Link it over to QuickSlants.com where I'll be running a live blog on the day's tournament action and poking some fun at my own brackets along the way.  Should be a good time.

Feel free to stop by!
 

Quick Slants is on the move!

Though I'm still playing with the bubble wrap and tweaking things to perfection, I'm very excited to announce the launch of QuickSlants.com.  As soon as I can cure the excessive whitespace issue on the page, I think it's headed for great things.

For the last year and a half or so, the "QuickSlants.com" URL has pointed to this site; however, it will now point to a newly created page that will be the home of all Quick Slants blogging activity.  I've got a couple tricks up my sleeve, as well as a few guest postings in the works from some writers you might actually recognize.  And if not, please act as if you do for moral support.

Anyway, feel free to check it out.  We'll be getting into the March Madness swing of things and revealing our tournament picks, and, GASP, our rationale for said picks long before Thursday's tip-off!

-Ty
 

Some “Quick Slants” from yesterday, the “off” day, and the final session of games slated to hit Philadelphia on Sunday…

- The weather in Philadelphia has now shifted from “in-season” to “unseasonably cold.”  After walking about ten city blocks on Saturday to find what a friend called a “good sports bar,” we were horrified to learn that it had been rented out by a group of rugby fans who were watching some sort of special event on every monitor in the joint.  Plus, there was also a ridiculous $20 cover, which clearly forced us to another spot.  In hindsight, all I got from the journey was a wicked case of post-nasal drip.  The odds of a possible upper respiratory infection have now dropped to 2:1.

-  Arizona fans should be happy to know that I have not spotted Hassan Adams at any local bars.  With that said, I think Arizona has an excellent chance of knocking off Villanova today.  It peeves me to say, especially because Nova was my national championship pick a week ago, but if Zona comes out with the same intensity they did on Friday, it could be a very interesting game.  Don’t be surprised if the game goes to OT.

(On a side note – is there anything more frustrating than two teams playing against each other with the exact same nickname?)

-  I said this yesterday, but I now expect Connecticut to run the table and win the national championship.  Kentucky won’t even be a speed bump.  Sorry, Ashley.  Final score prediction:  85-69.

-  My bracket is officially on life support.  It’s only a matter of time before I start plummeting in the standings of my “Us Versus Them” group here on FOXSports.com.  I guess it happens to the best of us.  I did, however, manage to pick Wichita State in the Sweet Sixteen, which made me feel a lot better about myself.  Right now, I still have three of my final four teams in tact:  Texas, Connecticut, and Villanova.  I’m still waiting for the egg that Kansas laid to hatch.  I swear, I’ll never pick them again.

-  Fearless upset picks of the day:  Georgetown over Ohio State and Bucknell over Memphis.  Just a hunch.  You can throw stones at me if I’m wrong.  If I was a betting man with more income, I’d throw two bills at the 8.5 points Bucknell is getting.

-  If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone praise J.J. Redick yesterday…. I’d have one dollar.  Here’s what I don’t get:  why does everyone hate the guy?  I realize there is strong anti-Duke sentiment out there, but people act like he’s the antichrist.  I mean seriously, what’s the big deal?  Meanwhile, Adam Morrison can slam basketballs off his head, be visibly cockier, and have the worst mustache we’ve seen in 30 years, and still be a crowd favorite.  For the record, I don’t have a problem with either guy, but can someone please explain this to me?

-  Speaking of haters, I think there’s an outside chance that someone here in Philly will physically attack Terrell Owens when he comes back to town this season.  The people here aren’t talking about it publicly, but they are absolutely ENRAGED that he signed with the Cowboys.  Words cannot express how much they hate the Cowboys – Philadelphians feel about the Cowboys the way most people feel about Satan.  This situation has powder keg potential.

-  Yesterday’s most curious happening:  A well-dressed man in a leather sport coat pulling up a chair and sitting next to me and my friend Feldman before randomly flopping to the floor like a dead fish, laying on the ground as hotel employees called for help, then standing up in a jiffy, dusting off, and walking away.  I felt like I got Punk’d.

More after the games...

It’ll go down as another near-miss.  Another giant dodging a bullet.  Another 16-seed covering the spread.

But there wasn’t a fan in Philly’s Wachovia Center on Friday night that won’t remember the first 30 minutes of Albany-Connecticut as the most exciting sports event they’ve seen since the 1980 Miracle on Ice – or at least the last time they watched ESPN Classic.

From a fan’s perspective, expectations were high that Friday’s first session would produce two situations:  a nail biter between Arizona and Wisconsin, and a razor-sharp performance by Allan Ray, Randy Foye, and the Villanova Wildcats.  But the collective energy of the arena was reduced to anguish when Arizona blew the doors off Wisconsin and Villanova struggled mightily with a Monmouth squad that treated the ball as if it were a hot potato.

Needless to say, after the first session of games on Friday and the worst 80-minutes of basketball I’ve ever seen, there was no impetus to return to the arena after dinner, especially with half of the city already knee-deep in St. Patty’s Day festivities.  The only reason any of us cared about Kentucky-UAB was because of our bracket pools.  The only reason I cared about Connecticut-Albany was because I brought my laptop, and Marcus Williams was in town. 

Nonetheless, my friends and I came back.  I’m glad we did.

From the get-go, Connecticut-Albany had a big brother-little brother feel to it – the overwhelming perception was that the Huskies were just taking longer than expected to hit their stride, at which point they’d lay a hurting on the Great Danes worthy of its own FCC regulations.  Statistics backed up the assumption -- number one’s being undefeated against 16-seeds since the inception of the tournament.  The outcome seemed a foregone conclusion.

However, the mood in the arena shifted from one of “let’s get this over with” to “they have a chance!” when Albany came out guns a-blazing and proved that they could actually shoot the ball in key situations.  Though it was the team’s first ever tournament appearance, Albany veered from the touristy happy-to-be-here mentality of Monmouth and seemed poised to achieve a historic set of goals.

And the crowd reciprocated.  We didn’t know faces or names – we didn’t need to.  We gave standing ovations at every break.  We gasped with every shot.  We cheered as loud as humanly possible for a team we never knew existed.  Believe it or not, we didn’t even care about what it would mean for our brackets.  Honestly, we couldn’t believe our eyes.

Quite frankly, it was the biggest home game that Albany has ever played.  For 40-minutes, they became our team.

After trailing 31-30 at the start of the second half, the Great Danes went on a miraculous 13-2 run and jumped out to an improbable 10-point lead with Jason Siggers’ three-point jumper, which nearly brought down the house.  The scene was absolutely electric, with middle-aged men high-fiving, fist-pounding, and even hugging each other for something that no bracketologist could’ve possibly foreseen.  Albany fed off the emotion of the arena, going shot-for-shot with Connecticut for the next three minutes, extending their lead at one point to 12 with 11:33 left in the game, and setting the table for the biggest upset in the history of sports.

But then the clock struck twelve. 

For as quickly as we dubbed Albany our new Cinderella, Connecticut stormed back with an inevitable 34-9 charge over the final 11-minutes and snatched victory from the jaws of the Great Danes.  The Huskies reclaimed their inside presence and catapulted back into the lead behind Rudy ####, Denham Brown, and an unconscious Marcus Williams, who seemed physically unable to miss in the closing minutes of Friday’s game.

In the end, it was Connecticut that took the prize, relying on its wealth of talent and never-say-die attitude to solidify its spot as the favorite to cut down the nets.  Championships can’t be won in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, but they certainly can be lost – just ask Iowa, Kansas, and Michigan State.  Big teams step up in big situations, even if it’s not against big competition.  Despite the scare, Connecticut shook off any lingering inconsistencies and stepped up in the most crucial (and unlikely) scenario, eventually winning 72-59.  They’ve validated themselves in my book.  Winners always answer the call.

But I want to thank Albany for reminding me what March Madness is all about.  Thanks for giving me a reason to forget about my already-busted brackets.  Thanks for giving me a reason to cheer.  And though it might’ve been an impossible dream, thanks for making it seem real.

It was fun while it lasted.