I've decided to make the notebook a feature story, and then a series of bullets after the jump to keep the posts from getting too long. Tonight's topic - how the tourney is shaping up. The field of 65 is already starting to take shape, with the tournament selection committee beginning their difficult process starting Thursday, and finalizing the bracket sometime Sunday afternoon. Here are the teams who have already punched their ticket to the tourney:
Atlantic Sun: Eastern Tennessee State (23-10)
Big South: Radford (21-11)
Colonial: Virginia Commonwealth (24-9)
Ivy: Cornell (21-9)
MAAC: Siena (26-7)
Missouri Valley: Northern Iowa (23-10)
Ohio Valley: Morehead State (19-15)
Southern: Chattanooga (18-16)
West Coast: Gonzaga (26-5)
With that aside, and a hearty hurrah for Jeff Capel's former school VCU, we move onto stuff that impacts OU directly. It appears that the Sooners have taken a hit in the court of public opinion lately. In Joe Lunardi's latest bracketology, we have been demoted to the 2 seed in the South Region. Interestingly, he bumped Kansas to a 2 seed after getting spanked by Texas Tech, the second worst team in the Big 12, and then getting challenged by Texas for most of the game at the Fogg.
Jerry Palm's bracketology appears to be based more in reality. In that update we maintain our 1 seed. He files us in the West region but a Kansas City pod for the first two games. We fall to #7 in the "People's Poll" on CBS Sports. Coincidentally we also fall to #7 in the USA Today poll, while falling to #6 in the AP Poll.
More news after the jump including Bono, Bob Stoops, and our women's basketball team's awesomeness (click the link below).
Apparently U2 is doing a tour. So while you're getting your Sooner football fix midseason, you can also get your U2 fix. They'll be playing Memorial Stadium in Norman on October 19th. Tickets go on sale April 4th.
Bob Stoops is a great guy. Sometimes I don't think people realize how much he gives back to the community in his free time. Great article, I would read it.
I'm going to try to work on some sort of spring preview for the football team. It's gonna take some time, but just throwing it out there that I'll try and work on that.
Our women's basketball team raked in the accolades today. I'll let you read them all. It's a pretty impressive list. Also, just thought I'd throw that out there that we might get a women's national player of the year (Courtney Paris) and men's (Blake Griffin). I don't know if that's ever happened, but I know Heisman and Naismith has never gone to the same school in the same year. Something to chew on.
UT president William Powers might be digging himself into a huge hole by suggesting that they might eventually need to eliminate football. What would we do without our hated rival? This will never happen.
OU baseball extends their winning streak to 6 games by beating Cal today. Their record is 13-3 and they are on an amazing roll right now.
A good read from the New York Times on why Blake Griffin chose to play at Oklahoma when he had offers from the likes of UNC, Duke and Kentucky. Here's a separate blog post by the same author.
While coaches may be upset about a lack of effort or focus from the offensive line, Brent Venables is apparently skipping around grinning and singing - happy about his awesome defense.
In closing, let's shine the spotlight on an accomplishment of another school's team. Nebraska had their best Big 12 record in men's basketball since 1998. They finished 8-8, but were a combined 4 agonizing points from being 10-6 in the conference.