How are your brackets doing? Did everybody have Marquette and Syracuse in their Final Four? I didn’t, or Kansas, for that matter. My strategy of selecting all four of the Number One seeds for the Final Four achieved very limited results, and prospects are dim for my final of Kentucky and Oklahoma.

Despite my overall bracket lousiness, I am, incredibly, leading in one contest, and will win as long as somebody who did possess enough prescience to select Syracuse [Hokie Kev], sees his heroes go one and out in New Orleans. I need very little extra impetus to root against the Orangepersons, but now I have it. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing Jim Boeheim, a coach I like, finally win a national championship, and Carmello Anthony is a pure joy to observe on the basketball court, but we are talking picking championships here, and this is war. Well, not exactly.

Events that have been conspiring during this NCAA Tournament demonstrate that all of the military metaphors often applied to sports competitions can be made to seem pretty silly when the genuine article is in operation. There are a lot more serious things going on at the moment than a basketball tournament, even the Final Four. I have watched very little of the games, far and away the least since the Tournament went to sixty-four teams and became extensively televised. I have attempted to follow a few teams, UConn and Pitt from the Big East among them -- the Huskies because they have a program I very much admire and the Panthers because of their current team -- but all teams I kept up with were gone after the round of sixteen.

It was tough even to watch them, as every commercial that popped up every few seconds sent me scampering to a news channel, and often, by the time I got back, another game would be on whose interest level for me paled in comparison to the riveting images coming from the battlefield. Every time I looked at my brackets I found myself not looking for the progress of my picks but that of the 3rd Division, and they ain’t on the bracket sheet. I hope the next time the US decides to give somebody a little " Shock and Awe," they begin during the Dead Zone of baseball season.

After a week off, TSL duty calls and dictates that I spend less time musing about the 3rd’s column and more about a TSL one. Obviously, if there is a pause in the war, it is because General Franks has checked my schedule. Closer to home, we notice that once again Tech is not participating in the NCAA tournament. This is not exactly breaking news, as we have become entirely too accustomed to this state of affairs. What is newsworthy is, as of this writing [Monday morning] anyway, we still don’t have a basketball coach. TSL does not have a reporter embedded in Jameson, so information concerning the advances made in hiring one is scant.

We have been able to discern that coaches aren’t exactly lining up down Spring Road applying for the job, and it seems a Southern Conference coach (Jeff Lebo) has turned us down. This is the state in which the once-proud Virginia Tech basketball program finds itself. Ricky Stokes was hired because he was willing to take the job at the money that was then offered. Rhode Island's Jim Baron, if he comes, will be hired because he is willing to take the job, period. That might be the defining commentary on the Ricky Stokes Era at Virginia Tech.

Baron, if hired, is not exactly a sexy choice for those hoping for a Marshall Plan or Oliver’s Story for Tech, but he seems a competent coach with a knack for taking downtrodden programs and improving them at least to NIT level. That would certainly be a step in the right direction for Tech. Baron also seems to have had enough sense to bolt St. Bonaventure before, or perhaps because of, the introduction of that command-imposed Welding curriculum.

That Baron is also either being considered by or pondering the Penn State job is another positive, as it shows he doesn’t mind working at places that have eight hundred-pound gorillas in nearby offices, which I think has contributed to some of the perceived lack of interest in the Tech job. Discussions as to whether Baron or any other potential coach would stay are for another time; right now, the mission will be to get the Tech basketball program into some semblance of a decent and competitive one. 

A second front has opened in Tech athletics, that of spring football practice. This offers the possibility of more immediate success, as Frank’s team has the look of one that can be quite good. A major problem of the last two seasons, lack of experience and talent at quarterback, the most crucial of football positions, looks to be working itself out, as Tech now has both experience and talent with impeccable bloodlines.

There are concerns, to be sure. The look the coaches are taking at DeAngelo Hall at wide receiver indicates that they are still not altogether pleased with what they have at hand. Tech seems to have many more quality defensive backs than wide receivers, but Hall is the best of the DBs, and I expect by August he will be back to his usual terrorizing of enemy wide receivers.

Injuries along the defensive line are troublesome, particularly the torn pectoral muscle injury to Jim Davis. There is not a freshman in the country that can bring to the field the combination of talent and experience possessed by Davis. There also seem to be some problems with D-lineman Jimmy Williams, but I will spare the reader my usual rant on the folly of recruiting JUCO players.

Tech fans have learned over the last two years that the differences between the generally expected good season, a very good season and a very, very good one can be small, and Davis would be a handy player to have around. But, this is a program with a lot of talent and a world of potential. 

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