screen inside and the player runs out for the catch and the quick shot, or the ball screen on the outside to free the player up for a 3. 2) Transition 3 3) doubling of the inside player causes people to be open for a 3. Gordon gets none of those advantages. There is nobody that can set a screen well that is any type of offensive threat, so both defenders go to Gordon. Even if White sets a screen, which is not his strong suit, both defenders go to Gordon anyway and they switch off to White, which leaves the power forward wide open. IU ran a decent amount of this early in the season and then threw it to the open power forward, who promptly fumbled it out of bounds. IU's offense doesn't use any transition 3's, and nobody ever comes off of Gordon to be the doubleteam on White. That's why Gordon has to shoot from 5 feet behind the line all the time, and I don't think that will be the case in the NBA.

The biggest difference I see in their stats this year is that Gordon gets to the foul line a lot more, which ends up making him a more efficient scorer (1.62 points per shot to 1.29 for Mayo). Mayo has slightly higher assist and rebound numbers. Their turnovers are identical. I love Gordon's defensive game most of the time, so I would have a hard time definitely taking Mayo over him in that regard. Mayo has a better 3 point shooting percentage, but Gordon's injury and the fact that Gordon shoots most of his shots at beyond NBA range already is part of the reason for that difference. Gordon's percentage is likely to even maybe go up slightly in the NBA, while Mayo's will certainly go down. It's a close call. I'd probably take Gordon because some of the things that have plagued him at the college game won't be a problem in the NBA. Almost half his turnovers are traveling calls where he shuffles his feet before he takes a step. It isn't a very big traveling call, and it isn't called often in the NBA. I think both will be better off going to a town in which they aren't the superstar though. Both of them struggle against doubleteams and will have much less of turnover problems if they draw less attention from the defense. I do doubt Gordon's height a little bit, but I think he could survive in the NBA defensively because of his weight. 215 pounds is big enough that he won't get pushed around by other shooting guards, although they will be able to shoot over him.

I'm not happy with the way Indiana's playing as a team right now, but I do think the bracket lines up well for them right now. They just beat Minnesota by 14 points last week even during the middle of their slump. I'm not saying Minnesota doesn't have a pretty decent chance of winning that game, they do. I'd just rather play them than play Illinois again. Then in the semifinals, it's probably Purdue, and IU matches up much better with Purdue then either Wisconsin or Michigan State. That would be a really fun rematch. Then who knows who they would face in a possible final game. Mark me down for them losing on Saturday, but I think they have a much better chance of going to the final or winning the tournament then they would have if they were on the other side of the bracket.