When the NHL playoffs began, my upset pick was Penguins-Blue Jackets series, with a pick of Columbus in seven games. My rationale was that Sergei Bobrovksy, the Vezina Trophy winner (the goaltending equivalent of the Cy Young Award) in 2013 would give the Blue Jackets the edge against a vulnerable Pittsburgh defense, at a time of year when defense and goaltending take on a bigger importance.
If you define March Madness by college basketball being on TV all day during the week, that today is when it all kicks off. The Big East tournament tipped off the first of four games a few minutes ago, the Mountain West goes wall-to-wall, to go with the assortment of power conference preliminary rounds and small conference championships today. It’s sorting out and prioritizing the college hoops docket that will the daily sports focus of TheSportsNotebook today.
Its conference tournament week in college basketball and five championship games are on tap tonight, including one involving #1-ranked Gonzaga. But unless you’re a fan of one of the small-conference teams playing for their NCAA lives, the biggest action tonight is still in the NBA. The top spot in the Western Conference is on the line when Oklahoma City visits San Antonio (8:30 PM ET, NBA-TV).
If you’re just getting caught up with college basketball now, in preparation for March Madness, there’s something you need to be extremely aware of—Butler is in serious trouble. Maybe you caught highlights of their November win over Indiana and their last-second buzzer-beater against Gonzaga. Great wins, to be sure, but within Atlantic 10 play, the Bulldogs have been reeling. They’re 9-5 in the conference, just lost by 32 to Virginia Commonwealth and suddenly face a key game tonight against Massachusetts (7, NBC Sports Network) that I would consider the most compelling on the Thursday daily sports docket.
The Big East basketball race is coming down to the wire. Georgetown holds a one-game lead in the loss column on Marquette and Louisville, but a difficult final push for the Hoyas starts tonight. They visit Villanova (7 PM ET, ESPN2). The Wildcats are right on the NCAA bubble and desperate for a win themselves, having just coughed up consecutive games to Seton Hall and Pitt. The argument for Villanova is built around their success against the conference’s best—the Wildcats have home scalps against Louisville, Syracuse and Marquette. If ‘Nova can add Georgetown to that list, at a time when the Hoyas are the hottest team in the country, you would think it would seal the deal for an NCAA invite.
Whether it’s the bubble of the NCAA Tournament or that in the playoff races of the NBA and NHL, the marginal teams are in the spotlight tonight. TheSportsNotebook’s daily sports talk will run through all three, starting with action in the NBA.
The battle on the NCAA Tournament bubble enters the final week of the regular season for the power conferences, and for a lot of the smaller conferences—including a couple notable mid-majors—tournament play starts up later this week. Two teams in must-win spots are Cincinnati and Baylor and with both teams on ESPN they lead up our daily sports talk.