Wow, this basketball team has become completely special. I’ll put our brand of play against anybody’s in the country. We are an electrically fun team to watch. The shooting is out of the roof good right now. Saturday night we went to  “the Tad Pad” and upset the Ole Miss Rebels, a team that is projected to be in the tournament by “Joey Brackets” Lunardi. Ole Miss came into the game with an 11-6 conference mark and needed to beat us to insure a double bye in the SEC tournament. It was also their senior night, so they had a lot to play for. So did we. We wanted to win and secure the highest seeding we could get in the tournament. We took care of business in a big time way with an 86-77 victory over the Rebs to finish the regular season 19-12 overall and 9-9 in the conference. That’s pretty outstanding considering we were 1-7 in the conference heading into February. We finished 8-2 in our last 1o with the only two losses coming in overtime to UT at home and on the road to Florida by 3. Both games were winnable, but that’s OK, because the way we finished, we’ve become the hottest team in the SEC besides the team that plays at Memorial North in Lexington. We wouldn’t have to play them until the finals of the tournament if we can matriculate that far. We play UT in the second round, our first game,  on Thursday @ 7 PM ET/6 PM CT on the SEC Network.

Back to Saturday night’s classic. Riley was shooting like the Riley before he sustained his broken nose in Decemeber. He’s been playing a great overall game, but his shot came really alive in Oxford. Riley was 8-of-13 from the field and 5-of-9 from triple range to finish with 19 points. Riley also dished out eight assists and committed zero turnovers. Just a sensational game from a sensational player. WB4 added 15 on 4-of-5 from the field, 2-of-2 from trifecta and 5-of-6 from the line. Wade also pulled down eight boards. Our guards, particularly WB4 MFD, and Riley some too, are excellent rebounders. James Siakam played an exceptional game with 14 points and nine pulls. MFD added 14 which included 4-of-6 from trifecta. Luke finished the night with 10 and Damian added 8. WB4 had the play of the night when he drove the floor in the closing seconds of the half, made a spin move, and sank a beautiful trifecta that extended the lead to 46-33 at the half when it looked like Ole Miss may be gaining some momentum. Watching the guys go into halftime, they just looked pumped and there was a hop in their steps. Huge play by Wade. We just have some awesome shooters. And that makes the game so much better. There’s good defense in college basketball,  which helps you win a lot of games, but good offense makes the game a lot more interesting. We pass it and we shoot it outstandingly. Riley, MFD and Luke can hit ’em from anywhere. Matthew Fisher Davis likes either side of the key, but he can sink a deep one in the corner. He’s such a versatile shooter. Riley is the same. He can sink it from anywhere. Luke really likes the corner and is hotter than he’s ever been  from three. Wade can get it done from three. He’s been heating up from deep lately. Looks like his three point shooting is on the money. I almost forgot about Shelton Mitchell. Shelton runs the floor extremely well at the point, he executes precise passes that lead to a bucket, and he is so good at driving and finishing at the rim. He did it a couple of times on Saturday. Love the combination of Wade and Shelton at the point.

We ended up shooting 13-of-23 from three (56%) and  54 % from the field (30-of-55). We out-rebounded them 36-32, which was huge. James pulled down six off the offensive glass, many at critical times. He’s so clutch. We held them to 42 percent from the field and 6-of-21 from three (29%). We shot 68% from the line, 13-of-19, not our best, so we need to get better at the line against Tennessee. But everything else was terrific. Love where this team is at. I’m not counting out anything right now. The NCAA tournament is certainly attainable. We’ll have to win the tournament most likely, but that’s possible, with this youthful, hard working, energetic, confident and talented team. Our guys are not intimidated by anyone. I’ll put them up against anyone in the country and that includes the team from the North.

Baseball didn’t have its best weekend this past weekend going 1-2 on the left coast. After a nice 6-0 shutout victory on Friday night over No.4 UCLA, we lost two in a row to a pair of very good teams. Saturday, we lost the USC, 6-5, on a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth, and Sunday we lost to No.6 TCU, 4-2. Not our best. Not exactly sure what’s going on with Hayden Stone. He’s not been pitching lately. Don’t know if it’s performance based or what exactly. Hayden sure was a key part of us winning the national championship last year, and while he had a rocky start at the beginning of this season, he started a mid-week game a couple of weeks ago and pitched well. Sure would like to see Hayden get back in our pitching rotation on the back end as our closer. Philip Pfeifer has been pitching well out of the pen, but Hayden is stellar. So not sure what the issue is there. We play Quinnipiac out of Hamden, Conneticut today and tomorrow weather permitting, and Arkansas comes to the Hawk for a weekend series this weekend to begin the SEC season. Arkansas is 9-3 presently. Quinnipiac is 2-6. Hopefully we can get it together this week and this weekend. Baseball is now 11-3 overall. Rhett Wiseman is leading the team in hitting @ .419. Hitting has been excellent overall. Just lost a couple of tough losses to two very good teams over the weekend. USC is now 14-1 and now No.13 in the country. Time to get it back together. We are now ranked No.5 in the D-1.com College Baseball poll. Florida is No.1, TCU is 2, Virginia is 3 and LSU is 4. So we have our work cut out for us going forward.

Some good news just in: looks like the Bears will be keeping Jay on the roster this season. New offensive coordinator Adam Gase, who worked with Peyton Manning for the last two years, will try to design plays that work for Jay’s strengths. I still believe Jay can be an elite quarterback in the National Football League. Very happy he will be a Bear next year, according to a report by ESPN. I just keep thinking about Tony Romo, who had been much maligned the past several years for making the bad play at critical times. Well Romo, at 34 this past season, came into his own, and had a sensational year, taking the Cowboys to the second round of the playoffs making clutch play after clutch play and putting up some outstanding numbers. Jay will be 32 April 29th, so his best football could be ahead of him. The Bears have a new regime with the steady, solid leadership of John Fox as head coach and the excellent, tough-minded Vic Fangio as defensive coordinator. Fox is an excellent defensive coach, and Fangio, who comes to the Bears from the 49ers, where he had excellent, physical defenses, will bring that tough defensive mindset that the Bears have always had until the last couple of years. I really liked Marc Trestman, but his defenses under Mel Tucker, who is now the secondary coach at Alabama, were just not very good. We never could count on the defense to stop opposing offenses, and particularly, ARodg and Green Bay. Fangio brings a blue collar toughness to the defense. There are still good players on both sides of the ball. Excited to see what Gase can do with Jay. Tucker is a good coach, but just couldn’t seem to get the defense to play up to Bears’ standards. He’ll do well at Alabama most likely, but the Bears needed to make changes even though Trestman is an excellent offensive coach. Trestman takes over as offensive coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens as their previous OC, Gary Kubiak, left to be the head coach of the Broncos. Trestman will do well with the Ravens. They should be an excellent team again this coming year.

Football is back at it in spring drills as the team returned to the indoor facility yesterday for more work. Spring game is set for March 21st. I love the energy that Derek and Coach Ludwig have brought to the defense and offense respectively. Derek is a master motivator and a keen defensive mind, and Coach Ludwig is extremely solid and smart. The players are really playing with a high energy level. Our young coaches, wide receivers coach Cortez Hankton and safeties coach Marc Mattioli, have also brought high energy to the team. Like the talent we have, particularly on defense. Our running backs are going to need to stay healthy and we need a couple of quarterbacks to step up this spring, and the wide receivers need to step up and the oline needs to be more physical, but we have the makings of a productive offense and a stellar defense. This quarterback competition might run into August drills. The spring game may create some separation though. We’ll see how Johnny, Patton, Wade and Stank fare in the Black and Gold game. It could be a pretty good barometer of who will be under center against Western Kentucky on Saturday, September 5th. We play Georgia the next Saturday at home, Sept. 12th, so we’ll be tested right out of the gate. Western Kentucky played in the Bahamas Bowl last year and came back from a ton down and almost won the game at the end, losing 49-48. The Hilltoppers scored a touchdown on a pass and a bunch of laterals to pull within one point as time expired. Their coach, Jeff Brohm, decided to go for two and get the victory. It was kind of a surprising decision. The two point conversion failed. Looked like Western had all the momentum with that touchdown and could have taken the game into overtime and won. That didn’t seem like the right decision, but they had a good year. They finished  8-5 with a huge win over previously unbeaten Marshall, 67-66 in overtime the last game of the season. Marshall finished the season 13-1 and defeated Northern Illinois (Are you kiddin me? Herbstreit three years ago when Northern Illinois was in the hunt for a BCS game) in the Boca Raton Bowl, 52-23. They can play some serious offense, and Brohm is an excellent offensive coach. Georgia, of course, will have the awesome Nick Chubb and the emerging Sony Michel at running back and the talented team they always have. They are breaking in a new quarterback though.

The tennis team won a three matches over the weekend. We upset previously 11th ranked Florida last Friday and we defeated Auburn and Ball State on Sunday. Auburn was ranked 35th in the country by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. We were 14th last week. We could move up as the new rankings are released today. The No.1 doubles team in the country, Austin Gonzales and Ryhs Johnson, keep winning. We play @ Texas A&M Friday and @ LSU Sunday. A&M is No.10 in the country and LSU is No.28, so it’s a big weekend for the guys.

Golf team is in action at the Talis Park Challenge in Naples, Florida Saturday and Sunday. Will have more on that later in the week. Last Wednesday’s Golfstat.com poll had us at No.5 nationally. The next poll comes out tomorrow.

The women’s basketball team lost in the SEC tournament to Kentucky 67-61 after defeating Alabama in the first round, 66-56. The girls were really young this year with no senior on the team and five freshmen and one redshirt freshman on the team, some of whom played a lot of minutes. The future should be pretty bright. Melanie Balcomb has done an excellent job getting us to the tourney most every year. Hopefully, Melanie can get us back in the tourney next year. We finished the season 15-16 overall and 5-11 in the conference.

Brandt finished tied for 17th at the World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championships at the Donald’s Doral Course, the Blue Monster. It was quite a tournament and Dustin Johnson, who said afterwards that he knew he was “great,” captured the title. This confidence some of these PGA players have sounds a little unusual, almost awkward. I’ve never heard more self confidence spewed out. Would be nice if somebody says, “It was a good day,” instead of “I was awesome today,” or “I knew I was great” like Johnson said. Brandt does a lot better than that though they all need to tone it down on  the confidence meter. They’re arrogant and sound really stupid.

Brandt shot 74-73-70-72, one over for the tournament. He’ll play this week at the Valspar Championship in Palm Harbor, Fl. in the Tampa Bay area. Brandt is No.9 in the Fed Ex standings and, more importantly, needs to have a good week this  week at the Valspar and next week in the Arnie as he hones his game up for the Masters.

Jon Curran had an excellent weekend at the Puerto Rico Open, the PGA tour event for players not in the world top 70 who played at Doral. Jon made it to a five way playoff to win the title and lost out to Alex Cejka in the playoff. Still a stellar performance by Jon and he’ll be in the field this week at the Valspar. Jon is presently 70th in the Fed Ex standings. A player needs to be in the top 125 of the standings at the end of the year to earn his card for next season, or get in the top 125 in money earned this season at the end of the year. Jon needs to keep playing well. Wow, it’s competitive out there.

Luke List finished tied for fourth at the Karibana Championship in Columbia this past weekend. With his fourth place finish, Luke moved to No.22 in the Web.com “the 25.” The top 25 players at the end of the season automatically qualify for the PGA tour next season. Luke was on the tour two years ago and I know he wants to get back. He’s 30, so he needs to get this done. Luke is playing this week in the Brasil Champions presented by HSBC. Jon Curran actually won this tournament last year, which was instrumental in him making the tour. Hopeful that Luke can get in the winner’s circle soon, maybe this weekend.

Will have more on our game with UT and everything else going on in a couple of days. Thanks a lot.