Trudging towards March

With the elation from the Super Bowl slowly wearing off day by day, Wisconsin sports fans are now desperately searching for something to keep their minds off of winter snow storms, freezing temperatures, midterm exams and crappy jobs. Don't get me wrong. I still enjoy watching the Badgers and Warriors duke it out in my second favorite sport, college basketball (second only behind baseball), but it's not quite enough to distract me from the droves of homework that the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh leaves at my doorstep. . . Now that you've caught your breath from that hysterical laughter, let me try and make you burst out once more. Do you realize which Division I college basketball program in Wisconsin has the best chance of winning their respective conference? Still no clue? Will the UWM Panthers please stand up! I'm not kidding you. Marquette sits in 11th place in the Big East, five games out of first place. The 12th ranked Wisconsin Badgers remain two games out of first and five games back of the Ohio State Buckeyes. But Milwaukee is only one back of Cleveland State with two games to go on the schedule...one of their games happens to be at Cleveland State -- Thursday, to be exact.

Before you get too excited, let me say this: UWM already hosted the Vikings earlier in the conference season and got toasted by 23 points at The Cell. Now let me get you too excited: the Panthers have won seven straight Horizon League games (they lost to non-conference opponent Buffalo in a BracketBuster game last Saturday). Not only this, but they swept the season series against Butler -- yes, the same Butler that was about two inches away from being National Champions last March. Well, okay, it's not nearly the same Butler team, but it's still rather unexpected news. If the chips fall correctly, the Horizon League tournament runs through Milwaukee. Those would be some magical chips.

That was for you, Chris. You're welcome.

When getting back to teams that can actually contend for the spot in the Big Dance, we have the Wisconsin Badgers locked in and the Marquette Warriors scrambling for an at-large bid out of the Big East. I basically went over my feelings towards these two squads in my last post, but a few things have changed since February 14th. This is just how sports are...my mind is always churning out a different opinion. Kyle brought up a good point about having two go-to guys in Jon Leuer and Jordan Taylor rather than the typical lone scorer that the Badgers have had in past years. This is all well and good, but how about a third? I know this sounds greedy, but I think it's necessary. Look at teams like Ohio State and Purdue. They each have three (at the very least) guys they can turn to in tough situations. Therefore, I'm sticking with my Badgers-aren't-built-for-the-tourney attitude, but not completely ruling out an elite 8 appearance...that's the limit for this team, though.

Marquette? Yikes. That loss to St. John's in the BC was a killer. I fully expected the Warriors to pull that one out against a now ranked Red Storm team led by extremely underrated coach, Steve Lavin. Since they didn't, they are going to need to win a game or two in the Big East tournament to squeak into the field of 68. I think they can wind up 19-12 going into it, which would look pretty nice. What would look even better is a 20th win by irking one out in the conference tourney. Now look at the sitch...how can you shut out a team with a 20-13 record and ten wins in the Big East? You can't. Hence, I still like Marquette to earn a spot in the Madness...and make a little noise as well. Don't get up in a tizzy if they lose to Connecticut on Thursday because they have three very winnable games left on their slate.

I like how I just talked myself back into my original opinions.

Here's my snippet on the NBA. Melo is a Knick and the Bucks have some fearing to do.

I'd like to mention, in case you didn't already notice by the self-promoting links, that I earned an unpaid writing gig for a website called The Sports Jury. It's a pretty cool idea for a site as roughly 100 writers can basically chip in articles about whatever they want and then others can check in and read them. For instance, my article about the Bucks was somehow the feature article on the site all weekend, so that garnered me a bunch of reads. Eventually, I might be able to earn myself some pay out of it, so that's definitely something I'll be keeping up with.

Don't worry...I'm not going to abandon the blog thing. In fact, I'll be releasing new posts rather soon about my keys to filling out a perfect March Madness bracket so that you can all win a lot of money in your pools as well as a Brewers' season preview. For now, just try and survive the rest of February and then allow the NCAA tourney to ride you right into baseball season...and summer.