We get it.

Wichita State is the first No. 9 seed to advance to the Final Four. And their nickname is “Shockers”, and so it seems incumbent upon too many headline writers at too many major outlets, both print and internet (newphemism alert: “printernet“), to use “Shocker!” in their heds. As if what this team has done over the past 10 days or so is akin to Adele setting fire to the rain.

(On the other hand, using “March of the Penguins” to describe the NHL franchise’s 15-game win streak is dead solid perfect. It may be obvious, but that is only because nothing could possibly work better)

But nothing’s shocking in college basketball any longer. John Wooden and the UCLA Bruin dynasty is dead. Instagram? In college hoops we live in the age of Instateam, in which Kentucky can start four freshman and win the national title one year, then start nearly as many the following year and be bounced in the first round of the NIT. The monoliths — Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, Indiana, Duke and the Bruins — are still capable of cutting down the nets, but they are just as capable, and have demonstrated it, of being bounced in the first or second round.

Is Jane really done with Sergio? He treats her like a ragdoll.

A program is only as good as either its incoming freshman class or the chemistry of its upperclassmen. Louisville was the smart pick to cut down the nets on April 8 before the tourney began (the even smarter pick was to pull a Seth Davis and pick two different schools for your two different employers, but I digress), and yet not a single one of the three All-American squads named so far has a Cardinal on its first team. The Cards, however, have a veterang group that plays well together and advanced to the Final Four a year ago.

Anyone who ever played pick-up hoops as a kid — I mean, lived to play pick-up hoops (Crestview Park, Middletown, N.J., representin’!) — understands that five guys who know each other well can defeat five more talented guys who do not. And that is why Louisville is so dangerous. Basketball, and this is only a happy coincidence but it fits, has all the letters inside of it to spell the word “ballet.” And that’s what well-played basketball is: A synchronicity of motion between five players who understand their individual roles in relation to that of the four others.

Iit’s also why, in case you were wondering, the Los Angeles Lakers are a .500 team this season even though they start three probable Hall of Famers.

Carl Hall

Yes, Perry Farrell, nothing’s shocking in college hoops these days. So why do too many people at ESPN and other outlets continue the Cinderella narrative? It’s trite and it’s inaccurate. Wichita State starts two seniors, a junior, a sophomore and a freshman. They’ve taken down two teams that have a first-team All-American this season (Creighton with Doug McDermott and Gonzaga with Kelly Olynyk). They’re 30-8. They’ve led every one of their four NCAA tournament games by at least 13 points and have held 20 points in both games this weekend.

Nothing’s shocking about Wichita State having advanced to the Final Four. What’s shocking is that anyone who covers college hoops — or pens headlines — is still pushing that pill on us.

NFL guru and cinemaphile Chris Corbellini went to see “Spring Breakers” and filed this review. (I’m continually awed by and grateful to people who volunteer their time and talent to contribute to this site. Anyone else who wants to do so, just contact our home offices via comment.)

SPRING BREAKERS

Conduct a nationwide poll of overprotective fathers asking for nightmare characteristics of a potential boyfriend for their teenage daughters, have a court artist sketch a composite, then mix in 20 percent more alligator and 10 percent more Jesse Pinkman and you’ve got James Franco in the new movie “Spring Breakers.” He enters the film like a reptile with bling around his fangs in Act 2 and at that point you just have to roll with it. From there, what you’ve got coming is “Cheerleader Scarface.”

Franco’s non-Italian army

A confession: For the first time in my movie-watching life I entered the theater curious about who would be sitting next to me, guessing chatty teenage girls together, and balding, paunchy men in their 40s and 50s sitting alone. That’s exactly what I got. The opening montage of female flesh and funnels on the beach – with the lens so tight on the action it feels like the cameraman is a discarded flip-flop – made both demographics erupt into hysterical laughter.  Soon enough former Disney actresses smoke enough wacky tobacky in college to make their agents tear up, a well-orchestrated (and directed) robbery happens, more hedonism followed in every crevasse imaginable and absolutely nothing was learned. This is Spring Break, you’re told, and dialogue and clothing is optional. But director Harmony Korine wasn’t finished. Franco shows up to raise the stakes, bailing this filly foursome out of jail after a bust in a local hotel.

I suppose this is the spot I should talk about the lead actresses – Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens and Korine’s wife, Rachel. I’ve never seen one frame of those House of the Mouse motion pictures or television programs they’ve built their reputations on, so I only have a vague sense of the image they are gleefully torpedoing here. The director divvies up the juicy lines and lines of cocaine fairly evenly during Spring Break week, and also plops the group into what must have been real-life, improvisational situations (a roof-wrecking party in a hotel room, a neighborhood pool hall) and not one of them drops the ball completely. Not knowing anything about the girls beyond still images in US Weekly, I thought Gomez has the most potential for a long acting career. Her character Faith is a student at a bible college, the angel on one shoulder, and the one Franco’s “Alien” character zeroes in on like the big, bad wolf. She also looked 11 years old to me and the sweetness has not quite left her eyes, and I was relieved to see Faith flee to safety.

Innocent or cruel, I think women make better voice-over artists than men in movies, and Korine does a fine homage to Sissy Spacek’s small-town-girl VO work in Terrence Malik’s “Badlands” by having his actresses talk about happiness and connecting with others as footage of debauchery and violence plays out. The spine of the second half of “Spring Breakers” is Alien surmising these girls are down with a life of crime to snap out of the monotony of their lives, and exploiting that. There are scowling rivals to gun down. Stacks of cash to be made. Spring Break. “Money. And big-old booty. The American Dream,” in Alien’s words. At least that’s what I noticed. The film is a crystal bowl that slipped off the table, and it’s up to you to pick up the shard you see first.

Whatever you scoop up, at the very least it’s well-made. There is luminous cinematography involved (a darkened college lecture and the tracking shot of the robbery spring to mind). The editing is edgy and non-linear without being distracting – making you feel like you’re piecing together events from a hard day’s night the morning after. The performers were willing to go all-in for the director – willing to dress up in pink ski masks armed with heavy artillery while dancing around a crooning Franco. Yeah, it’s that kind of loony tunes and I won’t recommend it very highly, but not a frame of it is boring.

There’s an old line about how most people work, others are lucky enough to have a career, and a precious few find their calling. Korine impressed me with his debut screenplay “Kids” back in the 1990s, and it’s obvious indie filmmaking is his calling. Perhaps after another not-quite-mainstream hit a whale like Marvel Studios will allow him to make, say, an Iron Man 4. He has the requisite skill to stage it, but I doubt Korine directing something of that scale will come to pass. He’d have Tony Stark smoking out of a Cabbage Patch Kid bong.

One last note for NFL fans: I thought the judge in the courtroom scene looked familiar and after an IMDB search discovered the role was played by John McClain, a longtime pro football writer for the Houston Chronicle. Seemingly random casting – a sports journalist from Texas flown in to shoot one scene in Florida – but it worked. I felt that way about long stretches of “Spring Breakers.”

1. If you find yourself on a blind date, never lead with a Holocaust joke. In fact, it’s best not to lead with a joke at all (Question: “How many Vietnam veterans does it take to screw in a light bulb?” Answer: “YOU WEREN’T THERE, MAN!”) until your date has a better appreciation of who you are and your sense of humor. And that, dear reader, is where Doug Gottlieb went wrong last night.

It wasn’t that Gottlieb’s joke was partiuclarly offensive. To refresh, it was just after 7 p.m. and CBS’ NCAA studio show, with host Greg Gumbel and analysts Greg Anthony, Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley –all of whom are black — as well as Gottlieb, who is Jewish white, appeared onscreen. Gumbel introduced Gottlieb second, after Anthony, and his very first remarks were, “I’m just here to bring diversity to this set, give kind of the white man’s perspective.”

Watch as both Gumbel and Smith look behind themselves as if to say, “Where did that come from?” Anthony stares intently at the desk and mumbles, “Okay.” Barkley chuckles.

You can’t spell “Gottlieb” without G-L-I-B. Anthony’s reacting as if Doug just swiped his credit card (oh, too soon?)

It was not THAT offensive. Not at all. It’s just that Gottlieb is not only the token white guy, he’s the token never-played-in-the-NBA guy. He’s the guy on that set with the least big network experience. It’s kind of like being the weakest member of the gang at a rumble and calling out the other gang. Know your place.

Also, Gottlieb noted just before the joke that this was a time of “the cream rising to the crop.” So, he was already distracted by the joke he was about to unleash.

A few moments later, as Kenny Smith attempted to pull a Denzel Washington and safely land this upside-down aircraft (he is “The Jet”, after all) before it completely crashed and burned, Gottlieb interrupted to ask why everyone was so uptight. Smith handled this expertly: “You jumped right in,” said Smith, then waited a beat. “I’m free, I might add.”

Finally, let’s note that the entire show began with a thinly disguised ad-parading-as-an-inspirational intro for the film “42”, which is being released by Warner Bros., a sister company of CBS. The film, of course, traces the route of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier back when baseball was America’s No. 1 sport. I don’t know if Gottlieb was attempting to leapfrog on that moment or not, but either way it just made his quip more ironic and awkward.

2. Syracuse topples No. 1 seed Indiana with its 2-3 zone. When Jim Boeheim has long, athletic defenders like these and they’re really motivated, the Orange look unbeatable. The Hoosiers commited a season-high 18 turnovers, Cody Zeller texted his agent midway through the second half to inform him that he’d be remaining in Bloomington one more year (!), and Tom Crean did an awful job of preparing his team. Next time, Hoosiers, let Norman Dale lead you to the Sweet 16.

Block-a-Zeller Center? Stay in school, Cody. Stay in school.

By the way, thanks to The Big Lead for this video of the Crean-Boeheim postgame handshake. Is this the part where the NCAA and conference commissioners remind us that coaches are molders of young men?

3. The fortnight in billionaire hedge-fund trader Steve Cohen. Last week, agrees to pay $600 million fine to SEC to make insider-trader allegations disappear (if you haven’t been paying attention lately, Lady Justice’s new slogan is “What’s in YOUR wallet?”). Tuesday: purchases a Picasso painting for $155 million. Purchases a $60 million home in East Hampton without even seeing it in person first. Mr. Cohen’s shopping spree should be all the proof you need that a reliable penis-enhancement surgical procedure remains a decade or two away.

“More is better” — It’s not complicated

As this story argues, both HSBC and now Mr. Cohen have figured out a way to avoid prosecution/incarceration. Make the US government a financial offer it can’t refuse. America: Where freedom is now for sale.

4. A Forbes survey proclaims Austin, Tex., as the second-fastest growing city in the United States. And, who knows, the Lone Star State’s capital might be No. 1 if all those Longhorn basketball players were not fleeing. Yesterday Sheldon McLellan, who led Texas in scoring most of the season, announced that he would transfer. Backup guard Jaylen Bond announced he would transfer earlier this month while sophomore poing guard Myck Kabongo, who led the ‘horns in scoring but sat out 23 games due to an NCAA suspension, likely will turn pro.

Austin powers up the rankings of fastest-growing cities

5. In this piece on the Today show travails, Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times gets it exactly right: Ann Curry should never have been promoted to No. 1 anchor in the first place, Matt Lauer is very good at his job but he won’t recover soon from how Curry was excised from the show, and Savannah Guthrie is good enough and pretty enough but she just fails to stand out.

Earlier today Lauer tried to have some fun with the controversy by tweeting, “@savannahguthrie Me storming out of the office after your middle finger salute”. Maybe he was just trying to offer the white man’s perspective to this controversy.

Meanwhile, CNN just announced a morning news team of Chris Cuomo and Kate Bolduan (me neither). Right now, if I had a network, Anderson Cooper would be the face of my morning show. And I’d actually ask Julia Boorstin of CNBC to be the co-host. Either her or Kate Upton.

Reserves

Two friends in the business, Jerry Palm and Doug Tammaro, were responsible for the best laugh Twitter has provided me in quite some time last night. Tweeting during the second half of last night’s Indiana-Syracuse contest, Palm, a CBSSports.com guru and Purdue alum, tweeted, “When was the last time Syracuse got a shit off?” Tammaro, a Sports Info Director at Arizona State, instantly fired back, “Damn, where is autocorrect when you need it?”

I’d show you Jerry’s tweet, but he has since deleted it. I’ve got to admit, my friends disappoint me. It was a Twitter misfire (like yours, Josh Elliott), but you NEED TO OWN IT. Your jobs are to inform people. When you erase the news you make, how do you hold others any more accountable for doing the same? It’s a little thing, but never erase the record. The record is what it is.

Richard Deitsch is correct. This is a solid read.

If you want to make money in the next two weeks, bet against the Phoenix Suns. Every night. And bet on the Sacramento Kings.

REMOTE PATROL

Sweet 16 Hoopage

CBS  and TBS, 7 p.m.

Watch as Doug Gottlieb opens with a Crucifixion joke! Michigan-Duke is the game I’m most looking forward to (The Fab Five vs. Hurley/Laettner contest from 1992 will be referenced) (UPDATE: My bad: As you know, Duke faces Michigan State while Kansas plays Michigan), but we’ll all be watching to see how close FGCU can make it against the Gators. Will Amanda Marcum get more screen time than Julie Boeheim did last night? And if their husbands’ teams meet later in the tourney, can someone arrange a walk-off?

Dunk City may be the fastest-growing metropolis in America

XXX

Starting Five

Steakateria double today. This will be as brief as my Calvin Klein undies (TMI!)

1. Streak Ends at 27 Miami loses at Chicago, and thus endeth the second-longest win streak in NBA history. Former Dookies Luol Deng and Carlos Boozer scored 28 and 21, respectively. Somewhere, just out of habit, Mercury Morris popped open a bottle of Dom.

2. Life keeps getting better for Oscar Pistorius, whose bail has been eased. He may now compete internationally in track meets while awaiting trial. A moment now as we update the status of Reeva Steenkamp… oh, yes, still dead. If I’m the starter at Oscar’s next race, I’m firing the pistol four times.

3. From the “Print is dead, it just doesn’t know it yet” files: The Sporting News is laying off at least a dozen writers and editors, including my old AOL Fanhouse colleagues Lisa Olson and David Whitley. The analogy of polar bears looking for an iceberg on which to rest while treading water in a steadily warming polar region applies here.

“So I won’t be covering the Final Four this year?”

4. You know, on second thought, give me a home where the buffalo don’t roam…

5. Rick Reilly to Aaron Craft: “Could you see how some people might find you annoying, not just in basketball but in real life?” Craft to teammate: “I think he’s asking you, Deshaun.” Sportswriters, do the following: 1) Pull out old “Bobby Hurley” feature. Step 2: Insert “Aaron Craft” wherever you see “Bobby Hurley”. Step 3: Press “Send”.

REMOTE PATROL

East Regional semifinal, Syracuse vs. Indiana

CBS 9:45 p.m.

Let’s replay the 1987 national championship game! The Orange beat a No. 1 ranked team back in January, when they edged Louisville by two at the Yum Center. Tonight they’ll take on Cody Zeller and top-ranked Hoosiers in the Sweet Sixteen.

Starting Five

1. “You heard me, rabbit! I said, ‘Draw!'”

So I wanted to tell you about the 0-0 draw between USA and Mexico in the World Cup qualifier last night (this is apparently important stuff on a night when the Heat don’t play and Amanda Marcum’s husband is not coaching), and I was looking for a pop culture reference. Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian”? Too violent, but you know, the USA does cross into Mexico and wreak havoc, so the analogy rang somewhat true. Then I thought I recalled Yosemite Sam (“The toughest hombre to cross the Rio Grande…and I don’t mean Mahatma Ghandi”) barking the line atop this item — but I was unable to locate it.

So, yes, the USA picked up an important draw at Azteca Stadium

However, I did unearth this 91-second clip that reminds me all over again of the genius of Mel Blanc. We were five year-old kids watching this stuff, most of the jokes flying way over our heads, but who cares? Eventually, we got them. There’s no Smurf/Care Bear/Spongebob inanity going on here. Everything from bad puns (“Sue City”) to gin rummy. If I ever have children, they will be fed a steady diet of Bugs Bunny and we’ll refer to each other as “you darn  galoot.”

2. Stevie Nicks: Bella Donna. Delaware hoops: Delle Donne.

In her final home game as a Blue Hen, Elena Delle Donne (no relation to Roseanne Rosanadana) scores 33 points to lead Delaware to an upset of North Carolina and a spot in the Sweet Sixteen. The 6-6 senior eclipsed the 3,000-point mark and is now just one victory away from an Elite Eight showdown versus Geno Auriemma and the Huskies. It’ll take an upset of Kentucky to do so –and maybe some more referee support; as Tar Heel coach Sylvia Hatchell said after last night’s game in Newark, Del., “I wish Delaware good luck when they get on a neutral court”… oooh, suh-nap!)

Other Blue Hens of note include Joe Flacco and Jeff Pearlman

ESPN’s Rebecca Lobo, erstwhile sunny-faced post player who also led a then-nowhere program to the Sweet Sixteen (and beyond) back in 1995, tweeted this after last night’s game: “Can’t remember the last time I enjoyed seeing someone play as much as Delle Donne. The best part: She acts like she’s been there before.”

In other words, she would have made a perfect Husky (by the way, B., I can remember the last time: her name is Diana Taurasi).

Kind of a shame that it’ll take a near-miracle (newphemism alert: a “nearacle“) to see Delle Donne go up against Brittney Griner (who also scored 33 points last night0. And even more of a shame that this never happened.

3. The Coach K tree is growing more branches. Former point guard –and arguably the best leader Mike Krzyzewski ever coached — Bobby Hurley accepts the head coaching job at Buffalo while another former guard, Chris Collins, has agreed to terms with Northwestern… a school that has never ONCE been to the NCAA tournament, even though the first NCAA championship game was played on its Evanston campus. Meanwhile, Jay Bilas is THE keeper of the flame of college hoops at ESPN. So where the hell is Christian Laettner these days?

Meet Teddy Greenstein’s new best friend.

Turns out that he runs the Christian Laettner Basketball Academy, which as you can see, offers discounts to players from Kentucky, Connecticut and North Carolina “for causing you all so much pain, agony and hate over his four-year career at Duke.”

4. He’s taking the black. Chase Hilgenbrinck, who played soccer at Clemson and then professionally in both Chile and then the MLS, is a 5th-year seminarian. If only he weren’t so homely looking, maybe Chase would have found a girlfriend.

Carmela Soprano has already requested he be assigned to her parish. As the girls would say, “Fr. Whatawaste.”

5. One of my very favorite people at the steakateria (and the list keeps growing) is a hyperkinetic actor named Dan who, besides looking like the lead singer of a rock band and having more manic energy than anyone I’ve ever met, is absolutely obsessed with baseball. So Dan has implored me to mention one Yasiel Puig, a 22 year-old Cuban outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers who batted .526 in the Cactus League this spring with an .842 slugging percentage. Yesterday the Dodgers sent Puig down to their double-A affiliate, with manager Don Mattingly noting that Puig “didn’t look happy” about the news. Mattingly calls Puig “an unpainted Ferrari.” In a year or so Puig will own a few of those.

When Yasiel makes the Show, the bleachers in the outfield behind him will be known as The Puig Sty

Reserves

Wide receivers Davonte Neal and Justin Ferguson are transferring from Notre Dame. And just when Bookstore Basketball is starting up. If you’re going to transfer from Notre Dame, fine. If you’re going to endure January, February and March in South Bend only to depart when the weather is finally improving and the coeds are only wearing one layer of sweatpants to class, I question your sanity. It has been noted that with the departures of Aaron Lynch, Gunner Kiel and now Neal, the Irish have lost the top three players from their 2012 recruiting class. Lynch and Neal left for (mostly) hometown honey-related reasons (i.e., fatherhood), why Kiel wanted to be someplace where he could start.

Neal in the national championship game.

As noted here before, the Washington Wizards are one of the best, if not the best, bad teams in NBA history. The Wizards are 26-44, but when oft-injured John Wall, who scored a career-high 47 points in Monday night’s defeat of Memphis, is in the lineup they are 21-16. From 4-28 on January 6 after losing by 28 to the Heat, they have gone 22-16.

This is a squad that has now beaten Memphis, Oklahoma City (whom it visits tonight), Miami, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta, Milwaukee, both New York teams, both Los Angeles teams, and Denver (twice).  In other words, the Wizards have beaten seven of the eight playoff-bound teams in the East and six of the eight playoff-bound teams (as of today) in the West.

They’ve also lost to Charlotte. Twice.

Still, Randy Wittman is correct: They’re no circus.

John Wall (the “ters” is silent)

Here are the standings for both conferences. Washington has beaten every team that is bold-faced.

EAST

Miami

New York

Indiana

Brooklyn

Chicago

Atlanta

Boston

Milwaukee

WEST

San Antonio

Oklahoma City

Denver

LAC

Memphis

Golden State

Houston

LAL

Remote Patrol

Miami Heat at Chicago Bulls

ESPN 8 p.m.

Wouldn’t it be just like 5-7 Nate Robinson to ruin the anticipation of the Easter Sunday showdown between the Heat and San Antonio Spurs? Miami has this bad habit of falling behind in the first half on the road recently, but against teams such as Orlando and Cleveland, it has not cost them. Tonight, versus Chicago, such a flawed first half might be more costly.

Will Nate flex versus the Heat?

XXX