It’s NCAA tournament time! I watched the first set of games at work today (don’t tell nobody) and everything went pretty much as planned.  The only surprise was LSU winning.  In my bracket, I have all the SEC teams losing in the first round; the conference was incredibly weak this year.  I overlooked the fact that Butler just wasn’t anything at all either.  So end result, LSU sqeaks by.  I fully expect UNC to absolutely destroy them.

UCONN: Best wishes to Coach Calhoun who is feeling ill in a Philadelphia hospital and will be kept overnight for tests.  Now what’s interesting about all of this:

• UConn still won.  By a lot.  56 points.  3rd largest margin of victory in NCAA tourney history, to be exact. And even more interesting…

• This is the third NCAA tournament game Calhoun has missed. In the two previous instances, UConn went on to win the national title.

Hmm, I wonder how “ill” he was feeling after all.  Tracking…

My picks for the games this evening: Texas, Michigan, Nova, Zags, Duke, Oklahoma, UCLA, Illinois.

More later on tonight…

-El Meester

As the lone senior remaining on the floor, Brian Hoff had two hands firmly wrapped around the basketball as the final seven seconds ticked off the clock Sunday at the Donald L. Tucker Center.

You didn’t need to look at the scoreboard to know the outcome of Florida State’s Senior Day finale against Virginia Tech. Hoff’s huge smile told it all.

On a day when FSU fans bid goodbye to seniors Toney Douglas, Uche Echefu and Hoff, a 63-53 victory over the Hokies gave them every reason to say, ‘Hello, NCAA Tournament!’

In his first career start, Hoff scored the Seminoles' first six points by draining a pair of 3-pointers.

“Me, Uche and Toney, we’ve been through so much here,” Hoff said. “We’ve been on the bubble. We knew we weren’t getting in last year, pretty much. The year before we got here, we weren’t very good. …

“My dream was always to play in the NCAA Tournament. To finally be able to realize that, it’s so fulfilling.”

The Seminoles (23-8, 10-6) will enter this season’s Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament as the No. 4 seed, not needing a miracle run to an end an agonizingly long drought since its last NCAA appearance in 1998. No ACC team with 10 league wins has been denied an NCAA berth since the field was expanded to include at-large berths.

Hoff, who spent three seasons as a walk-on before earning a scholarship this season, won’t soon forget his first career start. He scored the Seminoles’ first six points by draining a pair of 3-pointers, and even shared the team scoring lead at the half.

“I didn’t know if I was going to get a shot or anything, but my mindset was to make something happen,” said Hoff, who passed on several small-school scholarship offers to walk-on with the ‘Noles after helping Jacksonville Arlington Country Day win a state title in 2005.

“It’s made it all worthwhile, to come here and help turn this program around,” he said of his decision. “I’m grateful that I could contribute to it.”