ESPN reports:

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Police say doctors amputated the foot of a man who was shot in the leg during raucous celebrations in Lexington of Kentucky’s NCAA basketball championship.

Lexington police spokeswoman Sherelle Roberts says 31-year-old Harold Calloway remained hospitalized Tuesday afternoon. He was shot around 2 a.m. as Kentucky fans were celebrating in the streets. No arrests have been made in the shooting.

I believe the children are our future; treat them well and let them burn the way . . .

For the first time in over 50 years, a state-rivalry match is happening in the Final Four. Kentucky and Louisville have one of the biggest intrastate rivalries in the country, and everything’s come together to make this a volatile matchup.

Make no mistake, however: Louisville is a massive underdog, and it’ll take more than luck to turn the tables on Kentucky. The Wildcats have run through the NCAA tournament so far with ease, boasting speed, length, NBA talent, and surprising unselfishness in dismantling their opponents. Louisville, on the other hand, was a middling Big East team that got hot at the right time.

It’s hard to find a better coaching matchup. Rick Pitino has a long list of accomplishments — including back-to-back NCAA championship games when he was coaching the University of Kentucky — and a history of overachieving with discipline amongst his players. John Calipari is a powerhouse (and controversial) recruiter, turning this year’s Kentucky team into one of the most impressive collections of talent ever assembled, a team that could often win on athleticism alone.

Pitino has disciplined Louisville to play great defense, but they’ve only seen Kentucky’s level of athleticism one other time this season — when they played against Kentucky in December. They came away with a loss. Kentucky’s top two — Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist — are a matchup nightmare. Look for them to exploit Louisville inside and on the boards.

For Louisville to put up a fight, three things have to happen. They have to have learned (a lot) from their December meeting and Pitino must try to exploit a weakness — any weakness — that he can find. Louisville has to play with poise and confidence — they’ve played one of the toughest schedules this year and will be going up against a freshman-heavy team that hasn’t been challenged very often. And Rick Pitino will have to dig into his bag of tricks. Pitino is one of the best in-game coaches in the college game, while Calipari has a tendency to be high-strung on the sidelines. If the underdogs can keep it close during the second half, they might find a way to exploit the talent-laden but inexperienced behemoth.

That’s the best news for Louisville. They’re still facing an incredible uphill battle. Anything can happen in the tournament, but expect Kentucky to pull this one out comfortably.

If so, the University of Miami Hurricanes want to talk to you about becoming a walk-on offensive lineman. Yes, this is real:

From ESPN:

The University of Southern Mississippi has revoked the scholarships of five members of its pep band who took part in the heckling of a Kansas State basketball player at last Thursday’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament game.

The school announced Tuesday that the five students also were removed from the band and will be required to complete a two-hour cultural sensitivity training course this week.

Here is video of the actual chant. Personally, I have no problem with the punishment. They embarrassed the band and their university with their chant, and thus they should no longer represent their school.

Maybe Alex Ovechkin should have asked John Carlson to give him a hand with his NCAA bracket:

I was so wrong last year (except for picking the winner, my brackets were abysmal) I tried to go in a different direction this year. But since it is the last year of the real Big East, I couldn’t resist. So, Final Four: UConn, Louisville, Syracuse and North Carolina. I could have made it an all-Big East Final Four, but some Fluke stopped me from picking Georgetown over the Tar Heels.

I like Louisville over UConn, North Carolina over Syracuse, and Louisville to win the tournament.

Last year, I think half or three-quarters of my Final Four had gone by the boards (by the brackets?) by the end of the first weekend. I’ll probably do better this year because I’ve watched next to no college basketball so I can’t even pretend to know much about the teams.

On Twitter the other day I predicted President Obama’s Final Four bracket based on his desire to not offend swing-states before the election. I was almost right. I had him picking Duke, NC, Missouri and Ohio State:

I was pretty close. The president has Kentucky, NC, Missouri and Ohio State:

Looks like #1 seed, Syracuse, will be without starting center, Fab Melo:

Syracuse sophomore Fab Melo will not play in the NCAA tournament due to an eligibility issue, the school announced Tuesday afternoon. Melo did not travel with the team to Pittsburgh.

No. 1 seed Syracuse will be without Fab Melo for the entire NCAA tournament. CAPTION By Jim McIsaac, Getty ImagesSyracuse also said due to University policy and federal student privacy laws, no further details can be provided at this time.

Melo averaged 7.8 points per game and a team-leading 5.8 rebounds per game. He blocked 88 shots this season.

For a team whose Achilles’ heel is its ability to rebound, losing their seven-foot-tall leading rebounder can’t be a good thing.

Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal.

*Definitiveness not guaranteed.

March is here and, with that, a chance to make water-cooler talk with your office mates because you’re participating in an NCAA bracket. No matter what your knowledge level, you can play and even sometimes defeat your sports-junkie friends who have been following college hoops obsessively for years. It’s called madness for a reason.

And now, for the first time, you can have a patented system guaranteed to place you in . . . OK, maybe the top half of your office pool. Probably. It’s been honed and perfected over the years by a select committee of casual basketball-watchers for over a decade . . .

  Don’t fall in love with the upset. Yeah, it’s fun to root for the underdog, but when we’re filling out our brackets, too often we talk ourselves into low seeds making a “run” and going farther than they should. The best way to fill out a bracket is from the inside-out: pick the championship matchup, then the Final Four, then the Elite Eight, just so you can avoid suddenly looking at your bracket and seeing Montana in the Final Four.

  With the aforementioned in mind, certain first-round matchups have a knack for delivering upsets. The NCAA selection committee usually values middling big-conference teams over small-conference champions. Look for the 5 vs. 12 and 7 vs. 10 matchups where a smaller school can take a victory over a big-name team.

 Bet on the big-name coaches. (Corollary: Never bet against Tom Izzo in March.) For better or worse, coaches with a pedigree and a track record usually come prepared in March. The likes of John Calipari, Rick Pitino, Tom Izzo, Mike Krzyzewski, and others have established reputations for a reason. If you’re at a loss, check the coach’s Wikipedia page — and bet on the one with more detail.

4. Don’t sleep on the mid-majors. Just because you haven’t heard of a school or never saw one of their games this season doesn’t mean the team is a pushover. We’ve seen spectactular runs by Virginia Commonwealth, Butler, Xavier, Davidson, and George Mason in the last few years. This year, teams like Wichita State, Murray State, and New Mexico are well positioned to make deep runs.

  As in many other sports, defense wins championships. As the clock ticks down in a close game between two evenly matched squads, the ability to get a stop is crucial. High-powered offenses like North Carolina and Missouri are fun to watch, but when it comes down to crunch time, count on athletic defenses like Kentucky’s or efficient ones like Michigan State’s to triumph.

  Chicks dig the long ball. In picking upsets in the NCAA tournament, the ability to get hot from the three-point line is important. Powerhouse teams from big conferences like Syracuse often aren’t used to teams with undersized guards and forwards from smaller conferences who nonetheless have the ability to light it up from downtown.

  Depth matters. One superstar can bring a team a lot of hype during the regular season, but the strength of a team from top to bottom matters more come tournament time. It’s better to take the team with a solid interior tandem or great guard play over the team with one great player whose teammates may wilt when he’s double-teamed.

 Duke is always overrated. Just kidding. But they’re fun to hate. They’re actually very good and pass just about every test on this list. It’s okay to bet on Duke. People will hate you if you win, though.

 Everything you know is wrong. It’s better to be lucky than good. Every year millions of people play online bracket challenges and every year there are seemingly only four or five people who emerge with a perfect bracket. While logic should always be the basis for a decision, if you just can’t decide, sometimes it’s fun (possibly even preferable) to go with your gut.

There you have it: a formula for guaranteed success in picking your NCAA tournament bracket. For a few diverse viewpoints, if you really want them, check out FiveThirtyEight’s guide from last year and Eamonn Brennan at ESPN.

Happy Madness, everyone.

– Kevin Glass is the managing editor of Townhall.com. He and fellow contributor Christopher Regal, a health policy writer with HealthCentral, are veteran viewers of college basketball.

Oh, joy. Now you can donate to President Obama and enter his Final-Four bracket pool.

I guess we won’t have another Bobby Sands to deal with.

Virginia football player Joseph Williams broke an eight-day fast Monday around 10 p.m. so that he could focus on his studies and prepare for a service trip to Belize over the school’s spring break next week, he said Tuesday morning.

Williams is one of several Virginia students who either were or are participating in a hunger strike as part of the Living Wage Campaign’s efforts to leverage school officials into improving the treatment of service-sector employees. He said he lost roughly 12 pounds during his fast.

His first post-strike meal: miso soup and sushi.

“It felt good,” Williams said. “I got full a lot quicker. I ate really fast. I guess I was just really excited to be eating again. I was kind of queasy a little bit for a while, but I got over it.”

 I’ll admit, eight days is a lot longer than I’d go. On the other hand, I believe most would find a first meal of miso soup and sushi evocative of the 1 percent.

On the bright side, that $2,000 maximum allowable earnings should go a lot further now:

Virginia junior football player Joseph Williams was at the school’s library late Sunday night when he noticed another student fast asleep at one of the tables. A friend mentioned to him that the student was participating in a hunger strike organized by the university’s chapter of the Living Wage Campaign, a group with which Williams previously had been involved.

Williams sent a text message to another friend of his who he figured also was participating in the hunger strike and told her he had eaten his last meal. He too was going to join the hunger strike, which is designed to leverage university decision-makers into improving the pay of the school’s service-sector employees.

As National Review Institute contributor, Scott Lincicome, commented to me: “The kid’s life is an inspiring story, but he’s clearly not an econ major.” 

Williams is not on a football scholarship; he said he receives full financial aid from the university because of his family’s economic situation. But he said he is concerned “to a certain extent” about how his participation in the hunger strike will affect his standing on the football team.

“But at the same time, that’s something I’m willing to sacrifice,” Williams said. “I’m very passionate about what I believe in, so obviously if I’m willing to give up food, there’s not a lot that’s going to be able to sway me as far as other people’s opinions of what I’m doing.”

As Williams described in a blog post he wrote Thursday for MichaelMoore.com, he and his family moved “over 30 times – including various stays in homeless shelters, the homes of family friends, and church basements” as he was growing up. He was raised by a single mother and has three siblings.

More Lincicome: “I wonder if Michael Moore paid him a living wage for that blogpost?”

Can the Fine-abuse scandal get weirder? I doubt it. AP:

NEW YORK (AP)—The New York Daily News reports that former Syracuse ball boy Bobby Davis says in an affidavit the wife of former Orange assistant coach Bernie Fine had sex with the players.

The affidavit was filed Monday in New York State Supreme Court by attorney Gloria Allred.

A lawyer for Fine’s wife, Laurie, calls that accusation a “desperate” attempt to keep the suit alive.

Davis and stepbrother Michael Lang are suing Syracuse and basketball coach Jim Boeheim, saying they were defamed when Boeheim called them liars out to make money by accusing Fine of molesting them.

The rest here.

Video here:

There are bigger villains in the Sandusky scandal than Joe Paterno, but this deification of the man is border-line sickening. Back in 2002 when Paterno first heard of the allegations, he did the absolute minimum — from what we know — to report what he heard to the university. He went as far as to admit to the Washington Post that he had never heard of “rape and a man” before.

Paterno — a devout Catholic — never once heard the subject of child abuse come up? With all of the scandals involving the Catholic church and “rape and a man,” it’s impossible to believe this to be true.

Yes, the Trustees only took this action after failing themselves, but the fact remains that Paterno deserved to be fired.
 

If they show, that is:

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – The controversial Westboro Baptist Church said after the death of Joe Paterno it will travel to Penn State to protest at services for the former football coach.

The Westboro Church showed up at Penn State’s bowl game in Dallas on January 2, where it was confronted by Occupy movement protesters.

This time, the church said it will be at Paterno’s funeral. Margie Phelps, daughter of Pastor Fred Phelps, said on Twitter the church would picket the funeral.

But many times, the church doesn’t show at events that it threatens to protest.

The AP, quoting the Paterno family, denies the CBS report that Paterno has passed:

Paterno family spokseman Dan McGinn: reports of former Penn State coach’s death are “not true.”

Details here.

If I had to guess, this has more to do with recruiting this year than overall happiness with Kelly. His contract now expires in 2016, which allows him to tell recruits this year that he’ll be the coach for their entire career at Notre Dame.

I don’t know if the extension will help. Urban Meyer, not content to just take coaches from Notre Dame, just poached a 4-star offensive lineman from the Irish:

Urban Meyer plucked two of Notre Dame’s assistants for his new staff at Ohio State. Now he’s pilfering Irish recruits, too.

Offensive lineman Taylor Decker has switched commitments from Notre Dame to Ohio State after the Vandalia, Ohio, product took an official visit to the Buckeyes, according to multiple online reports.

Decker is a 6-foot-8-inch, 310-pound four-star prospect, according to Rivals.com. He had been committed to the Irish since March, but Rivals.com reported that the move of Irish assistants Ed Warinner and Tim Hinton to Ohio State contributed to Decker’s flip.

It’s the second decommitment suffered by the Irish in a week after top 100 prospect Ronald Darby reopened his recruiting. Notre Dame now has 16 commitments in its Class of 2012 recruiting haul.

Can you blame the recruits? Who’d want to play for the “Purple Hulk”?