Tuesday

The women's tournament gets down to its Sweet Sixteen tonight with the completion of their second round. (No confusion on the round number here.  They don't have the First Four to confuse things.)  Iowa got a first round win Sunday and earned the opportunity to meet ND in Iowa City around 2030 CST this evening.  The Irish coach was crying in the paper this AM about having to play a "road" game as a #1 seed.

My recollection is that schools can bid on hosting these first two rounds, and if that school then qualifies for the tournament, the committee will automatically place them at that home location.  Why ND elected(?) not to bid for these games is a bit of mystery (although I truly don't care).  They do this automatic-hosting protocol to insure attendance for these games.  Curiously, the only site without a qualifying host school was Ohio State, where ND would have been the obvious choice for a top attendance draw.

Rather than send ND to Columbus, they had UCLA, Oklahoma, Stetson, and Central Michigan at that site. 

Attendance for the first night was 2,256, and for the second round last night it was 1,358.  Boy, that was a home run.

I was also surprised to find only one channel on ESPN broadcasting women's games last night, while they had at least two of their channels showing men's NIT games.  I mean, the only men's teams happy about going to the NIT are underachievers with thin resumes.  But the network chose those games over second round women's games.  (For the record, the Hawkeye men sold out both of their first two NIT games last week...15,500.  That women's double-header on Sunday with Iowa and ND in separate games drew less than 7,000.)

There's not a real palatable explanation for the reality that women's games are not that great of draws, neither for the live gate nor the TV audience. 

This is Tuesday of Holy Week in the Catholic Church.  I don't recall much in the way of rituals for Holy

Tuesday, but I did a quick check on Wiki of the scripture readings for the day, and one is from Matthew with the parable of the talents.  That's the one where a master gave three servants money/property to manage while he was away on travels. The first two servants invest/achieve profits with their allocations, while the third buries his share.  The master rewards the first two and sends the third out into the night where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Really not sure of the lesson there, speaking as a financial advisor where I didn't see a risk analysis performed by those first two servants.

Belated props out to 4 for handling a national hour-long newscast on Sunday afternoon.  Sounds like she has been sliding into a good place on her "day" shift.  All good news.  Congrats, Kiddo!

I checked the calendar and the first sign of my pneumonia issues came to the surface over two months ago.  Wow!  Although I got a little winded from a busy day yesterday, I think that I'm above the 90% mark for the first time since January.  Talk about a long hill to climb.  I'm looking forward to some warm weather to keep the improvement going.  Cycling goals for the early part of the season have been adjusted.  But I'll be out there grinding.

Back to the piles on my desk.

BCOT