5-at-10: NCAA tournament contest, who won the weekend


              FILE - In this Dec. 21, 2014, file photo, New England Patriots cornerback Darrelle Revis (24) defends New York Jets' Jeremy Kerley (11) during NFL football game in East Rutherford, N.J. Revis is coming back to the Jets after winning the Super Bowl with the rival Patriots last season. Revis agents Neil Schwartz and Jon Feinsod wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night, March 10, that "pending legal," Revis had agreed to terms on a new deal with the Jets. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
FILE - In this Dec. 21, 2014, file photo, New England Patriots cornerback Darrelle Revis (24) defends New York Jets' Jeremy Kerley (11) during NFL football game in East Rutherford, N.J. Revis is coming back to the Jets after winning the Super Bowl with the rival Patriots last season. Revis agents Neil Schwartz and Jon Feinsod wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night, March 10, that "pending legal," Revis had agreed to terms on a new deal with the Jets. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

It's Monday, you know what that means.

Who won the weekend and who lost it? Add in a little NCAA tournament chat, and well, there you go.

From the "Talks to much" studios, believing is better than not believing.

Weekend winners

photo This March 1, 2011, file photo shows former baseball player Barry Bonds arriving at a federal courthouse in San Francisco, A federal judge has barred the jury from hearing angry voicemails Barry Bonds' left with his mistress during their stormy nine-year relationship. Prosecutors wanted to introduce the voicemails at the slugger's perjury trial starting next week to show that Bonds was experiencing so-called 'roid rage when he left the messages demanding to know the whereabouts of Kimberly Bell. But U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston said Thursday, March 17, 2011 that the voicemails had little relevance to proving Bonds lied when he denied knowingly taking steroids. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

* College hoops. It has structured itself to have one great month, and that month starts now. Plus, the committee got everything right as far as invites go. A consensus of Vegas odds makers told RJ Bell that no team left out of the NCAA tournament would be favored over any at-large team picked for the tournament. Well done.

* Aggressive Kentucky bettors. We have been on UK going unbeaten from the start. If we had been able to get a little entertainment on that statement before the season, we could have got 50-to-1 odds. Now, UK is even money to win the whole thing, both in Vegas' eyes (that's the spread) and in the public perception (they were the pick on half of the first 100,000 brackets submitted to Yahoo.com). In fact, you can get 20-to-1 odds if you think UK will not trail for a single second of the NCAA tournament - a bet that would make the first few possessions of every game especially hairy - and Vegas says the closest competitor spread-wise to UK is Wisconsin, which would be a 5.5-point underdog.

* Jordan Spieth. Dude hit a 30-foot bomb in overtime (extra holes) to win the Valspar tournament to beat Patrick Reed and Sean O'Hair. (Side question: Do you prefer 'Sean' or 'Shawn' overall?) We can say this with fervor and directness: The PGA Tour needs Spieth to go on a serious roll and make a push. If he and Rickie Fowler can rally, and charge against the Rorys and the Jason Days, well, maybe that could be a golf story that helps fill in the narrative beyond "where's Tiger" and "when did Phil forget how to play?"

* Anyone who invested the 90 minutes in the "I Hate Christian Laettner" ESPN 30-for-30. Plus, Laettner was tweeting through the event - here is a recap of the highlights - that even included an apology to the Kentucky player Laettner stomped in the famous Duke-UK game in 1992.

* Kevin Harvick. Last year's champ now has back-to-back wins and has won four straight at Phoenix. Dude is like the theme song to "Karate Kid" - he's the best around. (C'mon, after the Laettner 30-for-30 in which there were multiple comparisons to Karate Kid villain Johnny Lawrence and his money head bands, you know you've been humming that tune.)

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Weekend losers

* OK, this dude, who shot his buddy with a shotgun after he brought him a Busch beer rather than a Budweiser. Wow, this is where we are in 2015. Sweet buckets of suds and sudden stupidity.

photo File photo - Alabama coach Anthony Grant shouts to his players during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Arkansas in Fayetteville, Ark., Saturday, Jan. 15, 2011. (AP Photo/April L. Brown)

* Anthony Grant. Dude was sacked as the Alabama basketball coach on Sunday, and the Tide was picked for the NIT later that evening. All things considered, Grant likely deserved the slip. So it goes.

* OK, someone get the CDC on the blower. Kevin Pillar is the ninth baseball player to be injured in the last dozen or so years by sneezing. Yes, Pillar strained his oblique with a powerful snot blast. Bless you, too.

* New England Patriots. Yes, they are the best organization in the NFL, but every team in the AFC East has gotten strides better, other than the Pats, which lost both starting corners in an already thing cornerback market.

* Potentially the NBA, which is already looking around at a league with a bunch of stars on the shelf, if this turns out to be anything more than an irritating pain for LeBron James. Side note: This trend of the league's top teams resting a chunk of its starters, while understandable, is troubling on a lot of levels. And when the Hawks are resting players against the Lakers, well, we know the NBA is flipped on its ear.

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NCAA tournament

We will breakdown the field through the week, and we will dedicate Wednesday as the day for tournament tips and bracket help. Deal? Deal.

We have two points for today:

First, can we now force every conference tournament to end by Saturday? Seriously, other than Kentucky's ho-hum, next step on its march to perfection, Sunday's hoops were lost int he shuffle. Not that Georgia State's 38-36 win over Georgia Southern deserved to be sent to the Tom Emanski film crew on sports fundamentals, but can't we give these teams a day to celebrate before we turn the page and stare at the bracket?

photo Kentucky forward Willie Cauley-Stein holds the trophy after the NCAA college basketball Southeastern Conference tournament championship game against Arkansas on Sunday, March 15, 2015, in Nashville. Kentucky won 78-63.

We think yes.

Second, we will host and play in the fifth annual "Method to the Madness: Last-in, First-out Challenge." The rules are easy, pick the first No. 1 seed to get bounced and the last double-digit seed to be left in the dance. Since there are more double-digit seeds in the draw, in the case of a split tie (one has the double-digit and one has the No. 1 seed correct), we'll give extra credence to the double-digit seed. If we still have a tie after that, we'll let the Electric Elite Eight Shootout challenge serve as a second tie-breaker. (The Electric Elite Eight Shootout is when you pick two players alive in the second weekend and the pair that scores the most total points wins. We'll get to that next week.)

Who wants to win stuff?

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This and that

photo Beer tile

- Speaking of beer, we found this interesting. Of the eight eight notable brands picked, Sam Adams and Sam Adams Light were picked as the best in the regular and the light beer categories. The most surprising stat in that story was that, while Bud Light was picked second-best in its category, Budweiser was last in its class. In fact Budwesier has dropped in sales every year from 1988 to 2013, going from 50 million barrels sold to 16 million.

- Here's an interesting story that the Braves are among the finalists for Cuban third baseman/slugger Hector Olivera. OK, dude's numbers are stout, and the Braves certainly need more offensive help, but he's north of 30 and the albatross contracts of Uggla and Upton have to be arming signs right? We''l see.

- Happy anniversary to the 5-at-10 parental units. They celebrated their 47th anniversary on Sunday. Kudos.

- And to continue the happily ever after riff, here's Dickie V smooching Ashley Judd. Say what you want about Dickie V - and we have through the years - but dude has won at life, and now he's smooching Ashley Judd. Golf clap sir.

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Today's question

Who you got - UK or the field?

Go and enter the contest - it don't cost nothing.

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