It’s back! And just at the right time, too. The last two weeks in college basketball are the most important; for bubble teams like Texas and Seton Hall as well as conference favorites like Syracuse and Kentucky. Down 4, loud as hell, its the full court press.

Must-Wins:These teams are in need of a win to stay relevant in the NCAA tournament hunt:

West Virginia (17-11, 7-8). They are coming off a 71-44 loss at Notre Dame and host #10 Marquette tonight at 8 CT. At 10th in the Big East,

West Virginia scored just 16 points in the 2nd half against ND

West Virginia has cellar-team Depaul and a good South Florida team to wrap up the season.

Xavier (17-10, 8-5). I’m not sure many people saw this coming. Most predicted them to take the ACC, but SLU and Temple are running away with it. The Musketeers still have to go to SLU on the 28th. If they can win out, they will be able to sneak into the tournament.

Any team in the Pac-12. I may be exaggerating, but I wasn’t pleased with any team in this conference, including Cal. In two games against ranked opponents, Cal has lost by a combined 56 points. NO team in the entire conference has defeated a ranked team at all.

Local Flavor: #3 Mizzou vs. #5 Kansas tomorrow. ESPN is all over this game as this will be the last regular season showdown between one of the top 5 rivalries in all of college sports. The more I hear from kU (on purpose, they don’t deserve my proper grammar), the more I doubt we will ever play them again. These inbreds sound like a jealous ex-girlfriend when explaining why they don’t want to play us again. The whole “you dumped us so why would we give you the satisfaction” argument still doesn’t explain why we should quit playing. Not one kU fan can tell me that before the season starts, they don’t look at when they play Mizzou. It’s stubborn, it’s childish. They want to say “Mizzou quit by leaving the Big 12”. A crumbling, unfair conference.

Wow, back to basketball.

The Book: Will be posted tomorrow.

Image via Wikipedia

Off-Subject: The Ryan Braun press conference gave me some relief. I understand why it the courts dropped the case, but in the interest of the sport, MLB is going to interject and appeal the decision. What can they do? Not much. I’d be surprised if they are able to get the ruling reversed because the testing agency messed up, but going off what the Kruk man said today, you will hear more about this situation and more details will come out. And this WILL hurt MLB’s reputation. Don’t expect to see any more over-rulings on these because no one in this situation wants a positive test result. Just my 5 cents.

Thanks For Reading,

Chach