Starting Five

1. Cinderella is hanging in the VIP lounge. Gonzaga, which this week attained its highest AP poll ranking ever (3), blasts Santa Clara, 85-42. The Zags doubled up on the Broncos in both points and rebounds (45-22) while not one starter scored more than 17 points. Santa Clara, which had not scored fewer than 60 points in any game this season, was held to 18 points less than its lowest total. The Road to the Final Four for Mark Few’s team looks like this: most likely a first weekend in San Jose, a second weekend at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and if they can emerge from that, a Final Four berth in Atlanta (we’ll reserve our ire about the last Final Four held west of Texas having taken place in 1990 for another post).

Elias Harris, who is from Germany, led the Zags with 17 points and nine boards

2. My two favorite coaches in women’s college basketball, Geno Auriemma and Kim Mulkey, and here’s why. And this is BEFORE Monday night’s game. Geno’s response to Kim, who is divorced, when she asks him to introduce her to some Italians: “The Italians I send to see you aren’t going to date you.”

Geno would never have given Pat a pat.

Quickly, my Geno story: March of 2001 and I’ve been tailing the Huskies all season long for a book on the team. Eastern regionals, Pittsburgh. Geno is in the hotel bar with his wife, Cathy, at a booth. I find a waiter and send over a $75 bottle of wine (which is at least $35 more than I’ve ever spent on myself). I tell the waiter, “Give it to that man and his wife and say, ‘It’s from John. That’s for his being a pain in the ass all season.'”

The waiter returns 15 minutes later and presents me with a bill for a $400 bottle of champagne. The waiter says, “The gentleman says you’ve been a much bigger pain in the ass than that.”

3. Miami is dirty blah blah blah. The NCAA acted unethically blah blah blah. Don’t care. Call us when Mark Emmert resigns and Jay Bilas accepts the job.

4. LeBron James is the best player in the NBA. But James Harden may be more fun to watch. Last night The Beard scored a career-high 46 points and led the Rockets back from a 14-point fourth quarter deficit versus his former team, OKC, in a 122-119 victory. (I’m no John Hollinger, but I still cannot fathom why the Thunder would part ways with Harden). Jeremy Lin scored 29.

Rocket launcher

Meanwhile, in Tempe, Ariz., students at Arizona State University (Harden’s old school) decided to stage a James Harden Appreciation Night as the Sun Devils hosted Washington State. In honor of Harden, who was not invited and of course would not have been able to attend anyway, the Sun Devil student body decided to remain silent until their team scored its 13th point. The problem? To begin, ASU coach Herb Sendek was unaware of this plan (Sendek: “This is the quietest gym I’ve ever been in.”) Second, the Sun Devils trailed and still had not scored their 13th point nearly midway through the first half.

Adding to the bizarre nature of the night, it snowed in Phoenix yesterday. Seriously.

ASU eventually scored its 13th point and went on to a 69-57 win, its 20th (20-7) of the season.

5. The lead investigator in the Oscar Pistorius murder investigation, Hilton Botha, steps down after it is discovered that he himself is facing an attempted murder charge. Yes, the story is getting more O.J. by the day. This link has a good diagram of the scene of the tragic events.

Reserves

Now THIS is an oustanding and memorable SI cover. While we don’t need four writers’ names on the cover (it’s a cover, not a masthead), the gallery of iconic figures here is perfect. Kudos to whoever fostered this idea. Oh, and I think I see Jenny rushing across the reflecting pool yelling, “Forreessssst!”

Monumental

If you stayed at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles recently and thought that the water tasted a little bit funny, here’s why. It turns out that the Cecil has quite the notorious history.

The cover of today’s New York Post goes to Rob Morrison, Handsome Anchor, who resigned yesterday from WCBS following his arrest Sunday night for allegedly strangling his wife, Ashley, a CBS Market Watch reporter. Morrrison was spotted at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Stamford, Conn., where he downed three light beers (during happy hour; pays to be frugal!) and spoke to Post reporter Laurel Babcock. Whether or not she identified herself as such is not known. The hed on my edition read “Drown & Out” though I prefer the one I saw elsewhere, “Pour Me.”

Oscars gift bags have an estimated value of $45,000. The rich are very different from you and me. Before you go on a bleeding heart rant (I won’t), remember, the people “donating” these items are doing so for promotional purposes. If you or I were more marketable, they’d be giving it to us. The solution: next time, find parents with better genes. Otherwise, zip it.

Jessica “Cheststain” and Bradley Cooper (“Silver Linings Cookbook”) go “Between Two Ferns.” “How’s bragging camp going?”

***
A modest proposal for college hoops and/or college football: Create a jackpot for the team that wins the national championship. For argument’s sake, here’s a rough outline of what I’d see. We can debate the particulars later:

1. The winning squad earns a prize of $1 million to split among every member of its roster (yes, I understand that there are far more players on a football team than a basketball team; perhaps we make it $5 million for the gridders).

2. The winning team votes on how to distribute shares amongst themselves with the one stipulation being that no player can be voted a share more than seven times greater than the smallest share.

3. The money for every player is placed into a trust until that player earns his undergraduate degree.

Your thoughts?

Starting Five

1. So it’s definitely OSCAR WEEK, between the Academy Awards and the most infamous crime of 2013 thus far. As for the accused, Oscar Pistorius, his bail hearing is proving to be more intriguing than most actual trials.

Steenkamp, who was laid to rest yesterday in Port Elizabeth

What of the witness who reportedly heard a gunshot, then screaming, then more gun shots? However, will a witness who was 600 yards away at the time provide credible testimony?

What of the needles and bottles of testosterone found at Pistorius’ home? Or were they just an herbal remedy?

What of the police alleging that the trajectory of the gun shots indicate that Pistorius was on his blades when he fired the shots, which would be in dispute with what Pistorius claims?

It’s a little too early in this race between the prosecution and Pistorius to call a winner.

You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of a 400-meter race in its first half. Because of the staggered starts, it’s difficult to grasp who’s in the lead or how far someone is trailing. It’s not until the athletes round the final turn that you really begin to understand where everyone stands relative to one another. For Pistorius, an Olympian in that event, it’s a metaphor that is easy to grasp. This race has a long way to go before it rounds its final turn.

2. This just in: Victor Oladipo is good. Top-ranked Indiana University won in East Lansing last night for the first time in 17 tries, or since 1991, and the six-foot-five junior was the primary reason. Oladipo, who was nothing special a year ago, had 19 points, nine rebounds, five steals and one block — while playing on a sprained ankle — as the Hoosiers nipped No. 4 Michigan State in a contest that felt like a Final Four matchup, and may very well be. The volume of Oladipo’s contributions pale in comparison to the timeliness of his most spectacular plays, including a dunk on a breakaway release that put IU up 70-67 in the final minute. Some players fill up stat boxes; others are pure gamers. Oladipo is more of the latter, but a little of both.

Hail to the Oladipo (see what I did there?)

3. Steve Rushin hits rock bottom. Sort of. With Kate Upton.

What’s larger than the Ross Ice Shelf?

4. Roger Goodell, NFL commissioner, earned nearly $30 million last season and Ashley Fox, NFL writer for ESPN.com, defends his pay (“Roger Goodell Earned Every Penny”). Fox (an old friend from SI days) has a point, but the question should be, Would the NFL still have earned most of those lucrative TV and labor deals with someone other than Goodell (probably)? Also, would Goodell have done the same job for half the income (definitely)?

It is worth noting, and Fox does, that Goodell earned just over $3 million in salary but more than $22 million in bonuses (and nearly $4 million, or more than ten times the annual income of the president of the United States, in “additional compensation”). It’s also worth noting that Goodell basically earned more than –before you begin factoring in stock options– every major CEO in the country.

It’s not that the NFL isn’t worth that much. It’s that Goodell is not the reason the league is. The players and the sport are.

5. Apologies for stepping on the toes of my colleague here, but Kurt Cobain would have turned 46 (my age) today. My Kurt Cobain story: In 1991 my sister, Lorraine, worked in the music business in Los Angeles. Over the Christmas holidays, in Phoenix, she secured tickets and backstage passes to a concert for herself, my brother and I at Arizona State University.

There were three acts, so we blew off the first one. Some band by the name of Pearl Jam. We arrived just after Pearl Jam’s set and that is when my sister introduced my brother, George, and I to a wispy dude with thin, purple hair by the name of Kurt Cobain. “Nevermind” had been out for a few weeks by then, but Nirvana was still just breaking out across North America.

Kurt was soft-spoken and very nice. He was eating a bowl of corn flakes and talking to some woman we did not yet know (Sis: “This is Kurt’s wife, Courtney. She’s got an album coming out, too, and it’s fantastic.” [I’m sure my brother and I rolled our eyes inwardly at that]). Kurt invited George and I to walk with him as they headed to the stage and then take in the show from the side of it (recall, this is still about nine years before “Almost Famous”). We wisely said, “Yes.”

So there the three of us were, walking out into the arena as Kurt gulped down a bowl of corn flakes. Almost as if to fulfill the song’s prophecy, Kurt entered the arena with the houselights up and the fans barely noticed. It was only when the lights went down (“With the lights out/It’s less dangerous/Here we are now/Entertain us”) did the arena erupt.

So that’s my Kurt Cobain story. We watched the entire show from about 15 feet away. I still kick myself for not stage diving during “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” At the time I was 25 and thought, I’m too old to do that. I was so much older then. Oh, well, whatever. Never mind.

The Kurt I met…

(Note: Many of the songs that appear on From The Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, Nirvana’s live album, were recorded within days of the night of this meeting)

 Reserves

Liberty and Longwood, a pair of Division I hoops schools (Big South Conference) , combine to score 55 points in the final 3:55  (Grinnell yawns at this news). The Lancers of Longwood led 80-68 at the final media timeout, but were then outscored 33-22 by the Flames. Still, Longwood held on to win, 102-101.

What is the headline here? “Cow Tipping?” “Moo-ving Violation?” “Ground Beef?” Russian dash-cams are the new Harlem Shake.

That slow and steadily growing tech giant, Google, which gets mentioned on CNBC about once for every 100 times Apple does, eclipses an $800 stock price. Less than six months ago the two companies were at near-identical stock prices, in the high $600s. Since then AAPL has plummeted more than 200 points (it opened today at near $455) while the search engine colossus opened at $807. For what it’s worth, AAPL trades at 10.4 times earnings (the lower the number, the better), while GOOG trades at 24.8 times. Which is to say, if investors truly believed in value, AAPL should be trading at about $1,100 per share relative to what GOOG is trading at.

Jeff Passan, the MLB columnist for Yahoo! Sports (as opposed to Jeff Rossen, the investigative reporter for the Today Show), tweets, “Coolest story of the spring: a blind 32 year-old is trying to make the Rays. And he’s actually got a chance.”

1. “Coolest story?” Why don’t you let us be the judges of that? Especially since it’s what, more than 30 days until spring?

2. “Blind”. Well, not really. If you read Jeff’s story –and maybe that’s all he or his editors are concerned about, the number of hits — in fact, if you read just the headline, you’ll see that pitcher Juan Sandoval is “Blind In One Eye.” Which is not the same as being blind, or even the same as being legally blind. Or even legally blonde. Passan even notes that not only is Sandoval’s left eye in good shape, it’s “better than it’s ever been, in fact.”

3. And then, in the story, Passan actually writes “even if he is a long shot to make the team now…” How does that clause jibe with Passan’s “and he’s actually got a chance” tweet?

Jeff Passan: third-eye blind

Does any of this diminish the valiant nature of Sandoval’s effort to make the Rays, particularly as a 32 year-old journeyman? No. My beef isn’t with the player. But, sorry, this is a bullshit tweet and an overblown story that other (lazy) sports blogs will note and, without either reading the story or, worse, asking some superficially observant questions about it, will simply regurgitate and implore you to read.

Passan’s tweet is –what’s that buzzphrase of the moment? — “intellectually dishonest.” Maybe he is hoping Sandoval makes the team, and then he gets a book and/or movie deal out of it. Maybe he didn’t have room in his 140 characters to write “in one eye” after the word “blind.”

I’m not here to undermine a courageous effort by Sandoval. I’m here asking all of you to practice a little reading comprehension. To simply not accept someone’s shameless self-promotion of his own story based on, I don’t know, blind faith.

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Starting Five

1. But Will It Play In Pretoria?

In a South African courtroom, Oscar Pistorius attends his bail hearing. The defense team argues that the double-amputee Olympian thought that his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, was a burglar (“I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder as I had no intention to kill my girlfriend,” Pistorious’ statement, which he was too upset to read, said). As these live tweets from the courtroom show, Pistorious is arguing that he thought Steenkamp was in bed when he approached the bathroom.

Prosecutors, seeking a charge of premeditated murder, argue that the “Blade Runner” put on his prosthetic legs and walked 23 feet to the locked bathroom in order to fire four shots through a locked door. They ask why a burglar would lock him/herself in a bathroom and note that neighbors heard arguing earlier.

2. Buss Stop

Los Angeles Laker owner Jerry Buss passes away at the age of 80. The Lakers won 10 NBA championships under his stewardship. More impressively,  at least to me, Buss earned a PhD in physical chemistry by the age of 24. Fittingly, the Lakers’ first game after Dr. Buss’ death will be a home contest versus inveterate rival Boston.

3. No. 1 Baylor downs No. 3 UConn in women’s hoops, in Hartford, 76-70. Brittney Griner, who scored just four points in the first half, finished with 25 as the Bears rebounded from a seven-point second-half deficit. Griner’s final points, on free throws, gave her 3,000 for her career. Only seven other players, in both men’s and women’s hoops, have reached that plateau. Griner’s UConn counterpart in the post, Stefanie Dolson, played all 40 minutes. “It never even entered my mind to take (Stefanie) out,” said Huskies coach Geno Auriemma. “Well, I shouldn’t say that. One time I thought, ‘Maybe I should get her out.’ Then I looked over (at the bench) and thought, ‘Nah, maybe not.'”

Griner and Dolson.

4. Mindy McReady becomes the fifth celebrity to appear on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew to die thereafter. In Dr. Drew’s defense, everyone eventually dies. Also, one of the “celebrities” was a Real World cast member, so I’d place that number at four, not five.

5. Local New York-based CBS New anchor Rob Morrison, who is handsome, is charged with second-degree strangulation of his wife, CBS MoneyWatch anchor Ashley Morrison, who is purdy. The incident allegedly took place around 1:30 a.m. in their Darien, Conn., home. The latter was not killed, only injured, but as police were processing Mr. Morrison in the wee hours of the morning, he reportedly made further threats that he intended to harm his wife. Champ Summers and Brick Tamland want her out of the picture, too.

Rob Morrison

Ashley Morrison