The telephone rang in the sports information office at UNLV around 2 p.m. on Thursday. A local college baseball fan had a question:
Ed Graney
Ed Graney is a sports columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, covering a variety of topics and the Las Vegas sports scene.
egraney@reviewjournal.com … @edgraney on Twitter. 702-383-4618
John Stockton couldn’t stop smiling. C. Vivian Stringer’s voice cracked with emotion. David Robinson spoke with the excitement of a teenager presented his first car.
DETROIT — There was a lot of talk about preparation around here the last few days, about how Michigan State’s coaching staff gets its basketball team ready to play big games on quick turnarounds, about how the Spartans have enough video experts to open a film school, about numerous 20-minute sessions for players throughout the day and sometimes late into the night.
DETROIT — There are varying degrees of causes. Some inspire nations. Others motivate small groups. Some change lives. Others alter ideals. Some make you remember. Others help you forget.
DETROIT — It’s almost like the whole UFO phenomenon. There are those who deeply believe in their existence and those who mock such faith. There are those who always will remain skeptical and those who always will keep an open mind.
If he and his North Carolina basketball coaches and teammates can get past that small but often difficult part about perception, Ty Lawson should play craps here every available second until the Tar Heels are eliminated from the Final Four or crowned its champion.
A colleague was bragging the other day about her NCAA Tournament bracket. She was closing in on first place and purposefully inquired where my entry sat among more than 60, knowing full well it had exploded like a cargo ship in Halifax Harbour once Wake Forest decided that rolling over and beginning its offseason early was more enticing than winning a lousy game or two.
Chalk defines teams that have advanced to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16, but it has nothing to do with how well the leading players might translate in the NBA.
Pete Manarino coached for decades in the mecca of youth softball. He witnessed the skill, watched it be nurtured, lost track of the number of travel teams at, oh, tons.
The Wranglers today are like a home ready to be shown to interested buyers, but not yet listed.
Paul Howard wants you to know his betting tickets are for sale. The ones with Siena and Texas A&M and Virginia Commonwealth winning the NCAA Tournament.
When order has been restored and all the nonmajor basketball programs are sent home from the NCAA Tournament — or, in the case of this year’s Cinderella-lacking bracket, all the below-average-to-awful Big Ten teams and Arizona — the Final Four will be staged in Detroit.
Exclusivity is an upsetting trend to everyone except perhaps Jim Nantz. It is everything college football has become and everything we once could count on the NCAA Tournament avoiding.
UNLV has a men’s basketball team today preparing not for the NCAA Tournament but rather a first-round National Invitation Tournament matchup at Kentucky for one reason.