Starting Five

1. The University of Akron should win the MAC tournament and should, with a 24-5 record (15-1 in conference) earn a berth in the NCAAs. However, all is in flux now after starting point guard Alex Abreu was arrested and charged with marijuana trafficking. Abreu, who was averaging more than 10 points and six assists per game for the Zips, has been charged with two third-degree felonies and has been suspended from the team.

Anagram alert: “AKRON” becomes “NARKO”

We’ve typed this before but we believe that drug trafficking is the great underreported means with which many scholarship athletes support themselves. Let’s see: You’ve got young men who want spending money, who are not allowed to work, who (for too many) have no financial support from their parents, and who have access to people and materials, especially to people who’d like to get close to them for exploitation purposes. Trust me: there are a few more Alex Abreus out there.

2. New York Yankees: today it’s Mark Teixiera. Eight to ten weeks with a strained wrist. If you’re scoring at home, now Tex is being overpaid to NOT play baseball. When comes the plague of locusts and the parting of the Harlem River? Someone get me Wilhelm on the line. Honestly, even Carl Pavano is shaking his head.

Tex mess

3. Even The Sports Guy loathes First Take. “It’s amazing to me that people get so worked up about ‘First Take’,” Bill Simmons tweeted yesterday. “Who cares? Just don’t watch it. There are like 800 TV channels.”

Simmons’ tweet was aroused by this even-for-First-Take beyond the pale bickerfest between Seattle Seahawk cornerback Richard Sherman and fellow low-blowhard and FT co-host Skip Everhair. Simmons also sent out these two tweets: “I am not defending this segment. I thought it was awful and embarrassing to everyone involved. Seriously.” And this: “But what bothers me about the reaction to this segment is everyone saying that Richard Sherman ‘won.’ Nobody won. Everyone lost. Including ESPN.”

What ever happened to “Let your actions speak for themselves?”

4. So yesterday I penned this column for CollegeSportsScholarships.com on college athletes and travel. Unbeknownst to me a pertinent pilgrimage anecdote was unfolding at the very same time (thanks to @okerland). The University of Maine’s women’s basketball team has, in the wake of a February 26 bus accident that rendered no significant injuries but rattled pretty much everyone, chosen not to participate in the America East conference tournnament this weekend in Albany.

“My recommendation,” said dean of students Robert Dana, “…is that the (team) end its season to spend this time continuing to recuperate. They are back in the UMaine community and that’s what matters.”

Maine stays (see what we did there?)

Who does this Dana guy think he is, acting all sane and stuff? We must note that the Black Bears (4-24) were seeded 8th, and would have been facing No. 1 seed Albany, in the tourney.

5. Reports out of South Bend are that redshirt freshman quarterback Gunner Kiel, the most heralded (and harked) quarterback from the prep class of 2012, is considering a transfer. And why not, if you’re Kiel? He’s sitting behind a QB, Everett Golson, who has three seasons of eligibility remaining and who in his first led the Fighting Irish to the national championship game. There is an incoming QB, Amir Carlisle (my bad: I meant Malik Zaire) who has some serious talent. And, of course, there is always Tommy Rees, who is entering his 9th season at Notre Dame and who will probably still pull out two games for the Irish next autumn.

Kiel over?

Brian Kelly stockpiles QBs. You cannot blame him. As happens at most schools, if they are athletic enough and willing, they find another position. Kiel, a 6-4, 210-pound pro-style QB, could easily bulk up and become a terrific linebacker or tight end if he so desired. If not, he can always go play for Charlie Weis. Or most anyone else. Kiel’s uncle, Blair Kiel, was a four-year starter at quarterback for Notre Dame from 1980-83.

Another era, another major bowl game versus an SEC school with a Kiel in uniform (another Irish loss to said SEC foe)

Also worth noting: This would be the second spring in a row that the Irish lost a player entering his second season who at the time of his recruitment was rated the nation’s top player at his position (Aaron Lynch, DE, now at USF). Lynch left for personal reasons (“Cupid, draw out your bowwwww….”). Kiel, who is a Hoosier native, would be departing for strictly pragmatic reasons. Does he stay in-state and transfer to IU or Purdue? Or does he look around? He still could start for 90% of the schools in the country.

Reserves

This is just awful. A Swiss league hockey player, 33 year-old Ronny Keller, is paralyzed after being checked from behind into the boards.

Kyle Smith of the New York Post is not a fan of my other profession (you know, the one that actually pays). Ignorance and condescension all in one essay. I’d be angry at Kyle, but as someone who has sat in a 9th-floor cubicle of the Newscorp Building (NY Post’s editorial headquarters) and as someone who serves at Manhattan’s top-grossing restaurant, I’ll sate myself knowing that I’m both having more fun and earning more money now.

Kudos to my good friend Jill Montgomery who was dealt a bad hand recently (“Ugh! Men!”) but who is rebounding nicely back in her best time zone. Jilly B., a sideline reporter and studio host who rocked her stint doing sideline work on ESPN’s Big Ten games in the winter of 2011, will be back in the winner’s circle. She’s in the top ten, Roger.

Remote Patrol

Houston Rockets at Golden State Warriors

ESPN 10:30 p.m.

I get excited (okay, not like tail-wagging excited, but at least intrigued) imagining where each of these teams will be in a year or two if they keep their nuclei (Latin, masculine plural “nucleus, nuclei”) together. The Rockets (33-29) with James Harden, Chandler Parsons, Jeremy Lin and the shot-blocking/rebounding potentate that is Omar Asik. And the Warriors (35-27) with Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, David Lee and Andrew Bogut. Fluid, beautiful hoops the way the game was meant to be played. Enjoy.

As the Rev. Al Green would say, “Let’s stay together…”

-The End (For this week)

Starting Five

1. The Miami Heat win their 16th straight, although this time it was a nail-biter versus Orlando. The Chicago Blackhawks rally from a goal down in the third period versus the Avalanche to win 3-2 and maintain their remarkable streak of recording at least one point in every game this season, through 24 games. Chicago is 21-0-3. Keep on keepin’ on, both of you.

2. So, it turns out that Mila Kunis is every bit as cool as her character from “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” The editors of Horse & Hound would be beaming with pride. (“So far you’re doing a great job.” “Really?” “No, but we’ll see what happens.”) (“I should get back to the questions.” “Why? This is WAY more fun for me.”)

She will spend time with the lads at a pub and then watch your football club’s game with you. What’s not to love?

The reward of listening to that video all the way through is that you get to hear Scott ask Mila, “Have you ever dropped trou at a wedding?”

3. Kentucky congressman Rand Paul undertakes a 13-hour filibuster in Congress to protest the administration’s policy on potential use of drone strikes in the United States versus non-combatants. Paul’s address reminds us that once upon a time there was an English band named Talk Talk who released an album entitled “Talk Talk” that had the hit single “Talk Talk.” Hey, it was the height of the New Wave era. Anything with a synthesizer was cool.

Look Who’s Talking

4. So, Sports Illustrated puts out a theme issue, “The 50 Most Powerful People in Sports”, a list that Sports Business Journal has been compiling for years with far less fanfare. A few things:

— Any time you can get Steve Rushin to write your essay, then it was worth the inspiration.

— No. 10 on their list? “Hedge Fund Dude.” I will now spend the next three days in a fit of depression.

— The entire “Game of Thrones” conceit that accompanies the piece was the brainchild of my good friend, terminally hopeless hipster and bonafide good egg Adam Duerson. He is a man of many passions — soccer, RAGBRAI, and the George R.R. Martin series, to name a few– and certainly one of the finest people I have ever met.

You want an Adam Duerson story? Okay. In March of 2004 Adam, writer Jaime Lowe and myself were thrown into an RV and told to travel to as many NCAA (and/or NIT) tournament games as possible for SI On Campus (a great idea with an idiot as its publisher). The pilgrimage took us from Storrs to Spokane to finally, Phoenix (where we had two hours of R&R at my parents’ house, time that was spent with my mom and dad shoveling lasagna down our throats and doing the laundry of two of the three of us [I was the stinky odd man out]).

Adam Duerson: Of course he owns a bear suit. Why wouldn’t he?

Anyway, on St. Patrick’s Day we found ourselves in South Bend, Ind., for an NIT game. Being that it was that day and that McDonald’s serves Shamrock shakes — and that we thought it would be cool to have a non-alcoholic drinking contest — Duerson and I engaged in a Shamrock Shakedown. Now, he’s a lot younger than I am and attended a large state school, so I knew I’d have no chance in this seven-minute, all-you-can-drink battle royale…unless I went tortoise.

Which I did. Adam sprinted out to an early lead, but about five minutes in began grabbing the front of his cranium and moaning, over and over, “Brain freeze. Brain freeze. Brain freeze.” It remains to this day one of my greatest triumphs.

Okay, maybe that was a John Walters story. But I love Duerson.

The people at McDonald’s, by the way, kicked us out.

5. When should you not be allowed to bring a pocket knife to a cabin? When that cabin is part of an aircraft. The TSA has passed a resolution in which small, sharp objects will once more be allowed on commercial flights. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Reserves

The insomniacs’ cut (it’s kind of like the devil’s cut and the angel’s cut, but not really) last night was staying up late enough to listen to the indefatigable, existential Bill Walton do color for Cal-Stanford. First of all, it was a game in which a bench-clearing brawl elicited the ejections of two players and three assistant coaches. Better was listening to Walton berate the lack of traveling calls and wondering exactly why players with the ball in a half-court set are allowed to bull-rush to the hoop without being whistled for an offensive foul. He sounded so old. He sounded…just like me.

As soon as you shoot 22 for 23 in an NCAA championship game, feel free to criticize Big Red. Until then…zip it.

My favorite Walton moment was, when discussing the rule that mandates assistant coaches be automatically ejected for leaving the bench area (even if it is, as it was in this case, to break up a melee), Big Red said, “That’s something that must be discussed at the next measure of evolution.”

Remote Patrol

Today I am devoting this space to the game that should be televised but won’t be. While ESPN –and the WWL does wonderful things with college hoops, I get it– has time to air Penn State at Northwestern (the pair are a combined 5-27 in Big Ten play), it will not air Louisiana Tech (26-3) at New Mexico State (19-10). The Bulldogs boast an 18-game win streak, which I believe is the nation’s longest, while the Aggies are 13-1 in Las Cruces this season, their lone loss coming to ranked in-state rival New Mexico.

Tech’s leading scorer, Raheem Appleby. Who wouldn’t want to watch a dude named Raheem Appleby ball?

Come on, Kerri Potts, throw your weight around. Get this game on the air.

By the way, my MSN Picks page previews tonight’s Thunder at Knicks contest as “a potential NBA Finals preview.” Chico, please.