the mad sports man

the end of march has finally arrived. a rather chilly month and a bit of snow. edmonton has had it easy though. winnipeg got hit hard. eastern canada got walloped a couple or three times. i am thinking they want to see some green grass. lets what else: loads of hockey, the ncaa tournament, the start of baseball happened in australia for two games between teh dodgers and diamondbacks on the 22nd and 23rd, opening night last night and opening day today, car racing, the start of the aussie rules footy and i think that is about it. can't remember anything else. hopefully april is good.

the final regional final game was a pretty good one. the kentucky wildcats are in the final four with a 75-72 win over the michigan wolverines and will face the wisconsin badgers in the national semi final game saturday. the final four is close. kentucky and wisconsin, i think, will be the second game on saturday while the florida vs conneticut game will be the first. start times soon. update: florida vs conneticut at 4:09pm mt and wisconsin vs kentucky at 6:49pm mt

the conneticut huskies are in the final four with a 60-54 win over the michigan state spartans, in a fairly close game. conneticut will now face the florida gators in the first national semi fianl matchup on saturday. coming up in about half an hour has kentucky facing michigan. winner gets wisconsin.

in a very good game, the wisconsin badgers beat out the arizona wildcats 64-63 in a thriller of an overtime game to win the west regional final. wisconsin will now face either kentucky or michigan in the final four. that game is tomorrow afternoon at about 3:05. with arizona losing, that just leaves florida as the last #1 seed left in the tournament. until tomorrow, stay tuned.

the florida gators are the first team into the final four with a 62-52 win over the dayton flyers. florida has the play in the first half. the second half was pretty even. florida will play conneticut or michigan state. that is tomorrow. coming up in about 25 minutes has arizona wildcats playing wisconsim badgers.

couple of great games to end the night. kentucky just knocked out defending champion louisville 74-69. at one point kentucky was down 13 points to get even tehn was down by 7 with four minutes left in the game. they will be playing michigan in the midwest regional finat at about 3:05 pm mt sunday afternoon. michigan began teh evening winning a thriller of their own, beating tennessee 73-71. they had a decent sized lead with two minutes to go in the game and almost blew it. in the east region, michigan state capped off the evening in new york with a close win over virginia, 61-59 they will be playing conneticut in teh east region final on sunday. uconn beat iowa state 81-76 to get there. uconn vs michigan state is sunday afternoon. tipoff is 12:20pm mt. tomorrow has florida vs dayton at 4:09 mt and arizona vs wisconsin at 6:49 pm mt (approx). getting close to crunch time.

in the south region, florida beat ucla 79-68 to get to the elite eight, where they will face the dayton flyers, who knocked out stanford 82-72 in the early evening game. they will play on saturday for the south region final. in the west region, wisconsin put the boots to the baylor bears to the tune of 69-52. they will face the arizona wildcats who just beat san diego state 70-64. arizona and wisconsin play in the west final, also on saturday. the rest of the sweet 16 matchups are tomorrow with the winners playing for the east and midwest regional finals.

the rest of the sweet 16 is set for the ncaa tournament, which included a second upset. it had kentucke, as an 8th seed took out the top seed in teh midwest wichita state 78-76. the rest of the winners had ucla, stanford (mentioned in an earleir post today), virginia, iowa state, tennessee, baylor and arizona, who just finished putting an ass whooping to gonzaga. the sweet 16 matchups has florida vs ucla, dayton vs stanford, virginia vs michigan state, iowa state vs conneticut, tennessee vs michigan, kentucky vs louisville, wisconsin vs baylor and arizona vs san diego state. these games will be played this coming thursday and friday.

the upset brigade continues as stanford knocks out kansas 60-57 in the first game of the day. stanford will play dayton when it resumes again thursday. but first, the rest of the days action

day three produced yet another upset as dayton beat syracuse 55-53. a second one was just recorded (although im not covince given the calibre of who it was) as connecticut beat villanova 77-65. the other six teams that got through to the swee 16 is florida, michigan state, sandiego state, wisconsin, louisville and michigan. their opponents will be decided tomorrow as the remaining eight spots get filled in. will there be another upset? stay tuned.

quite a finish last night with a couple of overtime games and a buzzer beater. plus a third upset. today the upsets continue as duke got knocked out by mercer 78-71. the second one today, although a ten seed beating a seven seed is minor i think. this had stanford beat new mexico 58-53. makes me wonder whose predicted brackets are still intact. not many i think. update: and yet another one. stephen f. austin knocks out virginia commonwealth 77-75 in overtime. three of the four #12s all advance. only saint louis moved on.

the first full day of the ncaa tournament is in full swing and already two upsets. first one had #12 harvard knock out #5 cincinnati 61-57 in the east region. the second one was in the south region and it had #11 dayton 60-59 over #6 ohio state. several games tonight and one last afternooner nearly done. stay tuned.

happy st. patricks day to all. that time of year where people wear green and feel a little irish. unless you are already irish. wearing green, drinking green beer, part of the chicago river got dyed green, just feeling green. cheers eh

the winter paralympics in sochi are done. canada ended up with 16 medals - 7g 2s and 7b. russian ran away with the most medals with 80 of them. yes 80. josh dueck carried the flag at the closing ceremony. he won two medals in sit skiing. the olympics in sochi are now officially done. onwards to rio in 2016 and pyeongchang in 2018.

quite a turnaround compared to the week. it finally warmed up yesterday and should be staying nice for the week. plus we turned our clocks ahead an hour (loss of an hour of sleep the downside) nice to see the snow melting away. makes me wonder how long this will last. in the meantime, time to enjoy the weather.

snow storms out east, cold all over the place. is anyone sick of winter yet? supposed to start warming up this weekend. i dont know about anywhere else, but i think everyone is sick of winter. we all need a vacation to somewhere warm.