Tuesday, March 3, 2009

What? The Duke game isn’t on TV?

Assuming I counted correctly, for only the 3rd time this season, the Duke game isn’t on national TV tonight.

Quick Links

Rush-the-Court provides a grid of all the conference tournaments.

Howard Salwasser fills in the conference tournament brackets as seeds are clinched. Georgia Tech is locked in as a 12 seed in the ACC tournament bracket. Iowa and Indiana are locked in as the 10th and 11th seeds in the Big Ten tournament bracket. (Don’t be discouraged by the November 14th date at the top, when he updates, the date doesn’t get changed.)

Finally, a metaphorical picture of Ed Hightower can be found here. I subscribe to the “Wonk” idea of not talking about referees, but I also like to be a contrarian. And I want to say that I think the internet backlash against Ed Hightower is out of proportion.

There’s a reason Ed Hightower has been voted the top referee by the Big Ten players and it isn’t just because they want to suck up to him. The classic example was this weekend’s Michigan St. vs Illinois game when Travis Walton seemed to give an extra shove to Mike Davis. Rather than let the situation fester, Hightower went over to Walton, pulled him over to Davis, and made sure there was no bad blood between the two of them. Travis Walton is a hard-nosed defender and certainly meant no ill-will to Davis, and I appreciate a referee who will step in and try to encourage good sportsmanship.