Starting Five

1. We are leaving this spot blank in honor of college basketball, whose No. 1-ranked schools appear only too eager to vacate this position. In the past five weeks Duke, Louisville, Duke again, Michigan and now Indiana have all lost when ranked No. 1 in the nation. The Hoosiers were outscored 13-2 in the final four minutes in Champaign and lost, 74-72, last night to the Illini.

But, to quote Bill Murray in “Meatballs”, “It just doesn’t matter!” Heck, Kansas, another former No. 1 who on Wednesday lost to Big 12 bottom-dweller TCU, could lose to NIU, the Topeka YMCA and to the first team Dr. Naismith (who was not a MEDICAL doctor, but whatevs) ever put on the floor (back in Springfield) and the Jayhawks would still qualify for the NCAA Tournament’s 68-team field.

Tripper Harrison would not be flummoxed by a February loss

2. South Dakota State’s Nate Wolters scores 53 points, the most prolific outburst of the D-I season (in fact, the highest scoring output since 2009), in an 80-74 victory. The performance by the  Jackrabbit guard, who drained nine threes, is even more impressive when you consider that he did it against Indiana Purdue-Fort Wayne, which is like, what, three schools?

Imagine how many more points Wolters might have scored were he not wearing a skirt

3. To paraphrase Stefon, “This New York Post cover story has EVERYTHING: a suicidal George Washington Bridge leaper (making the jump on her 22nd birthday), a villainess with a Van in her surname (Victoria Van Thunen), a nasty Facebook post that may have incited the leap, a boy toy at the center of the love triangle with an Aryan name (Drew Heissenbuttel!), a suicide note in which the victim –Ashley Riggitano — forbids five of her friends to attend her funeral (Snap!) and, of course, a vintage NY Post hed: “Leaping Beauty.”

4. I’ve rarely –okay, I’ve never — sided with the Ku Klux Klan on anything, but I’m with them on this one. Three Memphis parks are being renamed in an effort by the city to distance itself from its Confederate past. The parks’ names are not even racist (e.g., Forrest Park is being renamed Health Sciences Park…yawn), but a nine-member city council voted 9-0 in favor of changing the names.

The Civil War, slavery, racism, etc., all of it is woven into the fabric of the South. You couldn’t have “To Kill A Mockingbird”, for example, without racism.  The names of the parks are not in themselves racist (It’s not as if any of them are named “Fighting Irish” park, after all), so I’m not sure where the pain is coming from.

 The Klan being the Klan, of course, they are planning on staging a rally to protest. Oh, and the “Exalted Cyclops” (wasn’t he in those Sinbad movies I saw as a lad? Or is that someone’s pet name for his…never mind…) is planning to attend. Guys, just make sure that the eye holes in your hoods are properly spaced.

5. So, Sports Illustrated went to Antarctica for its 2013 swimsuit issue. Let the record reflect that your “humble” author was the first SI staffer to set foot on the continent at the bottom of the earth.

My good friend Scott Dvorak, who won the 1997 edition of The Last Marathon in Antarctica.