unclevlad

Oregon pushed Creighton...game went to double OT, but totally ran out of gas. They had 2nd half leads, but couldn't finish the deal. They had 2 players take 70% of the shots, and score 80% of the points...but as you can imagine, their tanks ran dry at the end. SEVERE depth problems. Not like Creighton was particularly good, they only got 7 points from their bench...in a double OT game. That wraps up a day and night that was...almost completely chalk, for once. The only higher seed to fall was Kansas, and that was a 4-5 game where the 4 was hurting. How dull............ Shattered brackets!!!!! I want shattered brackets!!!!!!

Hey, no dissing on the shrooms, man! Hmmmmmmmmmmm.......(goes to pantry, pulls out the dried shrooms) Realized I've got an extra heirloom tomato as I was getting the salad for tonight. OK...toss it into some eggs for a frittata...with mushrooms, yeah..... No dissing the shrooms. IQ of a package of Peeps. MUCH, MUCH lower.

The latest twist? It appears Mizuhara has been treading the Santos path.... From the Athletic: And it's probably snuck up on most of us, but...the real opening day, forget the Korea series...is Thursday. THIS Thursday. Still in March. But I believe they did this last year. IIRC, they built in more off-days during the season, to break up the grind to a degree, and hopefully to allow open dates to make up weather delays. Let's not get dive too deeply into the point that in MANY cities, they've just extended the Pretty Bad Weather (for baseball) period an extra week. Shorten the season??? C'est impossible!!!!

To be fair, it's none of our <bleep>ing business, either. Which you know, so please, don't take that personally. And not like that'll stop any of us.....oh, not about *speculating*. That's nothing. It's being nosy and wanting more facts. I think none of us...at most, a handful of us...understands the destructive invasiveness of being seriously, broadly famous...

Remember to dress.

WHOA....just flipping through, I looked at the '25 cap space. Right now, and barring an increase (which likely won't be as large)...the Saints are $71M over the cap for '25, *right now*. And usually that situation gets worse as the season progresses and injuries pile up.

I thought everyone had to get under the cap at the start of the new league year. I think there's some other dates where caps come into play...either beginning of camp or opening day...but I'm not sure about those. This will make your eyes glaze over. https://russellstreetreport.com/salarycap/nfl-salary-cap-faqs/

OK, had I picked a bracket, I would've picked the Zags...even if Kansas was at full strength. Much less depleted. But I didn't expect then to break out a Spo-CAN on em...... (Yes, I will steal from Ernie Johnson.)

I think it unlikely that the bookie would have direct contact with, and/or accounts naming, Ohtani. That's the only way he's gonna get off, as the operation's drawing federal attention, so it's much larger than just Ohtani. The translator...he's already becoming a tainted witness to try to implicate Ohtani. If he helps to get the bookie, then it's plausible to me he'll have his visa revoked, and barred re-entry for a period...but that may be it. Making illegal bets is only a misdemeanor offense in California...for an individual offense. The kicker, as the CBS article points out, is that the laws are designed to go after the bookies...because that's an organized crime activity. And of course, it may be that the translator could be charged with a whole, whole, WHOLE lot of individual charges....

........................................................................ Can someone help me pick my jaw up off the floor? I wanna smile, and I wanna cry, and........wow....

You're a week early with that, I'd think..........

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/could-shohei-ohtani-face-punishment-for-interpreter-gambling-scandal-what-legal-expert-mlb-rules-say/ Yes, it's a 1 year minimum...but the potential criminal issues may be far more serious. None of us want to think Ohtani's involved in actual betting, but the law is such that even paying off his translator's debts can be prosecuted. My gut feeling is, so long as that's ALL it is? California won't prosecute, and MLB won't suspend.

Thank you for taking the time to explain that more fully. And to take it a step further...AP becomes brutal against Takes No Stun, because for the automaton, buying Hardened is expensive. 2 points of hardened, resistant defense is 11 points with TNS in play.

Well of course Putin's gonna blame Ukraine. The sun rose, right?

And the night ends with another one, as #12 Grand Canyon takes out #5 Saint Mary's. I don't treat a 10 over a 7, or a 9 over an 8, as upsets; they're too close to tossups regardless. But that makes the final tally 1 three seed, 1 four seed, 2 fives, and 3 sixes. And, yeah, if ya wanna argue the 11 over the 6 is getting to be too close to be a noteworthy upset...I wouldn't argue strongly against ya... And there was a bit of confusion...ESPN's perfect bracket tracker had 0 perfect brackets after the Wisconsin loss, but the leaderboard had 1 left. THAT one fell when Utah State won. So regardless...22 million brackets, and none survive the first round intact. That's despite only one really big upset...3 seed or higher. I'd kinda thought there might be 2. There were 20 brackets with one miss...but that'll drop considerably once everything's updated.

Excellent seque, Cyg....

But he goes best neat.

I don't question the human race. The race as a whole is not responsible for the derangement, however extreme, of one particular member. The person's site info calls it satire/parody, but it's just moronic IMO. But the git has 1.3M followers somehow. Barnumesque!

We certainly know he's not anti-static......

JUST dropped into my inbox...US believes a branch of ISIS, based in Afghanistan and a frequent critic of Putin, is responsible for the Moscow attack that...last I saw...claimed 40 lives. And, yeah...fearmongering is likely sufficient explanation too. And certainly, BOTH can be true.

FUN STUFF!!!! Colorado goes super-tight and super-conservative in blowing a sizable, late lead; Florida hits a long 3 to tie with about 8 seconds left. Colorado gets it down into the low block...little baby hook bounces a couple times on the rim...and goes in. Florida can't hit the desperation 3. So #10 Colorado advances...so, I think it's 5 double digit seeds. MORE amusing...in a WILD!!!!! ending, Yale beats Auburn. That's a 13 over a 4...can't *wait* to hear Barkley's consternation. Auburn misses 2 FTs, down 2 with 7 seconds, but get the board, and a flurry of shots, in close but contested, but they don't drop.

Uh oh. He's threatening to shed on us again.....

More-original source for Dean's last... https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2024/03/20/tennessee-senate-passes-bill-banning-chemtrails-what-to-know/73027586007/ What scares me is, it's plausible to read this as a separate tactic by Christian nationalists. Attack science to promote the authority of faith. They don't *have* to believe it, they may darn well know it's idiotic...so what? It got through the Tennessee Senate. That means it's not just wild-eyed conspiracy nuts, to me.

Oh man.... https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/22/europe/crocus-moscow-shooting/index.html NYT indicated EDIT: the embassy further explained that "extremists" did NOT refer to Ukraine...that it was something totally separate. They note the owner of the facility is Aras Agaralov, an Azerbaijani billionaire sometimes described as one of Putin's oligarchs, so that could certainly be the motive. We'll likely never know for sure.

That could be taken as damnation by faint praise.