Rod's Friday Take N Things

Way to go Sammy!!!!! Another huge game from the Pierre former All Stater last night. 22 points and 10 rebounds as Pacific beat Appalachian St. 64-56 in the College Insider Dot Com post season basketball tournament. Yea, the CIT is probably 3rd in the line of post season tournaments behind the NCAA and the NIT but it might be better than the CBI (College Basketball Inviational) or at least even with it. But how many times to you get to play in a championship game of the national tournament. And the tourny organizers haven't made it easy on Sam and his teammates. All 3 of their previous games have been road games. They don't have the big money to play at neutral sites so they play at campus sites and usually the ones where they know they will get a good gate. So Sam and the Tigers have been on the road at Loyola Marymount in L.A. At Northern Colorado and last night at Boone, North Carolina. And Tuesday for the championship, at Springfield, Missouri and Missouri State who by the way is in the same football conference as South Dakota State. I think it is a big deal for Pierre and Riggs High basketball.

Speaking of the NCAA tournament, everybody likes the underdog. What if Butler plays Northern Iowa for the national championship? It would be an entertaining game. It won't happen of course but it would be fun if it did. Duke is the darling of college basketball and they were certainly given a huge gift by the NCAA tournament committee. 1 seed in the South, the weakest region of the 4. I would love to see a Northern Iowa and Duke national semi final game. Go UNI. Ah what the heck, Go Purdue tonight against Duke. No body gave Purdue a chance to win a game in the tournament when they top scorer went down with an injury. I am not a Big 10 fan of anything but when they play Duke, in basketball, Go Big 10. Now if it were football I would say, go Duke. And what is the deal with these late starts. Major League Baseball got run over the coals for their late start times to the world series and playoff games and young children could not stay up late to watch. So we have NCAA games starting after 10 p.m. Eastern Time? Last night's Cornell and Kentucky game was a 10:07 p.m. eastern time start. As for that, why did the east region games in Syracuse, New York start after the West Region games in Salt Lake City? Does CBS not care that young children who have to go to school the next day can't wait up til 10 p.m. eastern time for the start of their favorite team, be it Kentucky, Cornell or whoever? Or is it more important for kids to get to bed early in the fall than it is in the spring?